Reprinted from Comrade Alastair.

Nepal’s Maoists are often accused of being anti-worker, Stalinist, bourgeois nationalist and so on by many on the Western ‘left’, particularly anarchists and Trotskyists. As ‘evidence’ towards this, it is often claimed that while in government earlier this year, they ‘banned strikes’.

Let’s set the record straight.

The Maoists never banned strikes. All the militant, class struggle fighting unions are Maoist unions, and since their change in tactics in 2006 and the shift of the struggle to the urban areas the Maoists have essentially taken over the trade union movement in Nepal, as well as the bulk of the student unions. They regularly lead strikes for both political issues and bread and butter issues like pay and conditions. They have strongholds amongst the teachers, hotel workers, petrol workers, workers in many SEZs and industrial zones, and more. They never stopped leading strikes – they just called a three day general strike across Nepal!

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The Nevada girls’ big stomper from ‘64 (contributions from The Kasama Project and Ian Anderson.)

“Now U.S. imperialism is quite powerful, but in reality it isn’t. It is very weak politically because it is divorced from the masses of the people and is disliked by everybody and by the American people too. In appearance it is very powerful but in reality it is nothing to be afraid of, it is a paper tiger. Outwardly a tiger, it is made of paper, unable to withstand the wind and the rain. I believe the United States is nothing but a paper tiger.”

From Mao Zedong U.S. IMPERIALISM IS A PAPER TIGER, July 14, 1956 [Part of a talk with two Latin-American public figures.]

Reposted from Kasama.

A group of activists from Aotearoa Climate Camp ’09 today blockaded the stock exchange in opposition to carbon trading, a scheme which allows finance capitalists to benefit from environmental degradation. Protestors chanted the slogan, “Resist! Resist! Fight the capitalists!”

Activists were detained by the police force, then released without charges.

Climate Change Leaflet attached.

Text of the Workers Party leaflet for New Zealand Climate Camp 2010, by Ian Anderson.

This leaflet is for people who’ve figured out that climate change is happening, and that it’s driven in large part by industrial greenhouse gas emissions. If you’re here, you want to stop it in its tracks.

Despite the attempts of industrial capitalists to distort the flow of information, the findings of climatologists remain consistent. Since the Industrial Revolution of the 19th Century, greenhouse gas emissions have rapidly increased, driving a long-term process of global warming.

Resources were sucked out of the countryside and the developing world to fuel economic growth, while workers were packed into polluted and cramped living spaces. This transformation continues to this day, as capitalists seek new blood and soil to develop; from Iraq to Mount Aspiring.

This leaves one central question: what is to be done? It is possible to match human and environmental need. We just have to figure out how.

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