Jose Maria Sison on the 45th Founding Anniversary of the Kabataang Makabayan

From the National Democratic Front of the Philippines:

Brief address on Kabataang Makabayan on its 45th founding anniversary

By Prof. JOSE MARIA SISON
Founding Chairman, Kabataang Makabayan

It is a great honor for me to have been the founding chairman of Kabataang Makabayan (Patriotic or People’s Youth). And it is my pleasure to talk to you about KM on the occasion of its 45th founding anniversary.

The KM was founded on 30 November 1964, the birth anniversary of the great worker and founder of the Katipunan, Andres Bonifacio. Since the beginning, the KM has been dedicated to the just cause of continuing the revolutionary struggle of the Filipino youth and people for national liberation and democracy against foreign and feudal domination.

The Filipino people are proud for being the very first nation in Asia to fight and defeat a Western colonial power, specifically Spain. But unfortunately, a modern imperialist power, the United States, intervened and launched a war of aggression against the Filipino people to destroy the Philippine republic and kill 1.5 million Filipinos in order to recolonize and occupy the Philippines. To this date, the US continues to dominate the Philippines through the local exploiting classes and their political agents.

The KM has inherited the rich revolutionary tradition of the Filipino people in fighting against Spanish colonialism for more than three centuries, in defending their national sovereignty against the US war of aggression, in resisting the colonial power of the US and the Japanese fascist invasion during World War II, and in carrying out a people’s war against the semicolonial and semifeudal system under the US and the local exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords.

Racism & The Far Right at Caledonia

Thanks to the blog Solidarity with Six Nations for putting this together and continuing to add to it.

Paul Fromm

Paul Fromm is one of Canada’s most well known white supremacist organizers.  he began his far right organizing in 1967 with the Edmund Burke Society, and then was the founder of the Western Guard, Canada’s most significant neo-Nazi grouping in the 1970s. Fromm had his Ontario teaching license revoked in 1997 due “failure to maintain professional standards; not complying with college regulations and bylaws; disgraceful, dishonourable, unprofessional and/or unbecoming conduct; and practising while in a conflict of interest” after being conspicously linked with the Neo-nazi Heritage Front. Wikipedia has a well-documented resource page on him that is worth checking out.

The following is a youtube video that Fromm released after having made links with people in Caledonia opposing Six Nations. He was spotted (and photographed) with several other neo-nazis at McHale and Vandermas’ January 20th 2007 flag raising protest, and was part of a group of about 30 people led by McHale who conveyed from the protest over to the Chatwell’s residence which backs out onto DCE. He released this YouTube video discussing the Chatwell’s circumstances in July of 2007. In it he uses many of the same images of Six Nations protests publicized by McHale on http://www.caledoniawakeupcall.com and speaks in almost exactly the same way as many members of CANACE. He avoids racist slurs, plays up white victimhood, and casts activists from Six Nations as terrorists.

U2 – Native Son

A friend of mine pointed this song out to me the other day, and it is quite interesting as it is indicative of a greater trend in U2′s music over the last several albums of having less and less serious political content, something which of course contrasts greatly with their first several albums. For those who do listen to U2, you will notice that this song is a very early version of the song that would become Vertigo off of their 2004 album How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. Why is this version called Native Son? Because it is about Leonard Peltier, one of the most well known political prisoners in the world, who has been in prison for most of his life for a “crime” he didn’t commit and that the U.S. government now admits did not commit.

Why did U2 change this song into Vertigo? Apparently during the recording sessions for How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb Bono was asked if he would be able to perform the Native Son in front of an audience and afterwords said that he found the experience to be to uncomfortable, so the process was begun to turn the song into Vertigo. Why would he feel uncomfortable? Probably because with the exception of a few artists like Rage Against the Machine, in your face politics don’t so well (and even the extent to which RATM’s audience is/was based on their politics and not the music itself is up for debate). As U2 has become one of the most successful musical acts in history they have become seriously apolitical and the transforming in studio of Native Son into Vertigo is probably yet another example of this.