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This week we take on CNNs comparison of the Smith Act trial defendants with the January 6th insurrectionists, along with examining the CPUSAs attitude to the new administration.

Image: Smith Act Trial defendants Robert Thompson and Benjamin Davis (public domain, Wikimedia Commons).

The Communist Party USA is a working class organization founded in 1919 in Chicago, IL.

The Communist Party stands for the interests of the American working class and the American people. It stands for our interests in both the present and the future. Solidarity with workers of other countries is also part of our work. We work in coalition with the labor movement, the peace movement, the student movement, organizations fighting for equality and social justice, the environmental movement, immigrants rights groups and the health care for all campaign.

But to win a better life for working families, we believe that we must go further. We believe that the American people can replace capitalism with a system that puts people before profit socialism.

We are rooted in our country's revolutionary history and its struggles for democracy. We call for "Bill of Rights" socialism, guaranteeing full individual freedoms.

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This Week @CPUSA: CNN's anti-communism and lying - Communist Party USA

Rachel Chiu, Opinion contributor Published 7:00 a.m. ET Feb. 3, 2021

Hong Kong activists and Uighur minorities are under assault from Chinese President Xi Jinping's old communist playbook. America can come to their aid.

Seventy-one years ago, my grandmother was beaten, enslavedand nearly killed by the Chinese Communist Party. China continues to do the same thing today and America should offer its new victimsrefuge.

Tension is already brewing between Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping. During last month's Davos Agenda conference, Xi condemnedthe arrogant isolationism of the Trump era and cautioned that a cold war, hot war, trade war, or tech war would lead to division and even confrontation. This is the oldest play in Chinas Communist handbook, which values economic and social power above all else.

Bidens next move should be a decisive one a warm welcome for Hong Kongers, Uighurs, and Chinese political dissidents.

At its core, communism involves socio-economic restructuring.But the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has always wanted morethan command of resources and capital and, to that end, continues to pay a high price for fear and respect. Despite their best efforts, Xi and his predecessors have never been able to buy complete compliance from other nations nor its own people.

Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published these words in 1848;100 years later, Mao Zedong, the leader of the CCP, put this belief into practice. In the late 1940s and 50s, Mao and the early Chinese communists galvanized working class tenants with the promise of social equality and property rights.

This massive and deadly disinformation operation, known as the Land Reform Campaign, mobilized the working class to pillage and seize property owned by their landlords.But it didnt end there. Controlling the infrastructure wasnt enough, so rebels humiliated, torturedand killed the ruling class.

Hong Kong activists: We're protesting for our freedom from brutal Chinese authoritarianism

By the time the uprising reached Sun Wui, my grandmothers hometown in southeast China,the landlords had already fled. Their wives, many of whom were originally from the working class, were left behind to care for their children and home. They committed no transgressions against the tenants, yet were persecuted as if they did. My grandmother was sent to a hard-labor campin 1950, where she was forced to tear down her neighbors homes during the day and endure beatings by her captors in the night.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Joe Biden on Sept. 24, 2015, at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland.(Photo: Carolyn Kaster/AP)

During her four years of torture, my grandmother's infant son died from starvation and illness and shetried to escape repeatedly, failing three times. Her town was overrun by the Communists, but they needed the wives and children to remain as slave labor before they were executed. They took all of her belongings and broke her bones, but they could not destroy her dream of living safe, freeand happy. On her fourth escape attempt in 1954, she succeeded.

Incredibly, she was able tobringherself andthree of her young children to freedom, she finally made it to the United States in 1968.My family now calls Americaour home.

Xi and the CCP are not as strong as they portray themselves. The CCPs ascent to power required the deaths of millions during the Land Reform Campaign and subsequent Cultural Revolution, yet they continue to struggle for social control. Chinas communist handbook contains only authoritarian solutions their go-to response to opposition is to resort to violence, arbitrary detention, imprisonmentand disappearances.Similar to the Land Reform Campaign, the government uses disinformation and arrests to silence political activists in Hong Kong, and they use surveillance and "re-education" camps to torture the Uighurs.

But like my grandmother, the CCPs political opponents do not yield.

The United States should follow the United Kingdoms lead and provide special visas for qualifiedHong Kongers. Since a new national security law went into effect last summer, dozens of pro-democracy activists have been arrested,and many more are at risk, even those no longer on Hong Kong soil.

Hong Kong national security law: Hong Kong freedom lovers deserve global support against Chinese Communist Party's new Red Terror

Last summer, the UK government quickly provided Hong Kongs British National (Overseas) passport holders the opportunity to apply for special visas, which allow for prolonged visits and provide a pathway to citizenship. Such visas from the United States, in addition to refugee and asylee admission, would send a powerful signal to the CCP and all those suffering under its rule.

Rachel Chiu in Ithaca, New York, in 2016.(Photo: Family handout)

The United States has direct interests in the region, including 85,000 U.S. citizens living in Hong Kong and a trade surplus of $26 billion.The Hong Kongpro-democracy demonstrations in 2019 pushed back on authoritarian encroachment from Beijing, championing the freedoms and liberties that the United States believes are central, inalienable rights.

Furthermore, the United States-Hong Kong Policy Act of 1992 states that Support for democratization is a fundamental principle of United States foreign policy. As such, it naturally applies to United States policy toward Hong Kong. The United States should honor these social and economic ties by protecting those who similarly champion a free society.

The inability to garner absolute obedience, from the 1940s to present day, is the CCPs mortal wound. If Biden wants to get tough on China, he needs to save its people.

Rachel Chiu is a Young Voices Contributor and public policy researcher at the Cato Institute. Her opinions are her own and do not reflect her employer's. Follow her on Twitter @rachelhchiu.

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My grandmother stood up to the Chinese Communist Party. President Joe Biden should too. - USA TODAY

Leaders on the right and centre of Bulgarias political spectrum honoured the victims of the countrys communist era in annual commemorations on February 1 2021.

On this date in 1945, the communist Peoples Court handed down death penalties to a large number of figures from the former royal regime, including three regents, 67 members of Parliament, 22 Cabinet ministers, 47 generals and other senior officers and eight royal counsellors.

The executions were carried out on the night of February 1. Apart from the death sentences, there were a large number of imprisonments. Ahead of the Peoples Court process, there were numerous extra-judicial killings amid the communist takeover of Bulgaria.

The first Boiko Borissov government decreed the day of commemoration in 2011, acting on the recommendation of former presidents Zhelyu Zhelev and Petar Stoyanov, two of the democratically-elected presidents in Bulgarias post-communist era.

The reformist Democratic Bulgaria, which held a wreath-laying ceremony at the monument in Sofia to the victims of communism, said in a statement that despite our desire to look to the future and not to dig into old crimes, the truths about the communist regime must remain alive in the memory and the lessons must not be forgotten, as well as the national betrayal committed by the Bulgarian Communist Party that handed over Bulgarian independence and sovereignty to the Soviet Union.

Prime Minister Borissov, in a post on Facebook, said that the so-called Peoples Court which was neither a peoples institution nor a court marked the beginning of one of the darkest trials in our history.

Illegitimate, primitive and politically controlled, it physically liquidated much of the nations elite, Borissov said.

Unfortunately, there are still voices that this criminal act was necessary and unavoidable justice. There are still politicians who speak too timidly on the subject and claim to be democrats, he said.

That is why I am glad that our efforts have paid off and the tenth graders are already studying the history of communism in Bulgaria. Only an objective knowledge of the past can give us the necessary lessons for the future.

Today our country is a respected member of the EU, which is a guarantor of respect for human rights and democratic principles. Undoubtedly, the thousands of victims are the most painful, but not the only, consequence of the communist regime. The damage to the economy that the communists and their successors left, we are repairing to this day, Borissov said.

Tsveta Karayancheva, Speaker of the National Assembly and a senior member of Borissovs GERB party, said: We bow our heads in pain to the memory of the representatives of Bulgarias intellectual, spiritual and economic elite destroyed by totalitarian repression. But also to all those ordinary Bulgarians whose dreams, dignity, future were brutally trampled by an arrogant elite that came to power with a coup and lies.

Karayancheva said that even today, there were attempts to justify the Peoples Court and even calls for its example to be repeated. Because only a few months ago we witnessed attacks on political opponents in the form of coffins, black sacks and erected gallows. This was a reference to the anti-government street protests in the second half of 2020.

One of the greatest fears of the regime, whose victims we honour today, was the fear of protests. Thats why it crushed everything that even remotely resembled a protest from the length of the skirt to the length of the hair, she said.

Karayancheva said that one of the great advantages of democracy is the right to protest.

When protesting, let us not use images from a dark past and techniques reminiscent of times of reckless political repressionlet us continue together to defend democratic values and human dignity, regardless of the differences between us, she said.

(Photos from the Facebook page of Democratic Bulgaria)

The Sofia Globe has no connection whatsoever to any Bulgarian government or state institution, nor to any Bulgarian political, business or media grouping. If you would like to support independent coverage of Bulgaria, please consider supporting The Sofia Globe via its Patreon account, for as little as three euro a month, or the equivalent in other major currencies:

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Victims of communism commemorated in Bulgaria - The Sofia Globe

OPINION: I took the long-suffering wife to Cuba for our honeymoon. Shes a lucky woman. Back then Fidel Castro was still in charge and I wanted to see what real communism looked like.

Readers, it wasnt pretty. We saw children with treatable deformities in a country that claims to have a world-class health system. We encountered intelligent ambitious men reduced to pan handling for tips as bellhops and endured street girls touting themselves brazenly for a few dollars.

Cuba isnt the only dictatorship Mrs Grant has been dragged to. Gadhafis Libya was the other stand-out, but weve travelled to Myanmar, Mozambique, Vietnam and Cambodia. I proposed in Laos, a country that has never had a free election and has engaged in brutal oppression of the Hmong people.

I had no moral qualms in visiting countries ruled by evil governments. I have done business in China and have commercial contracts with a firm in Vietnam. I tried to get a visa to North Korea a few years back, but was denied on account of being a columnist. Journalists are banned from the Hermit Kingdom and the distinction between a columnist and a journalist got lost in translation. Or perhaps they took the time to read my columns. I remain unsure.

Many reasonable people feel a deep sense of unease trading with countries that are ruled by malevolent governments and this issue was highlighted for many last week when we signed an updated free-trade agreement with China.

READ MORE:* With the US now calling China's treatment of the Uyghurs 'genocide', how should NZ respond?* New Zealand signs upgraded free trade agreement with China* China is building vast new detention centres for Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang

These concerns are sensible; Id be worried about the humanity of an individual who didnt consider the ethics involved; so let me share my perspective.

For a start, sanctions do not work. No tyrant has moderated his behaviour once they were imposed. Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Saddam Husseins Iraq and dozens of African kleptocrats provide a mountain of evidence for the thesis that tyrants are impervious to external economic forces.

Governments that are subject to political and economic pressures at home can be bullied into behaving better domestically. South Africa is the most obvious example but there are others. Such niceties are utterly ineffective against true dictatorships such as Cuba, North Korea and China.

The Kim family developed a communist dynasty in North Korea whilst their people starved. Sanctions did nothing to dent the ruling familys power or moderate their tyranny. Today, while many of his people live on the edge of hunger Kim Jong-uns quality of life remains undiminished.

Not only do they not work, the rationale for limiting trade is immoral. At the extreme, it amounts to a demand upon a civilian population to risk their lives to topple a government or face the economic consequences. Sometimes these consequences are barbaric; with much of the population of Iraq exposed to malnutrition in the 1990s.

On the surface, the logic of sanctions is appealing. What, a reasonable person can ask, is the moral justification of doing business with places like Saudi Arabia, where women are denied the same rights as men and dissidents are whipped and often beheaded?

If sanctions worked imposing a short-term economic harm on ourselves to help free an oppressed people would be the right thing to do. But they dont. They impoverish the civilian population, sometimes resulting in their death, for no material advantage.

Saul Loeb/AP

Outgoing US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared China was committing a genocide against the Uyghur. (File photo)

Today, the super-power of human rights abuses is China and the outgoing American Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, declared that China was committing a genocide against the Uyghur. Surely if we are ever to draw the line, it must be at genocide?

To understand why the answer is no, consider that we do not trade with a nation. We trade with firms, individuals, collectives or whatever enterprise has been established to undertake commerce.

To refuse to trade with the factories, farms and supermarkets in China because of the crimes committed by those running the Communist Party is to engage in collective responsibility and punishment. We are harming one person for the crimes of another and doing nothing to assist the victims while the perpetrators live in undiminished luxury.

But if you still remain unconvinced let us look a China through a longer historical lens.

Under the isolationist and inward-looking Mao Zedong, tens of millions of Chinese perished in his various programmes. He is, objectively, the bloodiest tyrant in human history. Since his death, China has embraced not only its unique version of capitalism but the world; through trade, education and tourism.

China has moderated as a direct result of its economic engagement with the West and this transformation began with Richard Nixons visit to China in 1972, during the height of the Cultural Revolution. The deepening economic ties has helped lift a billion Chinese out of poverty and makes a return to the violent extremes of the past unlikely.

An argument can be made that trade enhances the economic power of countries with expansionary ambitions and self-preservation dictates prudence. I am unpersuaded by this line of thought but that isnt the focus of this column.

Stuff

Damien Grant: We may be economically impotent but our voice carries a heavy moral weight. We should use it.

We should be more concerned about China using economic levers to pressure us. New Zealand appears to be distancing itself from its five-eyes partners in recent months, especially in response to Hong Kong. A cynical observer may suspect that our muted reaction to the crackdown in the former British colony and our improved free-trade deal are connected.

Given the importance of our trade with China, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and her new Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta have a difficult path to walk.

While threats of economic pain for their citizens do not deter dictatorships, those running these regimes have demonstrated a desire for respectability. China in particular appears highly sensitive to criticism. We may be economically impotent but our voice carries a heavy moral weight. We should use it.

If Beijing elects to retaliate that is beyond our control; but while I believe we should trade with China, we should not become a vassal state in the process.

* Damien Grant is a regular columnist for Stuff, and a business owner based in Auckland. He writes from a libertarian perspective and is a member of the Taxpayers Union but not of any political party.

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The logic of sanctions is appealing, but do not work with communist countries - Stuff.co.nz

The formal end of the apartheid government in South Africa was hard-won. It took decades of activism from both inside and outside the country, as well as international economic pressure, to end the regime that allowed the countrys white minority to subjugate its Black majority. This work culminated in the dismantling of apartheid between 1990 and 1994. On April 27, 1994, the country elected Nelson Mandela, an activist who had spent 27 years in prison for his opposition to apartheid, in its first free presidential election.

The white minority who controlled the apartheid government were Afrikaanersdescendants of mostly Dutch colonists who had invaded South Africa starting in the 17th century. Although Afrikaaner oppression of Black South Africans predates the formal establishment of apartheid in 1948, apartheid legalized and enforced a specific racial ideology that separated South Africans into legally distinct racial groups: white, African, coloured (i.e., multiracial) and Indian. The apartheid government used violence to enforce segregation between these groups, and forcibly separated many families containing people assigned to different racial categories.

Black South Africans resisted apartheid from the very beginning. In the early 1950s, the African National Congress, or ANC, launched a Defiance Campaign. The purpose of this campaign was for Black South Africans to break apartheid laws by entering white areas, using white facilities and refusing to carry passesdomestic passports the government used to restrict the movements of Black South Africans in their own country. In response, the government banned the ANC in 1960, and arrested the prominent ANC activist Nelson Mandela in August 1962.

The banning of the ANC and the incarceration of its leaders forced many ANC members into exile. But it did not stop resistance within South Africa, says Wessel Visser, a history lecturer at Stellenbosch University in South Africa.

What many dissidents started to do inside the country was to form a kind of an alternativeresistance movement called the United Democratic Front, he says. The UDF, formed in 1983, was a [collaboration] of church leaders and political leaders who were not banned at that stage, community leaders, trade unionists, etc., he says.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Reverend Allan Boesak, two of the UDFs main leaders, started to organize marches to parliament, in Cape Town, in Pretoria, Johannesburgcrowds of 50 to 80,000 people, so there was definitely a groundswell of resistance against apartheid, he says. And around the world, this activism drew attention.

Ronald Reagan delivers a speech regarding South Africa, July 1986.

Dirck Halstead/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images

One of the big moments for international awareness of apartheid was in 1976, when thousands of Black children in the Soweto township protested a government policy mandating that all classes be taught in Afrikaans. Police responded to the protests with violence, killing at least 176 people and injuring over 1,000 more. The massacre drew more attention to activists calls to divest from South Africa, something the United Nations General Assembly had first called on member states to do back in 1962.

Campaigns for economic sanctions against South Africa gained steam in the 1980s, but faced considerable resistance from two important heads of state: United States President Ronald Reagan and United Kingdom Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Both Reagan and Thatcher condemned Mandela and the ANC as communists and terrorists at a time when the apartheid government promoted itself as a Cold War ally against communism.

Reagan vetoed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986, but the U.S. Congress overrode his decision with a two-thirds majority, passing the act to impose sanctions on South Africa. The U.K. also imposed limited sanctions despite Thatchers objections. The combination of international sanctions placed significant economic pressure on South Africa, which was then at war with the present-day nations of Namibia, Zambia and Angola.

Anti-apartheid activism also drew international attention to Mandela. International advocates urged South Africa to release him and other imprisoned ANC members and allow exiled members back into the country.

As early as 1984 there were attempts by national intelligence inside the government structures and also by some of the ministers to make contact with the ANC and sound out the waters of a possibility of a negotiated settlement, says Anton Ehlers, a history lecturer at Stellenbosch University.

Anti-apartheid leader and African National Congress member Nelson Mandela and his wife anti-apartheid campaigner Winnie raise fists upon Mandela's release from prison on February 11, 1990.

Alexander Joe/AFP/Getty Images

Visser speculates that the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 helped speed the process of ending apartheid along because it took away one of the governments main defenses of itself among Western allies: that it needed to remain in place to fight communism. The argument that the ANC are only the puppets of the Reds couldnt be used anymore, Visser says, both because the Cold War was ending and because the ANC now had a lot more support in Europe and the U.S.

Mandela finally walked free on February 11, 1990, and negotiations to end apartheid formally began that year. These negotiations lasted for four years, ending with the election of Mandela as president. In 1996, the country initiated a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in an attempt to reckon with the gross human rights violations during apartheid.

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Key Steps That Led to End of Apartheid - History