Footage of the Nov 7th, 2009 Six Nations Solidarity Rally in Brantford

Opinion Criticizing Israel Isn’t Antisemitism

But a new coalition of MPs seems to say the two are one and the same. By Murray Dobbin, TheTyee.ca

Ever since the Israeli invasion of the Gaza strip last December, the global debate surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has intensified with both sides upping the ante, and the stakes of the framing battle increasing almost daily. One of the most recent — but almost totally unreported — developments in Canada is something called the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism (CPCCA). It is not an official parliamentary body but is a multi-party, voluntary association of 13 MPs. It is currently holding an inquiry into anti-Semitism because, it says, “The extent and severity of antisemitism is widely regarded as at its worst level since the end of the Second World War.”

In fact, antisemitic attitudes in the U.S. are at an all-time low according to Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, whose mandate is to monitor and expose anti-Semitism. Statistics Canada reports the number of hate crimes against Jews has been dropping since 2001-2002.

But of course, it all depends on how you define anti-Semitism. Jewish organizations from the Canadian Jewish Congress and Hillel to B’nai Brith have all been vigorously redefining this scourge to capture many more alleged perpetrators in its net of enemies. One of their targets is the handful of Canadian universities where pro-Palestinian activity has been intense.

But it goes far beyond just the universities. For the first time in decades, the unquestioned dominance of Israel’s public relations machine and lobbying juggernaut is being seriously challenged. The characterization of Israel as an apartheid state is gaining much more credibility than Israel’s supporters had ever anticipated. So is the international Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) campaign. These are very serious threats to Israel’s credibility as “the only democratic state in the Middle East” — one of its most powerful claims.

Rosa Luxemburg – Then and Now

Andrea Smith Lecture: Conquest: Sexual Violence and the American Indian Genocide

Facing Down the Anti-Indian Movement in Canada: Lecture given by Dr. Rudolph Ryser at the Univerisity of Victoria 1996

Understanding the Colonial Roots of Anti-Native Activism

Thanks to Klem3 of the Solidarity with Six Nations for putting this piece first up.

The actions and words of Gary McHale are deeply rooted in colonial and racist understandings of Native peoples and Canadian history. Caledonia Wake Up Call materials, actions, and rhetoric clearly criminalise Aboriginal assertions of sovereignty. This criminalization trivializes and de-historicizes the very reasons Aboriginal nations across the country are pushed to make these assertions as they confront the continued theft of their land. McHale consciously uses the language of civil and human rights, and his reliance on ‘peaceful activism’ serves to distinguish between those who are civilized and those who are not. So while McHale and followers define the CWUC movement as rooted in peaceful activism, they cast the Six Nations reclamation as terrorist in nature.  This is a racist tactic and a very old colonial justification for violence against Aboriginal people.

In fact Caledonia Wake Up Call, the Caledonia Militia and CANACE are only the newest groups in a long history of anti-Native/anti-sovereignty organizing in Canada. Anti-sovereignty/Anti-Native groups are those groups defined solely or in part by their opposition to Aboriginal sovereignty and treaty rights. These types of groups have existed since the arrival of Europeans on this land. Today these types of groups and organizations often passionately employ language based in civil rights movements, calling for ‘equal rights for all Canadians’ and using the popular slogan ‘one law for all.’ The names of anti-sovereignty organizations also usually “combine patriotic symbols to evoke notions of political fairness and equality.”1 Tracing the history of anti-sovereignty and white supremacist movements Kim Goldberg writes that:

Like other anti-democratic movements before it, the anti-Indian movement cloaks itself in the populist rhetoric of “equality,” “democracy” and “civil rights,” thereby concealing its true agenda and netting a much wider following than it could otherwise obtain. Language becomes so distorted that anti-democratic proponents not only seek to deflect the damning but accurate labels applied to them, they shoot them back at their critics. So it isn’t the opponents of aboriginal self-government who are racist but rather the very concept of self-government along with those who advocate it.2

O’odham: Surviving Apartheid on the Illegal Border

Much of this article deals with a talk by Ward Churchill; my posting of it should not be seen as an acceptance of his views or actions.

By Brenda Norrell
Censored News
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/

TUCSON – Tohono O’odham living on the border joined with activist Ward Churchill to speak out on “Apartheid in America, Surviving Occupation in O’odham Lands,” on Nov. 13. Ofelia Rivas and her brother Julian Rivas, O’odham living on the US/Mexico border, spoke of the impact and desecration of colonization and border militarization.

Ofelia Rivas said O’odham were never included in the dialogue determining the delineation of the US/Mexico border in the 1800s or the construction of the border wall.

“We were not at that table when they made that international border. We were not considered human,” she told the crowd of several hundred people.

Responding to questions from supporters seeking ways to help, Ofelia said, “Can you take that border down for us? Can you restore our way of life? Can you give the language back to our young people who have gone though the boarding school experience or those who went through relocation? Can you give those back to us?” she asked.

“In the beginning, when the world was made, we were here. We were made from this earth.”

She said when O’odham elders, the ancestors passed away, they became part of this earth since the beginning of time. “Our ancestors are every part of this land, not just our ancestors, but all the Indigenous Peoples of this world.”

Quebec Bridge Disaster at Kahnawake?

Mohawk Nation News

http://www.mohawknationnews.com/

MNN. Nov. 15, 2009. The Mercier Bridge is 1.4 kilometers long, spans the St. Lawrence River and Seaway between Montreal and Kahnawake on the south shore. It was built in 1932 beside the CPR Bridge which was built in 1885. www.pjcci.ca

Mohawk Nation, Quebec and Canada contracted the Mohawks to strengthen the steel structure and replace the reinforced concrete bridge deck of three access ramps on Mohawk Territory. It is the largest bridge repair project in Canadian history. Canada is paying $57 million and Quebec $9 million. Over 1000 direct and indirect jobs are being created per year. Work started on April 25, 2008.

The Montreal Iron Workers Union Local 711 is trying to kick the Mohawks out because they don’t have the CCQ cards. Commission de la construction du Quebec cards are issued by the government which controls the union.

CCQ rules and regulations violate the Union’s international charter. Quebec is the only place on Great Turtle Island where a union card is worthless.

The Andolan in Kathmandu and the Revolution to Follow

By Gary Leupp  of CounterPunch.

Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch’s merciless chronicle of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial Crusades.

He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu

“I Want to Dance With the Real Hero of My Country”

“So far,” notes Peter Lee of the Asia Times, “Western media have reported remotely and somewhat uncomprehendingly on the massive demonstrations in Kathmandu led by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), with a marked lack of interest. This perhaps reflects the shared desire of the Indian, Chinese and Western governments not to inflame the situation with excessive attention and rhetoric.” He refers to the two-day action in the Nepali capital Thursday and Friday.

But those demonstrations should be of enormous interest. According to AsiaNews, “The second phase of the so-called ‘people’s movement-III’ saw more than 150,000 participants, including former Maoist guerrillas and United Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (UCPM-M) members of parliament and militants, gathered around the  Singha Durbar, Nepal’s official seat of government.”

The Maoists virtually paralyzed the government in a stunning display of power. All the top Maoist leaders marched through the city, some meeting the police at the barricades and breaking through  to assume positions around Singha Durbar where they addressed the huge crowd.

The Contradictions of the Post-Apartheid State in South Africa

Written by David van Wyk in South Africa Tuesday for In Defence of Marxism.

The working masses and poor of South Africa overthrew the old hated Apartheid regime as a means of improving their living and working conditions. Instead what we have is a party in power, the ANC, which was created by the working masses but which is presently carrying out policies in the interests of the rich. This contradiction must be resolved and the only way is for the working people to take back control of the party they created.

In July the construction workers at the Green point world cup stadium in Cape Town demanded amongst other things a pay increase and a minimum wage. Photo by collins m gituma on flickr.

The South African Navy is currently engaged in joint operations with the United States Navy. Meanwhile, the ANC Youth League is calling for the nationalisation of the Mines. The National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa (NUMSA) is calling for the nationalisation of the wealth of leading black “empowered” mining industrialists, Patrice Motsepe and Cyril Ramaphosa, citing the obscenity of their spectacular wealth in the sea of poverty that is South Africa. 700,000 workers (that is almost one in five workers) have lost their jobs since the beginning of the year, while the government bends over backwards to keep capitalist businesses afloat. And trade union membership is in rapid decline.

Grassroots working class ANC and SACP members lead community delivery protests and uprisings against ANC local government structures. Concerted struggle by the working class residents of Sakhile township against rubber bullets, teargas and police dogs finally paid off as the ANC NEC and the National Government were forced to dismiss the corrupt local government councillors of Standerton.

Afghanistan: Bad Autumn for NATO

Tariq Ali reports, “It’s now obvious to everyone that this is not a ‘good’ war designed to eliminate the opium trade, discrimination against women and everything bad – apart from poverty, of course.”

This article originally appeared in London Review of Books.

Short Cuts

It’s been a bad autumn for Nato in Afghanistan, with twin disasters on the political and military fronts. First, Kai Eide, the UN headman in Kabul, a well-meaning, but not very bright Norwegian, fell out with his deputy, Peter Galbraith, who as the de facto representative of the US State Department had decreed that President Karzai’s election was rigged and went public about it. His superior continued to defend Hamid Karzai’s legitimacy. Astonishingly, the UN then fired Galbraith. This caused Hillary Clinton to move into top gear and the UN-supported electoral watchdog now ruled that the elections had indeed been fraudulent and ordered a run-off. Karzai refused to replace the electoral officials who had done such a good job for him the first time and his opponent withdrew. Karzai got the job.

Karzai’s legitimacy has never been dependent on elections (which are always faked anyway) but on the US/Nato expeditionary force. So what was all this shadowboxing about in the first place? It appears to have been designed in order to provide cover for the military surge being plotted by General Stanley McChrystal, the new white hope of a beleaguered White House. McChrystal seems to have inverted the old Clausewitzian maxim: he genuinely believes that politics is a continuation of war by other means. It was thought that if Karzai could be painlessly removed and replaced with his former colleague Abdullah Abdullah, a Tajik from the north, it might create the impression that an unbearably corrupt regime had been peacefully removed, which would help the flagging propaganda war at home and the relaunching of the real war in Afghanistan. For his part, Abdullah wanted a share of the loot that comes with power and has so far been monopolised by the Karzai brothers and their hangers-on, helping them to create a tiny indigenous base of support for the family. Did the revelation that Ahmed Wali Karzai was not simply the richest man in the country as a result of large-scale corruption and the drugs/arms trade, but a CIA agent too come as a huge surprise to anyone? I’m told that in desperation Nato commissars even considered appointing a High Representative on the Balkan model to run the country, making the presidency an even more titular post than it is today. Were this to happen, Galbraith or Tony Blair would be the obvious front-runners.

Popular Resistance Rejects Fake Elections in Honduras

Socialist Voice has been kind enough to publish both an  English translation of the Resistance Front’s statement and the  Spanish original.

Introduction by Felipe Stuart Cournoyer

In the following Comunique, the National Front of Resistance Against the Coup in Honduras (NFRAC) declares that it will not recognize the legitimacy of elections proposed by the coup regime for November 29. Its statement follows on the breakdown of the “Tegucigalpa Agreement,” an effort to resolve the political crisis created by the June coup against President Manuel Zelaya Rosales.

It is unlikely that the elections and government issuing from the electoral sham will have any legitimacy in Latin America beyond the traditional oligarchic right, and governments like those in Peru and Colombia. The anti-coup candidate for the presidency has withdrawn. The OAS Secretary-General has said this body will not send election observers to Honduras, and continues to recognize Zelaya Rosales as the constitutionally elected president. Washington will no doubt come good on its pledge to recognize the electoral process, and Canada can be expected to carry out the wishes of its gold mining companies and back the coup regime to the hilt.

No one can predict to any degree of certainty how this struggle will unfold into the New Year, but there is no question that the old Honduras – the fiefdom of ten oligarchic families – is gone to the trash bin. The country will never return to those days. The National Front of Resistance is campaigning for a constituent assembly process to draft a new, revolutionary democratic constitution. This process can grow, through popular demonstrations and agitation, providing a great school for social change.

Meanwhile, the extreme right in the region is setting its sights on Nicaragua and El Salvador, howling that Daniel Ortega’s government in Nicaragua is installing a dictatorship and the FMLN government in El Salvador is plotting a coup to install a Chavez-type regime.

What the Québec Debate on the Hijab Conceals

By Benoit Renaud, a member of the International Socialism collective in Québec solidaire replies to articles in journals such as L’aut’journal, published by “left” Parti Québécois supporters, which has been campaigning against the hijab.

This article is part of LeftViews, which is Socialist Voice’s forum for articles related to rebuilding the left in Canada and around the world, reflecting a wide variety of socialist opinion.

This article was published in the November 3 issue of Presse-toi-à-gauche¹, an online publication in the periphery of Québec solidaire. It was translated by Richard Fidler for Life on the Left.

The debate on accommodation, religious symbols and secularism has been recurring periodically since the period of collective psychodrama in 2007 that led to the election of 41 ADQ members to the National Assembly and the appointment of the Bouchard-Tremblay Commission.[1] This debate is a challenge for the left, given the complexity of the issues it raises.

For example, we are presented with a choice worthy of a Solomon: to discriminate against the members of minority communities or endorse patriarchal customs. In effect, to decide between sexism and racism. The only way to avoid falling into both these traps is to grasp the overall dynamics of oppression in all its forms, in the context of globalized capitalism and therefore imperialism. The debate must be situated in its context if we are to understand clearly the real meaning of the proposals being advanced for action.

First, it is necessary to correct a common – yet evident – error in vocabulary. In French, clothing that covers the hair and/or the neck is called a foulard (headscarf). A voile (veil) is clothing that conceals the face. There is a qualitative difference. Some writers, insistently confusing these quite different accessories, display a lack of rigour, to say the least. In what follows, I will refer to the Islamic headscarf or hijab. Genuine veils are a quite different question, since they impede communication and actually “hide” the women who wear them.

What to do about Religious Fundamentalism?

By Farooq Tariq, general secretary of Labour Party Pakistan, writing for International Viewpoint.

Pakistan has been top of the world news with the recent visit of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to firm up Pakistan support for US policy in the region. This article examines the role of religious fanatics in Pakistan politics and US responsibility for their current strength.

“Let’s deal with the ISI [Pakistani Intelligence Agency] and the Pakistan military and let’s go recruit these mujahideen. Here is a very strong argument which is… it wasn’t a bad investment to end the Soviet Union but let’s be careful with what we sow… because we will harvest,”  Hillary Clinton, 23 April 2009.

Once again Pakistan has become the focus of world attention. Every day there is news about the latest suicide attack or military operations, with killings, injuries and displaced communities. Lately schools were ordered closed for over a week. Even children talk about death and suicidal attacks.

With over 125 police checkpoints in Islamabad, it has become a fortress city. Lahore and other large cities suffer the same fate: there are police road blockades everywhere. After each terrorist attack authorities issue another security high alert and set up additional barriers. How ironic that, until recently, officials and the media described these “terrorists” as Mujahidin fighting for an Islamic world.   Under immense pressure by Obama administration, the Pakistan government has launched a series of military operations in various parts of the country. This has lead to an unprecedented wave of killings, with hundreds of thousands more forced to leave their home for temporary shelter.

Indian and Northern Affairs Canada is No Steward of the Land

By Ahni at Intercontinental Cry.

The Auditor General of Canada, Ms. Sheila Fraser, has singled out Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) for its abysmal role as a steward of Indigenous lands.

According to Ms. Fraser, who released her 2009 audit to the House of Commons last week, INAC, and to a lesser extent, Environment Canada, has routinely failed to regulate environmental threats on reserves, leading to a “significant gap” when compared with the rest of Canada, where regulations are strictly applied.

“As a result, people living on reserves have significantly less protection from environmental threats than other communities,” says Ms. Fraser.

“For example, while regulations under the Indian Act require a permit issued by INAC to operate a landfill site or burn waste on reserve lands, the Department has issued few permits and is not equipped to conduct inspections, monitor compliance, and enforce the regulations. Consequently, garbage is often not confined to licensed landfill sites and there is no monitoring of the impacts on drinking water sources and air quality. Off reserves, provincial and municipal regulations and enforcement help to prevent such situations.”

Similarly, while provinces like Ontario have their own set of legal provisions to address environmental emergencies, such as an oil spill, which would require a detailed report and a clean up—there are no such regulations for reserves. “Such provincial requirements, which apply to spills of pollutants generally, do not apply on reserves.”

In fact, there are almost no federal regulations to govern environmental protection on any of Canada’s 642 reserves, which means, in effect, that reserves are “regulatory dead zones,” perhaps comparable to the oil fields of Nigeria and Ecuador, where corporations have been allowed to pollute and engage in harmful or otherwise criminal activities with impunity.

Native Blood: The Myth of Thanksgiving

By Mike Ely of the Kasama Project.

[Available as podcast.]

Puritan settlers massacre Pequot people.

It is a deep thing that people still celebrate the survival of the early colonists at Plymouth — by giving thanks to the Christian God who supposedly protected and championed the European invasion. The real meaning of all that, then and now, needs to be continually excavated. The myths and lies that surround the past are constantly draped over the horrors and tortures of our present.

Every schoolchild in the U.S. has been taught that the Pilgrims of the Plymouth Colony invited the local Indians to a major harvest feast after surviving their first bitter year in New England. But the real history of Thanksgiving is a story of the murder of indigenous people and the theft of their land by European colonialists–and of the ruthless ways of capitalism.

* * * * *

In mid-winter 1620 the English ship Mayflower landed on the North American coast, delivering 102 exiles. The original Native people of this stretch of shoreline had already been killed off. In 1614 a British expedition had landed there. When they left they took 24 Indians as slaves and left smallpox behind. Three years of plague wiped out between 90 and 96 percent of the inhabitants of the coast, destroying most villages completely.

The Europeans landed and built their colony called “the Plymouth Plantation” near the deserted ruins of the Indian village of Pawtuxet. They ate from abandoned cornfields grown wild. Only one Pawtuxet named Squanto had survived–he had spent the last years as a slave to the English and Spanish in Europe. Squanto spoke the colonists’ language and taught them how to plant corn and how to catch fish until the first harvest. Squanto also helped the colonists negotiate a peace treaty with the nearby Wampanoag tribe, led by the chief Massasoit.

The Music of Leftöver Crack

Super Tuesday

Cornel West and Carl Dix on “The Ascendancy of Obama… and the Continued Need for Resistance and Liberation”:

Tuesday July 14 this past summer was an interesting meeting in Harlem. It was a meeting between revolutionary communism and black liberation theology, between Cornel West & Carl Dix, who met to discuss “The Ascendancy of Obama and the Continued Need for Resistance and Liberation.” The event saw 650 inside the Aaron Davis Hall in Harlem, 100+ listening outside and hundreds unable to get tickets in time. The event was broadcast live on WBAI radio.

This event was produced by Revolution Books.

Carl Dix’s You Tube promo:

The full audio can be listened to here. If you want to watch the video of the dialogue and following Q &A they can be seen at Revolution Books NYC’s website here.

Later Dix and West also were interviewed by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! to continue the discussion and talk about “Race and Politics in the Age of Obama,” part 1 can be reached here, and part 2 here.

Finally please note that this posting is not an endorsement of either Dix’s or West’s positions.

Indigenous Women Position on Canada-US-Mexico Borders

Mohawk Nation News
http://www.mohawknationnews.com/

MNN. Nov. 12, 2009. AIM-West is hosting a 40th year commemoration in San Francisco on November 24 to 28th, 2009. A major player was from Akwesasne, Richard Oakes when AIM took over Alcatraz Island. The Treaty of Laramie 1868 affirmed that all abandoned federal facilities irrevocably revert to the Indigenous people. Shortly afterwards Oakes was beaten with a pool cue and went into a coma. Not long after recovering he was shot dead. A main topic will be the militarization of the north and south borders on Great Turtle Island. [www.aimovement.org]

Two years ago the Mohawks went to Tohono O’odham [Arizona], an Indigenous community on the US-Mexico border. Censored News wrote on the second anniversary of this trip. http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com

Let’s hear it for the Mohawks!

What a great time I had watching this video of the Mohawks ripping out

this [Canada-US] border marker with a backhoe [at Akwesasne]. Reminded me of when the Mohawk Warrior Society came to the Indigenous Border Summit in Tohono O’odham in November 2007. The Mohawks were horrified over the building of the border wall, the CAGE outdoor migrant prison and the federal US spy tower. The Mohawks spotted the US Border Patrol arresting a pitiful group of tiny Mayans, [who had just crossed the desert] mostly women and children. The Mohawks jumped out of the cars and rushed the Border Patrol, who fled like scared dogs with their tails between their knees. Sadly, the pitiful migrants were smashed into the back of the vehicle. They became another group of desperate and hungry Mayans arrested on Tohono O’odham land by the white agents of darkness, the US Border Patrol. –Brenda Norrell, Watch video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsNap5EyQnk

40th Anniversary of the Occupation of Alcatraz, Berkeley

40th Anniversary of the Occupation of Alcatraz Program
“YOU ARE ON INDIAN LAND”

Host: Richie Richards
Type: Education – Workshop
Network: Global
Date: Friday, November 20, 2009
Time: 10:00am – 5:00pm
Location: Bancroft Hotel – across the street from Hearst Museum
Street: 2680 Bancroft Way Berkeley, CA 94704 (510) 549-1000
City/Town: Berkeley, CA
Phone: 5106437649
Email:
rrrichards75@berkeley.edu

On Friday, November 20th 2009, Richie Richards the Native American Education Specialist for the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at UC Berkeley proudly hosts the 40th Anniversary of the Occupation of Alcatraz Program. The event will honor and commemorate the original efforts and intentions of the student-based occupation that took place in 1969; which was to protest the social conditions Native Americans were being subjected to in both urban areas and on reservations. Alcatraz provided a national forum for their voices to be heard and we want to continue that conversation with this event.

*Opening: Richie Richards will discuss the agenda and speakers.

*Keynote Speaker, Dr. LaNada War Jack (formerly LaNada Means), was a student leader here at UC Berkeley and organized the Third World Strike- which ultimately led to the development of the Ethnic Studies Program at Cal. Dr. War Jack along with Richard Oakes, co- organized the take-over of Alcatraz in November, 1969. LaNada will discuss motivating factors of the Occupation during her presentation.

An Appeal to the Revolutionary Socialists and Communists of Bosnia

The breakup of Yugoslavia led to the domination of imperialism over the republics that made it up. It led to terrible fratricidal killing and the emergence of reactionary political forces, all pushing a nationalist agenda to the benefit of a small clique. This is clear today in the situation facing workers in Bosnia. Here a Bosnian Marxist, M. Majevica, makes an appeal to all genuine socialist and communists to come together and offer the workers an alternative.

Those interested in further developing this idea can receive more information at socijalizam@yahoo.com

The current economic crisis is continuing to affect more and more workers throughout the world. The same is true for the workers of Bosnia. Even the minimal growth and reconstruction in post-war Bosnia is a thing of the past as workplaces are again beginning to put the people out of work. In this situation, the conditions are such that the workers are becoming increasingly radicalized. Capitalism is proving itself incapable of meeting the demands and goals of the working class, and more and more workers are supporting the initiative to organize a genuine party to fight for their interests. The workers, angered by the failure of capitalism to give them a secure and fulfilling life, are beginning to be more open to the only real alternative to capitalist exploitation – true socialism.

Again, the same is true for the workers in Bosnia. The small, localized groups of genuine socialists and communists are too weak and disorganized to counter the threat of nationalism and imperialism. This state of affairs cannot continue if the workers of Bosnia don’t want to be left behind. The time has come to unite in a strong organization that is dedicated to destroying the nationalism and capitalism that have been exploiting and, literally, killing the workers of the country. This organization must represent all of the genuine socialists and communists in the country if it is to have a chance of countering the enemies of the working class.

Our Understanding of Liberation

This letter to Socialist Worker is yet another addition to the ongoing debate over their on the issue of “Animal Right/Liberation.”

I READ Paul D’Amato’s article “Socialism and ‘animal rights.’” I thought it presented many important points and its overall thesis was a sound one: humans are fundamentally different from animals, and while animals certainly deserve decent treatment, talking of animal rights and animal liberation as being the same as for humans is not correct or useful–and more importantly, it misunderstands human liberation as well.

I was a little surprised to see so much disagreement in response, so I thought I’d comment.

But first, here are a few quotes from the article which I think clarify some of the article’s main points:

All species evolve and change, biologically speaking; only humans evolve culturally and socially. Indeed, the only reason we can have this discussion about animals is because we have something they don’t have–language…They cannot “liberate” themselves or demand “rights” from us, either; they can’t even formulate what a right or a demand is…

Non-human animals are helpless and, as I pointed out earlier, incapable of organizing and fighting for their rights. To compare the condition of animals to that of women, Blacks and other groups for freedom and equality is to view the latter through a paternalistic lens, rather than a lens of human liberation…

In order to put that concern in the right perspective, we need to insist on the essential differences between human beings and other animals, and reject the idea of “animal liberation.”

First I’d like to point out, in response to a couple of the letters, that none of this is arguing that animals are somehow not “deserving” of human rights, but simply that human rights, such as free speech, are of no use to animals, even if they were somehow guaranteed them. Some lesser subset of “rights”–or to state it correctly, some basic standards of decent treatment–would be in order in any decent society; however, in our present society, the profit motive prevents this.

Michael Lebowitz on Venezuela: `Socialism Requires a New State from Below’

Michael Lebowitz interviewed by José Sant Roz for Aporrea, translated by Kiraz Janicke

November 5, 2009 — Venezuelanalysis.com — On the question of the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela, Michael Lebowitz is one of the thinkers who has penetrated deepest into our process. He plunges his scrutinising gaze into its most diverse and conflicting issues, in order to calmly and forcefully reveal its truth with knifelike clarity. He talks like a peasant or a worker who dips into the reality that they experience, that they suffer and feel.

At the Centro Internacional Miranda, I had a chance to converse with Lebowitz, a professor from the Simon Fraser University in British Columbia (Canada).

Lebowitz is the author of outstanding books such as Socialism does not fall from the sky (much discussed by President Chávez) and Build it now: Socialism for the 21st Century.  I do not hesitate to declare that Lebowitz is an essential light for us in the Bolivarian revolutionary process. Many problems and many concerns were raised in this interview and he responded to them with simple and accurate clarity. [For more by Michael Lebowitz, click HERE.]

The Revolutions of 1989

Alan Maass continues the SocialistWorker.org series on the fall of the Berlin Wall by recounting the tide of revolt that swept across Eastern Europe in 1989.

Crowds celebrate as the Berlin Wall falls

THE FALL of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago was one crest in a wave of revolt that overturned governments across half of Europe at the end of 1989. Tyrannies that were seen as exercising total control over the people–the ultimate Big Brother-style police states–fell with incredible speed, one after another, when faced with massive mobilizations demanding democracy and justice.

The revolutions against the regimes of the Eastern bloc were a vindication of a basic principle of socialism–that the working-class majority in society has the power to defeat even the most repressive ruling class.

But that’s not at all what most people think about 1989. The conclusion drawn for them by the Western media and political establishment is that the fall of the Berlin Wall symbolized the failure of socialism and the superiority of capitalism. The images of crowds of East Germans scrambling to the top of the wall or pulling down sections of it are associated in most people’s minds with the fact that those people were desperate to flee a system that called itself communist.

Capitalism’s defenders naturally celebrate that interpretation. Many on the left have the same understanding, but with the opposite reaction. They believe the revolutions against the regimes of the Eastern bloc were a cause for despair–a step backward, possibly orchestrated by the CIA, from societies that, however flawed, at least rejected capitalism.

Onkwehonwe Remove British Border Marker

Friday afternoon, October 30 2009 in Kanatakon. Onkwehonwe (Mohawks) removed one of the british land markers that were forced on Onkwehonwe Lands, back in the early 1900s, at the border of the US and Canada.

Let’s hear it for the Mohawks!

The World Social Forum, A Sustainable Model?

By Pierre Rousset of the Socialist Project.

After a period of remarkable expansion, the process of the World Social Forum (WSF) has stalled. The balance sheet of the most recent big assemblies turns out to be very contrasting – we can say, simplifying a lot, politically negative in the case of Nairobi (Kenya) in 2007 and positive in the case of Belem (Brazil) two years later.

The question that is raised is not primarily one of numbers: success does not depend (or does not only depend) on the number of participants, it is political: what is the point of the forums? The answer seemed obvious in the early 2000s, but that is not the case today.

In the past there was a lively interrelation between the Forum process, large anti-globalisation mobilisations, social struggles and international campaigns – a synergy that reached its peak with the mobilising and popularising role which the European forums (Florence, Italy) and global (Porto Alegre, Brazil) played in preparing the anti-war day of March 2003. The expansion of the WSF was phenomenal: in only a few years it had taken shape in Europe and Latin America, then in Asia, North America and Africa. It rooted itself in the national and local forums. The network and the Assembly of Social Movements played a dynamic role. The manifold expansion was driven by a dynamic combination of expansion and radicalisation. In the framework of the forums questions were raised which the traditional labour movement had not yet been able to answer.[1]

Today – with some exceptions – the Forum process is largely disconnected from struggles and international campaigns. Other frameworks have been formed to address the climate crisis or the so-called financial crisis, without functional articulation with the WSF. In Malmö (Sweden) in 2008, a large and dynamic anti-globalisation demonstration took place at the time of the European Social Forum (ESF), but with no synergy between the two events. In Europe, the ESF has not been able to play again the role of giving momentum that it had against the Bolkestein directive. It is possible that the process retains its vitality in North America, but it has come to a standstill in Asia and has hardly been able to redefine itself in Europe. Even if the Assembly of the Social Movements still adopts policies whose content is important (Belém), the network is experiencing a protracted crisis of functioning.

America’s Head Servant?

From New Left Review.

The PRC’s Dilemma in the Global Crisis

The subprime mortgage crisis and ensuing global downturn led many to speculate whether any challenger might emerge to replace the us as the dominant player in the capitalist world economy. [1] Because the financial crisis in the us and global North had originated in high indebtedness, low productivity and overconsumption, it seemed natural to look to their polar opposites—the East Asian exporters’ huge holdings of us debt, productive capacity and high savings rates—to identify likely candidates. Immediately after last year’s collapse of Lehman Brothers lifted the curtain on the global recession, there were proclamations of the final triumph of the East Asian, and above all Chinese, model of development; American establishment commentators concluded that the Great Crash of 2008 would be the catalyst for a shift of the centre of global capitalism from the us to China. [2]

But by the spring of 2009, many had realized that the East Asian economies were not as formidable as appearances had suggested. While the sharp contraction in demand for imports in the global North had led to crash landings for Asia’s exporters, the prospect of either the us Treasuries market or the dollar bottoming out presented them with the difficult dilemma of either ditching American assets, and hence triggering a dollar collapse, or buying more, preventing an immediate crash but increasing their exposure to one in future. State-directed investment, rolled out late last year under the prc’s mega-stimulus programme, fostered a significant recovery for China as well as its Asian trading partners, but the growth generated is unlikely to be self-sustaining. Chinese economists and policy advisers have been worrying that the prc will falter again once the stimulus effect fades, as it is unlikely that American consumers will be picking up the slack any time soon. Despite all the talk of China’s capacity to destroy the dollar’s reserve-currency status and construct a new global financial order, the prc and its neighbours have few choices in the short term other than to sustain American economic dominance by extending more credit.

Maoism and Me

A single spark can start a prairie fire – Mao Zedong

Mao Zedong, leader of the Chinese Revolution

When I first began to wrangle with radical politics near the end of my time in high school one of the first books of Marxist literature I picked up and read was a small collection of Mao Zedong’s writings, which included such important works as On Practice: On the Relation Between Knowledge and Practice, Between Knowing and Doing, On Contradiction, Combat Liberalism, On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People, Where Do Correct Ideas Come From?, Concerning Stalin’s ‘Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR and, Critique of Stalin’s ‘Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR. However, although I was at the time making a break with the political norm pushed in my colonial British private school, I had been indoctrinated enough into standard thought on already existing socialism that I still viewed the process of the Chinese Revolution, including the Cultural Revolution, with a large degree of cynicism. As such the natural direction that I first developed in was one more influenced by trends that ranged from critical to dismissive of the Chinese Revolution, especially anarcho-syndicalism and Trotskyism of one variant or another.

However since the summer of 2008, thanks in no small part to my engagement with comrades involved with the Kasama Project and Freedom Road Socialist Organization, I have begun a reassessment of my relationship to what was known first as “Mao Zedong Thought”, and later by many as “Maoism.” I have come to view Maoism as being made up of a number of sub-tendencies, some of which I share little in common with, and who interest me little if any, such as those that seek to justify their practices and analysis in Stalinism and that particular set of Marxist-Leninist paradigms. However, I also found that I shared much with a number of Maoist and post-Maoist formations, and as a surprise to no one it it is those that more overtly critiqued the Stalin period and the particular approach to socialism that it represented.

Who’s Knocking at the Eastern Door?

Mohawk Nation News
http://www.mohawknationnews.com

MNN. Nov. 7, 2009. Have we Mohawks become an unwitting pawn in a power struggle between some thugs? We are the Keepers of the Eastern Door of Great Turtle Island. Agents are hanging around us trying to gather information and destabilize us.

Kanehsatake is a model on how to attempt to destroy a community, push a false leader and confuse everyone. Soon the band council will be declared as having mismanaged their funds. Tyendinaga will be put under third party management. Pro bono ambulance chasers will arrive to start class actions suits with nothing in it for us.

The few Mohawks who vote in the colonial elections generally work for the band council. To control the outcome, Indian Affairs might place hundreds of names of strangers onto the list to vote by proxy.

The story goes Cathie Duchene, a non-native, lived in British Columbia. She befriended some Indigenous and then left. Then the local businesses were raided by the RCMP. Somebody had provided intel.

About 3 years ago she showed up at Sharbot Lake, just north of Kingston Ontario. A controversy was raging over some fake Algonquins trying to fraudulently settle a Haudenosaunee land claim. She tried to pass herself off as a Mohawk from Kanehsatake. She claimed to be speaking on behalf of the Six Nation Iroquois Confederacy. it looked like the OPP were protecting her. She lives well though she has no job that we know of.

About a year ago Duchene moved to Tyendinaga, a Mohawk community on Lake Ontario. She is apparently running for band council chief, which the colonial Indian Act allows. She’s decked out in denims covered with warrior and confederacy emblems. She lies that she is a friend of the MNN editor, who is on record as calling her a Space Cadet and Cathie Lost-in-the-Woods.

Dissension follows her. Recently the longhouse mysteriously burnt to the ground. Community members were quickly blamed.

Rotinoshonni:onwe Justice System

Mohawk Nation News
http://www.mohawknationnews.com

MNN. Nov. 7, 2009. Colonial tyrants are always trying to undermine any nation and peoples who assert inherent sovereignty. They refuse to resolve differences by peaceful and lawful means. Where do we go for protection and intervention? We don’t have military might. We can and must defend our ideas on how we are equal and each has a voice.

Kaianereh’ko:wa provides a formula for peace. Our way is about how we use our mind. We balance out the easy and the difficult, and sort out the real from the make-believe. Stretching our consciousness physically, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually takes vigilance. [Mann, Barbara Alice. Iroquoian Women, the Gantowisas. Peter Lang. NY. 2000]. Questioning and asking for proof is the basis of our thinking.

We look for an extended meaning to everything. This is almost impossible in a corrupt bureaucracy of privilege, empty rhetoric, tyranny and a system based on military might.

We carry out rightness and fairness with the advice, guidance and wisdom of the people as a whole, keeping in mind the continuity of the genealogical information, history, traditions and values of our people.

We are all legal advocates of peace and morality. In our way the people decide the suitable fate of the accused.

Victims put the case before the people. The families of the accused participate. It is investigated. The accused are heard before the Council fires of the men and women of their clan, the Council of their nation, as well as the Council of the Confederacy. Should a clan feel unable to deal with an issue, they may pass the issue to other clans.

Depending on the issue, the Six Nations Confederacy serves as a forum of appeal from individual and community issues that cannot be resolved at the community level.

A decision is made. Decisions have to be justified, rational and follow the criteria and process of the Kaianereh’ko:wa.

Blackstone/Sithe Global More Dirty Coal Power Plants

Photo: Navajos protest Sithe Global in New York

BLACKSTONE REPORTS 3Q PROFITS BUT CONTINUES
WITH RISKY COAL PLANTS

Citizens: ‘Bring us clean energy, no dirty coal’

FARMINGTON, N.M. – As the Blackstone Group executives proudly hyped their new found profitability in today’s third quarter earnings call with financial reporters, the one component of their equity portfolio they failed to discuss was their misaligned ownership of the energy developer, Sithe Global, Inc.

Sithe is proposing to develop three large dirty coal power plants around the county, including the River Hill waste coal project in Pennsylvania, the Toquop coal plant near Mesquite, Nevada, and the Desert Rock coal plant near Farmington, New Mexico. All three of the plants have met stiff opposition from locals, including the Mayor of Mesquite, Susan Holecheck, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, and several groups within the Navajo Nation where Desert Rock would be located.

None of the plants have the needed permits from local and state regulators. The air permit for Desert Rock was issued in 2008 by the Environmental Protection Agency under the Bush Administration but was remanded by the agency in August over significant concerns of inadequate environmental analysis.

Sithe’s attempts to construct the plants come at a time when building coal plants has fallen out of favor in the financial world. Over 100 of 150 such plants proposed in the early days of the Bush administration have been shelved permanently or indefinitely due to financial difficulties, market uncertainties, increasing public support for cleaner energy and opposition to coal, and the strong likelihood that Congress will enact some type of accountability for carbon-based fuels in order to address global warming.

20 Years of Collapse

By Slavoj Žižek

TODAY is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. During this time of reflection, it is common to emphasize the miraculous nature of the events that began that day: a dream seemed to come true, the Communist regimes collapsed like a house of cards, and the world suddenly changed in ways that had been inconceivable only a few months earlier. Who in Poland could ever have imagined free elections with Lech Walesa as president?

However, when the sublime mist of the velvet revolutions was dispelled by the new democratic-capitalist reality, people reacted with an unavoidable disappointment that manifested itself, in turn, as nostalgia for the “good old” Communist times; as rightist, nationalist populism; and as renewed, belated anti-Communist paranoia.

The first two reactions are easy to comprehend. The same rightists who decades ago were shouting, “Better dead than red!” are now often heard mumbling, “Better red than eating hamburgers.” But the Communist nostalgia should not be taken too seriously: far from expressing an actual wish to return to the gray Socialist reality, it is more a form of mourning, of gently getting rid of the past. As for the rise of the rightist populism, it is not an Eastern European specialty, but a common feature of all countries caught in the vortex of globalization.

Much more interesting is the recent resurgence of anti-Communism from Hungary to Slovenia. During the autumn of 2006, large protests against the ruling Socialist Party paralyzed Hungary for weeks. Protesters linked the country’s economic crisis to its rule by successors of the Communist party. They denied the very legitimacy of the government, although it came to power through democratic elections. When the police went in to restore civil order, comparisons were drawn with the Soviet Army crushing the 1956 anti-Communist rebellion.

This new anti-Communist scare even goes after symbols. In June 2008, Lithuania passed a law prohibiting the public display of Communist images like the hammer and sickle, as well as the playing of the Soviet anthem. In April 2009, the Polish government proposed expanding a ban on totalitarian propaganda to include Communist books, clothing and other items: one could even be arrested for wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt.

The Fall of the Berlin Wall: 20 Years Later

By Alan Woods of In Defence of Marxism, homepage of the International Marxist Tendency.

Twenty years ago as the Berlin Wall came tumbling down the bourgeoisie in the west was euphoric, rejoicing at the “fall of communism”. Twenty years later things look very different as capitalism has entered its most severe crisis since 1929. Now a majority in former East Germany votes for the left and harks back to what was positive about the planned economy. After rejecting Stalinism, they have now had a taste of capitalism, and the conclusion drawn is that socialism is better than capitalism.

The fall of the Berlin Wall has passed into history as a synonym for the collapse of “Communism”.

The year 2009 is a year of many anniversaries, including the murder of Luxemburg and Liebknecht, the founding of the Communist International and the Asturian Commune. None of these anniversaries find any echo in the capitalist press. But there is one anniversary they will not forget: On the 9th of November, 1989, the Border separating Western from Eastern Germany was effectively opened.

The fall of the Berlin Wall has passed into history as a synonym for the collapse of “Communism”. In the last 20 years since those momentous events, we have witnessed an unprecedented ideological offensive against the ideas of Marxism on a world scale. This is held up as decisive proof of the death of Communism, Socialism and Marxism. Not long ago, it was even presented as the end of history. But since then the wheel of history has turned several times.

The argument that henceforth the capitalist system was the only alternative for humanity has been exposed as hollow. The truth is very different. On the twentieth anniversary of the collapse of Stalinism, capitalism finds itself in its deepest crisis since the Great Depression. Millions are faced with a future of unemployment, poverty, cuts and austerity.

Horowitz’s Hate Speech at USC

Claire Douglas reports for Socialist Worker.

LOS ANGELES–Activists at the University of Southern California (USC) protested David Horowitz by turning their backs on the arch-conservative as he spoke on November 4.

Horowitz is the author of the book 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America, in which he denounces left-wing, liberal and Arab professors for, in his view, sympathizing with terrorism and hating democracy. He was also behind the racist “Islamo-Facism Awareness Week,” which was held on several campuses in the fall of 2007.

About 10 people from the USC Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the International Socialist Organization stood up and turned their backs during his College Republican-sponsored talk, “Campus War on Jews and Israel.” More people would have taken part if activists who were registered for the event weren’t turned away at the door for their known left-wing political affiliation and/or Arab-sounding names.

As they were escorted away by campus police, Horowitz mocked the demonstrators and called them anti-free speech. But the only speech that they were protesting was Horowitz’s hate and fear-mongering.

Within the first 15 minutes of his speech, Horowitz denounced SJP and progressives at USC as fascist thugs and claimed that the eight officers were there to protect him and the audience from campus terrorism. He claimed that the university coddled Muslim groups and that they were given more funding and religious freedom than other groups, while they supposedly funded terrorist organizations in the Middle East. All the while, said Horowitz, Christian, Jewish and pro-Israel groups are silenced.

After being kicked out of the event, demonstrators joined other students who were protesting the talk outside. All the while, members of the College Republicans harassed protesters and tried to intimidate them by video recording the demonstration. But that just make our protest louder. Demonstrators held signs that read, “Does my last name pose a security threat?” and “Stand With Us Against Racism”–a play on the words “Stand With Us,” which is the name of a pro-Israel public relations organization.

1989-2009: Celebrations Muted by the Disappointments of the Present

By Mike Haynes, Reproduced from Socialist Review

What happened to the illusions that free market capitalism would bring democracy, social justice and equality to the societies of Eastern Europe? Mike Haynes reports

British tourists are commonplace in the former Soviet bloc today. Cheap flights take you to Prague or Budapest. You can spend a weekend in the Baltic states or even make it to Moscow and St Petersburg. The beer is cheap. For stag nights and last minute flings the prostitutes are numerous and cheap. It is easy to combine a visit to some of the finest sights with some of the worst. And many do. Out of sight, out of mind.

In Western Europe migrants from these countries are common. We meet them every day working in bars and hotels, on the farms and in the factories. Supermarkets in

Britain have special sections for Polish food. In the poorer parts of the cities small shops specialise in Eastern European foods for those far from home.

In the richest areas of Western cities, “their” elites rub shoulders with “our” elites, competing to buy the best housing. And if the Eastern European rich are rather poorer this year and the migrants fewer, the closeness of the links that exist would still have been hard to imagine in 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell.

Today the former Soviet bloc is a mass of contradictions and how we cut through them is a matter of controversy. This question remains urgent, not because of the past but the present. Today many of these countries, which were supposed to be marching towards the future, have been hit hard by the global crisis. Instead of emerging market economies some cynics have coined the term submerging economies for them.

The old Soviet bloc was made up of the countries of Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria and the USSR. Today East Germany is no more, the USSR is split into the 15 successor states and the Czech and Slovak republics have divorced. Further south the former Yugoslavia has fragmented and Albania remains barely known. Together roughly 400 million people live in these states.