Washington's cold war against Cuba will never end

White House promotes
latest slanders on Cuba

BY SETH GALINSKY
The White House released an official statement March 24 adding its voice to the latest slander campaign against the Cuban Revolution. President Barack Obama claimed that “Cuban authorities continue to respond to the aspirations of the Cuban people with a clenched fist.”

Obama was referring to Orlando Zapata Tamayo, who died February 23 after refusing food for 80 days, and to Ladies in White, a U.S.-backed group in Cuba that opposes the revolution.

According to the Cuban daily Granma, between 1993 and 2002 Zapata was arrested several times on charges that had nothing to do with politics, ranging from fraud to battery and breaking and entering. At one point he was arrested for assault with a machete. In 2004 he began serving a three-year jail sentence; this was increased to 24 years after he physically attacked prison employees.

In December 2009, Zapata began a hunger strike, widely publicized in the capitalist news media as a fight for “human rights” in Cuba. The Cuban press, however, reported that Zapata’s main demands were “the installation of a telephone, cooking facilities, and a television in his cell.”

No torture in Cuba
Cuban president Raúl Castro noted that the Cuban government tried to save Zapata’s life. “He was taken to our best hospitals,” Castro pointed out. “He died: we regret it very much.”

Since the 1959 revolution that overthrew the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship, “we have not murdered anyone here, we have tortured no one here, we have not carried out any extra-judicial execution,” Castro explained. The same cannot be said about the U.S.-controlled Guantánamo Naval Base, the Cuban leader added, where “there have been tortures.”

Cuban television’s nightly news on March 1 included interviews with doctors who tried to save Zapata’s life. The report noted that family members and Cuban government and hospital personnel tried to convince Zapata to end his hunger strike, but not a single “dissident” group that had taken up his case did so.

Ladies in White stepped up its activities after Zapata’s suicide, including a series of provocative demonstrations in Havana that were met by counterprotests of supporters of the revolution. The group is made up of relatives of 75 opponents of the Cuban Revolution who were arrested in March 2003, 53 of them still in prison. The 75 were charged with receiving funds from Washington and collaborating with U.S. diplomatic personnel stationed in Havana against the Cuban Revolution.

Washington financed opposition
They had been encouraged by James Cason, who was appointed in 2003 by then-president George Bush as head of the U.S. Interests Section in Cuba. Cason publicly touted his “6,000-mile” plan to crisscross the island to aid groups opposed to the revolution.

Amnesty International, which continues to criticize Cuba for the arrests and public trials, admitted in a March 2008 report that the 75 had “received funds and/or materials from the United States government in order to engage in activities the authorities perceived as subversive and damaging to Cuba.”

While claiming that the Cuban government restricts “freedom of expression and association,” Amnesty International concedes that the Cuban government provides “all Cubans with key human rights such as access to housing, healthcare, and education.” Amnesty does not accuse Cuban authorities of torture, disappearances, or beatings.

“Solidarity” marches with Ladies in White took place in Miami, New York, and Los Angeles in late March. The largest took place in Miami, led by singer Gloria Estefan, a longtime opponent of the revolution. At a press conference, Estefan backed the hunger strike in Cuba begun by Guillermo Fariñas after Zapata’s death. Fariñas says he is refusing to eat to win the release of 26 prisoners.

In an autobiographical note posted on an anti-Cuba Web site, Fariñas says he fought in Angola in 1980 as part of the Cuban volunteer troops who helped defeat invasions by the South African apartheid regime.

In 1986, he says, he was a supporter of Perestroika and Glasnost in the Soviet Union. Fariñas also identifies himself as having opposed the execution of Arnaldo Ochoa in 1989. After it was discovered that he had been involved in drug trafficking, black market deals, and robbery, Ochoa, a general in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba, was put on trial, found guilty, and given the death penalty.

For the last 50 years, Washington has used every means at its disposal to undermine and attack the Cuban Revolution. This has included scores of assassination plots against Fidel Castro and other Cuban leaders, the economic embargo of Cuba, the backing of rightist groups that have launched violent attacks and bombings against Cuba, and the financing of small groups inside Cuba that falsely claim to be fighting for democratic rights.

Oppose slanders against Cuba
(editorial)

The February 23 suicide death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a prisoner in Cuba, is cynically being used by Washington to attack the Cuban Revolution.

The White House and capitalist media worldwide paint Zapata as a political dissident and martyr. The fact is over 10 years he was repeatedly picked up for assault, theft, and other such crimes. He went on a hunger strike to demand privileges such as a cell phone and a television for himself. A small number of opponents of the revolution in Cuba, who work hand-in-glove with Washington, convinced him to use his strike to attack the revolutionary government. Havana spared no effort in trying to prevent his death.

As Cuban president Raúl Castro said February 24, Cuba’s revolutionary government has never carried out murders, tortures, or extra-judicial executions. The only torture on Cuban territory, he noted, has taken place at the U.S. prison camp in Guantánamo.

Washington’s attitude toward the human rights of prisoners is amply demonstrated by its treatment of five Cuban revolutionaries unjustly incarcerated in U.S. prisons for the last 11 years. They were arrested for monitoring right-wing Cuban groups in Florida who have launched attacks on Cuba with Washington’s backing. For 17 months leading up to their trial, the men were kept in solitary confinement. Convicted on frame-up “conspiracy” charges, they received draconian sentences, with three of them initially sentenced to life. Washington has consistently denied two of these fighters, Gerardo Hernández and René González, the right to visits by their wives.

The Cuban Five are among the 2.3 million working people behind bars in the United States, which has the highest incarceration rate in the world. One out of every 31 adults is either in jail or on probation or parole. African American males are 6.5 times more likely to be imprisoned than white males.

In response to the renewed slanders against Cuba, defenders of the revolution reiterate our demands for an end to the U.S. embargo and travel ban against the island, restoration of normal diplomatic relations, and freedom for the Cuban Five.

Pictures from life's other side

A rebel to the end

Alexander Billet reviews the last Rick Rubin-produced album from the late, great, Man in Black--Johnny Cash.

April 1, 2010

Johnny Cash

"O DEATH, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?"

So asks the book of Corinthians 15:55, which Johnny Cash chose to reference in the one original composition that appears on American VI: Ain't No Grave. That the Man in Black was by this point facing the imminent reality of death should be surprising to nobody. The ten songs that make up this final installment in the American Recordings series were recorded with Rick Rubin mere months after Cash's wife June had passed away. He was so frail that he spent most of the sessions sitting down.

And yet, it's hard to imagine another artist able to greet the reaper with such graceful defiance. To be sure, death had always played a large role in Cash's repertoire. But with his health deteriorating, the gravity of the situation seems to drip off of American VI. The pared-down arrangements, Cash's weathered singing voice, even the release date--what would have been his 78th birthday--all convey a haunting sense of mortality.

Review: Music

Johnny Cash, American VI: Ain't No Grave, 2010, American Recordings/Lost Highway.

Or is it immortality? The album's title track sees a rapturous gospel song retooled into a slow, plodding dirge. The song's tone is far from resigned, however. Rather, it sounds as if Cash is defying death itself to keep him off this mortal coil as he declares that "there ain't no grave can hold my body down."

It's a lyric chilling in its profundity. Since Cash's death in 2003, there have been no shortage of forces who have sought to manipulate and reclaim his legacy for themselves. It might seem an easy task. After all, dead men can't argue, and figures on the conservative right have been notably smug in morphing this most rebellious of country legends into one of their own.

It's easy to imagine the likes of Glenn Beck squirming at this batch of songs, though. Like the other parts that make up the American records, American VI is mostly cover versions. But notably missing are the unique takes on modern artists' work (the version of Sheryl Crow's "Redemption Day" notwithstanding). Old favorites feature prominently here--songs that Johnny had long loved to perform and record. And in their own way, they reveal a stunning answer to any confusion on whose side this artist stood.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

ONE THING that is never in doubt is the deep love and knowledge that Cash held for American music. Several songs are taken directly from the rich history of country music's golden age--Porter Wagoner's "A Satisfied Mind," Hank Snow's "I Don't Hurt Anymore." Others reflect how truly eclectic and far-reaching Cash's influence could be.

In May of 1962, after a horrific performance at Carnegie Hall, a despondent Cash found himself approached by Ed McCurdy, a socialist and folksinger who had just barely escaped the grip of McCarthyism into the thriving Greenwich Village folk scene. McCurdy ended up taking Cash to the Gaslight Cafe, a favorite hub in the Village.

McCurdy was a major figure in his own right. In 1949, in the aftermath of the Second World War, he penned "(Last Night) I Had the Strangest Dream," a stirring antiwar missive that became such a hit that other folks mainstays like Pete Seeger and Guy Carawan would record their own versions.

"Strangest Dream" also held a massive resonance with Cash, and appears on American VI. His most famous performance of the song was at Madison Square Garden in 1969, where he recalled for the audience a recent conversation between himself and a reporter who asked about his visit to the troops in Vietnam. "That makes you a hawk, doesn't it?" asked the reporter.

"No, no, that don't make me a hawk," Cash told the crowd. "But I said if you watch the helicopters bring in the wounded boys, and then you go into the wards and sing for 'em and try to do your best to cheer 'em up, so they can get back home, it might make you a dove with claws."

Johnny never did say what his thoughts were on the war on Iraq, but songs like these, recorded in the months following the initial invasion, make it pretty clear what he thought.

Then there's the version of "Can't Help But Wonder Where I'm Bound," a gentle rambler originally written by Tom Paxton. Another player in the Village scene, Paxton essentially became recognized at "Dylan before Dylan." Still writing songs today, he's applied a deft song-writing skill to protests against war, racism, poverty and corruption. Knowing this places songs like "Can't Help But Wonder" in a different light, as if Cash himself is asking not just where he is going, but more broadly what is to become of us, the human race.

In all these respects, American VI represents an unmistakable statement on what kind of artist Cash really was. Far beyond the borders of the country mainstream, he stood as a living, breathing example of American music's indefatigable humanity. It's a tradition that's been hidden from us, no doubt about it. Much like Cash's own legacy, it's been obscured under half-truths and omissions.

Cash himself would have looked at these manipulations with clear disdain. But then, he never really did have much time for the accepted orthodoxy. American VI: Ain't No Grave shows that even in death, Johnny Cash can't stand being silenced.

First published at the Web site of the Society of Cinema and Arts.

UK on eve of General Election

Four weeks to put the case for the fightback

The Tories—a party of the rich, for the rich—shouldn’t have a hope in the general election.

A programme of cuts in vital public services, attacks on pensions, tax breaks for millionaires, more nuclear weapons and attacks on immigrants should have no chance of success.

But Conservative leader David Cameron is ahead in the polls because Labour has betrayed the people who voted for it.

From its inception New Labour venerated big business and the free market.

Then, when the system crashed, it bailed out the banks while letting unemployment soar.

And Gordon Brown’s pitch for votes is now an eerily similar programme to Cameron’s—with a slight time lag.

Mark Serwotka, the leader of the PCS civil service workers’ union, struck a real chord when he spoke to delegates at this week’s NUT union conference:

“I say to you that if you judge the government as an employer, this is the worst government in the history of this country.

“I’ve got no illusions in David Cameron, I know he’ll be dreadful.

“But in the last four years, we’ve lost 100,000 jobs. We’ve had more privatisation than under Thatcher and Major combined.”

If the Tories win it will be because working people can’t bring themselves to vote for Labour.

Socialist Worker urges readers to use the election period to put forward socialist ideas and to build the fightback we will need whoever wins.

There will be strikes and anti-cuts campaigns over the next four weeks—in this period they are more important, not less.

Many trade union leaders will try to have four weeks of “social peace”.

But the greater the resistance, the less chance of Tory arguments getting a hearing. It’s defeated, demoralised and sold‑out workers who accept Cameron’s solutions.

We need strong campaigns for the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition candidates.

Everyone should get involved in working for their nearest candidate.

We also need united resistance to the threat from the British National Party.

The Nazis must not be allowed to get new confidence and further fake respectability from grabbing a parliamentary seat or adding a new clutch of councillors.

And it is urgent that we consciously build now for the fightback after 6 May.

That means building permanent structures that bring together trade unionists, pensioners, the unemployed, students and campaigners.

The Right to Work emergency conference on Saturday 22 May, backed this week by the NUT conference, should be part of all our election work.

Ruling classes across Europe are determined to make workers pay for the crisis. The battles in Greece are a sign of what’s to come.

The stirrings of the struggle in Britain can be felt in the battles at BA and the anti-cuts campaigns that have already begun. But much stormier struggles are to come.

We need to prepare.

---

© Socialist Worker (unless otherwise stated). You may republish if you include an active link to the original.

Socialists, elections and class struggle

Working class men and women fought hard for the right to vote. For many today, voting seems their only chance to have a say in how the system is run—despite often thinking that it won’t change very much.

Most people are disillusioned with parliament. This is reflected in the low level of voter turnout. Working class confidence and struggle matters more than elections, but who wins them, does matter.

Governments can raise taxes on the rich or lower them. They can invest more money in hospitals or cut funding. They can bring in laws to restrict women’s access to abortion, or they can liberalise the laws.

Nobody would say that if the fascist British National Party gets an MP it doesn’t matter.

If Nick Griffin is elected in Barking, every racist and fascist will cheer. Millions of other people will feel under threat.

These things have a real impact on the lives of ordinary people. At this election, Labour and the Tories are offering similar policies. But who wins can affect workers’ confidence.

A Tory win will demoralise many working people and boost every rotten element in society. It will make some workers feel less able to fight the cuts.

That is why the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) does think it matters who you vote for, and that sometimes it’s worth standing in elections.

Revolutionaries don’t think we can bring about socialism by electing left wingers to parliament.

But we can use elections to highlight the failings of mainstream politicians and the system they defend.

The election allows socialists to raise demands that challenge the ruling class’s priorities. They can do these things even if they don’t win.

The SWP is taking part in the upcoming elections as part of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), which is standing in around 50 seats.

Even modest results could be a stepping stone towards broader left unity, and help create networks of resistance and solidarity.

If socialists get a good vote, or are elected, it can give workers more confidence. If they go on strike or campaign to save services, they know they have support from the many people who voted socialist.

And elected socialists can become a focal point for people fighting back.

Bernadette Devlin—a radical, anti-imperialist young woman in Northern Ireland—was elected to the British parliament in 1969. “I managed to touch a chord with whole layers of people,” she told Socialist Worker.

She said significant political developments were taking place outside parliament, but that after she got elected, “parliament was a megaphone, which meant that what we were up to had a bigger impact”.

This is how socialists should view elections—as a means to support the self-activity of workers, building the confidence of the working class.

Who holds power?

There are some real dangers for revolutionaries who are successful in elections. The current capitalist system minimises the role of the working class.

It’s based on a handful of unaccountable representatives acting on behalf of a passive majority.

Many elected intending to change this system instead find that it changes them. The experience of working within parliament distorts how they see the world.

Standing or electing a socialist cannot be a substitute for workers’ activity, and does not guarantee a rise in struggle. The reality is that power does not lie in parliament.

It lies with a class of unelected bosses, judges, generals and bankers who make the decisions that affect the rest of us.

We don’t get to vote on whether a factory opens or closes, what it produces or how, or how products are distributed. The police and the state are completely unaccountable.

The ruling class pressures all governments to introduce policies that maintain its wealth—like the anti-union laws, tax laws, and even urging them to go to war to protect capitalist interests.

If governments interfere with their interests, the ruling class is prepared to use violence. The way to get real change isn’t by relying on MPs—we need class struggle.

The most important question is the organisation of working class people, our fighting unity and our confidence.

We are the force that can fight for reforms—and a different society. In order to achieve genuine liberation, we have to move beyond parliament to building independent working class organisation strong enough to overthrow the capitalist ruling class.

Can workers run the world?

Socialists argue that there is an alternative to the madness of the current system.

The people who do all the work should collectively control society’s resources.

Under capitalism, production is controlled by bosses whose only real concern is making a profit.

Workers are denied a say over what is produced or how it is organised.

Democratic planning in a socialist society would match resources to society’s needs, making sure everyone had enough food, decent housing and didn’t work exhausting hours.

Today, production is increasingly concentrated into fewer hands.

In 2008 just 2,000 multinational firms accounted for nearly half of everything sold in the world.

If workers ran these firms, we would have enormous power to reshape the economy and to produce the things the majority of the planet’s population need.

And workers know far more about how production is organised and functions than managers.

It is true that some vital technical skills are the monopoly of a minority of experts, who often benefit from educational opportunities unavailable to most workers.

But a society based on collective decision-making could put the resources required into expanding education, to end the stranglehold of a minority over these skills.

Under capitalism, workers have to labour just to get a wage.

Karl Marx called this a “dull economic compulsion”. If we work harder, we rarely see the benefit—the boss just pockets the extra profit.

It’s not surprising that many people hate their jobs and try to do as little as they can.

If the majority of people ran production and saw the benefits of any gains, it would be in our interest to be motivated.

And workers would collectively decide, through majority votes, the big decisions about how society’s resources should be allocated.

Workers, together with those who use their services, would figure out how to implement these decisions.

Gradually, waste on such things as war, weapons, advertising and the luxury wealth of the rich would be abolished.

More and more things could be provided for free, and the role of wages and money eroded.

Capitalism has created enormous wealth and advanced technological development.

In the hands of workers, these advances could serve humanity rather than just a rich minority.

Reclaiming G.B. Shaw

George Bernard Shaw

A. V. Lunacharsky

1931

We may hail in George Bernard Shaw one of the most brilliant master wits in the history of art.

When you read Shaw you are assumed, you find yourself constantly smiling or laughing. But, at the same time, you are horrified. A reader who is the target of Shaw’s arrows of mirth way well be horrified, a sympathetic reader will also be awe-struck when Shaw unmasks the gloomy essence of capitalist reality.

Shaw had a wonderful predecessor, a powerful and gloomy genius, whose humour reached the same virtuoso heights but was of a darker cast. He was a master wit like Shaw, though circumstances and the time in which he lived made him more morbid. This was the great satirist Jonathan Swift.

Swift knew how to laugh in a merry, graceful, tinkling way. His Gulliver’s Travels has long been a favourite of bourgeois and proletarian children alike, yet the very same Jonathan Swift proposed with frightening humour that the English bourgeoisie should consume infants born in such great numbers into the families of the Irish poor, and suggested ways of salting and curing their flesh and of preparing dainty dishes so as to turn the misfortune of over-population into a source of food.

If we compare the laughter of Swift with the laughter of Shaw we shall arrive at some very interesting conclusions. In general, a man laughs when he is victorious. Physiological laughter is the release of psychological and physiological tensions which we let go when we find that a seemingly insurmountable problem can be easily dealt with. When we laugh we are reflecting the nervous activity of the brain; we are converting it into movements of our face and muscles, thus relaxing our control.

Laughter is a magnificent instance of the body demobilising; when mobilisation is suddenly proved unnecessary, we burst into joyous laughter. Laughter is victory.

But we know that laughter does not always come from above, from the heights of victory, crashing down upon the heads of a vanquished enemy. It can come from below, aimed at the ruling countries, the ruling class, the ruling power.

But if laughter is a banner of victory, how can it emanate from classes and groups that are still oppressed?

Russian literature has a great satirist who can justly take his place beside Swift and Shaw – Saltykov-Shchedrin. Saltykov-Shchedrin is an unusually gay writer. You will laugh unceasingly as you read his works, but, as in Swift, there will be dark clouds threatening the bright sunshine of his laughter. You will find a terrible combination of laughter and wrath, hatred, loathing, calls to action; you will see him close to tears and sense the lump in his throat when he is laughing. How is such a mixture possible? You will hear such laughter when the oppressed individual has long since vanquished his oppressors morally and intellectually, when he regards them as fools, when he despises their principles, when the morality of the ruling class is no more than a conglomeration of absurdities to him, when he considers his own class a generation of giants compared with the Lilliputians (when he knows that lightning will strike the doomed), but when he is still politically weak, when he is not mature enough to bring the imminent economic upheaval to a head. At such moments he will experience this terrible churning.

If we compare Shaw with our own gloomy-jolly Saltykov-Shchedrin or with the eighteenth-century satirist, Swift, we shall find Shaw to be much gayer than they. Shaw senses the closeness of victory, he is confident that the absurdity of the bourgeois system cannot last long. He can even laugh lightly. He spends more time laughing graciously, teasing his enemies while his predecessors Swift and Saltykov-Shchedrin launched out at their enemies with a contempt that was nearly a torture.

A very talented American journalist who visited Lenin later wrote an interesting account of the interview. Part of it reads: “When I spoke to Lenin I was most amazed to see him laughing continuously, laughing ironically and merrily. It made me wonder. Why was this man, whose country was stricken by famine (as was the case at the time), who was surrounded by enemies and was in the position that might very well have seemed hopeless, why was he smiling and joking? I realised that this was Marxist laughter, the laughter of a man who was convinced that the social laws would bring him victory, this was laughter peculiar to people who are gently tolerant of children that have not yet perceived the significance of phenomena which are quite clear to adults.”

We find something akin to Lenin’s victorious laughter in Shaw’s works. However, we must not overlook Shaw’s poison. He laughs, but he knows full well that far from everything is funny: he laughs to burn out human failings with his laughter. He laughs venomously, cunningly, ironically, sarcastically. These are not innocent buds of humour. He is using a subtle and magnificent weapon of the new world aimed at the old.

During his stay here, George Bernard Shaw called himself an old revolutionary. It was he who wrote A Rebel’s Catechism, which is full of pointed, unusually sharp and direct attacks on our enemies. Some of these aphorisms were recently published in Literaturnaya Gazeta and anyone can see how truly revolutionary they are in spirit. However, Shaw’s chief satirical and revolutionary work is to be found in his plays.

Shaw has written an extensive series of plays, a great number of articles and many aphorisms, all of which give him the right to the attention of our countrymen and to a long life in the literature of the future.

George Bernard Shaw is seventy-five years old, he is entering the later period of his life at a time when capitalism, which he has so abhorred and censured, is entering its final stage. Never before have the very foundations of capitalist society been shaken as they are being shaken today. Its walls are shaking, they are crooked and cracked.

At a time when the adherents of the old world must tremble, for Judgment day has come for the sins and crimes of capitalism, George Bernard Shaw believes it is only natural for an intelligent, educated person to be a socialist, and that he who is not a socialist, no matter how intelligent and educated he be, is an odd being.

However, it is one thing to be a socialist by conviction, and quite another to contribute actively to the advent of socialism. The destruction of the capitalist world is not in itself socialism. The capitalist world might have crumbled not left an heir. In a speech in honour of Lenin, which Shaw delivered for a sound film in Leningrad, he said that quite a number of civilisations had crumbled with no one to save them, but now Lenin’s way promises salvation and a transition to higher forms.

You will understand why the seventy-five-year-old writer who has noticed dangerous ruts on the road he is following asks himself: Is there not something positive that can take the place of the crumbling old world? And he turns his gaze to the East, he comes to us, because he is seeking that change here. That is why when Shaw says that should the great socialist experiment of the U.S.S.R. prove hopeless or doubtful he would have to leave this world in sorrow, his words sound so solemn. Shaw must be confident that mankind is young, that the future les before it.

---

Written: 1931;
Translator : Y. Ganuskin;
Source : A. Lunacharsky: On Literature and Art Progress Publishers, 1973;
Transcribed : Harrison Fluss for marxists.org, February 2008.

---

Ernest Mandel video

Part one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QoBfIYWdo8

"A good beginning," commented the snarky comrade

Maoists Kill Dozens of Police in India Attack

Fighters from the Communist Party of India (Maoists). The guerrilla units have killed over 70 police in early April 2010.
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos

Maoists kill dozens of police in India attack

SUJEET KUMAR | RAIPUR, INDIA - Apr 06 2010 11:27

Maoist rebels killed at least 73 police by setting off explosives and firing from hilltops around dense forest in central India on Tuesday in one of the worst attacks by the insurgents in years.

The ambush in Chhattisgarh state highlights the strong Maoist presence in large swathes of India, especially remote rural areas, and underscores how many parts of the country have been left out of India's booming economy.

"Something has gone very wrong," Indian Home Minister P Chidambaram said. "They seem to have walked into a camp or a trap."

Recent high-profile rebel attacks on police have raised questions over how well prepared India's security forces are to tackle the Maoists, especially during a counter-offensive by security forces this year.

"We have confirmation of 73 deaths in the attack. At least two dozen have been injured," Amresh Mishra, a senior police officer, told Reuters. Reinforcements trying to collect the dead bodies came under fire by the Maoists who have surrounded the area.

The Maoists regularly attack railway lines and factories, aiming to cripple economic activity in many of the mineral-rich and remote mining regions of India. But they have made few inroads into cities.

The Congress-led government has come under criticism by the opposition for failing to deal with the insurgents and the security issue could be important in several state elections over the next two years.

Taken by surprise

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has described the Maoists as the gravest threat to India's internal security.

The rebels number between 6 000 and 8 000 hardcore fighters in nearly a third of the country's 630 districts. Each year they extort more than $300-million from companies, the government says.

Tuesday's attack echoed a similar ambush in February, when Maoists caught police off guard in a daylight attack on in the state of West Bengal, killing at least two dozen police.

Maoists have stepped up attacks in response to a police offensive that began late last year in several states, which Indian officials say has for the first time weakened the decades-old movement.

Maoists, who say they are fighting for the rights of poor farmers and landless labourers, are trying to expand their influence in east, central and southern India.

Thousands have been killed in the insurgency, which began in the late 1960s.

On Sunday, rebels triggered a landmine blast that killed 10 police in the mineral-rich eastern state of Orissa. -- Reuters

Source: Mail & Guardian Online
Web Address: http://www.mg.co.za/article/2010-04-06-maoists-kill-dozens-of-police-in-india-attack

Good news from Lord Archer (Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare): Tory majority result of upcomming UK general election

Tea for three

I was looking to buy a new mobile phone, when I bumped into Sir Stephen Sherbourne, who ran Margaret Thatcher's private office at No.10, what seems like a hundred years ago. His views on the upcoming election (May 6th) were fascinating, and he said, subject to nothing spectacular happening in the debates between Brown, Cameron and Clegg (first one Thursday April 15th), he thought the overall result would be a 20-30 majority for the Conservatives. I left him to have tea at the Ritz with Joanna Lumley and Chris Beetles. Chris and I had bid for the privilege of tea with Ms Lumley at a charity auction some time ago, and she joined us there bang on time - like a good Gurkha. I was astounded that there was a choice of 17 types of tea on the menu, and I confess I thought £38 per person somewhat extravagant, although I'm bound to admit it was packed, with a long queue waiting to be seated. Joanna entertained us with stories about her upcoming play, La Bete, where she'll be performing with Mark Rylance and David Hyde Pierce for a 12 week run at the Comedy Theatre in June, before taking the show to New York. I was surprised to learn that it would be the first time Joanna was appearing on Broadway. After tea, Chris and I accompanied her back to her Smart Car, which looked sparklingly clean - she blushed, and admitted she was going on to Buckingham Palace for evening drinks with the Duke of Edinburgh in support of another of her charities. She is a truly remarkable woman.