Chilean judge sentences murderers of US-American citizens Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi

[In the exposure of the murders, 4 decades ago, of Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi, the US-spnsored Pinochet coup against Chilean President Salvador Allende, the role of the US and the terrorism master-minded by Henry Kissinger came into public view.  The fact that the murderers were not successfully prosecuted for 41 years is proof that US control  has been effective, even long after the fact.  And now the Chilean prosecution aims to put some of this embarassing history behind them as they sentence two of the murderous perpetrators.  —  Frontlines ed.]

Tlaxcala, 2/23/2015 Translated by  Richard Ferguson, Edited by  Supriyo Chatterjee

Almost 42 years after the events, Special Judge Jorge Zepeda Arancibia sentenced two intelligence officers for the murders of US-Americans Charles Edmond Horman, a 31-year-old journalist, and Frank Randall Teruggi Bombatch, a 24-year-old student, shot in the Estadio Nacional (National Stadium) days into the coup headed by Pinochet.

The 276-page judgment sentences Army intelligence official Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, who serves several other sentences for assassinations, to seven years of prison for the murders,while Air Force officer Rafael Agustín González Berdugo will serve two years of probation as an accomplice to Horman’s homicide. Judge Zepeda’s exhaustive investigations confirmed the direct intervention of the United States in the coup through Operation Unitas, carried out in Valparaíso simultaneously with the offensive, and further revealed the ruthless persecution that the United States ordered the Chilean intelligence services to undertake against American radicals in Chile sympathetic to Salvador Allende, or simply interested in learning at close quarters and living among the peaceful revolutionary process led by the Head of State overthrown by it. In the Estadio Nacional up to 24 detained Americans were registered (Horman and Teruggi weren’t), both men and women, including students, academics, writers and two Maryknoll priests. Charles Horman                                                  Frank Teruggi The instigators of and accessories to this persecution of American citizens were their fellow countryman, Ray Elliots Charles, Marine Captain and chief of the American military mission, supported by the Ambassador Nathaniel Davis. Far from protecting their compatriots, they covered up the murders and detentions of Americans, going as far as providing false information to family members like Edmund Horman, Charles’s father, who moved to Chile in search of his son.

New York: Indian/South Asian Group leads anti Modi protest demonstration

[We have received other reports that, while the numbers of protesters were much smaller than claimed in this AJA press release, the action clearly and prominently challenged the fascist Modi’s claim of universal embrace and acclaim.   The views of AJA are offered here by Frontlines, to understand the growing and diverse opposition to the Imperialist’s Modi.  —  Frontlines ed.]

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Massive protests send clear demands to Indian PM Modi: End suppression of minorities and desist from clamping down on civil society institutions

Alliance for Justice and Accountability — Press Release
New York, NY |  September 28, 2104

Alliance for Justice and Accountability, a broad coalition of organizations and individuals, announced that the rally this morning in New York City during Prime Minister Modi’s event at Madison Square Garden, was a huge success. Hundreds of people, including human rights activists, professionals, students and people from all walks of life attended the rally. Protesters were a large and spirited group of Indian Americans comprising of people of all faiths and ideological persuasions, with one thing in common: they were demanding justice and accountability in the case of Mr. Modi, and an end to repression of minorities and crony capitalism in India.

“The protests have demonstrated the rejection of a leader who represents a hateful and divisive agenda, ” said Robindra Deb, a key AJA organizer of protest on September 28. “We represent the 70% of Indians that did not vote for Mr. Modi,” added Mr. Deb.

Slave ships and supermarkets: Modern day slavery in Thailand

[Representatives of capital, and of modern capitalist-imperialism, have often claimed that their exploitative system has been a civilizing force, promoting and spreading democratic rights along with social and economic development wherever it has gone throughout the world.  These claims could not be further from the truth, as these masters of global plunder of human and all natural resources continue to force marginalized and desperately migrating peoples–peasants and proletarians alike–into the most dangerous conditions of slavery, enforced by the repressive regimes and the enslaving corporations they serve.  The following exposure by The Guardian exposes one aspect of this malevolent and highly profitable system, which then offers the inexpensive and tasty shrimp/prawn delicacies to unaware and/or uncaring consumers in imperialist countries. — Frontlines ed.]

By Kate Hodal, Chris Kelly, Felicity Lawrence, www.theguardian.com

June 12th, 2014

Slaves forced to work for no pay for years at a time under threat of extreme violence are being used in Asia in the production of seafood sold by major US, British and other European retailers, the Guardian can reveal.

A six-month investigation has established that large numbers of men bought and sold like animals and held against their will on fishing boats off Thailand are integral to the production of prawns (commonly called shrimp in the US) sold in leading supermarkets around the world, including the top four global retailers: Walmart, Carrefour, Costco and Tesco.

The investigation found that the world’s largest prawn farmer, the Thailand-based Charoen Pokphand (CP) Foods, buys fishmeal, which it feeds to its farmed prawns, from some suppliers that own, operate or buy from fishing boats manned with slaves.

Men who have managed to escape from boats supplying CP Foods and other companies like it told the Guardian of horrific conditions, including 20-hour shifts, regular beatings, torture and execution-style killings. Some were at sea for years; some were regularly offered methamphetamines to keep them going. Some had seen fellow slaves murdered in front of them.

Obama in South Africa: Washington tells Pretoria how to ‘play the game’ in Africa

Protesters greet Obama, June 28, 2013.

By Patrick Bond, Durban

July 1, 2013 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal – US President Barack Barack Obama’s weekend trip to South Africa may have the desired effect of slowing the geopolitical realignment of Pretoria to the Brazil-India-Russia-China-South Africa (BRICS) axis. That shift to BRICS has not, however, meant deviation from the hosts’ political philosophy, best understood as “talk left, walk right” since it mixes anti-imperialist rhetoric with pro-corporate policies.

Overshadowed by Nelson Mandela’s critically ill health, Obama’s implicit denial of a US imperial agenda could not disguise Washington’s economic paranoia. As expressed on June 25 by White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, “What we hear from our businesses is that they want to get in the game in Africa. There are other countries getting in the game in Africa – China, Brazil, Turkey. And if the US is not leading in Africa, we’re going to fall behind in a very important region of the world.”

Over a century earlier, another Rhodes – Cecil John – explained that very game: “We must find new lands from which we can easily obtain raw materials and at the same time exploit the cheap slave labour that is available from the natives of the colonies. The colonies would also provide a dumping ground for the surplus goods produced in our factories.” Although there is no longer formal slave labour within formal colonies, this sentiment readily links the neoliberal agenda of both the BRICS and the US.

Perhaps embarrassed, Obama himself retracted Ben Rhodes’ confession of inter-imperial rivalry when asked by the White House press corps: “I want everybody playing in Africa. The more the merrier. A lot of people are pleased that China is involved in Africa.”

This must have raised cynical eyebrows, because he added, “China’s primary interest is being able to obtain access for natural resources in Africa to feed the manufacturers in export-driven policies of the Chinese economy.”

US opposition to minimum wage increase in Haiti revealed

Sweat shop in Haiti (file foto) WikiLeaks public cables have showed how the U.S. Embassy in Haiti worked closely with factory owners contracted by Levi’s, Hanes and Fruit of the Loom to block an increase to the minimum wage for Haitian workers. In 2009, the minimum wage was $1.75 per day. In June 2009, responding to workers’ pressure, a parliamentary bill proposed to raise it to $5 per day. Factory owners opposed it saying they would only pay $2.50 “to make T-shirts, bras and underwear for US clothing giants like Dockers and Nautica”. Backed by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the US Embassy, they urged then Haitian President René Préval to intervene. The Haiti cables reveal how closely the US Embassy monitored widespread pro-wage increase demonstrations and the political impact of the minimum wage battle. UN troops were called in to quell workers and students protests, sparking further demands for the end of the UN military occupation of Haiti. Because of these fierce demonstrations, sweatshop owners and Washington were unable to keep the minimum wage as low as they had wanted to for long. In August 2009, President Preval negotiated a deal with Parliament to have two minimum wages: $3.13/day for textile workers and $5/day for other workers. But Parliament also adopted a progressive increase over three years so in October 2012 textile workers minimum wage finally went up to $5/day ($6.25 for other sectors). “200 Gourdes ($5) right now!”

Pennsylvania: McDonald’s Guest Workers Stage Surprise Strike

Josh Eidelson, The Nation, March 6, 2013

A McDonald’s store in the Philippines. (Flickr)

Alleging unpaid wages and repeated retaliation, McDonald’s workers in central Pennsylvania launched a surprise strike at 11 this morning. The strikers are student guest workers from Latin America and Asia, brought to the United States under the controversial J-1 cultural exchange visa program. Their employer is one of the thousands of McDonald’s franchisees with whom the company contracts to run its ubiquitous stores.

“We are afraid,” striker Jorge Victor Rios told The Nation prior to the work stoppage. “But we are trying to overcome our fear.”

The McDonald’s corporation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The J-1 visa program is officially intended to promote educational and cultural exchange. But advocates allege that J-1, like the other guest worker programs that collectively bring hundreds of thousands of workers in and out of the United States each year, is rife with abuse. The National Guestworker Alliance (NGA), the organization spearheading today’s strike, charges that such programs—whose future is intimately tied up with the fate of comprehensive immigration reform—offer ample opportunities for employers to intimidate workers, suppress organizing and drive down labor standards.

“McDonald’s is just the latest in a long line of corporations that have hijacked the US guest worker program to get cheap, exploitable labor, and that’s what the students are,” NGA Executive Director Saket Soni told The Nation. “The conditions are horrific, but have become the norm for guest workers.”

The workers are striking over what they charge are rampant abuses at their stores in Harrisburg and nearby Lemoyne and Camp Hill. According to NGA, the visiting students each paid $3,000 or more for the chance to come and work, and were promised full-time employment; most received only a handful of hours a week, while others worked shifts as long as twenty-five hours straight, without being paid overtime. “Their employer is also their landlord,” said Soni. “They’re earning sub-minimum wages, and then paying it back in rent” to share a room with up to seven co-workers. “Their weekly net pay is actually sometimes brought as low as zero.”

“We are living in [a] basement,” said Rios, “cramped together, with no divisions, in bunkbeds which are meant for children.”

India: 4,500 anti-nuclear farmers walk out of public hearing

Villagers shout slogans after boycotting a public hearing for a proposed nuclear plant, near Bhavnagar, Gujarat, on Tuesday. Photo: AP Photo/Ajit Solanki

[The proposed nuclear power plant is slated to be constructed by Westinghouse Corporation of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, by contract with the Nuclear Power Corporation of India.  To prevent yet another Bhopal and another Chernobyl and Fukishima, farmers whose lands are in the path of the proposed nuclear plant are acting to stop the project, its nuclear poison and its mass displacement. — Frontlines ed.]

The Times of India, March 5, 2013

RAJKOT: Thousands of farmers walked out from a public hearing in Nana Navagam organized by Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB) for the proposed 6000 MW nuclear power plant at Mithi Virdi in Bhavnagar district.  The hearing was held on behalf of Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) that will build the plant. The public hearing was held to discuss the environment impact assessment of the proposed plant prepared by Engineers India Limited (EIL).  The nuclear plant is expected to have six light-water reactors. The public hearing was attended by Bhavnagar collector V P Patel along with officials of GPCB and NPCIL.As soon as the NPCIL officials started their project presentation, about 4,500 farmers from around 28 villages started protesting and demanded they be heard first. “When they refused to address our queries first, all the farmers walked out in protest,” a resident of Jasapara village Khengarsinh Gohil said. The farmers said they will not allow the nuclear power plant to come up here in the area.Environment activist Krishnakant said the hearing was conducted in an illegal manner and the issues raised by farmers were not heard.

Egypt: US Urges Opposition to Join Morsi in ‘Electoral Path’–but Opponents Say, ‘Stop Meddling’

Egypt: Opposition Group Denounces U.S. Intervention in Egypt Affairs

Aswat Masriya, 27 February 2013

Egypt’s National Association for change condemned on Wednesday the “outright intervention of the United States in Egypt’s internal affairs” which was expressed in the U.S. State Department call to the opposition to participate in the parliamentary elections.

Spokesperson of the U.S. State Department, Edgar Vasquez, has urged all the Political Parties to participate in the upcoming elections, saying, “Elections give the Egyptians a chance to have their voices heard.”

“It is crucial for all Egyptian parties to be involved,” said Vasquez, as reported by the American Network, Fox News.

In response to Vasquez’s remarks, the National Association for Change issued a statement saying, “Neither America, nor any other country, has the right to provide advice to Egyptians, or interfere in any way in the internal affairs of Egypt.”

“The successive governments of the United States have supported Hosni Mubarak’s regime unconditionally, which sponsored corruption and tyranny. They continue to disgracefully support the Muslim Brotherhood’s repressive regime,” said the statement.

The statement added that according to U.S. reports, Barack Obama’s administration has provided financial aid of one billion and a half dollars to the Muslim Brotherhood to enable it to take over the revolution and the government.

The global rush to grab land and other resources

[The basic law of capitalism is “expand or die” — and quickly so, as the threat of being crushed or swallowed by competing exploiters also grows without a break.  Maximizing profits through ruthless exploitation of labor, manipulation of trade, and wholesale plunder of resources, all drive at immediate returns, and threaten and cause the destruction of the long-term survival of peoples across the planet. The article below details how the inherent malevolence of the capitalist-imperialist system, is driving billions of people in despair and into struggle against it.  — Frontlines ed.]

25 February 2013. A World to Win News Service. The planet is facing a serious food crisis. The unsustainable use of resources, from the land to the sea, due to the violent rush for profit, poses a great threat to humanity and the planet. But rivalry for control of food production and distribution under the profit-driven capitalist system is still sharpening, taking new forms and causing greater misery for the world’s people. The land-grab going on in Africa and other parts of the world is part of this trend.

Africa, whose people were kidnapped by the millions for the slave trade and ground down and bled under colonialism and since, a continent whose resources has been sacked for centuries and which has suffered so much from wars spurred by big-power rivalry, faces a new form of looting today. Corporations, private banks, pension funds and many multinational companies have grabbed fertile land all over the continent. With the connivance of corrupt and client governments dependent on foreign investment, they have secured long leases by paying as little as half a U.S. dollar per hectare per year.

Although this kind of land acquisition is far from new, there has been a spectacular jump since 2008. In the following year, investors bought or leased more than 56 million hectares in Asia, Latin America and especially Africa, roughly 15 times more land that the yearly average in the preceding half century. (Farah Stockman, Boston Globe, 24 February 2013)

Revealed – the capitalist network that runs the world

[An interesting study has detailed the organizational networks and concentrations of the world imperialist economic and financial systems of control.  Described in a recent issue of New Scientist magazine, it verifies the visceral sense of monstrous power of “the 1%” as the Occupy movement has dubbed it.  Although this article describes the study as “ideologically-free”, it actually portrays this concentration of power as a natural phenomenon and characteristic of “human nature” as well–as if the dominance of capital and the devastation it brings as collateral damage from the “expand or die” laws of capitalism is genetically, and not culturally, derived. Promoting such an assumption is capitalist ideology at its core. — Frontlines ed.]

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24 October 2011

by Andy Coghlan and Debora MacKenzieNew Scientist Magazine issue 2835.

The 1318 transnational corporations that form the core of the economy. Superconnected companies are red, very connected companies are yellow. The size of the dot represents revenue

AS PROTESTS against financial power sweep the world this week, science may have confirmed the protesters’ worst fears. An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.

The study’s assumptions have attracted some criticism, but complex systems analysts contacted by New Scientist say it is a unique effort to untangle control in the global economy. Pushing the analysis further, they say, could help to identify ways of making global capitalism more stable.

The idea that a few bankers control a large chunk of the global economy might not seem like news to New York’s Occupy Wall Street movement and protesters elsewhere (see photo). But the study, by a trio of complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is the first to go beyond ideology to empirically identify such a network of power. It combines the mathematics long used to model natural systems with comprehensive corporate data to map ownership among the world’s transnational corporations (TNCs).

“Reality is so complex, we must move away from dogma, whether it’s conspiracy theories or free-market,” says James Glattfelder. “Our analysis is reality-based.”

Previous studies have found that a few TNCs own large chunks of the world’s economy, but they included only a limited number of companies and omitted indirect ownerships, so could not say how this affected the global economy – whether it made it more or less stable, for instance.

Al-Jazeera: Wikileaks reveals US-China maneuvering on Korea issue

China ‘backs Korean reunification’

Chinese leaders privately support a unified Korea and would not stop the North’s collapse, according to leaked US cable

30 Nov 2010

Chinese officials increasingly doubt the usefulness of neighbouring North Korea as an ally and would support the reunification of the peninsula if the communist state were to collapse, according to leaked US diplomatic cables.

The latest documents released by the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks on Tuesday detail conversations between US officials and Chinese diplomats, as well as a senior South Korean official’s discussion with his Chinese counterparts.

Cheng Guoping, the Chinese ambassador to Kazakhstan, was reported to have told Richard Hoagland, the US ambassador, that “China hopes for peaceful reunification in the long-term, but he expects the two countries to remain separate in the short-term”.

The remarks were made during a three-hour dinner in Astana, Kazakhstan’s capital, in June 2009, according to documents published on WikiLeaks website.

Guoping was quoted as telling Hoagland that China’s objectives in North Korea were to ensure they honour their commitments on non-proliferation, maintain stability, and “don’t drive [Kim Jong-il] mad”.

Blackmail on Nepal by US Agency for International Development

Nepal Could Lose Out on Foreign Aid Due to Political Impasse

Kathmandu – The international donor community has warned  Nepal it will withdraw aid if the political situation does not improve.

A statement issued late Tuesday by the US government’s main aid organization US Agency for International Development on behalf of the international donor community said that there was concern over the “negative development impact stemming from the slow progress in forming a new government, implementing the peace process, and writing the new constitution.” Parliament has failed 16 times attempts to elect a prime minister. “The slow pace in implementing the peace process, combined with the continued caretaker status of the government, lack of development leadership, significantly reduces most donors’ ability to secure future resources for Nepal,” the statement said.

Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world and largely depends on foreign aid for its development. The country has been under a caretaker government since June when the prime minister Madhav Kumar Nepal resigned under Maoist pressure. A Maoist insurgency from 1996 to 2006 killed over 16,600 people. The absence of a government delayed the announcement of a full budget, affecting the administration as well as development. Donors said the announcement of a budget last week, using a special ordinance, had provided some relief but urged the completion of the peace process.

It also called on the country to “effectively deal with the other ongoing issues constraining Nepal’s development” in order to create an environment in which foreign assistance can most effectively be implemented. The statement was issued by USAID on behalf of organizations including the Asian Development Bank, a group of donor communities representing Western nations and the World Bank.

Philippines: New ‘terrorist scares’ timed to build support for increased US military intervention

US marines in southern Mindanao allegedly tracking down "terrorists"

 

New wave of “Terror-Scare” an old US imperialist ploy to intensify military intervention for US military basing and economic interest

Jorge “Ka Oris” Madlos 
Spokesperson, NDFP-Mindanao
, 16 November 2010

Open opposition, both locally and abroad, to the US war of aggression is meted out with fascist brutality, such as arrests and prosecution, and even extra-judicial killings. In the US in fact, political activists have been subpoenaed and even arrested by the FBI to silence political groups opposed to imperialist wars.

Hence, the National Democratic Front of the Philippines in Mindanao (NDFP-Mindanao) calls on the Filipino people to expose and oppose whatever machinations the US imperialism carries out to sustain its presence here.

There has been a series of “terror-scare” spreading in the country of late. The National Democratic Front of the Philippines in Mindanao (NDFP-Mindanao) views this chain of events along the following the lines:

1. The United States, being in the throes of a deep recession and trapped in the quagmire of wars of aggression in the Middle East, is looking up to the Philippines as its second front to secure its geo-politics in the Asia-Pacific, protect its economic interest and unhampered US military basing in the country. It had to install a more reliable ally — Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III – through a pre-programmed election and drum up a new wave of terror to justify its intensified military intervention.

1. Reminiscent of its old tactic that led to the terror events in the Philippines after the 9/11 attacks, this scheme is to justify the increasing presence of US troops in the country, and more aggressively launch the US counter insurgency strategy. Recently, some three thousand US soldiers have arrived to participate in joint military trainings in Luzon called CARAT and Phiblex, obvously, in blatant violation of our sovereignty. Hacienda Luisita of the Cojuangco-Aquino clan has even been targeted as the venue for these military exercises.

Inter-imperialist rivalry in Asia heats up between US and China

Obama and Hu Jintao make nice for public consumption

 

[This article provides a useful overview of the current state of economic, political and military contention between the US and China in Asia. However, it does not not identify China as an imperialist power in its own right, and it one-sidely portrays the US imperialists as “encircling” China. This makes it impossible to understand the capitalist/imperialist nature of China’s growing economic investments in Asia, as well as China’s development of military ties with Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. This not a “defensive” reaction to pressure from US imperialism, but is a calculated strategy of a newly emerged imperialist power that is trying to break into the US’ traditional spheres of influence in Asia, and elsewhere in the world.–Frontlines ed]

World Socialist Web Site, 13 November 2010

US diplomatic offensive tightens strategic encirclement of China

Washington’s aggressive diplomatic campaign in Asia over the past two weeks has amounted, in the words of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to “a full court press” against China, with the western Pacific and the Indian Ocean emerging as potential future theatres of war.

President Barack Obama’s visits to India, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan, and Clinton’s trips to Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand and Australia, sought to either strengthen existing alliances or create new partnerships for a US-led strategic encirclement of China.

Obama fervently courted India, China’s regional nuclear-armed rival. He urged New Delhi to become a “world power” and backed its bid to become a UN Security Council permanent member. Clinton twice reiterated that Washington could invoke the US-Japan Security Treaty to militarily support Japan against China in the conflict over the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands in the East China Sea. Vietnam announced it was ready to hire out its strategic Cam Ranh Bay port in the South China Sea “to naval ships from all countries”—with Washington the most likely client. Canberra agreed to provide greater US access to its military facilities, especially those in northern Australia.

“NOBAMA!” is the Call from Delhi, India

A remarkable anti-imperialist demonstration against Obama’s visit to India took place in New Delhi (November 8).  Many issues were raised, including internationalist solidarity with people in the US.  Among the slogans raised were:

NOBAMA! KILLER OBAMA GO BACK!

DOWN WITH IMPERIALISM! U.S. OUT OF AFGHANISTAN!

JUSTICE FOR OSCAR GRANT! FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL!

Hundreds of protestors converged today (8 November 2010) at the Parliament Street to participate in the Joint

Demonstration to oppose the ongoing visit of the U.S. President Barack Obama to India, and in solidarity with the peoples’ movements against U.S. imperialism worldwide. Starting in a march from Jantar Mantar, at the heart of New Delhi and a stone’s throw away from the Indian Parliament which was to be addressed by Obama this evening, the demonstration raised slogans of ‘Killer Obama Go Back!’ and ‘Down with Imperialism!’.

Slogans were raised against the U.S.-led imperialist world order, its wars of occupation against the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, against growing U.S. intervention in South Asia, against the complete sell-out of the country’s resources by the Indian comprador ruling class to U.S. corporations, against the Indo-U.S. Nuclear Deal, demanding the extradition of Warren Anderson, the criminal former-CEO of Union Carbide who was responsible for the Bhopal Gas Disaster.

Slogans were raised demanding the immediate release of Mumia Abu Jamal, wrongfully incarcerated and put on death-row for more than two decades in the U.S. prison for being an uncompromising critic of imperialism and racism. The demonstrators also demanded justice for Oscar Grant and exemplary punishment for his murderers.

The march culminated at the Parliament Street, where speakers after speakers representing various participating parties and organizations condemned the anti-people U.S. imperialist policies across the world, and termed Barack Obama and his war-crazy government as the biggest enemy of the world people. It was said that though the Indian ruling classes have become lackeys of Barack Obama and his regime, the people of the subcontinent –and especially its working masses– are suffering from policies dictated by the imperialist forces, and implemented by the Indian state.  At the same time, it was pointed out that the people of South Asia are fighting valiant struggles in various forms against Indian state and its imperialist masters.

Thus, they also are part of global resistance against imperialism, fascism and occupation, be it in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, or other regions. The protestors resolved to intensify this struggle against imperialism, and for democracy and justice. Several revolutionary songs were presented, and finally the effigy of U.S. imperialism was consigned to flames amid resounding slogans.

The demonstration was jointly called by CPI(M-L), CPI(M-L) New Democracy, CPI(M-L) New Proletariat, Democratic Students’ Union (DSU), Campaign for Peace & Democracy, Manipur (CPDM), Indian Council of Trade Unions(ICTU), Indian Federation of Trade Unions(IFTU), Inqlabi Majdoor Kendra, Krantikari Yuva Sangathan, Mool Pravah Akhil Bharatiya Nepali Ekata Samaj, Pragatisheel Mahila Sangathan, Progressive Democratic Students Union(PDSU), Revolutionary Democratic Front (RDF), Trade Union Centre of India, Bahujan Vam Manch, and other parties and organisations.

US imperialism burned in effigy