On this day, 20 December 1973, the Spanish fascist prime minister, who was hand-picked as dictator Francisco Franco's successor, Luis Carrero Blanco, was assassinated in Madrid.
Basque separatists ETA had spent five months digging a tunnel under a road he went down to attend mass. They then detonated a bomb as he drove over, shooting his car 35 metres into the air and over a five-storey building, earning Carrero Blanco the nickname "Spain's first astronaut".
His successor was unable to hold together different factions of the government, and so this action was credited by some for helping accelerate the restoration of democracy after Franco's death.
People in Spain continue to experience state repression for joking about Carrero Blanco’s death. One young woman was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment in 2017 for a series of tweets, including one asking: “Did Carrero Blanco also go back to the future with his car?”
Working Class History
Basque separatists ETA had spent five months digging a tunnel under a road he went down to attend mass. They then detonated a bomb as he drove over, shooting his car 35 metres into the air and over a five-storey building, earning Carrero Blanco the nickname "Spain's first astronaut".
His successor was unable to hold together different factions of the government, and so this action was credited by some for helping accelerate the restoration of democracy after Franco's death.
People in Spain continue to experience state repression for joking about Carrero Blanco’s death. One young woman was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment in 2017 for a series of tweets, including one asking: “Did Carrero Blanco also go back to the future with his car?”
Working Class History
#Make_Fascists_Astronauts_Again
#Spains_First_Astronaut
#BackToTheFuture
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Today marks the birth of Joseph Stalin, born on December 21, 1879, a figure whose leadership was deeply intertwined with the monumental achievements of the working class. Under his tenure, the Soviet proletariat transformed their nation through collective labor, building an industrial base that ensured economic independence and self-reliance. The collective efforts of workers and peasants brought about widespread collectivization, aimed at dismantling feudal remnants and empowering rural communities. During the Second World War, it was the resilience and sacrifice of the Soviet working class, united under a socialist framework, that delivered a decisive blow to fascism. However, after Stalin’s passing, revisionist policies undermined these hard-fought gains, reversing much of the progress made by the proletariat and weakening the global socialist cause.
@Communism
#HappyBirthday #Stalin
@Communism
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Happy Birthday to the pan-African revolutionary Thomas Sankara! Inspired by the example of the revolutionary armed movements in China and Cuba under Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro, he believed the armed forces could act as a progressive socialist force to help improve people’s lives.
Sankara launched extensive social, ecological, and economic programs and land reform. Setting a personal example, he cut his salary and sold off the government fleet of Mercedes while maintaining an austere lifestyle. He was also known for his solid anti-imperialist foreign policy, which challenged Western imperialism in Africa, mainly from France.
However, Sankara’s presidency came to a tragic end in 1987 when he was murdered during a coup organized by Blaise Compaoré, who had become Sankara’s closest friend after they had met in the military and who had been involved in the 1983 revolution. Read on.
theredstream
Sankara launched extensive social, ecological, and economic programs and land reform. Setting a personal example, he cut his salary and sold off the government fleet of Mercedes while maintaining an austere lifestyle. He was also known for his solid anti-imperialist foreign policy, which challenged Western imperialism in Africa, mainly from France.
However, Sankara’s presidency came to a tragic end in 1987 when he was murdered during a coup organized by Blaise Compaoré, who had become Sankara’s closest friend after they had met in the military and who had been involved in the 1983 revolution. Read on.
theredstream
#ThomasSankara #AntiImperialism
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As long as workers have to deal with capitalists on an individual basis they remain veritable slaves who must work continuously to profit another in order to obtain a crust of bread, who must for ever remain docile and inarticulate hired servants. But when the workers state their demands jointly and refuse to submit to the money-bags, they cease to be slaves, they become human beings, they begin to demand that their labour should not only serve to enrich a handful of idlers, but should also enable those who work to live like human beings. The slaves begin to put forward the demand to become masters, not to work and live as the landlords and capitalists want them to, but as the working people themselves want to. Strikes, therefore, always instil fear into the capitalists, because they begin to undermine their supremacy. “All wheels stand still, if your mighty arm wills it,” a German workers’ song says of the working class. And so it is in reality: the factories, the landlords’ land, the machines, the railways, etc., etc., are all like wheels in a giant machine—the machine that extracts various products, processes them, and delivers them to their destination. The whole of this machine is set in motion by the worker who tills the soil, extracts ores, makes commodities in the factories, builds houses, work shops, and railways. When the workers refuse to work, the entire machine threatens to stop. Every strike reminds the capitalists that it is the workers and not they who are the real masters—the workers who are more and more loudly proclaiming their rights. Every strike reminds the workers that their position is not hopeless, that they are not alone. See what a tremendous effect strikes have both on the strikers themselves and on the workers at neighbouring or nearby factories or at factories in the same industry. In normal, peaceful times the worker does his job without a murmur, does not contradict the employer, and does not discuss his condition. In times of strikes he states his demands in a loud voice, he reminds the employers of all their abuses, he claims his rights, he does not think of himself and his wages alone, he thinks of all his workmates who have downed tools together with him and who stand up for the workers’ cause, fearing no privations. Every strike means many privations for the working people, terrible privations that can be compared only to the calamities of war—hungry families, loss of wages, often arrests, banishment from the towns where they have their homes and their employment. Despite all these sufferings, the workers despise those who desert their fellow workers and make deals with the employers. Despite all these sufferings, brought on by strikes, the workers of neighbouring factories gain renewed courage when they see that their comrades have engaged themselves in struggle. “People who endure so much to bend one single bourgeois will be able to break the power of the whole bourgeoisie,” said one great teacher of socialism, Engels, speaking of the strikes of the English workers. It is often enough for one factory to strike, for strikes to begin immediately in a large number of factories. What a great moral influence strikes have, how they affect workers who see that their comrades have ceased to be slaves and, if only for the time being, have become people on an equal footing with the rich! Every strike brings thoughts of socialism very forcibly to the worker’s mind, thoughts of the struggle of the entire working class for emancipation from the oppression of capital. It has often happened that before a big strike the workers of a certain factory or a certain branch of industry or of a certain town knew hardly anything and scarcely ever thought about socialism; but after the strike, study circles and associations become much more widespread among them and more and wore workers become socialists.
V. I. Lenin
On Strikes
@Communism
V. I. Lenin
On Strikes
#Lenin
@Communism
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🔴 Human Rights Watch finds Israel guilty of extermination and ‘acts of genocide’
Today, Human Rights Watch issued a devastating report on Israel’s genocide in Gaza, titled: “Extermination and Acts of Genocide – Israel Deliberately Depriving Palestinians in Gaza of Water.”
The report’s conclusion, coming on the heels of Amnesty’s genocide report of two weeks ago, unequivocally states that Israel has committed the crime of Extermination, and an “act of genocide”:
“Human Rights Watch concludes that Israeli authorities have over the past year intentionally inflicted on the Palestinian population in Gaza “conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” This policy, inflicted as part of a mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza means Israeli authorities have committed the crime against humanity of extermination, which is ongoing. This policy also amounts to an “act of genocide” under the Genocide Convention of 1948”.
To be clear, the usage of the term “act of genocide” does not refer to a single act, but to a set of acts, namely “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”, as it is formulated in the Genocide Convention on 1948, Article II point 3.
Compared to the Amnesty report, the HRW report is not very strong on the issue of intent, which the Amnesty report focused on, however, it is significant in its singular focus on one central issue: water.
As we all know, water is a singularly crucial source of life, and its deprivation will kill in a host of ways. The report opens with a graphic depiction of the level of water deprivation that Gazans are subject to.
It is useful to get this palpable sense of the reality in Gaza because we can all relate to it. An average person in the U.S. consumes over 310 liters (82 gallons) of water per day, this includes a variety of uses (a five-minute shower, for example, takes about 60 liters, or 16 gallons). In Israel, the average person uses about 250 liters per day. In Gaza, the available water per person today is between 2 and 9 liters. HRW notes that “in protracted emergency situations, the minimum amount of water required is 15 liters of water per person per day for drinking and washing.”
This level of water means that people can use it almost solely for drinking, when that is even possible:
“When we cannot get drinking water, taking a shower is a dream,” said a 36-year-old woman who was displaced to Khan Younis.
And when they can’t access potable water, they literally drink the sea:
“If we can’t find drinkable water, we drink the sea water,” one father displaced to a school in Rafah told Human Rights Watch in December 2023. “It happened to me many times when I had to drink the sea water. You don’t understand how much we are suffering.”
Read more:
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/12/human-rights-watch-finds-israel-guilty-of-extermination-and-acts-of-genocide/
Today, Human Rights Watch issued a devastating report on Israel’s genocide in Gaza, titled: “Extermination and Acts of Genocide – Israel Deliberately Depriving Palestinians in Gaza of Water.”
The report’s conclusion, coming on the heels of Amnesty’s genocide report of two weeks ago, unequivocally states that Israel has committed the crime of Extermination, and an “act of genocide”:
“Human Rights Watch concludes that Israeli authorities have over the past year intentionally inflicted on the Palestinian population in Gaza “conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” This policy, inflicted as part of a mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza means Israeli authorities have committed the crime against humanity of extermination, which is ongoing. This policy also amounts to an “act of genocide” under the Genocide Convention of 1948”.
To be clear, the usage of the term “act of genocide” does not refer to a single act, but to a set of acts, namely “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”, as it is formulated in the Genocide Convention on 1948, Article II point 3.
Compared to the Amnesty report, the HRW report is not very strong on the issue of intent, which the Amnesty report focused on, however, it is significant in its singular focus on one central issue: water.
As we all know, water is a singularly crucial source of life, and its deprivation will kill in a host of ways. The report opens with a graphic depiction of the level of water deprivation that Gazans are subject to.
It is useful to get this palpable sense of the reality in Gaza because we can all relate to it. An average person in the U.S. consumes over 310 liters (82 gallons) of water per day, this includes a variety of uses (a five-minute shower, for example, takes about 60 liters, or 16 gallons). In Israel, the average person uses about 250 liters per day. In Gaza, the available water per person today is between 2 and 9 liters. HRW notes that “in protracted emergency situations, the minimum amount of water required is 15 liters of water per person per day for drinking and washing.”
This level of water means that people can use it almost solely for drinking, when that is even possible:
“When we cannot get drinking water, taking a shower is a dream,” said a 36-year-old woman who was displaced to Khan Younis.
And when they can’t access potable water, they literally drink the sea:
“If we can’t find drinkable water, we drink the sea water,” one father displaced to a school in Rafah told Human Rights Watch in December 2023. “It happened to me many times when I had to drink the sea water. You don’t understand how much we are suffering.”
Read more:
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/12/human-rights-watch-finds-israel-guilty-of-extermination-and-acts-of-genocide/
@Communism:
Please note that our endorsement is limited to the linked article. Other materials or views from this source (WebSite) may not reflect our positions.
Mondoweiss
Human Rights Watch finds Israel guilty of extermination and ‘acts of genocide’
Human Rights Watch has issued a devastating report concluding Israel is committing the crimes of extermination and genocide in Gaza by focusing on one crucial issue: water.
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... Lastly, it stands to reason that opportunism can never be defeated by mere programmes; it can only be defeated by deeds. The greatest, and fatal, error of the bankrupt Second International was that its words did not correspond to its deeds, that it cultivated the habit of unscrupulous revolutionary phrase-mongering (note the present attitude of Kautsky and Co. towards the Basle Manifesto). In approaching the demand for disarmament from this aspect we must first of all raise the question of its objective significance. Disarmament as a social idea, i. e., an idea that springs from, and can affect, a certain social environment, and is not the invention of some crackpot or group, springs, evidently, from the peculiar “tranquil” conditions prevailing, by way of exception, in certain small states which have for a fairly long time stood aside from the world’s path of war and bloodshed, and hope to remain that way. To be convinced of this, we have only to consider the arguments advanced, for instance, by the Norwegian advocates of disarmament. “We are a small country,” they say. “Our army is small; there is nothing we can do against the Great Powers (and, consequently, nothing we can do to resist forcible involvement in an imperialist alliance with one or the other Great-Power group!). We want to be left in peace in our backwoods and continue our backwoods politics, demand disarmament, compulsory arbitration, permanent neutrality, etc.” (“permanent” after the Belgian fashion, no doubt?).
The petty striving of petty states to hold aloof, the petty-bourgeois desire to keep as far away as possible from the great battles of world history, to take advantage of one’s relatively monopolistic position in order to remain in hidebound passivity—this is the objective social environment which may ensure the disarmament idea a certain degree of success and a certain degree of popularity in some of the small states. That striving is, of course, reactionary and is based entirely on illusions, for, in one way or another, imperialism draws the small states into the vortex of world economy and world politics.
V. I. Lenin
The “Disarmament” Slogan
#Lenin
@Communism
“Meeting of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b) on October 23 (10), 1917” (“Historic decision on armed uprising on October 10, 1917 under the chairmanship of V.I. Lenin”), painting by Vladimir Nikolaevich Pchelin, 1929
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