Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox

In this, the final part of my initial public meditation on “Maoism”, I wish to discuss “Marxism-Leninism-Maoism”. It will be noted that throughout the “Whence Maoism?” pieces thusfar, I have placed “Maoism” and “Maoist” in quotation marks. The reason for this relates to the phenomenon of “MLM”: “Maoist” and “Maoism” are labels that have been used long prior to the emergence of a conscious theoretical effort to grant “Maoism” the status of a third and higher stage of revolutionary science, forged throughout the struggles within the RIM , and surviving after the latter’s effective demise as an evangelical trend within anti-revisionist Marxism-Leninism (or, as they would have it, surviving as the only real anti-revisionist communist ideology). A particularly dogmatically anti-Mao Marxist-Leninist may use the term “Maoist” to deride others who are not, in the view of the “MLM” crowd, “proper Maoists” . Similarly, Trotskyites may refer to anti-revisionism as a whole as “Mao

For some decades now in every English-speaking state from Singapore to Canada there has existed a numerically significant, university-educated section of the bourgeoisie which holds “enlightened” and progressive views on various issues. Both among themselves and among revolutionary socialists it is known that our basic response to their existence consists of something along the lines of:

CINDY SHEEHAN'S SOAPBOX JANUARY 31, 2016 GUEST: MICKEY Z. TOPIC: WHEN "NEVER WRONG," IS; AND WHEN A "REVOLUTION" REALLY ISN'T  ABOUT MICKEY (CLICK PIC)  RELEVANT LINKS: Inscrutable Icons of Liberaladom by Cindy Sheehan Noam Chomsky on Al Jazeera       You’ll never BELIEVE who Chomsky could 'absolutely' vote for! (but her ex-president husband already knows) | Mickey Z.    Which Lizard Will You Choose? by Cindy Sheehan   What if #FeelTheBern is just a Hope & Change sequel? | Mickey Z.      

"Noam Chomsky." By jeanbaptisteparis. Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0) / "Braiiiinnnsss" (Hillary Clinton). By Lucas Cobb. Flickr (CC BY 2.0) Mickey Z. -- World News Trust Jan. 28, 2016 Another presidential election charade is upon us and I’m reminded of something the late Pakistani dissident, Eqbal Ahmad, once said about Noam Chomsky in the book, Confronting Empire (2000): “He (Chomsky) has never wavered. He has never fallen into the trap of saying, ‘Clinton will do better.’ Or ‘Nixon was bad but Carter at least had a human rights presidency.’ There is a consistency of substance, of posture, of outlook in his work.” (Sounds good in theory but it seems Ahmad wasn’t aware Noam had voted for Clinton in 1992 .) “Decent human survival” By 2004, Chomsky was far more public about his voting strategies, saying stuff like this: “Anyone who says ‘I don’t care if Bush gets elected’ is basically telling poor and working people in the country, ‘I don’t c

“It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..." "You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?" "No,” said Ford…”nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people." "Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy." "I did," said Ford. "It is." "So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't people get rid of the lizards?" "It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want." "You mean they actually vote for the lizards?" "Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course." "But,&quo

On January 25th, 2016, Consuelo "Connie" Picciotto passed away at age 80. You may logically wonder why this is important to the annual announcement by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists about the hands of the Doomsday Clock? Well, Connie spent the last 30 years of her life encamped in Lafayette Park in front of the White House protesting nuclear proliferation and war. Few people have even heard of her, or her encampment, but as I have spent a fair amount of time there protesting, too--I always stopped by to talk to Connie and give her a little cash. The DC Park Police tried for years to get her to close up her protest, but as she was camped there before anti-camping regulations took place she was "grandmothered" in and her tent had to always be occupied and other activists would giver Connie breaks so she could shower, warm-up, sleep in a bed or whatever. I have long admired her dedication and persistence to this cause and curse the global powers that be

Bernie Sanders. By Marc Nozell from Merrimack, New Hampshire. CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons Mickey Z. -- World News Trust Jan. 24, 2016 Stop me… if you’ve heard all this before (because I sure have). Let’s say the New York Times hired a charismatic half-black male motivational speaker in his late 40s to run the newspaper and this popular man promised change. And let’s say I wrote an article outlining what I think he should do, what I hoped he’d do. For example: create a focus on women’s issues and sex-based oppression, reduce the business section to a single page, add a huge labor section, start covering people’s movements and protests, refuse advertising dollars from corporations that pollute and/or exploit workers, and hire me to run the op-ed page. Justifiably, I’d be ridiculed for even suggesting such delusional expectations. (deep sigh) Let’s say America elected a charismatic half-black male motivational speaker in his late 40s to run the

UPDATE: CINDY HAS BEEN ILL, SO THE CALL IS RESCHEDULED FOR FEBRUARY 24TH--SAME TIME. PLEASE RSVP TO JOIN THE COMMUNITY CALL-IN When? Wednesday, February 10th 6:00 PM (Pacific time) Where? From your phone  WHY?    A recent report numbered the bombs the bloodthirsty US dropped on "Muslim majority" in 2015 countries to be 23, 144! That's just 2015. Since 2009, the Nobel Peace Prize winning President of the bloodthirsty US has expanded the Imperial agenda with just a tiny fraction of opposition that the Bush scandal received. This is the final year of the Obama scandal, but there has been a dismal lack of debate around the US's murderous foreign policy in the budding POTUS (President Of The United States) campaigns. What do people who care about this expansion of Imperial carnage do in 2016? Our silence on this question speaks very loudly to these people in "Muslim majority" countries. We are betraying humanity by all

"7-year-old newsie." By Lewis Hine [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. Mickey Z. -- World News Trust Jan. 21, 2016 Unlike the vast majority of my fellow commuters on the Manhattan-bound R train on the morning of Jan. 19, I was not staring at a smart phone. (Perhaps if I had one, I would’ve been.)  Instead, I was perusing my copy of a free NYC daily, amNY -- taking mental notes for a possible article. This is that article. To keep all of us safely in our comfort zones, I’ll present it as if it were a series of underdeveloped Facebook posts (Department of Redundancy Dept.). The first news ( sic ) story to catch my eye was entitled, “Big Names in Oscar Boycott.” Understandably, lots of people are pissed over #OscarsSoWhite . Spike Lee, however, opted to perceive his disdain as something akin to one of the most significant activist movements in U.S. history. Declaring it was “no coincidence” he announced his boycott on MLK Day,

JANUARY 20, 2016 GUEST: OUR VERY OWN CINDY SHEEHAN Dan and Cindy Speak Truth to Empire in January's show! SPEAKING TRUTH TO EMPIRE: Speaking Truth to Empire 3rd Wednesday, 3-3:30 PM  FROM THE WEBSITE OF KFCF (FREE SPEECH RADIO, FRESNO) "I interview authors, scholars, bloggers, and activists who help us look at our world through the prism of American Imperialism. On the show we talk about U.S. policies both foreign and domestic; and the actions of the U. S. Government, Big Corporations, and the mainstream media. These actions have severe consequences for the people in the US and other countries. To create a better, humane and a compassionate world we must first understand what is being done in our name. And we must always be willing to stand up, speak out and "Speak Truth to Empire." Dan Yaseen danyaseen at comcast dot met 559-251-3361 f you would like to receive a file of the radio show contact: Dan Yaseen dan

Arabic words are scary for English speakers. Routinely the English-speaking world is taught a single new one, and invariably, it is meant to frighten them. Never do you find on the lips of every British or American journalist an Arabic word related to love or humour or popular culture. We are told about "jihad", "mujahideen", "dhimmi", "kafir", "kuffar", etc. Occasionally, we are even given a distorted meaning of a word simply to render it more frightening. As every beginning Arabic student knows, "madrasa" simply means "school", but most Americans will tell you that it refers to an Islamic school, most likely one where children are taught about jihad. As a godless communist, I have every interest in defending women's rights and no interest in defending conservative men or the Muslim faith. However, as part of the latest push to vilify Arabs and Muslims, the bourgeois media has now decided that

Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox January 17, 2016 GUEST: Gloria La Riva TOPIC: What a REAL Socialist Campaign Looks Like MEET GLORIA CLICK IMAGE FOR MORE INFO www.VOTEPSL.org 

Re: The supreme Court Plaza - a lovely photo if you like   Demonstrations at the Supreme Court Executive Summary The court prohibits demonstrations on the Supreme Court Plaza because of bad optics. Harm to the solemnity, and they give the wrong impression. We argue that the optics are not bad or not always bad, but, on the contrary, the prohibition of all demonstrations on the Plaza is bad optics. It can be viewed as meaning that those in power are more in love with their titles and perquisites than with encouraging the people to oppose policies that they detest. Detail The statutes prohibiting demonstrations on the Supreme Court Plaza were recently upheld by the Appeals Court, in Hodge v Talkin. The Court’s thinking was that the Plaza is not a public forum, the legal term for places where first amendment protections are the strongest. Here are links to source documents relevant to this case: opinion