Transformers II
The latest Transformers film will delight plenty of people. It is filled with explosions, some new characters, bucketloads of special effects and the puerile one liners and adolescent humour one expects from an action film of its nature. It’s also one of the most reactionary films I’ve seen in a very long time. While many will scoff at the idea of a political analysis of Transformers (“it’s just a movie! It’s not meant to be taken seriously!”), the sewage bubbling below its clean cut, all American surface needs to be exposed.
The film opens with scenes of people running in panic past military cordons at the scene of an apparent chemical spill at an industrial complex in China. This quickly turns out to be the site where a Decepticon (the evil baddie robots) has landed. Soon after this we are treated to the arrival of the knights in shining armour, the US military. We see a scene with officers discussing China’s closure of its airspace, and their decision to ignore this and send in Black Ops helicopters with a team of elite troops and Autobots (the nice goodie robots) to deal with the situation. This sets the tone for the rest of the movie. The US military scampers merrily around the world, invading China, demanding access to the airspace of its Egyptian and Jordanian client states, and generally acting as a planetary police force. This isn’t anything unusual, of course, with most Hollywood films treating the United States exactly this way – a good example is Spy Game, in which Robert Redford (retiring CIA officer) organises the disabling of a Chinese power plant and a bloody assault on a Chinese prison by US Navy Seals in order to rescue Brad Pitt (CIA spy captured trying to infiltrate the prison). In the eyes of Hollywood, US imperialism’s armed thugs can do no wrong and the world is their playground, and it is this wall-to-wall view that reaches the eyes of cinema-goers around the world.
Presidential coup in Nepal
Below is an article I wrote a week or two ago for the Spark, the Workers Party paper, briefly going into some of what’s been taking place over the past wee few months and describing in particular the recent events surrounding the presidential coup. A shortened version will be in the next Spark (look out for us in Cuba mall and elsewhere on Saturday morning, only costs a dollar!), but readers of this blog get to see it in all it’s unedited glory. 
The fierce one: Prachanda, leader of the UCPN (M), and former Prime Minister of Nepal
Presidential coup in Nepal
By Alastair Reith
The last time the Spark carried news from Nepal, the story was positive. The Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) had been elected to government with just under forty percent of the seats (more than the next two parties put together). It’s leader Prachanda was Prime Minister. Previous to this, it had waged a decade long People’s War that liberated eighty percent of the countryside and radicalised the workers and peasants of the country in support of revolutionary change. Under the slogan of a new Nepal, the Maoist-led government attempted to bring about land reform, build national industry, empower and improve the lives of workers, and fight against the domination of foreign imperialism, in particular Indian expansionism. However, this article describes events of a much less positive nature.
Nepal: Maoists revive parallel government, kick up land seizures
New generation, new nepal: Young revolutionary woman at a Maoist rally
I haven’t posted anything here about Nepal in a while, and so much has happened that this brief post can’t do justice to the rapidly changing situation there. But here’s a few media reports to give a taste of what’s going on there at the moment. I plan on writing a detailed article putting forward my thoughts on what’s happening since the presidential coup and the end of the Maoist-led government, and I’ll post it here when I’m finished. The basic line it will take is that since the Maoist’s departure from government, they are taking an increasingly militant and confrontational approach.
Iranian Maoists call for revolution
Photos from Iran’s Upsurge of Anti-Regime Struggle — KasamaProject.org
(republished from Kasama)
Kasama received the following leaflet thanks to A World to Win News Service.
Iranian Maoists: “You wanted a fight? Let’s fight!”
15 June 2009. A World to Win News Service. Following is a leaflet issued 15 June by the Communist Party of Iran (Marxist-Leninist- Maoist). The title is a challenge to the regime.
Rebellion, revolutionary situation, an explosion of the hatred felt by millions of people throughout the country: it doesn’t matter what you call the recent events. What matters is that we have entered a new period. Many bridges have been broken and in many spheres there is no return to past. The young women and men fighting courageously in the streets reflect the discontent and anger of three generations. Faces are bloody, bodies bruised, but nobody is talking about retreat or surrender. Armed-to-the- teeth mercenaries and herds of lumpen are wandering the streets but nobody pays any attention to them. Parents accompany their children in the streets. The initial shock and demoralization is rapidly disappearing.
In the mind of millions, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s disgrace in the election farce has discredited the “possibility of change and the rectification of the regime from within” far more rapidly and effectively than any political debate and reasoning. The leading faction took a serious gamble with this. And now may of the rebellious youth are thinking about ways for effectively getting rid of the regime.
Back
Well it’s been a very long time since I posted on this blog, and chances are anyone who used to look at it has long since moved on in despair and disillusionment. Sorry… But that’s about to change, because I plan on getting back into blogging! Hopefully I’ll be posting something every day, and hopefully people will find it interesting.
Over the past months since I last posted there have been plenty of changes and plenty of significant events both in my own life and in the world as a whole. I’m now living in Wellington, capital of New Zealand, and I was attending Victoria University before they kicked me out for burning the New Zealand flag at a protest. Needless to say, I’m keeping busy and remain an active member of the Workers Party of New Zealand.
On selling revolutionary papers in Dunedin
Dunedin is a good place to do paper sales. This has always struck me as being quite interesting, considering the relatively low level of political activism and class struggle here compared to other centres. Whenever I hit the streets in my Karl Marx t-shirt (with the words “I’d rather have a revolution than a Labour government” written on it) and a stack of Sparks, I end up selling quite a few and getting a lot of positive responses.
I did a paper sale today with a comrade from Christchurch called Phil, who’s in town for a week or so. After a few initial probems (I always get messed up on Saturday thanks to the bus timetables being different to during the week… I have no excuses, I’m just bad with stuff like that!), we met up in the wee alleyway between George St and the New World shopping centre to sell our papers, hand out leaflets with the Workers Party election manifesto on them and generally preach the good news to people walking by.
All Things Bright and Beautiful – Workers Party radio ad
Now that my organisation, the Workers Party of New Zealand, has secured enough paper members to register as a political party, we get $10,000 to spend on whatever election stuff we want and we also get free airtime on the radio and TV channels. This is a video put together to go with our radio ad.
This is the first time in history that a revolutionary communist option has been on every ballot in the country, and it’ll be the first time New Zealand’s radios and TVs have had anti-capitalist material playing on them. So this is a pretty big deal.
The song was written and performed by Don Franks, our candidate for Wellington Central. Vote Workers Party – workers should be running the country!
The video can also be viewed at the Workers Party website – http://workersparty.org.nz/2008/10/09/all-things-bright-and-beautiful-2/
Reformism vs Revolution
(this is a debate between me and the Resident Action Movement’s #1 candidate, Oliver Woods. I think it’s quite illuminating. He shows himself to be pro-capitalist, anti-socialist, and a denier of class struggle and indeed the very existence of classes with irreconcilably hostile interests. Socialist Worker is a key component of RAM, and it’s saddening to think that the former Communist Party of New Zealand has swung right to the point where it would endorse a candidate like this)
The original post I responded to can be found on Oliver’s blog.
The argument for Open Borders
(above: refugees in an Australian concentration camp)
This was originally a post I wrote on Revleft, a forum I frequent. JimmyJazz and Spartan are the names of two people on the forum, and this post was a reply to a thread JJ started advocating that the US somehow “close it’s borders”. I tried to cover all the arguments against Open Borders put forward by leftists, and raised many of the arguments for it.
JimmyJazz, don’t quote from my sig to justify you’re position. I am an advocate of Open Borders, and the Lenin quote in question does not in any way justify more border controls.
Basically, you’re entire argument is disconnected from reality. You see the capitalist state repressing and discriminating against immigrants, and you see the capitalist class using the fact that these immigrants are illegal (and thus denied contracts, union rmembership etc) to make them a social underclass, and your solution is… “closed borders”.
JJ, the US border is already closed, You are only able to cross it legally with the permission of the capitalist state in the form of visas or whatever. And please explain to me how, in concrete terms, the border can be made any more closed than it is. Do you really think the US is going to build a gigantic wall along it’s border, so high (and perhaps electrified and covered in poisoned spikes) that noone can cross it? Do you have any idea how much that would cost? There already is a wall being built along the US-Mexico border, and that’s proven to be both ridiculously expensive and ineffective – immigrants can still get in.
Fidel Castro on Sports in Revolutionary Cuba
The following article is from Reflections of Fidel Castro, and I came across it at The Marxist-Leninist Blog.
What went unsaid about Cuba
Cuban President Raul Castro with the Cuban Olympic team
I have carefully followed the Western media’s reaction to my Sunday reflections on the Olympic Games in China. Actually, rather sensitive events were overlooked while others were highlighted ad libitum by the advocates of world plunder and exploitation.
Let’s see:
“Fidel Castro today blamed the judges and the Mafia for the poor performance of the Cuban delegation at the Olympic Games. He also justified the Cuban tae kwon do athlete Angel Volodia Matos, who was permanently suspended after kicking a referee in the head, and expressed his full solidarity with him.”
“The former Cuban President called on Monday to make a deep analysis of sports in Cuba. He also expressed his solidarity with an athlete who was permanently suspended together with his coach for assailing a judge.”
“Castro manifested his full solidarity with the tae kwon do athlete permanently suspended for attacking a referee and a judge.”
“Castro in solidarity with the Cuban tae kwon do athlete permanently suspended for aggression.”
There is a long list of similar sentences. This was the prevailing line of information. I didn’t expect otherwise. I was doomed, the same as the Cuban boxers in the face of bribed referees and judges, and I knew what would be publicized.
As was to be expected, not a word was published about hunger, undernourishment, lack of medicines, sport gear and facilities suffered by 80% of the countries competing there.
