The Second Battle of Gaza: Israel’s Undermining of International Law

By Jeff Halper. Jeff Halper is the head of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD).  He can be reached at <jeff@icahd.org>. H/t to MR Zine for this article.

The Israeli attack on Gaza in December 2008/January 2009 was not merely a military assault on a primarily civilian population, impoverished and the victim of occupation and besiegement these past 42 years.  It was also part of an ongoing assault on international humanitarian law by a highly coordinated team of Israeli lawyers, military officers, PR people, and politicians, led by (no less) a philosopher of ethics.  It is an effort coordinated as well with other governments whose political and military leaders are looking for ways to pursue “asymmetrical warfare” against peoples resisting domination and the plundering of their resources and labor without the encumbrances of human rights and current international law.  It is a campaign that is making progress and had better be taken seriously by us all.

Since Ariel Sharon was indicted by a Belgian court in 2001 over his involvement in the Sabra and Chatila massacres and Israel faced accusations of war crimes in the wake of its 2002 invasion of the cities of the West Bank, with its high toll in civilian casualties (some 500 people killed, 1,500 wounded, more than 4,000 arrested), hundreds of homes demolished and the urban infrastructure utterly destroyed, Israel has adopted a bold and aggressive strategy: alter international law so that non-state actors caught in a conflict with states and deemed by the states as “non-legitimate actors” (“terrorists,” “insurgents” and “non-state actors,” as well as the civilian population that supports them) can no longer claim protection from invading armies.  The urgency of this campaign has been underscored by a series of notable setbacks Israel subsequently incurred at the hands of the UN.  In 2004, at the request of the General Assembly, the International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled that Israel’s construction of wall inside Palestinian territory is “contrary to international law” and must be dismantled — a ruling adopted almost unanimously by the General Assembly, with only Israel, the US, Australia, and a few Pacific atolls dissenting.  In 2006 the UN Commission of Inquiry concluded that “asignificant pattern of excessive, indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force by the IDF against Lebanese civilians and civilian objects, failing to distinguish civilians from combatants and civilian objects from military targets.”  The harsh criticism of the UN’s Goldstone report on Gaza accusing the Israeli government and military again of targeting Palestinian civilians and causing disproportionate destruction has made this campaign even more urgent.

Fortunately, it is an uphill battle.  The thrust of just war theory, from which international humanitarian law (IHL) draws,

Apartheid in East Jerusalem

Daphna Thier describes a brewing struggle to defend Palestinian residents in a neighborhood of the city where she grew up. From Socialist Worker.

Protesters stand in the back yard of a house now occupied by Israeli settlers in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhoodProtesters stand in the back yard of a house now occupied by Israeli settlers in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood

OVER WINTER break, I traveled home for two weeks. My friends had been sending me updates of their activities in Sheikh Jarrah, a neighborhood in East Jerusalem, the city I grew up in. Many had been beaten and arrested at protests there, part of a solidarity movement to stop evictions of Palestinians from their homes.

In August 2009, a court order was issued to evict two Palestinian families from their homes. Since then, a total of five families living in 28 houses have been evicted. In the wake of the evictions, Israeli settlers moved in and are now constructing a new settlement right in the heart of this Palestinian neighborhood–”legally” no less.

Maged Hanun, aged 51, tells me he was born in the house he and his family were evicted from–the home that belonged to them for the past 60 years. “So how can they just take me out of my home?” he asks me.

Prior to 1948, these families owned homes in the western parts of Jerusalem, Jaffa, Haifa and other parts of what is now northern Israel. Now, their homes are in Sheikh Jarrah. All of these families are of modest means, and their options are limited. In other words, this is not a fight about ideology or religion. It is a fight that these families are compelled to wage as a matter of survival. It is a fight out of necessity.

Land Disputes Continue Despite Olympics: Okanagan Indigenous Community Blocks Access to Logging Company

By Andrew Crosby writing for the Vancouver Media Co-Op

Land disputes between indigenous communities, resource-based companies, and the Canadian state are numerous and on-going. There is no Olympic time-out in this historical struggle.

On Saturday, February 20, the Okanagan Indian Band held an emergency meeting and passed a motion to establish checkpoints throughout the community as a reaction to the Tolko Industries logging company’s plans to cut trees in the Browns Creek Watershed, near Vernon.

While a B.C. court ruled that Tolko could begin logging in the area, the Band insists that the company lacks jurisdiction to harvest trees where land claims remain unresolved.

The court ruling was contingent on an archaeological consultation, one that Grand Chief Stewart Phillip and Chief Fabian Alexis contend was less than genuine and ultimately flawed.

Okanagan Band Launches Road Block to Protect Their Water Supply

Originally from Intercontinental Cry

The Okanagan Indian Band (OIB) launched a “protective blockade” this morning, February 23, at the Okanagan campsite near Bouleau Lake in southern British Colombia.

A member of the greater Okanagan Nation, the OIB say they have been left with no choice but to stop the logging company Tolko Industries from endangering their water supply.

“This is not an action we took lightly, nor is it one we commenced without exhausting all of our legal options,” states OIB Chief Fabian Alexis, in a recent press statement. “However given the active collusion between the Ministry of Forests and Tolko and the continued indifference of the federal government, we had no choice but to act…”

Since at least 2003, the OIB has been seeking the legal protection of their water, which is provided by the Browns Creek watershed. The region has been extensively logged for more than forty years; and now, the Okanagan People fear that any further logging will threaten their health and safety.

Mexico’s Forgotten Black History

By Giselda. The originally appeared on the Solidarity webzine. Solidarity is a democratic, revolutionary socialist, feminist, anti-racist organization in the United States.

For decades, he revolted against the Spanish crown. He lead an autonomous community of hundreds whose existence panicked the ruling classes from Mexico City to Veracruz. In 1609, his band survived a devastating incursion from the Spaniards, paving the way to an eventual negotiation – one that would make his community one of the first semi-autonomous communities recognized in the colonized Americas. Had an indigenous chief, rebellious priest or mixed peasant accomplished such a historical feat, it would not be hard to imagine their name still proudly spoken or recognized among Mexicans and Chican@s on both sides of the border. Gaspar Yanga, however, was brought to Mexico in chains. His original homeland is said to be what is now the African nation of Gabon. Aside from a lonely statue and yearly festival in what is now the town of Yanga, Veracruz, his legacy remains largely unknown.

This February, while reading articles on African-American history for Black History Month, I found myself contemplating my own history, and the part of Mexican history that was all but erased following the call of Vicente Guerrero (another Mexican of African descent) to abolish slavery during his short time as Mexico’s president. Even though there were periods in which the African diaspora in Mexico greatly outnumbered Spanish colonialists, the modern narrative of Mexico is of a people and history shaped by the blending of two cultures – one European and one indigenous. Any mention of Mexico’s “third root” is usually confined to a few scholars or various darker skinned communities in Mexico where African diaspora (many times alongside indigenous communities) were able to hold on to traditions and community.

The Sixth Annual Israeli Apartheid Week 2010

Toronto's IAW Poster

Israeli Apartheid Week is upon us again already! Events are happening in a number of cities across Canada and Québec in March (March 1st-7th in some places, like Waterloo and Mar 8th-14th in others). While the first IAWs took place in Canada back in 2005, it is now spread not just within Canada, but now also within the United States, Europe, South Africa, Latin America and the Middle East, making it now a firmly worldwide event. The global focus this year will be the BDS or Boycott – Divestment – Sanction campaign.

Last year in Canada there were a number of issues around Zionists and Zionist-sympathisers attempting to censor or interfere in some way in the events held across the country. All of this was made worse by the fact that the Israelis and Zionists were attempting damage control after their most recent romp through Gaza which left over a 1000 people dead, mostly civilians, and the infrastructure of Gaza destroyed. Here in Waterloo, Ontario IAW is organized jointly by Students for Palestinian Rights (of which I am a member) at the University of Waterloo and Laurier 4 Palestine at Wilfred Laurier University and we both ran into a lot of interference being thrown at us from groups like Israel on Campus and sympathising members of the staff and faculty. Here at UW they attempted to ban our posters for the event and were actually successful at doing it at WLU. In both cases they argued against the supposed “graphic violence” and “offensiveness” of the image. A second major issue thrown at us literally came the day before the events started. Israel on Campus had called up the head of the Federation of Students Club Operations and requested a joint meeting between Students for Palestinian Rights, Israel on Campus and himself. So we went, on February 28th, the day before we were supposed to start, and we got completely side-swiped by Feds and IOC. IOC essentially demanded that we pull our posters, censor  our other materials and wanted to review the speeches that three of us (including myself) were going to be delivering the next afternoon at the opening march and rally. Luckily, that night as we were in the Student Life Centre getting our placards and speeches finished up, I ran into a friend of mine, a queer activist and no friend of Zionism, who happened to also be that year’s Feds Vice-President Internal, which made him the Club Director’s boss, and as he was outraged by not having been included on any of the decisions and over-ruled him in an email right then and there. Our speeches were still reviewed the next morning, but without Israel on Campus present, only make sure we were swearing too much.

In the end though last years events here went off extremely well, and I hope we can replicate that success again this year.

Coast Salish Blockade Bridge Where Ancestors Were Desecrated

From Censored News

.

As part of the Anti-Olympics Convergence in Vancouver B.C., members of Coast Salish Katzie First Nation and supporters blocked the Golden Ears Bridge.

The Bridge spans the Frazer River between Pitt Meadows and Langley, and is adjacent to Katzie 1 and Katzie 2 Reserves. It is about a half hour drive outside of Vancouver.

The bridge opened on June 16, 2009. It is owned by Translink, who say, “It will have major long-term impacts on the region, improving travel times and promoting economic activity.” It is clearly disregarding the negative impacts on Indigenous people.

Construction of the bridge desecrated a 3,000 year old burial ground. Its massive pilings in the river disrupt currents, and the ability of local Katzie fishers to fish. Situated at the mouth of the Frazer River, the bridge effects already threatened habitat for Salmon and Indigenous fishing communities all up the Fraser River.

Rethinking CrimethInc.

The CrimethInc. Logo

This article appeared on Anarkismo as Rethinking CrimethInc. The article is written by someone who chose to identity themselves solely as W., and my hope is that by spreading analysis like this one then we can begin to combat those tendencies within our movement that are most undesirable.

(note, I have made some minor corrections for grammar and typos, as well as some small edits for flow)

Rethinking CrimethInc

“Your politics are bourgeois as fuck”

There are two ways out of capitalism, revolution or death. Anybody who tells you otherwise is simply wrong. The US based sub-cultural cult “CrimethInc.” (CWC) who mix anarchism with bohemian drop-out lifestyles and vague anti-civilisation sentiment would have you believe that capitalism is something from which you can merely remove yourself by quitting work, eating from bins and doing whatever “feels good”. They carry on the legacy of prize-idiot Abbie Hoffman, printing books and zines which fetishise scams, petty crime and useless activist/punk sub-cultural activity like Food Not Bombs, squatting, etc. They are anarchists by name only with little relevance to the rest of the anarchist milieu. They also have no class analysis. With that in mind let’s venture into their secret underground “anarchy club”.

CrimethInc. claims to not exist in a failed attempt at being both mysterious and poetic, however we’ll have to start by stating that it does exist, it has a few addresses, a number of books in print and an online shop as well as a number of websites. It is a loose organization which represents a variety of political views, a mish-mash of post-leftism, situationism, primitivism and all those “introducing…” philosophy books you don’t tell people you read. Anyone can publish under their name or create content using their logo, and each “agent” or group operates individually. There is no formal structure, membership or decision making processes. One also has to wonder whether it’s as decentralised as they claim to be, because while the hundreds of kids who post on the forum have as much legitimate claim to call themselves part of CrimethInc., there is really only a vanguard of about 20 people, maybe less, who have had the pleasure of being published under the CWC title, and who run the entire show. Calling yourself a CrimethIncer allows you the illusion that you’re a part of something much grander, and when you’re a bored suburban teenager that’s very important and the well designed publications and impassioned prose in their texts make for a very inspiring read. The problem is that once you analyse them critically you quickly realise they’re barely saying anything at all.

Many aspects of CrimethInc. reference the Situationist International and a large chunk of their ideas are seemingly based around the Situationist concept of “the transformation of everyday life”. The Situationists were heavily influenced by Marx, while CWC are heavily influenced by American consumer culture, or so it would seem. The call to transform everyday by the Situationists was a call to smash the current exploitative system, to participate in the class struggle, an ongoing historical conflict between the proletariat and the ruling class. CrimethInc. substitute this class struggle with a teenage, individualistic rebellion based on having fun now. Shoplifting, dumpster diving, quitting work are all put forward as revolutionary ways to live outside the system but amount to nothing more than a parasitic way of life which depends on capitalism without providing any real challenge. The arrogance of middle class kids (just like the hippies) supposing to change by world by roughing it as “poor” people for a few years is captured perfectly in the quote on the back cover of their book Evasion:

“Poverty, unemployment, homelessness – if you’re not having fun, you’re not doing it right!”

Condescending, privileged, middle class crap. The only people who could think that poverty is in any way fun are wealthy kids playing at being poor for a few years. The daily reality of poverty, unemployment and homelessness for the average person is very serious and something anarchists should always organise against rather than mock.

The reality of the situation is that you can’t boycott your way out of capitalism; dropping out of the system is never going to bring it down, if anything you just re-enforce the system by recuperating peoples’ alienation and desire for revolution by selling them a new lifestyle under the same system. Capitalism is a system of coercion and control, we dont work to support the system, we work because we need food and shelter and healthcare and the only way to get that under capitalism is with money. The only way we can get money is by selling our labour – the alternative is to rot. That’s Capitalism. I don’t want to feed my kids out of a dumpster or have to scam free healthcare if I get cancer, it’s not appealing or practical. There’s nothing revolutionary about using your white, middle-class, Western privilege to remove yourself from the system at the expense of those who remain trapped in it. None of us are free until we all are.

This idolisation of grifting and scaming as a somehow being revolutionary tactics has led their followers, and they are followers (as they certainly don’t have much say in the running of the sites and the shop, and the informal organisational structure “we’re all CrimethInc.” enforces this) to be mostly bored teenage boys. A quick browse around CrimethInc.net will show you this. The more worrying aspect is the “us against the world” mindset many of these youths have. Many view people who work regular jobs as an enemy complicit in the capitalist system, a system they don’t fully understand and which CrimethInc’s literature never fully explains. They have an embarrassingly liberal interpretation of capital and the struggle against it,

“By your ‘support the working class’ logic, I guess y’all should feel guilty every time ya boycott any megacrop like Wal-Mart – after all, they’ve got “working class” clerks workin’ there too” DizzIE

In this quote from a row over a scam to rob tourists (or neo-colonialists as some bizarrely called them), a CrimethIncer shows their dangerous lack of understanding of class struggle. Boycotts of multinationals, much like drop-out lifestyles, will do little to bring about the fall of Capitalism which is a social relationship based on wage labour. I do not wish to deny them their right to be drop-outs and live out of bins so long as they realise they will change nothing by living like this. An inflated sense of self importance has convinced them that their chosen path is righteous and all others are brainwashed by the system or are revolutionary beauraucrats.

One of CrimethInc’s more recent publications Recipes for Disaster: An Anarchist Cookbook, is indicative of the massive problems with them. The book is a somewhat interesting list of pranks, scams and activist information. Proclaimed as the follow up to Days of War, Nights of Love this book has many serious shortcomings. Recipes (little more than DIY guides) range from how to organise a black bloc to gynecology, squatting, and how to make a bicycle into a record player. An eclectic mix of information, most of which is crap, the rest of which is useless without political understanding. This is meant to be the practice where Days of War was the theory, but unfortunately DOW had no real theory beyond drop out and do what feels good. Organising a black bloc out of a handbook without any understanding of the social conditions which necessitate mass militant anarchist direct action is not just dangerous, it’s counter-productive to our entire movement. The book shies away from serious revolutionary information like how to organise a union in your workplace, how to organise at school, how to make contact and work with communities in struggle, how to break out of the activist ghetto, how to set up a social centre, how to provide prisoner support or how to support asylum seekers etc. All the activities amount to little more than activist busy-work, something to waste your time with while being a “drop-out”, ease your social conscience and not have to do any hard work or compromise yourself by working with people who are complicit in the system. The Antifascist Action guide is well meaning but pathetic, it amounts to a bunch of kids masking up and getting their rocks off by confronting the cops before running off again. This is a common element throughout, these things are listed because they are exciting and dangerous and make you “feel good”, not because they are effective forms of revolutionary organising.

Ramor Ryan’s review of Days of War is spot on and does not really need expanding on. DOW is massively plagirised, full of inaccurate and offensive accounts of radical history and tends to define things in very basic terms like good and bad without any solid ideas backing up most of their claims.

“Text, ideas, and graphics are borrowed and pilfered from the Stoke-Newington fanzine Vague, British graphic artist Clifford Harper, French Situationist Raoul Vaneigem and indeed, the whole of the Situationist pantheon. They sack the archives of radical sub-culture to compound a falsehood, the basic premise of this book, that it is an instrument for total liberation. In reality, CrimethIncs vision seldom rises above that of a suburban kid rebelling against authority. Mired in the punk rock and crusty sub-culture, the practical application of all this revolutionary theory is apparently realized by forming a band, fucking in a park, going vegan or, oh my God now were really fucking doing it!, giving out phony free tickets to the local cinema. It soon becomes clear that the real crime here is the way they plunder some of the finest and most invigorating ideas from the end of the 20th century, and render them dull and inchoate.” – Ramor Ryan

When thousands of French students recently occupied their universities and trashed their cities in opposition to the introduction of the CPE law one CrimethIncer had this to say about the organised students:

“When I looked at the situation in France, I often thought that there were not enough dumpster diving collectives!”

What purpose or relevance this person thinks a dumpster diving collective would have served to a mass radical movement beyond getting some old sandwiches which could be looted anyway is beyond me. When mass struggles emerge CrimethIncers are of course thin on the ground; mass struggle means working with squares and allowing workers to be part of their revolutionary subculture, which just won’t do. The book Anarchy in the Age of Dinosaurs published under the CrimethInc. label by the Furious George Collective (who each deserve a bullet for crimes against anarchism) is short and poorly written, arguing against the idea of mass organisation, and for chaos and butterfly wings, apparently:

“Folk Anarchy is the name we have given to the arrow aimed at the heart of every dinosaur. We are replacing the mass movement with a scrappy multitude of mutineers, gypsies, sprawling shanties, thieves in the knight and mad scientists”

The lack of any critical analysis and focus on spontaneity are serious shortcomings for CrimethInc. and this has lead me to believe they do not believe in revolution and are quite possibly happy to be the kids living on the “edge” of capitalism, a system whose excess supports their drop-out lifestyles anyway. This would explain why CrimethInc. has no theory for revolution, how to build to overthrow this system and how to make sure that once we do we hold on to our gains, how to organise a post-revolutionary world so that we don’t repeat the failures of the CNT and other historical precedents. A spontaneous revolution leaves the working class no means to defend itself from reactionaries and state socialists. CrimethInc’s call for a revolution in everyday lifestyles and not life, they seek to define a sub-culture of individualists who care only about themselves and those immediately around them. A revolution of restless and spoiled middle class Americans that is contemptuous of workers and organised anarchists because in them they see the greatest threat to their bourgeois lifestyles.

The supposedly self-critical analysis in CrimethInc’s 10 year report never touched on their failures as listed here. Perhaps this is something these kids will address now and hopefully other anarchists will add to the debate. I spent a few years uncritically spewing out empty CrimethInc. rhetoric and wasting time with their ineffective tactics and don’t wish to see another generation fooled. I would urge all comrades to seriously consider the easy solutions being peddled by CWC. The world cant wait while serious revolutionaries are side-tracked by poor ideas and poorer tactics.

Our demands most moderate are We only want the earth!

- James Connolly

Canada’s Aboriginal Show and Tell

By Martin Lukacs. Originally from CounterPunch.

Olympics Can’t Mask Country’s Human Rights Record on Indigenous Peoples

The opening ceremonies at the Vancouver Winter Olympiad were flush with aboriginal motifs: hundreds of costumed Indigenous dancers, giant illuminated totem poles, and the broad smiles of representatives from the “Four Host First Nations.” It was a perfectly choreographed display of Canada’s multicultural grace for an international audience. Ever-sensitive about their reputation as a land of the fair-minded, Canada’s Olympic planners have gone to lengths to showcase the nation’s respect for aboriginals. They made an Inuit design the official logo. They ran the torch-relay through scores of reservations. And they bought the support and participation of local First Nations with a few million in bonds, business ventures and gleaming buildings. An absolute bargain, if this aboriginal gilding can blind Canadians and the world to the country’s secret shame: the true state of its Indigenous peoples.

The evidence is hard to dispute. Roads into most Indigenous reservations, some close to the celebrated Olympic slopes, are dirt. Nearly a hundred communities are on boil alerts, their tap-water undrinkable — this in the country with the world’s most fresh water. There is no government strategy to deal with the toxic mold that creeps up walls of cheaply constructed houses; even by the government’s own estimates, half require renovation. Aboriginals comprise 4 per cent of the Canadian population, and almost 20 per cent of the inmates of the country’s prisons. One of the acknowledged suicide capitals of the world? A small reservation in northern Ontario, where a group of girls once signed a collective suicide pact. And as I write, I am recovering from a debilitating case of the mumps, a viral souvenir from a recent visit to a Quebec community seized by an outbreak. The mumps have been practically eradicated in developed countries. Not so in the third-world pockets that exist throughout Canada.

Where are the Unions in Anti-Olympics Protests?

Gene McGuckin argues that “the elephant that’s not in the room” is BC’s union movement. Gene is a retired paperworker and lifetime member of CEP Local 1129.

It’s time for someone to mention the elephant that’s not in the room.

The room would be today’s British Columbia, where local and imported rich folks are enjoying an 8-billion-dollar, taxpayer-funded party, while a few thousand protesters challenge its moral legitimacy after years of corporate/government attacks on the poor, unions, public education, healthcare, seniors, children, etc.

And the no-show elephant would be the BC trade union movement, the once-fearsome champion of the working class and of all the underprivileged in our society.

Where the hell is labour in the anti-Olympic protests in Vancouver?

The utter absence, not only of the movement’s formal leadership, but also of any visible sector of its hundreds of thousands of members has to be a source of elation to the greedheads who have pillaged this province for the past ten years. Their joy at moving from a state of being virtually unopposed by unions to one of being COMPLETELY unopposed by unions can only be matched by the profoundly sinking hearts of those who struggle for social justice — both inside and outside the labour movement.

Unceded, British Columbia

By Kim Petersen of The Dominion

With files from Dawn Paley. Kim Peterson is the Original Peoples editor for The Dominion.

For up-to-the-minute Olympics resistance coverage, check out the Vancouver Media Co-op, and the Convergence website. Follow the VMC on twitter!

TRADITIONAL TERRITORY OF SNUNEYMUXW FIRST NATION (NANAIMO, BC)—On 2 July, 2003, a gathering of the International Olympic Committee in Prague awarded the 2010 Winter Olympics to Vancouver-Whistler. The Canadian entry beat out competing bids from Salzburg, Austria and Pyeongchang, South Korea. The IOC decision has provided a venue for international attention on sovereignty in “British Columbia.”

Vancouver is situated in the traditional territories of Coast Salish First Nations, specifically the Skwxwú7mesh, Xwméthkwyiem and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. This land has never been surrendered. According to the Royal Proclamation of 1763, it is the “hunting grounds” “reserved” for the “Indians” where they “should not be molested or disturbed.”

The same unceded status holds for Whistler. “Because we have no treaty with Canada, the imposition and encroachment of Whistler—their hydro lines, their highways, their railroad, in fact all infrastructure development for the 2010 Games—in our territory is illegal,” said James Louie of the Interior Salish St’at’imc Nation, in a press package put out by the Olympics Resistance Network.

Out of these contradictions, a slogan arose: “No Olympics on stolen native land!”

Class Apartheid in South African Society, at Our University and in Climate Politics

By Patrick Bond. This originally appeared on ZNet.

Before we get to some hot South African political economy and political ecology, first consider the psycho-socio-sexual-sporting context.

For cultural reasons, President Jacob Zuma is today at his weakest since taking office last May. He is suffering severe delegitimation amongst progressives and traditionalists alike, even within his majority-faction in the ruling African National Congress (ANC), thanks to a child secretly born four months ago.

The revelation last week suddenly recalled his 2006 rape trial – and acquittal – immediately after which Zuma publicly apologized for his ‘mistake’ in having unprotected sex (she said rape) with an HIV-positive daughter of a friend. The misogyny on display at Zuma’s trial followed his firing as deputy president for corruption (via a sprawling arms deal) by his then boss, Thabo Mbeki. Zuma was then charged with scores of bribery counts, which were conveniently wiped off the books a few weeks before the 2009 election by an accommodating state prosecutor (since duly rewarded).

Of apparent dismay to even his strongest supporters, the new child’s mother is the daughter of Zuma’s old friend Irvin Khoza, a very very rough and tough Soweto tycoon who happens to be the 2010 soccer World Cup organizing chairperson. In Zulu tradition, Zuma’s obligation is to pay for damages done to the Khoza daughter’s reputation, a task apparently carried out discretely by underlings last December.

Mohawks, Get Ready For Martial Law

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

MNN. Feb. 17, 2010. The Indian Act is Canada’s policy. The goal is assimilation until there are no Indigenous left. When we object to this, we are called racist.

Who stands to gain from this forced removal of non-natives from Kahnawake by the band council, followed by the forced removal of us?

These evictions are initiated by the government. Why is the media blaming Indigenous for creating the Indian Act and calling us racist?

Certain colonial political parties are making major deals with the US. Quebec has sold our water rights to the US under NAFTA. To ship our water south they must go through Mohawk communities. We will oppose this.

Quebec-Canada-New York State-Washington DC are trying to cut off Mohawk initiatives, economic self-sufficiency and the viability of our communities. They are threatening people who do business with us.

Canada Campaigns Against Kahnawake Mohawks

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

MNN. Feb. 15, 2010. The source of true equality and everyone having a voice comes from the Ongwehonwe. The elite tyrants are trying to kill it to get control of the world. They want the land and resources of Great Turtle Island. The liberal media in Canada says Mohawks don’t act right because we are not capitalists. Charges of racism are bogus. Our ancestors looked after the helpless refugees from Europe. We never mistreated them.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper wants to abolish native and communal title and to disperse our communities. He wants to use the Australian repressive model to set up unrestrained exploitation by mining companies and corporate developers.

On September 21, 2006, in the Bennell v. State of Western Australia ruling, the Noongar Aboriginies were affirmed as holding title to Western Australia. They proved they continue to exist and are still part of the land. It was upheld by courts set up by the Australian constitution supervised by the British Privy Council. This affirms us as the ethnic trustees of Onowaregeh/Great Turtle Island.

Shortly after, the Howard government declared a national emergency. 60 Aboriginie communities were put under martial law conditions.

Resistance Casts Pall over 2010 Olympic Festivities

By Anthony Fenton. From IPS.

VANCOUVER, Feb 15, 2010 (IPS) – The 2010 Winter Olympics opened with the largest protest convergence in the history of the Games.

Approximately 3,000 protesters of diverse backgrounds converged on Vancouver Friday afternoon, assembling for a peaceful yet boisterous rally and march through the downtown streets to the steps of BC Place, the site of the Games’ opening ceremonies.

As throngs of activists filled the Vancouver Art Gallery – indigenous, anti-capitalist, anti-corporate, environmentalist, anarchist, anti-war, pro-civil liberty, and anti-poverty alike – speakers laid out a laundry list of grievances against the Games.

The speeches opened with homage to the Coast Salish people, on whose unceded territory the demonstration took place. The march itself was led by Native Elders, while the most prominent chant heard was “No Olympics on stolen Native land.”

Olympic Resistance Network organiser Sozan Savehilaghi said, “The Olympics are taking place on lands that have never been surrendered. The people that are going to be impacted in a negative way the most are indigenous people; they have the highest rates of poverty, of abuse, and they are highly over-represented in prisons.”