Monthly Archives: March 2009
Fact Sheet: The War in Afghanistan and Pakistan
From the International League of People’s Struggle (Bay Area Grassroots Organizing Committee).
The War in Afghanistan and Pakistan: A Brutal War for Empire — not a “Good War”
Are the wars of the past six years finally behind us? Consider these recent developments in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq:
- In February, President Obama ordered 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan, in addition to the 38,000 U.S. soldiers and marines already there.
- There are 22,000 NATO soldiers in Afghanistan. Adding 5,000 armed “civilian” contractors like Blackwater, there are over 80,000 US-NATO forces in Afghanistan now, with more to come.
- The Afghan war is now a regional war, having expanding into Pakistan. In the past year, there have been 3 dozen missile attacks by unmanned CIA Predator and Reaper (as in “Grim Reaper”) drones based in northwest Pakistan, resulting in numerous civilian casualties—most recently 11 civilians were killed this week, as the Obama administration continues the Bush regime practice. Protests across Pakistan have become very broad and rebellious.
- Since 2005, thousands of Afghan civilians have been killed by US-NATO forces, mostly by air strikes.
- On August 22, 2008 in the village of Azizabad, 91 civilians were killed in a 6-hour air and ground assault by US forces, including 61 children and 15 women.
- US aerial attacks on wedding parties have been a hallmark of the occupation, since the US-NATO forces consider any large gathering of Afghans inherently hostile.
- The Obama administration is going on a diplomatic offensive. It has floated the idea of uniting “good” sections of Taliban against the “extreme” sections and Al Qaeda. It has met covertly with Iran in Europe in recent weeks, and it will attend a summit on Afghanistan in Moscow, along with China and Iran. Clearly, a re-tooling and re-alignment of the imperialist project is in the works.
- In Iraq, Obama plans to reduce US combat forces gradually over the next year and a half—sending many of them to Afghanistan. The US plan is to leave 50,000 troops in Iraq indefinitely. US intentions regarding the 100,000 “civilian” contractors have not yet been announced. Similarly, there is no indication that the scores of US military installations across Iraq will be reduced.
Some History
The US government’s stated goals have changed over the years, but they all differ greatly from their actual strategic interests in the region. The key spin arguments for their wars and occupations of Afghanistan over many decades have included opposing communism; defeating anti-US Islamic forces; liberate the people particularly women from fundamentalist rule; eliminating terrorists (Al-Qaeda); wage and win a modern “Crusade”-like “clash of civilizations”; and, finally, bring “peace and stability” to the country.
In reality, the war in Afghanistan is not a “good war,’ but is about defending and expanding US imperialist interests in the Middle East and Central Asia using the pretext of the “war on terror.” The central goals of the US and its NATO partners include ensuring imperialist control of the region, controlling the region’s abundant oil and other energy supplies and pipelines, defeating anti-US Islamic fundamentalist movements, and overthrowing or disarming states which resist imperialist control.
The roots of the current war in Afghanistan go back to the decision of the Carter administration in 1979 to secretly start supplying the mujahadeen in Afghanistan with weapons and military equipment, with the intent of drawing the Soviet Union into a Vietnam-style quagmire. During the 1980s, the US, through Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, poured tens of billions into building up anti-Soviet Islamic fundamentalist forces, including the Taliban in the southern Pushtun area and the warlords of the Northern Alliance. During these years, the Afghan people were pawns on the strategic chessboard of the imperialist US and the imperialist USSR.
After the defeat of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the Taliban as victors in a civil war that ended in 1996, the US worked closely with the Taliban, trying to negotiate pipeline deals with Unocal and other oil companies connecting the former Soviet Central Asian republics with the Indian Ocean. The US started to turn against the Taliban after the bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 by al-Qaeda, which was based in Afghanistan. Plans to intensify opposition to the Taliban were on Bush’s desk in September 2001.
The US government was waiting for the opportunity to restructure the whole region—starting with Afghanistan and then Iraq—when the September 11 attacks took place. When US military forces failed to achieve a decisive victory in Afghanistan, their attention turned to more strategic, oil-rich Iraq.
With the lowering of the insurgent threat in Iraq and the reduction (by elimination and dispersal) of the Sunni population in Shia areas, the US is now focusing once more on Afghanistan under a new Democratic president.
Like the Bush strategy, the Obama approach is military in scope, but it involves new regional political components. These include placing renewed pressure on the NATO forces to increase their troop levels and send them into combat areas, trying to isolate sections of the Taliban by sending out feelers to Russia (which has its own imperialist interests in the region) and Iran, building up the Afghan army firmly under US control, and splitting the Taliban. However, each of these approaches has built-in contradictions and may blow up in the face of the US government.
The Karzai Government
The US government has invested billions in economic and military assistance and substantial political capital in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, headed by Hamid Karzai, an Afghan businessman formerly based in the U.S. In reality, while the US touts the Karzai regime as “democratic,” the US has replaced the Taliban with another brutal fundamentalist state of its own design. This government has grown more unstable and isolated, and its reach is limited to no more than a third of the country.
• The Northern Alliance and other warlords on which the Karzai regime is based have kept many Taliban-era restrictions on women. In the rural areas, women are still forced to wear the sack-like burqa and cannot travel without male escorts.
• According to the UN, 70-80% of Afghan women are forced into marriage, and 57% are married before they are 16 years old.
• After a 4-minute trial, a journalism student was sentenced to death for “blasphemy”—for showing classmates a downloaded article critical of Islam.
• Afghan civilians are subject to arbitrary arrests, rape, home invasions, land occupation and severe press restrictions. Many prominent Afghan commanders, officials and former mujahedeen are implicated in these abuses.
• Along with US forces, the Karzai regime is carrying out torture of suspected insurgents and dissidents at the Bagram air force base.
• Important government officials and one of Karzai’s brothers are heavily involved in drug smuggling. In 7 years under US occupation, Afghanistan has become the source of 93% of the world’s opium, from which heroin is made. Today, the Afghan economy is mainly composed of drugs and foreign aid.
• In this country of 32 million people, life expectancy is 44 years. 70% of the Afghan people live on less than $2 per day.
All in all, life for the vast majority of Aghanis is no different under the Karzai government than under the Taliban.
Feeding off popular hatred of the US-NATO forces, the Taliban is establishing their medieval theocratic dictates over more of southern Afghanistan. Faced with this reality on the ground, the Karzai government, the US, and the UK have been making overtures to Taliban commanders through Saudi Arabian contacts. This creates the possibility that the Taliban, or some parts of it, will be brought into the Karzai regime, creating a consolidated fundamentalist government that will bring increased oppression and misery to the people of Afghanistan.
At the same time, popular opposition to the Karzai regime, particularly in the cities, has been growing. Demonstrations have been held against land grabs, torture, and especially protesting the US air raids and ground assaults that killed over 800 Afghan civilians, mainly women and children, in 2008.
The Pakistan Connection
The Afghan war is expanding to Pakistan. Under great pressure from the US, the Pakistani army has dispatched 120,000 troops to the areas bordering Afghanistan to confront the Taliban and Pakistan’s home-grown Taliban. The close coordination between the two militaries can be seen in the establishment of a US Special Forces camp into Pakistan, training Pakistani commandos to join the war in the border areas.
Islamic fundamentalist forces in Pakistan are gaining more support in reaction to the Predator strikes and to brutal measures employed by the Pakistani government in the border areas and throughout the country. Most Pakistanis are opposed to the US-NATO occupation of Afghanistan and to US incursions into Pakistan.
Whether a military government (until recently), or civilian under President Zardari, Pakistan’s government is heavily dependent on US military and economic aid.
At the same time, elements in the Pakistani government and military, particularly its intelligence apparatus, have close ties to the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban. This is in part an “insurance policy” for Pakistan should the Taliban come to power again. The Indian government–which is the Pakistani government chief antagonist, and is the US’ main strategic ally in the region– has established close contacts with the Karzai government. A sign of the difficulties the US is facing in bringing the Pakistani government fully on board is a recent truce it negotiated with a fundamentalist group in the northwest that allowed it to start imposing strict Sharia law in the area it controls.
Support the People’s Struggles Against Imperialism
From the beginning days of global imperialism to the invasions and missiles today, this region has been caught between contending colonialists and all manner of repressive forces. The US government and its allies have wrapped themselves in the fantasy that has driven all empires which have gone before—that they can conquer and suppress and own these lands and peoples. That quest has brought generation after generation of the people through horrible suffering and devastation, but even in their darkest hours they have continued to resist and fight for a new day. In both Afghanistan and Pakistan, democratic and revolutionary forces will have openings, due to the reactionary nature of both these regimes and the fundamentalists, to develop the struggle for national and social liberation. And the prospects for today’s imperialist project will prove no more successful than the earlier would-be conquerors.
Our opposition to the US war is based on solidarity with the Afghan and Pakistani peoples. Once the US-NATO militaries have been forced out, the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan will have the job of dealing with their own oppressors. International solidarity against imperialism is the key to the future.
March 21, 2009
International League of People’s Struggle, (Bay Area Grassroots Organizing Committee)
ilpsbayareagrassroots@gmail.com
Collision Course Media, San Francisco
El Salvador and US
Written by the National Executive Committee of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization/El Camino
The electoral victory in El Salvador of Mauricio Funes, candidate of the leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) has immense historical and political significance. The FMLN was a guerrilla movement that in all probability could have won control of El Salvador had it not been for the massive US intervention in the early 1980s. Nevertheless, the FMLN fought on until a peace settlement in the early 1990s. Despite the peace settlement, right-wing forces based in the notorious ARENA party continued to dominate the political scene until this election.
Funes is described by many commentators as a moderate, in part because he was not a combatant during the Salvadoran civil war. This description also probably relates to efforts by Funes to reach out to the US government and assure them that he is not planning on a radical reconstruction of El Salvador. It may also reflect the political situation in El Salvador because despite his victory, the FMLN does not hold a majority in the legislature.
There are many challenges facing President Funes. Along with leaders in other parts of Central America, and the Caribbean for that matter, they find themselves with economies historically deformed first by colonialism and then by modern imperialism. Compounding this has been the domination, at least in Central America, of thoroughly reactionary classes that have been prepared to take any and all steps to ensure their dominance. Though these classes may, in several cases, no longer occupy the Presidential seat, they have not gone away and continue to do what they can to undermine any and all moves toward the Left by the left-leaning governments that have emerged.
The Funes victory holds an additional significance in that, as opposed to the last Salvadorean election where the Bush administration effectively blackmailed the country into keeping the FMLN out, the Obama government remained relatively quiet. Though many progressives correctly wanted a forthright statement by the Obama administration of a commitment to non-intervention in the internal affairs of El Salvador, the Administration apparently chose to simply remain silent and let their silence convey a message subject to interpretation. Better and worse could have played itself out, but this is nevertheless an important lesson for US progressives and anti-imperialists: our voice must not remain silent in the face of even the possibility of imperialist intimidation of other countries.
El Salvador, in order to follow a progressive path, will need to undertake substantial economic and political reforms. These reforms will be resisted by reactionary forces on the ground and they—the reactionaries—will undoubtedly receive various forms of assistance from governmental and non-governmental players in the USA. In this sense, the Salvadorean struggle will continue to be international. Why? First, we in the USA will need to keep an eye on the US government as well as the political Right to ensure that they stay out of El Salvador’s internal affairs. We will need to highlight any funny business that is undertaken, including in the form of groups that mask themselves as allegedly being concerned about human rights. We, in the USA, continue to owe an obligation to the people of El Salvador as a result of the atrocities that the USA imposed on that country.
The second reason for the struggle being international is that, as identified by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, it is very difficult for smaller nations to operate and thrive in the current world situation. The absence of an alternative and revolutionary bloc, or even a superpower to rival the USA, makes it difficult for smaller nations to assert their independence. Even with excellent leadership they are often forced to compromise, if not cave into the demands of imperialism. In that sense, the building of regional trade blocs in the global South are a potentially important instrument in order to assert sovereignty. President Chavez has proposed ALBA, the Bolivarian Alternative, as the sort of bloc that needs to be constituted in Latin America. This question will be a matter for the new Salvadorean president to consider, as other leaders in Central America and the Caribbean are doing.
We, in the USA, need to greet with enthusiasm the FMLN’s victory. It is not enough to celebrate. We need to make sure that, at a minimum, the Obama administration does no harm when it comes to El Salvador. If we are successful in that, the people of El Salvador will figure out the rest.
Indigenous-Labour Solidarity and the Six Nations Land Dispute: An Interview With Rolf Gerstenberger
Rolf Gerstenberger is President of the United Steelworkers Union Local 1005 in Hamilton, Ontario. Members of his union local were some of the first non-natives to answer the call for support from Six Nations after the Ontario Provincial Police invaded the territory and attacked the peaceful occupation at Douglas Creek. He was interviewed on video at the barricade in May 2006.
Our local first came out here after a week of local media propaganda about how “something has to be done” about the stand taken by the Native people here at Douglas Creek. The local media were trying to whip up support for the police or the army to move in and clean them out. So we came the first day with our flags and about twenty of our members to lend support.
For us, supporting Native peoples’ hereditary rights and their land claims is a motherhood issue. It’s been 500 years of injustice done to the Native people; it’s never been resolved. They had been promised certain things and the Crown never upheld their promise. They had almost a million acres of land, and no sooner did the Crown promise it in 1784, they started taking it away. Today they have less than five percent of the land still available to them.
Our position was that you can’t solve this question with police attacks, or the army coming in, or shooting someone, or arresting someone, or making it a lawand-order issue. It’s a political question that has to be settled politically, through negotiations. So when the OPP riot police moved in and arrested 16 of the Native people, attacked them, beat them up, tazered them, had assault rifles out, and thought they could just clean up this small group of “trouble makers,” then, of course, the Native people took measures to prevent that from happening again. They asked for people to come out to just be witnesses in case the police attack. So our members have been coming either as a group or just on their own just to be around and support the Native people in their just demands.
NO CHOICE
I got lots of calls from union members who live in this area. Basically, my argument to them was, first of all, they all have to agree that we don’t want to settle this through law and order, by beating someone, by beating the Native people up, or by shooting them, or arresting them. There was a general view that that shouldn’t happen.
It was interesting because every one of the callers said, “What the Native people are doing is illegal, this is an illegal occupation.” The more I discussed with them, as far as the history of it, it turns out that all the residents of Caledonia know that there’s a land dispute. Twenty or 30 years ago, the reason you could buy houses cheaply in Caledonia was be-cause you weren’t really sure if you owned the land or not! So it turns out everyone in Caledonia knows that; they may not have liked it, but they know that this is… you know, the six miles on each side of the Grand River, is Native land. They knew that. And then they would say, “Well why didn’t the Native people raise this issue before?” And then we would tell them that the Natives did, but unfortunately the courts won’t listen to them and it isn’t until they take a stand that the government is forced to deal with it. And then of course when they do take a stand, like they did at Oka, and Ipperwash, and Gustafsen Lake, they’re attacked. So it’s not an easy thing for the Native people to take this step, but at the end of the day they have no choice.
It always comes down to whether you know the history or not. Hopefully this will be settled through negotiations. The problem is there are about 600 unresolved land claims in Canada right now, and that may open a can of worms. So this is what the government has to think about when they’re settling this problem. But it’s about time that these things are settled. Five hundred years is a long time to not settle a question as basic as this.
Statement by the Irish National Liberation Army Regarding Accusations of Criminal Activity
The Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) is the armed wing of the Irish Republican Socialist Movement, which also includes the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP) and the Republican Socialist Youth Movement. The IRSM is both republican and socialist and stands in the revolutionary political traditions of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Connolly. The INLA has also been observing a state of cease-fire since the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. While rejecting the GFA on a class unity and anti-imperialist basis, they are also quite right to take the position that the conditions for armed struggle do not exist in Ireland at this moment, and as such have advocated for political, rather than military, opposition to the Irish status quo, which was created by British Imperialism. Unlike colloborator groups like the former Provisional IRA and Provisional Sinn Féin, the INLA has never disarmed.
This statement regard accusations that have been made against the INLA concerning criminal activity, especially involvement in the drug trade.
We would like to place on public record the position of the Irish National Liberation Army on the continued accusation of criminality made against the INLA from a range of sources, including the British and Irish Governments the IMC, the PSNI and the Gardai, the Media and Provisional Sinn Fein. A series of briefing against the Irish National Liberation Army have included lies distortions and inaccuracies.
Drugs Trade
The Irish National Liberation Army has no involvement in the drug trades. We have taken action against those who use the name of the INLA as a cover for their own rotten drug dealing and will do so in the future if necessary.
In the North West of Ireland two individuals who had never any connection with our movement were warned to desist from their activities and were subsequently dealt with. One had set up a so called “INLA gang” as a cover for drug dealing and intimidation and recruited a number of impressionable young people. The other had used the name “Irish National Liberation Army” in connection with his drug dealing activities and extorted money from a number of families in the Limavady area.
In a number of areas we have, in conjunction with local communities, closed down a number of drug gangs preying on working class communities. We don’t turn a blind eye to drug dealing in areas in return for a percentage cut, for to do so would be to condone the drugs trade.
But we recognise that the drug problem is a complex issue and that it requires a multi agency approach in order to hold that problem at bay. The Irish National Liberation Army recognise that it cannot solve the drug problem. That can only be done by a united community response against the dealers. However the use by British state agencies of those same drug dealers as informers, touts and provocateurs against republicanism means that the drug culture will continue to poison working class communities.
Where evidence is given to us of serious accusations against our members we investigate. If our membership deviates from our policy they are dealt with. But it is worth pointing out that no past or current member has been convicted for drug offences while a member of the movement.
However we do take accusations seriously and as a result of evidence presented to us are currently investigating activities of people associated with us in a major Irish city. As a result pending the outcome of those enquires we have stood down a number of people.
Contract Killing
It has also been alleged by those closely associated with provisional Sinn Fein that the Irish National Liberation Army and indeed a prominent member of the IRSP and a former long tern political prisoner, was involved in a contract killing in the North West against a sheep farmer. We utterly refute this accusation. Indeed we go so far as to say they who made the accusations should look closer to home.
Tiger kidnappings.
Accusations have been made that the Irish National Liberation Army have been involved in a series of so-called Tiger Kidnappings in North Belfast. We are aware that there are a number of criminal gangs have been involved in these. Those gangs contain individuals who a number of years ago were dismissed from the movement with ignominy. The Irish National Liberation Army had no hand or part in those kidnappings. We have warned those involved to desist from their activities
So-called “Dissident” Activity.
We also note that in these comments and briefings we are referred to as “dissidents”. In so far as we disagree with the current political set up and the continued existence of a British administration based on Stormont, yes we do dissent. No republican can do other. We have always rejected the Good Friday Agreement but we have only encouraged political opposition to it.
We are not and will not be, in any military alliance with other armed republican organisations.
We strictly adhere to the position as outlined in our 1998 ceasefire statement. “-the conditions for armed struggle do not exist”——–“It is now time to silence the guns and allow the working classes the time and opportunity to advance their demands and their needs. See (endnote 1). Since 1998 we have encouraged people to engage in political as opposed to military activity. In the current political circumstances we believe that is the only viable option. That is one of the reasons we have encourage Republican Socialists to engage with other republicans in broad front groups such as the Forum for Republican Unity to pose Republican Alternatives to the current political set up.
The IMC
We utterly reject the stream of erroneous reports from the IMC (see end note ii) a body that believes Ardoyne is in West Belfast. (Page 5 IMC Report 20). The continued regurgitation of gossip, speculation, half-truths and British propaganda emanating from that body is worthy of the gutter press. For the record the Irish National Liberation Army is not in the process of targeting, encouraging young people to engage in inter community conflict or drug dealing. On the contrary we have totally endorsed the activities of our ex-prisoners through Teach Na Failte to lessen sectarian tensions at interfaces to support cross community work with young people and to encourage working class solidarity. Our ex-prisoners are active in reaching out to all working class communities. A range of community groups, voluntary organizations and Government agencies can confirm this.( Not that we expect the IMC to actually investigate this.)
The Irish National Liberation Army
Finally the leadership of the Irish National Liberation Army re-affirms its total commitment to the 1998 ceasefire. Any actions we take or have taken are to defend the integrity of our movement, protect our membership and ensure that vulnerable working class communities have some defence against sectarian attacks. We pose no threat to loyalist or unionist working class communities.
End statement
Why Protest Vancouver’s 2010 Olympics? by Gord Hill of Georgia Straight
No2010 Note: this article was intended for a less politicized, middle-class audience, who are the Georgia Straight’s primary market. The section on the US black civil rights movement does not mention the growing black rebellion, including riots, that accompanied non-violent civil disobedience just prior to the government enacting reforms. And the fact that there is a black president will mean as much change for black citizens as did the arrival of black mayors and police chiefs.
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There are many reasons to protest the Olympic Games. It is a multi-billion dollar industry run by an elite clique who sell the five rings to the highest bidder, using sports as a commodity and a platform for corporate advertising. Their main goal is profit, in collaboration with their partners: government, local organizing committees, and corporations (construction, real estate, tourism, TV, and media, as well as sponsors).
The Olympics have a long history of association with fascists, colonialists, and authoritarian regimes (i.e., the 1936 Hitler Olympics, the 1968 Mexico City Olympic massacre, and the 2008 Beijing Summer Games). Since the 1980s, they have displaced over three million people and contributed to massive increases in homelessness (as we’ve seen in Vancouver).
Due to the massive construction projects of Olympics, from venues to infrastructure, there is both widespread environmental destruction, as well as huge public debts. As part of security operations, police, military, and intelligence agencies receive millions of dollars for new personnel, equipment, weapons, et cetera—strengthening the creeping police states we see around the world (and south of the border) and further eroding our alleged “freedoms” and civil liberties.
Some naysayers ask: Why protest since protests don’t change anything, and the Games are gonna happen anyway? Their question is based on the apparent futility of protest.
To begin with, protests are but one tactic used by social movements. They help raise awareness and mobilize people. The U.S. black civil-rights movement started out as small protests and grew into a mass campaign of civil disobedience. This forced the government to enact reforms and to desegregate the South. Protests weren’t the only activities carried out by the civil-rights movement. They also organized forums, held workshops on legal rights, registered black voters, printed newsletters, et cetera.
The protests and civil disobedience were what made change both possible and necessary, because not only did they draw international attention to racism in the U.S., they also made it impossible for the apartheid system in the South to go on as it had before. By the 1970s and ’80s there were black mayors, chiefs of police, et cetera. Today, there is a black president.
People who say protests don’t change anything don’t know history. And those who say the Olympics can’t be fought don’t even know their own local history. Over the last three years, the anti-Olympic movement has forced Vanoc off the streets, to the point where it no longer holds large, public ceremonies (as it did in 2007). Anytime the organizing committee does have events, it requires a large policing operation to secure it. This is because we have successfully used direct action to disrupt Olympic events.
The effectiveness of direct action and protest can be seen in the struggle for social housing in Vancouver. This campaign increased in 2006 when the growing ranks of homeless began to become a major political issue, linked to Olympic-related construction, gentrification, and tourism.
By the fall of 2006, housing and anti-poverty groups were having large, noisy protests and began occupying empty hotels. Over two dozen people were arrested, many members of the Anti-Poverty Committee. These actions raised the profile of homelessness and dislocation.
Since 2007, the various levels of government, along with Vanoc, have had to respond with measures to limit the loss of low-income housing units, and to appear as though they are addressing the issue. By 2008, the homelessness crisis, along with the Olympic Village fiasco, determined the outcome of the Vancouver civic election.
Homelessness became a public issue because people organized, educated, and agitated for change. Without the political pressure exerted by the protest groups, without community resistance, the situation for the poor and the homeless would be far worse than it is today.
Why protest 2010? Because as history shows us, the limits of tyrants are set by those whom they attempt to tyrannize.
Gord Hill is a member of the Olympic Resistance Network and maintains No2010.com. He is also an artist and carver. On February 12, 2007, he was arrested after storming the stage at the unveiling of the Olympic countdown clock.
See also:
- David Eby: Looking forward to civil liberties threats during the 2010 Olympics
- Laura Track: Downtown Eastside residents lose out in the 2010 Olympics
- Maureen Bader: Olympic security budget will create a big brother legacy
Anti-2010 Activists Disrupt a Meeting Between VANOC and the Assembly of First Nations, March 8th 2009
The Assembly of First Nations is at the Intercontinental Hotel to promote the Olympics and make deals with its corporate sponsors. But, grassroots movements in indigenous communities are saying no to the Olympics. They see their land being irreparably damaged by expanding Olympic developments.
The Olympics have brought a frenzy of development to BC – the Olympics are the new gold rush bringing displacement and destruction to indigenous communities and culture. The Province of BC was carved out of land that was never surrendered by the indigenous peoples, and was never part of any treaty. Today, most of the province remains as unceded land. Despite this, the government continues to sell, lease and allow development on Native land for mining, logging, oil & gas, ski resorts, and other industries.
The Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) has gone to great lengths to hide the negative impacts that the Olympics will have on indigenous peoples, by obscuring the facts on their participation in these games. VANOC would suggest that participation means appropriating and marketing indigenous imagery and culture, and also making a series of multi-million dollar business deals that funnel money through Band Councils.
Pictures From Last Monday’s Israeli Apartheid March
Well, I finally my SD card reader up and runing again, so, as was promised last Tuesday, here are pictures from the rally and march last Monday that we at Students for Palestinian Rights and Laurier 4 Palestine held in order to kick off Israeli Apartheid Week.
The first set of photos are mine, and are of the rally and speeches before the march itself. I am the grey in army shade green clothes, Che took and carrying the Mohawk flag. My partner took all the shots, except for the one with her in it (she is the pink jacket holding my flag), which was taken by me.
Because my partner left with our camera before the march itself, I have no shots of that portion of the day’s events, so I the next set of shots were taken by my friends Gina and Farah, who are both involved with Laruer 4 Palestine
Gina’s Shots
Farah’s Shots
Israeli State to Level Palestinian Homes in East Jerusalem by Natasha Persaud
Demolitions part and parcel of decades of ethnic cleansing
The Israeli government is set to demolish 88 homes in the Al-Bustan area of Silwan in East Jerusalem. The demolitions will displace 1,500 Palestinians.
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The occupation government is going forward with plans approved last June by the Israeli Interior Ministry’s Building and Planning Committee. City workers, escorted by Israeli border police, were seen on Feb. 22 surveying homes, taking measurements and photographs and drawing plans. The demolition comes at the same time as 1,300 homes for Israeli settlers are being built in East Jerusalem.
The eviction notices have sparked outrage amid Palestinians in the West Bank. A one-day strike was staged to protest the Israeli move.
Demolition orders have been issued on the pretext that Palestinian homes were built without permits. The supposed “lack of permits” is merely an attempt to place a legal veil over Israel’s criminal policy of forced removal and ethnic cleansing. Requiring Palestinians to hold permits issued by illegal Israeli occupiers in order live on their own land is absurd.
By contrast, over the course of decades, Israel has authorized the construction of numerous Israeli settlements on Palestinian lands. Even Israeli settlements without permits are often left alone.
According to the Israeli Coalition Against Home Demolitions, 18,147 Palestinian homes were demolished by Israel between 1967 and 2006. This figure also does not include homes that have been destroyed or significantly damaged by Israeli air or artillery strikes. B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, reports that 89 homes were bulldozed in 2008 alone in East Jerusalem, leaving hundreds homeless.
The recent evictions and demolitions are simply a continuation of the 1948 Western-backed Zionist military campaign that brutally forced more than 750,000 Palestinians off their homeland.
The expansion of settlements in and around Jerusalem is very important to the apartheid state of Israel. Roughly 245,000 Palestinians and 200,000 Israelis live in East Jerusalem. The Palestinian population in all of Palestine now accounts for roughly half of the total population, if not more, and is growing faster than the Jewish population. To the Zionists, a majority Palestinian population is seen as a threat to the exclusivist nature of the Jewish state.
Decades of coordinated destruction and displacement
On Nov. 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 181 to partition the colonial British Mandate of Palestine into two states: one Jewish and one Arab. Palestinian Arabs, who at the time comprised two-thirds of the population, were not consulted prior to the decision.
Despite owning less than 6 percent of the land, the Zionists were awarded 56 percent of Palestine by Resolution 181. On the Palestinian side, there was anger and rebellion. As all parties knew ahead of time, partition meant war. Fighting broke out immediately.
The better-armed Zionist military and terrorist organizations began to systematically raze and wipe out whole villages. By May 15, 1948, when Israel’s independence was proclaimed, 300,000 Palestinians were living and dying in abominable conditions of exile in Lebanon, Gaza, Syria and the Jordan Valley. By the end of that year, the number of dispossessed Palestinians had grown to 750,000.
The Israeli military strategy was to not only to conquer land, but also to drive out as much of the Palestinian population as possible. Nearly 80 percent of the Arab population was forcibly “transferred” to make way for the new Israeli state.
In the 1967 war, Israel seized the remainder of historic Palestine: the West Bank and Gaza. This created 300,000 more refugees, many of whom were second-time exiles, having already fled the Israeli attack 19 years earlier. Settlers now occupy numerous homes that were left behind in Jerusalem by Palestinians expelled in 1948 and 1967.
None of the Palestinians driven out nor their descendants, now numbering more than 6 million, have ever been allowed to return or been compensated for their loss. This injustice remains despite U.N. Resolution 194, passed in December 1948, which stated unequivocally that all refugees must be allowed to return to their homes and have their lands and other property restored to them. Resolution 194 has been reaffirmed in numerous U.N. resolutions over the past six decades.
From the beginning, the policy of the Israeli state has been one of continuous expansion. Ben Gurion, the first Israeli prime minister, summed up this policy soon after the creation of Israel: “[N]ow the issue at hand is conquest. … As for setting the borders—it’s an open-ended matter.” This policy has manifested itself in a succession of wars waged against the Arab peoples.
The U.S. and Israeli governments have ignored the U.N. resolution for more than half a century. While forcibly preventing the return of any exiled Palestinians, the new racist Israeli state proclaimed that any person living anywhere in the world who had proof of one Jewish grandparent—regardless of whether they or their family ever stepped foot in historic Palestine—had the “right of return” to Israel, where they would be granted immediate citizenship in the new, exclusivist Jewish state.
The Israeli colonial-settler state would not be possible without an imperialist sponsor—first Britain and now the United States. The Middle East is rich in natural resources, particularly oil—yet its history is also rich with resistance against foreign domination. In exchange for massive military and economic aid coupled with political support, Israel serves as a garrison state for the projection of U.S. military power into this geo-strategically precious region of the world.
Following the Israeli massacre in Gaza in December and January, the new home demolitions are yet another vivid reminder to the people of the world: The U.S. and Israeli states are guilty of a calculated campaign aimed at forcing the Palestinians to either accept apartheid or outright extermination as a people. All progressives must continue to mobilize in support of the Palestinian struggle against home demolitions, racism and occupation.
Lousiana Legislative Attack on Science Sparks Opposition by Andrew Cheramie
Leading scientific group announces boycott of New Orleans
In February, a leading scientific group, the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, announced a boycott of Louisiana, citing a 2008 law that allows for creationism to be taught in the public schools. The 2,300-member group will no longer hold its 2010 convention in New Orleans, but in Salt Lake City instead.
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Gov. Bobby Jindal signed Louisiana Senate Bill 733 into law in the summer of 2008. The law allows public school teachers to “use supplemental textbooks and other instructional materials” in order to have “open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.”
The law claims it “shall not be construed to promote any religious doctrine, promote discrimination for or against a particular set of religious beliefs, or promote discrimination for or against religion or non-religion.” Notwithstanding its claims, the legislation is clearly designed to do otherwise. It appropriates language such as “critical thinking,” “logical analysis” and “open and objective discussion”— the backbones of science—to mischaracterize its anti-scientific basis.
Creationism is not a scientific theory. A scientific theory is the generalization of scientific observation that has been tested with such reliable results as to be considered a reasonable explanation for an observed phenomenon.
Darwin’s theory of evolution, on the other hand, is a true scientific theory. It has not only been tested, but also repeatedly reaffirmed. Technological developments since Darwin’s time have led to the discovery of DNA and leaps in the understanding of genetics, all of which have added to the body of evidence supporting the theory of evolution.
Creationism has different monikers—intelligent design, specified complexity and the fine-tuned universe, among others—but it cannot be called a scientific theory. Advocates of this idea seize on phenomena that have not yet been explained by evolutionary theory as evidence for the work of a god-like being.
The Louisiana law is a clear example of the Wedge Doctrine championed by the creationist Discovery Institute. Unable to directly confront scientific claims, creationists instead introduce controversy and doubt in order to open the door for gradually more overtly religion-based curricula across the board.
The conservative Christian Louisiana Family Forum, whose 1997 bill to introduce creationism in classrooms was defeated by the ACLU, penned the new Louisiana legislation.
The real purpose of these laws, and the organizations that advocate for them, is to strengthen Christian fundamentalist arguments that not only challenge science but promote a broad reactionary agenda. Right-wing Christian fundamentalism has been used as a weapon against gains made in the struggle for women’s and LGBT rights. It has fostered racist and anti-Muslim propaganda to support U.S. imperialist wars.
Interestingly, Gov. Jindal is a Brown biology graduate. Above all, Jindal is a savvy politician who is not about to let science get between him and his right-wing political base. Jindal has been a consistent opponent of same-sex marriage and a woman’s right to choose, very much in line with the conservative Christian forces that have been promoting “intelligent design.”
In Louisiana, the Department of Education hopes to achieve a high school graduation rate of 80 percent by 2016. Those students have a right to a materialist education in science. The government of Louisiana should focus on the well-being of its citizen, not on subverting science to strengthen right-wing ideology. Louisiana should use its wealth to ensure that all have a chance at a productive life and intellectual fulfillment.
Palestine: What You Need to Know About Israel’s “Colonies”
A four-minute video by Anna Baltzer, Jewish-American volunteer with International Womens Peace Service in the West Bank.
Anna Baltzer, a young Jewish American, went to the West Bank to discover the realities of daily life for Palestinians under the occupation. What she found would change her outlook on the conflict forever. She wrote this book to give voice to the stories of the people who welcomed her with open arms as their lives crumbled around them. For five months, Baltzer lived and worked with farmers, Palestinian and Israeli activists, and the families of political prisoners, traveling with them across endless checkpoints and roadblocks to reach hospitals, universities, and olive groves.
Baltzer witnessed firsthand the environmental devastation brought on by expanding settlements and outposts and the destruction wrought by Israels Security Fence, which separates many families from each other, their communities, their land, and basic human services. What emerges from Baltzers journal is not a sensationalist tale of suicide bombers and conspiracies, but a compelling and inspiring description of the trials of daily life under the occupation. Anna Baltzer is a Jewish American graduate of Columbia University, Fulbright scholar, and two-time volunteer with the International Womens Peace Service in the West Bank, where she documented human rights abuses and supported the nonviolent resistance movement to the occupation.
Flobots – We Are Winning
Rival gangsters sit down to plan an after school program.
A religious fanatic posts footage of an interfaith service project.
A group of teenage boys watches a video of a father playing catch with his son.
An adult film star paints thumbnail portraits of elderly couples fully clothed an smiling.
A record executive records a demo of his apology.
A policeman makes reverse 911 calls instructing residents to take to the streets.
A patriarch reports for duty.
She’s wearing an orange jumpsuit and holding a picket sign.
She’s ashamed of her birthplace, but retreat is not an option.
Women and Children
Front line
Log on
Tune in
Stand and be counted, wounded, stationed
In the belly of the vulture watch your back
Theres no civilians
Women, Children
Front line listen
Consider this a distant early warning
The fires imminent
Pollution gathering dust particles
Funneling through smokestacks, airways, bandwidth
This information tube fed
Check the labels
Delete the virus
Alert the masses.
Butterfly wing cross wings. send black hawks toward hurricane survivors.
Roses sprout from empty lots and sidewalk cracks.
Pacifist gorillas move undetected through concrete jungles.
New forms are beginning to take shape.
Once occupied minds are activating.
People are waking up!
The insurgency is alive and well.
Rise of the flobots
Portrait of
The new American insurgent
Rattle and shake the foundations of the world order
Assembly line incent, resist, refuse
Inform, create
Direct loved one’s to the trenches
Suit up forge rubble into fortress’s
Plaster, cloth, aluminum
Broken porcelain
Rusted platinum
Burn blood stains from decompressed diamonds
Hammer the battle cry into braille studded armor.
We are building up a new world.
Do not sit idly by.
Do not remain neutral.
Do not rely on this broadcast alone.
We are only as strong as our signal.
There is a war going on for your mind.
If you are thinking, you are winning.
Resistance is victory.
Defeat is impossible.
Your weapons are already in hand.
Reach within you and find the means by which to gain your freedom.
Fight with tools.
Your fate, and that of everyone you know
Depends on it.
PFLP Affirms that PLO Membership Does Not Mean Acceptance of the “Two-State Solution”
From the website of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a revolutionary Marxist-Leninist organization fighting for national liberation and socialism in Palestine.
The PFLP does not accept the “two-state solution” as the final goal for the Palestinian people or the Palestinian cause, but instead views the strategic goal as the liberation of all of Palestine, said Comrade Marwan Fahoum, “Abu Sami,” a member of the Political Bureau of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine said on March 2, 2009.
The PFLP’s acceptance of the establishment a Palestinian state on all territories occupied in 1967 with Jerusalem as its capital, and the return of all refugees to their homes from which they were driven, is part of the only acceptable solution to progress towards achieving the strategic goal, the liberation of all of Palestine, said Comrade Fahoum.
Comrade Fahoum stated firmly that this does not mean in any way that the PFLP accepts the “two-state solution,” as a final goal for the Palestinian people or the Palestinian cause, and it does not mean that the PFLP accepts in any way the commitments of Oslo and subsequent “agreements” including the roadmap, the Annapolis agreement, or any other such products of the so-called “peace process.”
This statement came in response to the statement of PA President Mahmoud Abbas, Abu Mazen, stating that all PLO member organizations, those currently in the PLO and those that will join, as well as all factions taking part in a government of national reconciliation, must commit themselves to the “two-state solution” and the acceptance of the Oslo agreements and other “agreements” of the “peace process.” Comrade Fahoum stated that any confusion must be cleared up about the presence of the PFLP in the PLO, stating that the PLO is the overarching framework of the Palestinian people in all of its components, but that does not preclude member organizations’ and factions’ own vision of the nature of the Arab-Zionist conflict and what is necessary to end that conflict.
Comrade Fahoum explained that the PFLP sees the Arab-Zionist conflict as one that cannot be completed or ended with the establishment of the Palestinian state, but only with the establishment of a secular democracy on all of the land of historic Palestine, with equality for all its people.
From Palestine to Turtle Island: There is No Justice on Stolen Land, Part 2
Yesterday, Monday March 2nd, I was given a bullhorn for the first time and given a pretty wide berth to speak my mind on political issues to a crowd that had assembled to protest apartheid in Israel. The event was a march to kick off Israeli Apartheid Week across Canada and around the world and I was one of three people delivering speeches before we set off on the march itself, which eventually took a snaking path from the campus of the University of Waterloo (which I attend), to the nearby Wilfred Laurier University. While the other speeches dealt with why it was that we were marching and protesting, mine took a slightly different direction, speaking from the perspective of an indigenous person living in Canada I compared the historical and current policies of Canada concerning Indian peoples with the apartheid practices of South Africa and Israel.
Anyway, Sunday night I posted what I was going to say, and in light of not yet being able to upload my video and photos of the event (which will be soon, fingers crossed), I am posting the finalized version of my speech, which I completed literally about five minutes before I got up and spoke.
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Pōsōh, Sekoh, Boozhoo, O-si-yo, Yá’át’ééh, Hau, Marhaba, Bonjour and Hello
As we gather here today, and throughout this week to assert our opposition to colonialism and apartheid, and to demonstrate our solidarity with struggles for dignity and self-determination of the people of Palestine, as an indigenous person living here in Waterloo, I believe that we cannot speak meaningfully about apartheid in Israeli without speaking first about the realities of apartheid here in Canada. The truth is that Canada’s reservation system and treatment of Indigenous peoples was closely studied by the planners of apartheid in South Africa, though this fact has become mostly lost in the chapters of Canadian history. More recently, many defenders of Israel have argued that “Canada’s values are Israel’s values”, and you know what, they’re right: the dispossession and theft of Palestinian lands, and the creation of Palestinian open-air prisons and Bantustans, mimic Canada’s own historical policies.
From its very foundations, Canada has been based on the theft of Indigenous lands, and the genocide and displacement of Indigenous peoples. In crucial ways, the Canadian state’s treatment of Indigenous peoples, historically and currently, can be described as an apartheid system — from the imposition of the Indian Act, band councils and reservation system, to stolen children and residential schools; from the continued theft of lands and resources by governments and corporations, to the appropriation of native traditions and culture.
Here in Waterloo, and all over Canada, we live in colonies, indeed, we exist in just an older and more established version of the settlements now built illegally in Palestine. To this day Canada’s colonial past is celebrated in the names of our streets, our towns and our cities, while erasing the genuine identity of the original peoples of this land. This colonial project continues to this day, encroaching on native land with golf courses, subdivisions, highways and major international sporting events. As we stand here today on the territory of the Haudenosaunee, more commonly known as the Six Nations or Iroquois, we can look around us and see that there are countless other examples of this colonialism in practice today. For instance, we now stand witness to the environmental devastation that is being inflicted on the Indigenous communities of Western Canada, such as those who live downstream from the Alberta tarsands, a people whose traditional livelihoods are in the process of being destroyed in order for Canadian corporations to ensure a cheap supply of oil. This type of colonial attitude is also reflected in the obliviousness, and lack of response, by the Canadian authorities and wider population, to the horrifying reality of hundreds of disappeared and missing native women in the past three decades alone.
In the face of more than five hundred years of Western colonialism, we in the Indigenous communities of this great continent continue to resist and survive, from the jungles of Chiapas to the plains of Dakota to Oka, Caledonia, Grassy Narrows and the west coast of Canada. The many and diverse struggles of Canada’s first peoples demands our active support, especially in the face of state repression and criminalization. Non-natives, also have a role to play within their own communities, to further the process of decolonizing Canada the Canadian psyche, and to correct the mistakes and crimes of the past. So, if you are here with us in opposition to Israeli Apartheid, we encourage you to join us in opposition to existing apartheid right here in Canada. Let us support both the resistance of indigenous Palestinians, and the survival and struggles of Canada’s own Indigenous nations.
Finally, I am reminded of a poem by Leonard Peltier, an Indian man who has spent more than 30 years in an American federal prison for daring to resist colonialism and fight for the freedom of my people, it is called “The Message”:
Silence, they say, is the voice of complicity.
But silence is impossible.
Silence screams.
Silence is a message,
just as doing nothing is an act
Let who you are ring out and resonate
in every word and every deed.
Yes, become who you are.
There’s no sidestepping your own being
or your own responsibility.
What you do is who you are.
You are your own comeuppance.
You become your own message.
You are the message.
From Palestine to Turtle Island: There is no justice on stolen land.
In the spirit of Crazy Horse
Mitaku Oyasin
