Demonstrators gathered across from the United Nations on Saturday, Sept. 18, to welcome Zimbabwe’s delegates to the United Nations and demand an end to U.S. sanctions on that African country. The U.S., Britain and other imperialist powers have been sanctioning Zimbabwe since the revolutionary government there took stolen land back from British settlers and returned it to African people.

The rally was organized by the December 12 Movement, which has long organized solidarity with Zimbabwe in the United States. It was joined by members of the U.S. section of ZANU-PF, the party that led Zimbabwe’s freedom struggle against colonialism and white settler rule and still governs Zimbabwe today. Freedom for Africa, which represents West Africans fighting the continued plunder of their countries by French imperialism, also joined the demonstration. Representatives of Struggle for Socialism – La Lucha por el Socialismo and the Socialist Unity Party also participated.

Peruvian authorities reported Sept. 11 the death of Dr. Abimael Guzmán Reynoso, better known by his nom de guerre Presidente Gonzalo. The leader of the Communist Party of Peru-Sendero Luminoso (PCP-SL) had been imprisoned in near-total isolation for almost three decades since his capture in 1992. He was 86.

From 1980 until the mid-1990s, the Maoist PCP-SL, better known as the Shining Path in the U.S., waged a revolutionary guerrilla war against the Peruvian capitalist oligarchy and its imperialist masters in Washington and Wall Street. A parallel guerrilla struggle was fought by the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), a pro-Cuba Marxist-Leninist movement.

Hundreds of PCP-SL and MRTA supporters have spent decades behind bars in harsh conditions, often subject to torture, after being convicted on charges of “terrorism” in secret military courts under far-right dictator Alberto Fujimori in the 1990s.

A handful of “high-profile” political prisoners — including Guzman and MRTA leader Victory Polay — are jailed in the military fortress at Callao naval base, known for its brutal conditions, especially in the winter months. 

In 1992, then-President Fujimori, with the full and enthusiastic backing of the CIA and the U.S. political establishment, carried out an “auto-coup” to consolidate power and suppress the guerrilla movements which had amassed enormous support among the rural masses and in the shanty towns surrounding the capital, Lima.

The guerrillas drew their main support from the Indigenous peasantry of the Andes, especially women, who played leading roles in the movement; 50% of the guerrilla fighters and 40% of the commanders were women. The facts are documented in the work of revolutionary anthropologist Carol Andreas, including her book, “When Women Rebel: The Rise of Popular Feminism in Peru.”

Alarmed by the scope of the uprising and its popularity, the U.S. sent Pentagon “advisers,” assassination squads, weapons and millions of dollars in military aid to dictator Fujimori under the George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations.

Refusal to turn over body

Saluting Guzman’s contributions, the National Democratic Front of the Philippines stated: “In the course of attacking the revolutionary struggle of the Peruvian workers and people, U.S. imperialism and the Peruvian ruling classes waged a massive campaign of demonization against PCP-SL and Comrade Gonzalo. When he was captured in 1992, he was presented to the big capitalist media in a cage, wearing a black-and-white striped prisoner’s uniform. Like the lion that he is, he roared loudly in that cage, calling on the PCP-SL and the Peruvian workers and people to continue the struggle.

“The campaign of demonization against him and the PCP-SL has continued throughout Comrade Gonzalo’s 29 years of cruel imprisonment and is reaching crescendo in the wake of his death. The workers and peoples of the world are called upon to be critical-minded and discerning in evaluating the widespread black propaganda against the said party and revolutionary leader.”

Peruvian prison authorities have refused repeated requests from Guzmán’s wife, comrade and fellow political prisoner Elena Yparraguirre to allow her to see his body and make final arrangements. On Aug. 24, Yparraguirre wrote a letter appealing for treatment for his failing health.

Resumen Latinoamericano reported Sept. 14: “What is happening in Peru with the remains of the Senderista leader Abimael Guzmán has surpassed all the limits of infamy. Not satisfied with having kept him 29 years in prison in total isolation, now the political class, the oligarchy, the narcofujimorismo [right-wing forces that profit from illegal drug trafficking] and not a few ‘leftists’ fan the fire of the public lynching of the corpse, and applaud the decision of the prosecution not to hand him over to his wife and make it disappear by cremating it. All in the name of ‘peace and security.’

“The remains of the PCP-SL leader will be declared in legal abandonment, so that the State can incinerate it and disappear the ashes. ‘This will prevent them from paying tribute to him,’ said an official spokesman. … The Public Ministry, through the Institute of Legal Medicine, will determine the final destination of Guzmán’s remains, in accordance with current regulations ‘that allow for the preservation of social peace.’”

The National Committee of Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War of Peru, which represents the PCP-SL prisoners, has published appeals from Yparraguirre, Guzmán’s family and international political movements demanding that his wife’s rights to receive his remains be respected.

Yparraguirre and other political prisoners have gone on a hunger strike to press this demand.

The real terrorists: Fujimori and U.S.

During his presidency from 1990 to 2000, Alberto Fujimori directed a reign of terror against leftists, students, labor union members, Indigenous communities, women and the poor — as he carried out vicious austerity measures ordered by Wall Street and the International Monetary Fund. 

In early 1992, Fujimori and his military/police allies carried out a so-called auto-coup, suspending the constitution, dismissing congress and the courts, and implementing martial law throughout the country.

Little more than a month later, he ordered the massacre of more than 400 political prisoners at Canto Grande prison outside Lima.

U.S. military special forces intervened directly in the civil war under the guise of the “war on drugs.” Washington’s intelligence agencies participated in the capture of revolutionary leaders.

Peruvian industries nationalized under left-leaning military governments in the 1960s and 1970s were sold off at cut-rate prices to Western and Japanese monopolies in exchange for massive military aid from both Republican and Democratic U.S. administrations.

Thousands of political activists and suspected sympathizers were imprisoned. They were convicted by military courts where judges wore hoods to hide their identities and where defendants had no right to defend themselves. Many prisoners were tortured. Thousands more were simply “disappeared.”

Death squads targeted Indigenous villages in the Andes and impoverished shanty towns around Lima from which the guerrilla movements drew support. Mass graves are still being uncovered today.

Fujimori also enacted a forced sterilization program against 300,000 Indigenous and poor women between 1996 and 2000, based on an earlier U.S. program in Puerto Rico.

In April 1997, Fujimori ordered the massacre of MRTA guerrillas who had occupied the Japanese Embassy in Lima to draw attention to the plight of political prisoners.

Kid-gloves for dictator

Nearly a decade after leaving office, in 2009, Fujimori was finally sentenced to 25 years in prison for crimes against humanity for ordering two death squad massacres. He served less than half his sentence before being given a presidential pardon on Christmas Eve 2018. This was done in exchange for his supporters in Congress blocking then-President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski’s impeachment for corruption.

The pardon set off a wave of outraged protests in Peru and around the world, and soon forced the withdrawal of the pardon and re-imprisonment of Fujimori. This was an important antecedent to the movement that swept trade union leader Pedro Castillo into the presidency of Peru this year.

It goes without saying that dictator Fujimori, even in prison, is treated with kid gloves compared with the revolutionaries who fought his regime. He remains politically powerful and influential. 

His daughter Keiko Fujimori, a leader of the Peruvian right wing, was Castillo’s main challenger in the presidential elections, and attempted for months afterward to prevent his taking office. Had she succeeded, her father would be free and residing in the presidential palace once more.

Fujimori and his imperialist backers are truly genocidal figures. The outcry casting Guzman and his supporters — who led an uprising against oppression — as even worse than Fujimori is beyond hypocritical.

Contradictions and struggle

It’s true that Gonzalo and the PCP-SL leadership were extremely sectarian. They refused to work with the legally recognized left movements and often acted hostile to them, even violently so. They refused to form a united front with the MRTA in their military struggle against the Fujimori dictatorship. They also were openly hostile to Cuba and other socialist countries.

These were very real shortcomings of the strategy, tactics and ideology of the PCP-SL and soured many Peruvian and Latin American leftists on their struggle to this day.

But meeting sectarianism with sectarianism in the midst of a mass revolutionary movement is no solution. And certainly, abandoning class-war prisoners to the tender mercies of the ruling class after a defeat is inexcusable.

As Marxist leader Sam Marcy wrote, “In a revolution, just as in a workers’ strike, the first and most important element to consider is the determination of which side to support. In the course of a strike there may be any number of formal violations of the democratic rights of those who promote crossing of the picket line, but as long as the strike is on, every worker is duty bound to support it.”

Marco Valbuena, writing for the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), noted: “Comrade Gonzalo was emphatic about the indispensable role of the Communist Party, the people’s army and the united front, especially with the peasantry and the most progressive elements of the intelligentsia. He, however, made an overestimation by 1990 of the strength of the people’s army and the potential for urban uprisings.

“The PCP was also unable to use the united front to split the ranks of the middle bourgeoisie and reactionaries. It was only after Comrade Gonzalo’s capture that his party tried to avail of the full scale of the united front policy and tactics.”

Swimming against the tide

However great were Guzman’s errors, two objective factors were much more responsible for the defeat of the movement.

First, the guerrilla struggle of the PCP-SL and MRTA took place at a most difficult moment for the international class struggle. 

These movements reached their height during the early 1990s, just as the world communist movement was suffering its worst-ever setbacks due to the counterrevolution in the USSR and Eastern Europe. 

The Peruvian guerrillas were truly swimming against the tide. They boldly raised the red flag of revolution and communism at a time when many others were hauling it down. Their refusal to give up was an inspiration to many workers and oppressed peoples around the world.

Nevertheless, they were unable to overcome the global counterrevolutionary tidal wave that damaged and dispersed class-struggle movements everywhere. What was important, in the long run, was that they resisted.

The second factor in the defeat was the massive intervention of U.S. imperialism, and to a lesser extent Japan and other imperialist powers, to prop up Fujimori’s dictatorship and aid in suppressing the guerrilla movement and all left forces.

The real fear Washington, the Peruvian oligarchy and state apparatus have today over the movement in support of Pedro Castillo is its potential to go beyond electoral politics and develop into a new revolutionary uprising of the workers and oppressed. 

On Aug. 26, a suicide bomb was detonated at the airport in Kabul amid the chaos of the U.S. troop withdrawal. Two hundred people were killed, including 13 U.S. soldiers. Reporters paid tribute to the U.S. troops that died, but barely mentioned the deaths of up to 170 Afghan people in the same attack. 

Then, ostensibly in response to the attack that ISIS-K took credit for, the Biden White House ordered two successive drone strikes. The second U.S. drone strike killed 10 people, most of them children. None of them were terrorists. 

The dismissal of Afghan deaths typifies and speaks volumes about the character and the true goals of the 20-year war.

The deaths of innocents shouldn’t come as a surprise. The war was justified by lies about elevating the lives of the Afghan people, or promoting the rights and safety of women and girls. 

Inching closer to the truth, speaking at the Virginia Military Institute in 2002, President George W. Bush reversed his campaign assertions that he was against “nation-building,” an imperialist euphemism for installing a government that would be compliant to the needs of U.S. imperialism. “After 9/11, I changed my mind,” he said.

But “nation-building” or protecting the rights of Afghan women and girls could never have been achieved and could not have been the goal of the warmakers as they bombed and shot and shredded any hope of peace or progress for the Afghan people. 

The remainder of the war — even after the 2011 capture and execution of Osama Bin Laden — was just continuous widespread destruction and mass murder being meted out by the U.S. military and all its paid mercenaries.

U.S. troops open fire at airport

On Sept. 1, Wang Wenbin, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, called for a full investigation of U.S. war crimes during the 20-year war and occupation. He referred to the accounts of survivors of the Aug. 26 bombing at the Kabul airport who said that U.S. troops opened fire on the crowd after the blast. 

An article in Xinhua quotes a military officer who said only 20 of the 100 bodies examined were killed by the suicide bomb blast. The others were killed by gunfire. The article gives more detail and raises serious doubts about how the horrible event was reported by the Pentagon and U.S. media. 

Wang also referred to other massacres by the U.S. and NATO forces.

The history of the war is checkered with reports of U.S. massacres. There was a wedding banquet bombed in 2002, killing dozens and injuring at least 100. In 2008, a U.S. aircraft bombed a village in Herat, killing 100 — including 50 children and 19 women. 

In March 2012, a U.S. Army staff sergeant was arrested for going house to house murdering 16 people. Members of Afghanistan’s pro-U.S. National Assembly alleged that up to 20 U.S. soldiers had been involved. Exercising U.S. extraterritoriality, the Pentagon was in charge of the trial, and it was handled as the act of one individual.

Afghanistan is the most “droned” country in the world. Since 2015, there have been 13,072 confirmed U.S. drone strikes that have killed up to 10,076 people and injured up to 1,769, according to the British-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

Another whistleblower jailed

In March of this year, former Air Force intelligence officer Daniel Hales was sentenced to 4 years in prison for leaking U.S. military documents which revealed that during a 4-year stretch, 90% of deaths from drone strikes in Afghanistan were of people who were not the intended targets. 

The papers were leaked in 2013, meaning that Pentagon and White House officials have known that drone strikes are mass murder and continued using them in Afghanistan for at least eight more years.

The war had transitioned into mainly drone strikes in later years. But combined with bombs from piloted aircraft and thousands of special forces raids aided by friendly forces on the ground or nearby, more than 70,000 Afghan civilians and an equal number of armed combatants perished. 

A center for the detention and torture of Afghan “terror suspects” — similar to Abu Ghraib in Iraq — functioned throughout the war at Bagram Air Force Base. As the U.S. withdrawal commenced, that center was burned and destroyed by its functionaries.

Although the “boots on the ground” phase of the imperialist effort has been defeated, every indication is that the imperialist drive to destroy any resistance in Afghanistan will continue. 

Given the possibility of China, Russia and/or Iran helping to rebuild Afghanistan, the U.S. has frozen $9.5 billion of Afghanistan’s money, held by the U.S. Federal Reserve and International Monetary Fund. 

Another $1.3 billion is held in international accounts in euros and British pounds and subject to the “long reach of American sanctions and influence,” according to the Aug. 18 New York Times. Access to another $12 billion in aid that had been agreed on by 60 countries is also now blocked.

On Aug. 31, in Biden’s speech about the withdrawal, he asserted — as his administration has in the recent past — the right of the U.S. to continue using drones to wage war in Afghanistan. He said, “We have what’s called Over The Horizon [OTH] capabilities, which means we can strike terrorists and targets without American boots on the ground, or very few if needed.”

The people of Afghanistan will find a way to regroup and rebuild. Abolishing the Pentagon, the CIA and all the U.S. agencies of death and destruction has to be the mission of the anti-imperialist movement.

Thirty-eight years ago, 269 people were killed when Korean Air Lines flight 007 was shot down over the Soviet Union on Sept. 1, 1983. 

President Ronald Reagan called it “an act of barbarism.” U.S. cops kill as many people every three months.

Less than five years later, the U.S. Navy blew up Iran Air flight 655 on July 3, 1988, killing 290 people. Reagan’s Vice-President, George H.W. Bush, declared a month afterwards, “I will never apologize for the United States — I don’t care what the facts are.” 

The Korean airliner flew as far as 365 miles off course to go over sensitive Soviet military bases at night. Monitoring Soviet communications, the National Security Agency later admitted the socialist country’s air defense personnel thought the jet was a U.S. RC-135 spy plane, a Boeing military plane that’s identical to the Boeing 707 commercial aircraft. 

The Iranian airliner, on the other hand, was on its expected course when it was shot down in broad daylight, 7,600 miles from the U.S., by a missile fired by the USS Vincennes. Both tragedies were used by the military-industrial complex to get what it wanted. 

After its airliner was shot down, Iran was compelled to end the Iran-Iraq war on poor terms. Using the “divide and conquer” tactic, both the Carter and Reagan administrations promoted this bloody war that killed hundreds of thousands of people. Now it was time to end it, with both Iran and Iraq severely weakened.

The shootdown of the Korean airliner unleashed a tidal wave of hate against the Soviet Union. Corporate media acted as cheerleaders. Reagan used the 269 deaths to push through huge increases in the Pentagon budget.

A crucial part of this war drive was deploying Pershing II medium range nuclear missiles in West Germany in November 1983. These mass murder weapons — that could hit Soviet soil in eight minutes — were installed despite millions of people having demonstrated against them.

War propaganda at the U.N.

Pumping up the anti-communist campaign was a Hollywood spectacular at the United Nations Security Council, courtesy of the U.S. Information Agency. Its director was Reagan’s buddy Charles Wick, co-producer of “Snow White and the Three Stooges.”

Five TV screens were set up in the council chamber to show the video. The MC was U.S. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick.

She had dismissed the murder and rape of four churchwomen in El Salvador by the oligarchy’s National Guard. “The nuns were not just nuns,” Kirkpatrick said. “The nuns were also political activists.” 

Thirteen years later the video’s producer, Alvin Snyder, admitted that “the video was powerful, effective and wrong.” It featured alleged comments of Soviet pilots, many of which were mistranslated.

Adding to the right-wing uproar was the death on flight 007 of John Birch Society leader and Congress member Larry McDonald. The fascist had nominated Nazi war criminal Rudolf Hess for a Nobel Peace Prize.

The Birchers claimed that flight 007 was actually captured by a secret Soviet weapon with McDonald and the other passengers being held captive. Interestingly, other Congress members  — including Ku Klux Klan Senator Jesse Helms — flew on KAL flight 015, which followed flight 007 and kept on the correct flight path.

All the while, the Reagan regime was conducting a massive cover-up that rivaled Watergate. Key radar tapes were destroyed. Gag orders were issued to silence witnesses.

By law, the National Transportation Safety Board was supposed to investigate the shootdown. It was illegally ordered instead to turn over its evidence to the State Department, which sat on it.

Deliberately off course

One of few voices to question the White House story about flight 007 was British journalist R.W. Johnson. His book “Shootdown” was published in 1986 and is worth reading today.

Johnson described the tremendous odds against the Korean airliner having accidentally flown so far from its designated flight path. He quotes retired Canadian Major-General Richard Rohmer: “Did the [Korean] 747’s crew know the aircraft was off course? … Yes, they knew exactly where they were …”

Here’s some of the reasons “Shootdown” gives for disbelieving that flight 007 flew 250 miles over Soviet territory by “mistake”:

• *The Boeing 747 was equipped with the Inertial Navigation System. The INS has three computers so it can continue to function even if two of the computers crash. Over a five-year period there was only one INS error per every 20,000 flights, most likely caused by programming errors.
• It’s hard to believe that such an error was made by the captain of flight 007, Chun Byung-in. The experienced pilot was known as a “human computer.” 
•  Chun wasn’t alone on the 747 flight deck. Even if the INS and the autopilot were uncoupled, the crew would have had to ignore the amber warning light. They also would have had to fail to notice the reading on the magnetic compass.
•  Standard procedure would be for the plane’s weather radar to be in its ground-mapping model. This would have clearly shown the Soviet Union’s rocky Kamchatka peninsula that the plane flew over. 
•  Captain Chun repeatedly gave false positions of his location. He flew almost directly over the Soviet bases of Petropavlovsk and Korsakov. Chun turned to go over the Soviet Union’s Sakhalin Island.
• In order to make evasive maneuvers, including increasing the speed, Captain Chun took 10,000 pounds more fuel than he put on the flight release sheet.
• Retired Trans World Airlines pilot and navigator Robert Allardyce along with his associate James Gollin listened to the last words of flight 007’s First Officer Son Dong-Hui. It was first broadcast on ABC’s “20/20” program. They heard: “For South Korean Director … repeating instructions. Hold your bogey (or ‘bogies’) north (or ‘course’) … repeat conditions. Gonna be a bloodbath … you bet.” 

As R.W. Johnson pointed out, both “director” and “bogey” are military, not civilian, aviation terms. He wrote that First Officer Son “was in touch with the mission director of what could only have been a surveillance mission.”

Using passengers as bait

Flight 007 wasn’t the first Korean Air Lines plane to go over Soviet territory by “mistake.” On April 20, 1978, KAL flight 902 flew over the Soviet base at Murmansk before it was forced to land by a Soviet fighter. One passenger was killed.

South Korea is a virtual colony of Wall Street and its military-industrial complex. In the middle of Seoul is a U.S. military base. That’s like British or German troops occupying New York City’s Central Park.

The CIA uses South Korea to spy on the socialist Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and, at that time, the Soviet Union. KAL flight 007 was used as bait to “light up” every Soviet radar in the region, as well as to listen to radio communications.

Collecting info for the Pentagon were at least two RC-135 spy planes; another spy plane, the Orion P-3C; the USS Observation Island, operating the Cobra Judy radar; and the 1982-41c spy satellite. The U.S. also had a series of ground radar stations. Meanwhile the space shuttle Challenger was circling the earth.

Ernest Volkman, editor of “Defense Science,” described the results:

“As a result of the KAL incident, United States intelligence received a bonanza the likes of which they have never received in their lives. Reason: because of the tragic incident it managed to turn on just about every single Soviet electromagnetic transmission over a period of about four hours and an area of approximately 7,000 square miles, and I mean everything. … Now, admittedly, that’s a cynical statement, but we’re talking about a very cynical business here.” 

More good news from the 269 dead passengers and crew was a boom in “defense” stocks, including Lockheed.

Risking nuclear war

The Reagan administration was possibly the most adventurist in U.S. history. It wanted to put MX nuclear missiles on Japanese bullet trains.

Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger wrote that Secretary of State Alexander Haig wanted “to invade Cuba and, one way or another, put an end to the Castro regime.” 

Reagan worshipper Peter Schweizer bragged how U.S. bombers would fly to the edge of Soviet air space before peeling off at the last minute. Every time Soviet fighters were forced to scramble. Pretending to launch a nuclear first strike must have been great fun! 

This was the most dangerous time of the Cold War since the Cuban missile crisis. A Soviet diplomat told Brian Becker — now the ANSWER Coalition’s national director — that the KAL 007 crisis reminded him of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Many on the far right claimed that accused JFK assassin and patsy Lee Harvey Oswald was a Soviet and/or Cuban agent.  

Starting on Nov. 7, 1983 — the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution — U.S. and other NATO forces staged the Able Archer ‘83 exercise, which included a simulated nuclear attack. Soviet Defense Minister Dmitry Ustinov warned that NATO’s exercises “are becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish from a real deployment.” 

Meanwhile U.S. naval exercises were staged in the northern Pacific near Soviet waters. These included the Fleetex ‘83 exercise and a simulated amphibious assault on Okinawa. This was seen as preparation for invading Soviet territories like the Kuril Islands, Sakhalin or Kamchatka.

The same year racist Reagan invaded the Black Caribbean island of Grenada while U.S. Marines landed in Lebanon. The CIA continued the Contra war in Nicaragua that cost 50,000 lives and was paid for by starting the crack epidemic.

Billions were spent to overthrow a progressive government in Afghanistan. Reagan did everything he could to prop up the apartheid regime in South Africa that was keeping Nelson Mandela in jail.

Gambling with 269 lives

Like Trump, the Reaganites wanted to ditch arms-control treaties. Part of this campaign was leaking to journalists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak that a huge radar was being built at Krasnoyarsk in Siberia. In their July 27, 1983, newspaper column, they claimed the facility would violate the anti-ballistic missile treaty.

What was needed to whip up this allegation was finding out if there was a radar gap on the Soviet Union’s Pacific border. Hence the flight of KAL 007 over a string of Soviet military bases, forcing its military to turn on every radar.

U.S. electronic platforms jammed as many Soviets radars as they could. This allowed flight 007 to get clean across Kamchatka.

Soviet fighters were sent to stop the intruder. Flight 007’s pilot Chun Byung-in ignored warnings that included tracer shells shot by Soviet pilot Vassily Kasmin.

Chun instead staged diversionary tactics like a military aircraft would. (Chun was a former Korean Air Force pilot.) These tricks included reporting that he was climbing when he was actually descending.

Kasmin was finally given an order to fire missiles at the intruder. The Soviets had no idea that it was a commercial airliner.  

R.W. Johnson believes that National Security Advisor “Judge” Bill Clark and CIA director  William Casey were responsible for sending flight 007 into Soviet airspace.

If worse came to worse, flight 007 might be forced to land on Soviet territory, like KAL flight 902 did in 1978. But 007 pilot Chun Byung-in tried to escape instead. Two hundred sixty-nine people were killed.

Clark looked for an exit. When the Secretary of Interior James Watt was forced to resign after making bigoted remarks, Clark slipped into the job. Within a year he was back at his California ranch.

The sad tale of flight 007 should be remembered for the deadly risks taken by the U.S. military-industrial complex. Poor and working people shouldn’t believe White House lies about the Soviet Union 38 years ago or the People’s Republic of China today.

Unless otherwise noted, the source is “Shootdown: Flight 007 and the American Connection” by R.W. Johnson.

On August 26, Peru Libre — the Free Peru national political party – organized a demonstration in the Koreatown neighborhood of Los Angeles. A group formed by people from Peru, other South American countries, Mexico and the U.S. gathered in front of the Peruvian Consulate to show support for the government of newly-elected President Pedro Castillo. 

They demanded an end to the war that has been waged against Castillo by the Peruvian Congress and military, which are acting under the influence of the U.S., Canada, and the oligarchs and transnational corporations that control their governments. 

“The U.S. government has no business in Peru,” declared Lazaro Aguero, a Peru Libre Party member. “You don’t have the right to put military bases in Peru. Peruvians are the ones who must solve their problems, not you. We don’t want your bases and that’s not what the Peruvian people need. You should stay away from the political issues of Peru.”

This war was going on even before the presidential elections that pitted Pedro Castillo, an Indigenous school teacher and union organizer, against Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of former right-wing dictator Alberto Fujimori. Maneuvering by Fujimori and the Peruvian elite blocked Castillo from being officially declared president for more than a month after his decisive victory in June’s runoff election.

Peru Libre is a socialist party that has massive support from the people, especially impoverished rural and Indigenous Peruvians. As usual when it comes to parties that put the interests of the people ahead of the interests of corporations, the right wing wants to destroy it. Old tools of imperialism like defamation and lies through the capitalist-owned media are being used to achieve this goal. 

Peru’s Congress is another body working to destabilize the Castillo presidency. Everything that Castillo and his party try to do, like forming a cabinet with the people they want, is being denied, as seen in the forced resignation of Foreign Affairs Minister Hector Bejar. 

Bejar, a former member of the Maoist guerrilla movement Sendero Luminoso, rejected the Washington-dominated Lima Group and sought a new approach to relations with Venezuela and Nicaragua. That was too much for Western imperialism — so he had to go. 

The oligarchs might have forced Hector Bejar to resign with pressure from the right-wing sectors. But he will remain in the war by continuing to assist and advise Castillo’s government. 

Destabilization campaign

The destabilization campaign is ongoing. It is urgent that independent, internationalist media go to Peru and show the rest of the world that the people of Peru support Castillo’s government in its fight against powerful enemies who have the Congress, the media and the military on their side.

The local media, to the surprise of no one, is on the side of the reactionary forces — especially after Castillo cut the slush fund by previous governments given to the media to pay them off for their support. 

The media have always been supportive of former Peruvian governments and spoke in their favor. But with Pedro Castillo, they act completely differently. During the presidential runoff, Fujimori had the support of all the corporate media. Afterward, dissatisfied with the results, they helped in her attempt to steal the elections by falsely claiming she had won. 

The people didn’t remain idle. Through massive mobilizations and demonstrations, they were able to deter the attempted coup. Social media was the only reliable way that Peru Libre and President Castillo had to counter the lies spread by the mainstream media and counter-balance its partiality. 

As for the other prong of imperialist-controlled sabotage, the Peruvian military brass, many of them are afraid that they will go to jail as punishment for crimes committed during Alberto Fujimori’s presidency, as President Castillo promised to bring justice to their victims. Therefore they have another reason to want regime change. 

Taxing big business

President Castillo is also demanding that foreign corporations pay over 20 years of back taxes or they will not be allowed to operate in the country. Before, these transnationals (the mining sector being one of the biggest) were tax-exempt with the excuse that they were “bringing jobs to the country.” The truth is, they brought few jobs and took vast amounts of the nation’s wealth, leaving the poor, and especially Indigenous people, destitute of the most basic necessities of life.

It’s no coincidence that the right-wing-controlled Congress just voted to allow more U.S. military bases in Peru.

The current constitution was written during Fujimori’s presidency and, like in any other capitalist country, devised to support the interests of the bosses and landlords instead of the people. The Peruvian Congress can impeach the president at any time, even without serious charges against the sitting official. In late 2020, Peru had three presidents in the space of a week.

Speakers at the Aug. 26 protest explained that the people are demanding a new constitution. Signatures are being collected everywhere, even here in the U.S., for a referendum on a new constitution to be created by an elected popular assembly. This is something of the utmost importance to the future of Peru. 

As in Bolivia, Venezuela and all Latin America, the reactionary forces do not accept Indigenous and working-class people in power. A democratic Peru must be defended at any cost and President Castillo must be respected because the people chose him.

It happened with a suddenness that was stunning. The Taliban taking town by town, village by village, province by province until Kabul itself toppled all without virtually firing a shot. The sudden full of the capital caused the falling of alligator tears by the US political class, many of whom demanded that more troops be sent ostensibly to prevent Imperial embarrassment.

Forgotten, of course, was the 20 year project that armed, funded and allegedly trained an army by the Americans. The U.S. trained troops faced with the prospect of fighting the Taliban melted away faster than the ice cream on a summer sidewalk. The Late Palestinian intellectual Edwards Said in a 2003 article taught the following lesson:

“Every empire” he wrote, “however tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires, that its mission is not to plunder and control, but to educate and liberate. These ideas are by no means shared by the people who inhabit that empire, but that hasn’t prevented the U.S. propaganda and policy apparatus from imposing its Imperial perspective on Americans, whose sources of information about Arabs and Islam or woefully inadequate.”

– The late scholar Edward Said.

When the Afghanistan War began, it was called “Operation Enduring Freedom”

When the Iraq war began several years later, it was called operation “Iraqi Freedom.”

You can call it what you will but is either nation freer? And what endures after decades of war besides immense loss?

On Aug. 21, New Orleanians marched against U.S. imperialism, “from Kabul to the Caribbean,” as stated in the announcement.

The action was initiated by organizers with Freedom Road Socialist Organization – New Orleans, and the New Orleans Hospitality Workers Alliance, with support from the New Orleans Mutual Aid Society, Socialist Unity Party, and various community members.

Appropriately, the starting point was Congo Square in present-day Armstrong Park — one of the only communal spaces in the U.S. available to African people during slavery. Mississippi-born educator and poet, She Ra, told the crowd, “This land here is sacred. It was sacred before colonization … [and when enslaved people gathered here on Sundays] they were able to hang onto some of their native tongue, spiritual practices, music and dance.”

She Ra thus framed the march, connecting the struggles within the belly of the beast — including the Black liberation struggle — to the just cause of the Cuban, Haitian, Afghan and other peoples holding the line against U.S. imperialism. 

“Cuba, Haiti and Afghanistan are geographically separated, but they’ve been united in the common cause against U.S. imperialism. It’s the tax dollars that we produce in America that have been funneled toward suppressing the national self-determination of all these peoples,” said Toni Jones of Freedom Road.

The march ultimately went to the Hale Boggs Federal Building, where educational talks were given. But before that, the crowd wound through the French Quarter to reach those in the service industry. In the streets were valet drivers, shop workers, restaurant servers and cooks on break. These workers read the fliers, and some pumped their fists to shouts of “U.S. out of Cuba! U.S out of Haiti! U.S. out of Afghanistan!” New Orleans workers, as in the rest of the country, can barely afford food, medical care and housing, while the military budget is over $700 billion. Something’s gotta give!

In our conversations along the way, we affirmed our commitments to unity. The U.S. imperialists may have failed to destabilize Cuba and are retreating from Afghanistan, but the global situation is still dangerous. The dying beast of capitalism-imperialism can, and will, continue to lash out, as evidenced by increasing aggression toward China, but not just there. 

Struggle-La Lucha’s Bill Dores recently observed, “While the U.S. retreats from Afghanistan, the war against the Filipino people continues. It has been raging since 1898. The planes, the bombs, the guns and bullets that murder peasants and freedom fighters come from the USA. … The Philippines was one of the first U.S. colonies. The U.S. has been there for over 100 years. If you want to see what kind of world the U.S. ruling class wants, look at the poverty, the death squads, and the mass murder in the Philippines.”

Our duty, therefore, is to continue building up all progressive, anti-imperialist forces, and especially working-class revolutionary organizations.

The art of Parts Bagani is world-renowned, undeniably distinct, and always in service of the masses. Spend enough time among the anti-imperialist forces in the world and you will inevitably see his work, whether decorating the office of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines in the Netherlands, or in anti-imperialist publications. This writer even has a tattoo with one of Parts’ pieces as a source.

On Aug. 16, Ka Parts was murdered in a police and military raid, unarmed and alongside his spouse, Pamela Peñaranda, who was then arrested and detained. The Philippine police and military have lied through their teeth, claiming that Ka Parts was killed in a shootout. 

Marco Valbuena, Chief Information Officer of the Communist Party of the Philippines, released a statement asserting that Ka Parts was armed only with his pencils, brushes, paint and paper.

Ka Parts not only leaves behind an outstanding model of revolutionary art, but also his legacy as a fierce, determined and strategic guerrilla fighter in the New People’s Army, who made immeasurable contributions to the armed struggle. 

Long live Parts Bagani!
Long live the revolutionary struggle for a liberated Philippines!
International solidarity forever!

The government of Pedro Castillo has suffered its first defeat, by yielding to the pressures of the right-wing coup and the most reactionary sectors of the Armed Forces. The imposition of the resignation of Foreign Minister Héctor Béjar is, without a doubt, an enormous show of weakness and will have consequences in the future. To discuss this issue we spoke with Ricardoi Jiménez, sociologist and activist of ALBA Movimientos del Perú, and a regular contributor to Resumen Latinoamericano.

-What are your impressions of what happened?

-Héctor Béjar’s resignation is undoubtedly the first and hardest blow against the current government of President Castillo and the process of change that the President is trying to promote. It is the hardest because Béjar is the most important, the most educated and I would say the most capable, without any doubt and by far, of the entire cabinet. On the other hand, demonstrating these capabilities, he had the luck, the ability and the capacity to act quickly. I have no doubt that he saw this possibility and acted quickly, with incredible serenity to evict the infamous Lima group and restored relations with Venezuela, which are two hard nuts for the Peruvian right wing to crack. He left in place a policy that will not be easy to reverse, I think the possibility is remote. It would be a serious step backwards, on the verge of treason on the part of Castillo, if he were to reverse the Chancellor’s policy.

-As you rightly say, he acted with speed, knowing that pressures would increase, and he also left a legacy.

-Even though Bejar only served a few days he left us this tremendous legacy, a turn of the screw in foreign policy towards sovereignty and respect for peace among peoples. It seems unbelievable that so quickly the right-wing would strike this blow, just weeks into the new government, in the most important part of the cabinet, if we look at the capacities and potentialities. What is behind, is the coup and the attack of the right wing that does not come from now, but from before. We are facing what I metaphorically call the “third round”. In few countries of the world does what is happening here take place, where this third round of coups has been imposed on us and has not ceased, before, during and after this elected government.

-Héctor Béjar says that the Navy accused him of having insulted them. However, what he said is based on very clear evidence. He pointed out that members of the Navy had been involved in terrorist acts, even before the Shining Path was active in Peru.

-Of course, as  the great Spanish singer Joan Manoel Serrat used to say: “the truth is never sad, that which has no remedy” The same thing happens here, history cannot be changed, the facts cannot be changed, you can google it, the evidence is overwhelming. The same American CIA gives official reports on the Peruvian state and they refer to a time in the 70’s, where there was the Condor Plan, where there are even open trials in Peruvian courts of the Peruvian judiciary to former military of the Navy of that time, where the attacks are clarified. As Héctor Béjar affirmed, before taking office as Chancellor, in a statement that was also manipulated, edited and presented tendentiously and wildly distorted by the media, is that the Navy undoubtedly participated in terrorist attacks.

-Héctor Béjar also said in an interview that I was able to see that the dangerous thing about this is that Pedro Castillo is now practically forced to ask permission from the armed forces if he can continue or not to continue with this or that minister that has been questioned. He shows a scenario of much conditioning by the military and the right wing, and that is dangerous in the immediate future.

-Of course, it is very serious, we cannot underestimate the risk that this brings, because the president and the government have put themselves in a position of being hostage of the military. They have given in very quickly, it is undoubtedly a mistake, the most serious that has been made, which will have consequences, which have not yet been experienced. They should have waited longer and should have negotiated better with the pro-coup sectors within the Navy.

-How was the operation that ended up removing Béjar from his post?

-The operation was more or less like this: in Peru it is called cargamontones, an incessant, cruel and merciless avalanche, in all the media, on all the front pages of the newspapers, the front pages of the newspapers, in the prime time of the news programs, fake news, all against the Chancellor. Then, a communiqué from the Navy, an official communiqué from the high command of the Navy in office, questioning the Chancellor and the famous declarations and finally Hector is forced to resign. This successful strategy in this situation, without any doubt, will be rehearsed again and again by the right wing coup plotters. From the beginning they have complained that this government, for the first time in 200 years of the country, chose ministers without consulting the powers that be. Now what they have achieved is a type of veto power by managing to leave out the most emblematic figure, the most qualified. I was very hurt by the lack of vision of the government, of the premier, of the president, at least they should have waited, because this move was to call Hector to Congress to ask for explanations. That would have been a really good opportunity because Hector would have given a lesson not only of history, of laws and international legality but also to show how to stand up to the right wing in Congress, and it would have done the country a lot of good if we had all witnessed this. In this sense and in my opinion the premier and the president have made a mistake. There are strong ties between the Navy and the military coup, they are at the forefront of the coup. Former admiral Montoya is in the congress, and he has coordinated without any doubt all this, with the fake news of the media and the high commands of the navy. Here what should be done now is that the state prosecutor’s office prosecute the admirals who made this statement, because it is unconstitutional. A flagrant act before the law, it is a crime of the armed forces, and this gesture should have been made before taking any decision. In order not to leave a precedent of impunity because it is extremely dangerous.

-Béjar says: “I did not resign, Guido Bellido told me that I had to leave”. Why did Guido Bellido make such a forceful decision?

I do not know Bellido or the president personally, I have no way of knowing the exact reasons. My analysis is that the right wing has managed to attack on several fronts, let’s remember that the most attacked, besides Hector, was Guido Bellido, also accused of terrorism, a ridiculous and absurd accusation. And they do it with the same campaign style. There was also talk of questioning him. In these days, the congress has to decide whether or not to give a vote of confidence to the cabinet headed by Bellido. I think Bellido has made the mistake of saving himself by burning Hector’s gun. The right wing has succeeded, I think, although I may be wrong, that he was on the chopping block and thought I will save myself by putting Hector on the chopping block, and that that’s what set the fuse. On the other hand, it is natural, it is a coalition government, Hector is not part of Peru Libre, he is not part of the Magisterio, which are the two primary forces of the government. He is a reference cadre, the most important, by far, of the Peruvian left, who was invited to be part of the government because of his qualities and capacities, which are extraordinary, so there is no trust built amongst these forces, They joined in this process of change which is good, but at the same time the lack of trust is their weakness. Two months ago nobody thought about the possibility of this government and this process of change. We have to have the perspective that this has just begun, struggles and processes of change are like that, they are given and taken. We must also remember that within the first 15 days, the government has achieved what was not achieved in the 40 years of neoliberalism: that the large mining consortiums pay the taxes they owe. They have paid close to 2,000 million soles, an important amount just when the country needs it most. For the government it has been a public success, and there is still a lot to be done in this area, they have paid 10 years, but they owe 12 years more, or something like that. But neither can we underestimate the fact that for 40 years they felt like not paying taxes and they did not pay them. I do not know the reasons for the privileges for which these mining businesses, which have multimillionaire profits, were. To top it off, now with the rise of the dollar, they have super profits and they have never felt like paying for their profits, while the rest of us citizens have to pay punctually. The government has achieved this, it has been an important blow. Now there is a struggle in Congress. I also risk the analysis that it may have been a negotiation for the vote of confidence, that maybe they have said “look, this fuse is burning, but the cabinet receives the vote of confidence and they show they can govern”. It may be, I hope so. Because it will be worse if even that does not happen.

Let’s see what happens in these days. There may also be false promises and deceptions, I do not believe that the right wing can control the pack that is in the congress, they are uncontrollable. The same thing happens to them as to us, there is a coalition where there is Fujimorism and four or five other right-wing forces that are with the coup and nobody controls them. Nor do they have the confidence and discipline that someone can speak in the name of all.

-The logical reflection that comes out of this after listening to you is that progressive governments are weak, no matter how many votes of the people they got. Héctor Béjar was saying that the people should be in the streets consolidating the support to this government, the problem is that they are not summoned. In this sense, now an important piece has fallen, but another and another can fall, and so at some point you end up in a situation where you leave or live enslaved to the conditions. Let’s hope that, as you said, this will be a fuse to save the whole, but it hurts, it hurts because of the value that Héctor Béjar has for the great fatherland, not only for Peru.

-I do not know if you saw the words of Vladimir Cerrón, in a public tweet that has been circulating, he says it with all lucidity: never before and never after, will Peru have a Chancellor of the stature of Héctor Béjar. The pain is deep, the blow is very strong.

Source: Resumen