Revolutionary Democracy Vol. XX, No. 1, April, 2014
by Theo Russell
The
latest issue of the Delhi-based Marxist-Leninist journal Revolutionary Democracy is packed with new and fascinating articles
from around the world, of which we only have space to delve into a selected
few.
There have been many recent revelations
about US intelligence, but an interview with former senior CIA officer Robert
Baer by Yugoslav journalist Milos Cupurdija is particularly revealing.
Baer details how, in the early 1990s, US
agents were tasked with whipping up fears in each community of attacks by
extremists from other communities, such as the fictitious ‘Serbian Supreme’
group, supposedly poised to attack key buildings in Sarajevo.
The CIA targeted the news media, and
Baer explains: “Of course the news readers did not know anything as they
received their instructions from their bosses, who received instructions from
his boss, who was our (CIA) man”.
He says the Srebrenica massacre was “an
exaggerated story” and says “the numbers of people killed there were all part
of the political marketing”, adding he was told well in advance that “there
would at some point be a big con in Bosnia” which “would be known around the
world.”
The CIA actively assisted the new
Bosnian army’s attacks on civilians in Srebrenica, leading Serb forces to
retaliate “as they would have been incited and paid to do so also”.
His
conclusions are of wide significance: “Simply, they made slaves of you, your
people are working for free and the products are going to Germany and America,
they earn! In the end you have to pay to import what you have made yourselves
and since you have no money you must take out loans. It’s the story with the
whole of the Balkans!
Ironically, another article, by Red
Action (Croatia), shows how the violent unrest in the Federation of Bosnia and
Herzegovina – but in the Republika Srpska – last February was followed by
attempts to whip up communal tensions.
Bosnia has much higher rates of youth
unemployment than Greece or Spain, and among the protestors’ demands were calls
for privatisations to be reversed. But the Croatian media and politicians
claimed the protests were aimed against Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina, while
Serb media and politicians claimed they were the “beginning of a Muslim war
against Serbs”.
In contrast to the increasingly violent
Ukraine protests, Brussels not only condemned the protesters, but the EU’s
Special Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina Austrian diplomat Valentin
Inzko threatened EU military intervention, while other EU and US officials
called for faster “NATO integration” in Bosnia to “ensure stability”.
In a debate on the economic relations of
People’s China since 1947, Rev Dem
editor Vijay Singh argues that the establishment of a people’s democracy 1949
based on an alliance with the middle bourgeoisie, advocated by Stalin, was
never followed by the removal of the national bourgeoisie from the National
People’s Congress, and today “the state structure remains frozen at the level
of the democratic revolution”.
In 1953 he says, the rich peasantry were
brought into the collective farms, now called ‘people’s communes’, and after
1958 the Machine Tractor Stations were dissolved.
Singh concludes that “the means of
production were never socialised in large sections of the economy of the PRC,
so they never were able to go beyond a democratic economy to a socialist
economy”.
A recent speech by Mohammad Shafi Khan,
secretary general of the Trade Union Centre of Jammu and Kashmir, exposes
India’s hypocrisy on the self-determination of Kashmir.
Khan recounts that after Kashmiri
patriots decided to adopt non-violent tactics,
“during the mass uprising of 2008 more than 50 people and during the
2010 people’s revolution more than 120 people were killed during peaceful and
democratic demonstrations,” and thousands more were injured imprisoned and
tortured.
In sharp contrast to much smaller events
in China’s Xinjiang province, the Western media ¬– which routinely describes
India “the world’s largest democracy” – largely ignored these events.
In their latest talks, Khan says, “India
and Pakistan are trying to exclude the Kashmiri leadership from the
decision-making process.” He calls on India to hold a referendum “to identify
the genuine leadership in Kashmir for a dialogue”.
An interview with Hindu fundamentalist
Swami Aseemanand, involved in bomb attacks on a Pakistan-India train in 2007
killing 68 people, anti-Christian riots, the destruction of dozens of churches,
and raping of nuns, reveals the new Indian premier Narendra Modi’s close ties
to the paramilitary fascist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
In his campaign to be the right wing
Hindu BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, Modi defeated Lal Kishan Advani by
backing Aseemanand, gaining the crucial backing of the RSS, the RSS forerunner
and core of the BJP.
In the 1930s the RSS had relations with
Mussolini and Hitler and regarded Hitler as “the saviour of Germany”, and
Hitler is still widely admired in its ranks.
The article “Corruption Plagues the
CPI(M), Too”, says that “the fact that corruption has become endemic within the
CPI(M), especially in states where it has been in power, has been admitted in
successive party documents on ‘rectification’”.
But, while many senior leaders have been expelled or
side-lined for exposing dishonesty, “there is hardly any instance of the CPI(M)
initiating disciplinary action against any senior leader on corruption charges,
at least in recent decades”.
There are many more articles on Africa,
Latin America, Ukraine, Soviet and communist history. We highly recommend this
issue of Rev Dem to any progressive observer of current events.
Our supply of the April 2014 edition has sold out but most of the articles can be read online on the Revolutionary Democracy website.
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