American Indian Movement Vets Protest FBI Raids

American Indian Movement veterans Clyde Bellecourt and Bill Means provided context of decades-long FBI interference during yesterday’s protests in downtown Minneapolis against the FBI raids against peace activists on Friday.

Occupation 101

An excellent and moving documentary about the ongoing, illegal military and settler occupation of the land of Palestine.

Main Film

PFLP Suspends its Participation in PLO Executive Committee to Protest Return to Negotiations

By the General Central Committee of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

The Popular Front for the Liberation is a revolutionary Marxist-Leninist organization in Palestine struggling for national liberation and socialism. It opposes negotiation with the Zionist state and stands in favour of a one state solution to the conflict.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine announced in a press conference on September 25, 2010 that it was suspending its participation in the PLO Executive Committee in response to Abu Mazen’s return to negotiations and the illegitimate “approval” of the EC for this dangerous action.

At a press conference held in Ramallah led by Deputy General Secretary Comrade Abdel-Rahim Mallouh and Political Bureau members Comrades Khalida Jarrar and Omar Shehadeh, the Front warned of the serious consequences and repercussions of the policy of concessions and appeasement to the U.S. and Israel.

The press conference issued a statement, as follows:

A policy statement issued by the Central Committee of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine

To the masses of our Palestinian people struggling in Palestine And the Diaspora…
To the masses of our glorious Arab Nation...

We make this statement today in light of our full national and historical responsibility and a high level of consciousness of the great risks to our people of current political developments on the Arab and Palestinian level. In light of the action of the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization to return to direct negotiations with the government of the Zionist entity under the auspices of U.S. imperialism, the Central Committee of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine convened an extraordinary meeting to discuss all of these developments, which determined the following:

Understanding the Filipino Revolution: Three Basic Problems

Forty-five years ago in mid-sixties the south east Asian archipelago of the Philippines saw the emergence of a powerful, dynamic and inspiring revolutionary national democratic movement of a new type. Founded on a clear patriotic and anti-imperialist line, the leading force in the development of this process has been the Communist Party of the Philippines, its armed wing, the New People’s Army, and its youth, union, Christian and national minority allies within the National Democratic Front. It gained national prominence during the First Quarter Storm of 1970 and took deep root among the people. Today, it is at the forefront of a growing mass movement for democracy and freedom.

Revolutions are not a simple affair though – either to carry forward, or to analyse. It should go without saying that whether we are speaking of revolutions in Nepal, India, Turkey, Latin America, or anywhere else, any revolutionary process is actually a complex intersection of various and particular historical, sociological, economic and political forces. The Filipino revolution lead by the CPP and its allies is no exception to this. However, that said, it can be a quite useful analytical tool to think of the National Democratic revolution as one seeking to rectify three basic problems in Filipino society.

Let Us Build a Resistance to Repression, War and Occupation!

From the Central Committee of Unión del Barrio, an indigenous-Mexicano revolutionary nationalist organization in the United States.

To supporters, progressives, leftists and the community in general,

On Friday September 24, a series of FBI raids were carried out throughout the United States. These raids targeted organizations with a clear anti-war, anti-imperialist, pro-peace position against U.S. foreign and domestic policy; a growing tendency of our time. We must be clear that this signals the coming of a more intense fascist state. It signals the coming of the persecution of organizations and individuals who oppose the current capitalist order.

Unión del Barrio condemns the raids and their purpose; which was to confuse, intimidate and instill fear in our community and in our movements.  We reject that intimidation and terror.

We have seen, been victims, and have witnessed these types of attacks before. We have been face to face with this fascism and are keenly aware of its reach; we know what it is to have members of our families taken by federal agents in the middle of the night or early mornings; we are aware of the empireís ability to suspend “constitutional, civil or democratic” rights; and we’ve seen the empire’s inhumanity, as it kills and maims people at the hands of its police-migra-military force against the non-white world. We are aware and assume our responsibility to struggle against it wherever it may appear.

Today the role, responsibility and duty of every revolutionary, progressive and those that call themselves leftists, must be to halt this drive to open fascism both within the political borders of the United States and abroad.  As we listen and observe the UN General Assembly speeches and discussions, it becomes clear that the possibility of nuclear war, with clear colonial ambitions is becoming more pronounced. A war that if carried out, whether by Israel or the United States against Irán, will undoubtedly alter the very possibility of life on this planet.

Today, the need for workers/class unity is ever more clear.  The need for a clearly anti-colonial, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist social movement for our basic rights depends upon us. We must be aware that the time to join the correct side of humanity, and leave behind the irrational, unsustainable, egocentric “American Dream,” is now! This “American Dream” has been, and continues to be a Human Rights nightmare the world over.

We invite, all who are willing to build a resistance to repression, war and occupation, to unite with the Manifesto of Caracas and build towards a continental day of action in your area on December 10th, International Human Rights Day; for Human Rights and Socialism, united we win!

In unity and in struggle,

Comité Central

CPI(Maoist): Awaiting Court Decision Concerning the Demolition of the Babri Masjid

The destruction of the Babri Masjid by Hindu Nationalists in 1992

COMMUNIST PARTY OF INDIA (MAOIST) CENTRAL COMMITTEE

September 21, 2010

Stay alert to the heinous attempts of the ruling classes to divide us in the name of religion and stop killing each other in their interests !

Court judgment on the demolition of Babri Masjid is awaited on September 24, 2010. Even before the judgment is delivered the air is reeking with apprehension and trepidation. The uneasy memories of that fateful day (December 6, 1992) are giving fear to all democratic sections in the country and needless to say, especially to the Muslims all over the sub-continent. Any sane person who wants to learn history in order not to repeat it is waking up with a start from the nightmare of our history of communal flare ups.

The unprecedented deployment of police and paramilitary forces in all the states and Union Territories on the eve of the judgment is creating doubts as to what is to be awaited from the court which is but an organ of the Hindu religion and upper caste-biased state that is the Indian government. The callous, cold-hearted, pro-imperialist, anti-Indian people, traitorous judgment in the Bhopal gas leak case is sending alarm chills down the spines of concerned citizens and is issuing warning calls. There is not much in our whole history of court judgments which could reassure the people.

We, the CPI (Maoist) appeal to all the people of India to stay alert to the possibilities of a flare up of communal tensions with the instigation of the ruling classes, especially by the saffron fascist brigades in the wake of this judgment. Whatever may be the judgment, what they would like to do is to divert the people from their problems, struggles and political and economic crises.

Join the Caravan and Support Navajo Resisters at Black Mesa

Join the Caravan in Support of Indigenous Communities Resisting Massive Coal Mining Operations on Their Ancestral Homelands of Big Mountain & Black Mesa, Arizona, November 20-27, 2010.

These Front-Line Resistance Communities, in their Struggle for Life, Land, & Future Generations, Have Always Maintained That Their Struggle Is For Our Collective Survival.

May They Be Supported Now and Always!

Greetings from Black Mesa Indigenous Support,

We are excited to extend the invitation from Dineh resisters of the Black Mesa region to join BMIS’s caravan to support their ongoing struggle. On behalf of their peoples, their sacred ancestral lands and future generations, the Dine’ and also Hopi communities continue a 36 year long struggle against the US Governments forced relocation efforts, Peabody Coal’s financial interests, and an unsustainable fossil fuel based economy. They continue trying to halt and repair the devastating impacts of colonialism, coal mining, and forced relocation of their communities, sacred lands, and our planet. As one of their resistance strategies they call upon outside support as they maintain their traditional way of life in the face of the largest relocation of indigenous people in the US since the Trail of Tears.

By assisting with direct, on-land projects you are supporting a broad movement for climate justice and families right to stay on their ancestral homelands in resistance to an illegal occupation. The oil spill in the Gulf highlighted the dangerous and unsustainable reality of our fossil fuels based economy. Another example of this dangerous reality comes from Black Mesa. The recently approved carbon capture storage project will capture the coal firing plant emissions and use clean water to pump the carbon an estimated 9,000 feet into the ground to be stored near their major aquifer. False solutions to climate change and large scale coal extraction must be stopped! We propose participating in this caravan as one small way in supporting these courageous communities who are serving as the very blockade to coal mining on Black Mesa!

Stand against FBI raids and intimidation!

By the Solidarity Political Committee. Solidarity is a socialist, feminist and anti-racist organization in the United States.

On Friday, September 24, the FBI used search and seizure warrants to raid the homes of several antiwar and socialist activists in Minneapolis and Chicago. Subpoenas were delivered to activists in other states. The charges related to supposed “material aid to terrorist organizations.” In this case, the activists appear to have been targetted because of their active support for organizations in Colombia and Palestine that the US government has decided to name as “terrorist” organizations. The often arbitrary designation of international political organizations as “terrorists” is not new, and neither is government repression of domestic dissent.

Intense periods of repression against the left — the Palmer raids of the 1920s, the Red Scare of the 1950s, COINTELPRO in the 1960s and 70s, and against the antiwar movement today — have been the most well known instances in a fairly continuous practice of surveillance, infiltration, disruption and even violence against the movements for peace, socialism, Black self-determination, and labor rights. In each case, there were also clear efforts to isolate radical organizations active in the movements.

This record demonstrates important lessons. First, the U.S. government and its “intelligence” agencies are quick to strip individuals and organizations of their constitutional rights and ignore the basic rules of democracy in order to discredit and demoralize opposition from the left. Second, the most potent defense against this disruption has been the refusal to be intimidated, and the support to targeted individuals and groups provided by communities and movements.

Solidarity joins those who are outraged by this attempt to intimidate the antiwar and international solidarity movements. We cannot allow any activists or organizations in these movements to be isolated, and extend our full support on this matter to all of the individuals targeted. Despite political differences, we are part of one movement, and will not be divided.

Oppose the Raids on the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (Fight Back!)

200 people in the Twin Cities gather to protest the FBI raids against antiwar activists.

The following piece was posted at Fight Back! News, the newsite of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (Fight Back!).

We denounce the Federal Bureau of Investigation harassment of anti-war and solidarity activists in several states across the country. The FBI began turning over six houses in Chicago and Minneapolis this morning, Friday, September 24, 2010, at 8:00 am central time. The FBI handed subpoenas to testify before a federal grand jury to about a dozen activists in Illinois, Minnesota, and Michigan. They also attempted to intimidate activists in California and North Carolina.

“The government hopes to use a grand jury to frame up activists. The goal of these raids is to harass and try to intimidate the movement against U.S. wars and occupations, and those who oppose U.S. support for repressive regimes,” said Colombia solidarity activist Tom Burke, one of those handed a subpoena by the FBI. “They are designed to suppress dissent and free speech, to divide the peace movement, and to pave the way for more U.S. military intervention in the Middle East and Latin America.”

This suppression of democratic rights is aimed towards those who dedicate much of their time and energy to supporting the struggles of the Palestinian and Colombian peoples against U.S. funded occupation and war. The activists are involved with well-known anti-war groups including many of the leaders of the huge protest against the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, MN in September 2008. The FBI agents emphasized that the grand jury was going to investigate the activists for possible terrorism charges. This is a U.S. government attempt to silence those who support resistance to oppression in the Middle East and Latin America.

The activists involved have done nothing wrong and are refusing to be pulled into conversations with the FBI about their political views or organizing against war and occupation. The activists are involved with many groups, including: the Palestine Solidarity Group, Students for a Democratic Society, the Twin-Cities Anti-War Committee, the Colombia Action Network, the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, and the National Committee to Free Ricardo Palmera (a Colombian Political Prisoner).

At the Roots of Mapuche Resistance

Written by Dawn Paley, originally for the Media Co-Op, a project of the Dominion News Cooperative.

More than 34 Mapuche political prisoners in Chile have entered into day 69 of a hunger strike to bring attention to their struggle and force significant changes in the way the Chilean state treats Mapuche people.

The hunger strike has entered into a critical and possibly deadly phase: Bobby Sands, an Irish revolutionary and a well known casualty of hunger striking, died after 66 days. Other hunger strikers have survived for longer, including Mapuche woman and ex-political prisoner Patricia Troncoso, who refused food for 112 days to protest the “predatory and inhumane economic model” in Chile and the still active anti-terrorist laws used to criminalize the Mapuche people.

The central demands of the hunger strikers and their supporters are that Mapuche people be tried in civil courts instead of in both civil and military courts, and that dictatorship-era anti-terrorist legislation not be used against them. Their struggle, at its roots, is in defense of their territory and culture, and in that way is similar to the struggles of Indigenous peoples around the world.

Indeed, the situation among the Mapuche people is dire. Their fight to maintain their freedom and independence dates back to the fist Spanish invasion of their territory in 1541. Since then, their land base has been whittled down to a series of reserves, which were broken up into individually held lands under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

Since the end of the dictatorship in 1990 laws have been passed that recognize the rights of Indigenous peoples to land, however these have not been honored and Mapuche people have continued to organize against transnational corporate activities in their lands.

“Although there have been many Chilean and international policies implemented to strengthen and support Mapuche communities— such as funding for intercultural health and sustainable development programs, legal processes for land claims, international and national legal support against and compensation for human rights abuses, Mapuche language programs, etc — the dominant model of industrial development including foreign investment still imposes structures of power over, rather than collaboration with the Mapuche people,” Claire Sieber, an anthropologist who graduated from UVIC and has spent time working with Mapuche people, wrote to the Vancouver Media Co-op in an email.

Indigenous Resistance, from Colombia to Palestine

Written by Anna Baltzer. This first appeared on The Electronic Infitada. Anna is an award-winning lecturer, author and activist for Palestinian rights. Author of Witness in Palestine: A Jewish American Woman in the Occupied Territories, she is contributor to four upcoming book on the subject. For more information visit www.AnnaInTheMiddleEast.com.

“They only see our water, our land, our trees. They don’t care about us. They want the land — without the people on it.”

These words are not of a Palestinian farmer but of Justo Conda, governor of Lopez Adentro Indigenous Reserve in southwestern Colombia, whose community was repeatedly threatened with displacement under former president Alvaro Uribe Velez. Uribe, recently appointed by the United Nations to investigate Israel’s fatal attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, has a notoriously horrific track record on human rights. Less explored are the clear parallels between his government’s mistreatment of indigenous peoples of Colombia and Israel’s abuses of the indigenous people of Palestine.

According to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Colombia has one of the largest populations of internally displaced people in the world, numbering as many as 4.9 million. According to the Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement more than 286,000 Colombians were uprooted from their land in 2009 alone. Approximately ten percent of the Colombian population has suffered forced displacement, many of them indigenous communities, afro-Colombian descendants of former slaves, and campesinos (farmers).

Like Israel, Colombia is the largest recipient of US military aid in its hemisphere. Six billion US tax-dollars over the past ten years have placed Colombia third in the world for US military assistance, after Israel and Egypt. Armed with US weapons and political backing, Uribe’s government and other armed actors have forced out millions through extrajudicial assassinations and terror tactics, clearing the way for the exploitation of natural resources by the government and multinational companies. Always in the name of security and the “War on Terror,” Colombian soldiers have burned villages, ransacked homes and destroyed the livelihoods of communities who have taken the radical decision of staying on their own land.

The State of Israel: A Disgrace to the Human Race

The World People’s Resistance Movement (Britain) has published a two part article on Palestine. I have represented them below as one continues piece. It analyses the origins of the State of Israel and a brief history of its oppression of the Palestinian People. It focuses on the resistance of the Palestinian people and their role as the motive force in this movement for liberation.

The Imperialist-Zionist Plan and the Palestinian Intifadas

“I fall into a restless sleep at night and dream that an Israeli army unit is chasing after my friends and me. We are somewhere in Gaza and we try to run for our lives, but we are suddenly cornered and the soldiers start shooting at a very close range. The screams and the immense amount of blood force me to wake up. I am sweating and gasping for air. The dreams just don’t stop. I’ve been out of the Palestinian territories for three months and the dreams still haunt me. I know it is going to take a long time – a long time before I’m not jumpy when I hear a helicopter flying ahead. I hear the helicopters in Austin, but they are up there to file weather reports for local TV stations. I am still not convinced that they will not bring death and destruction. It is going to take a long time before I don’t panic at the sound of an ambulance siren. And a very long time before I stop dreaming that the bodies of my friends are being riddled with gunfire”  (Muna Hamzeh, Notes from Dheisheh*, September 2000).

* Dheisheh is the largest of three Palestinian refugee camps in Bethlehem, home to nearly 10,000 refugees who were forced to flee their homes in the 1948 war.

From this ‘nightmare’ of the daily situation in Gaza, and decades of military occupation in general, to the recent Israeli attack on the international aid flotilla on its way to deliver vital goods to the people of Gaza suffering under years of blockade, the Palestinian people’s relentless resistance against the Israeli state and its international backers, mainly the US and Britain, remains a key issue for those interested in liberation and democracy around the world. The need for international support for the Palestinian people’s resistance is indeed greater than ever.

Pope’s Visit to Britain: Crisis of Church Mirrors, Crisis of Capitalism

This article written by Alan Woods is published here as appeared on In Defence of Marxism. H/t to the World People’s Resistance Movement (Britain). As usual, posting this does not imply endorsement of all of its views.

The Pope’s visit to Britain comes in the midst of the most serious crisis of capitalism since the Second World War, with a growing mood of discontent among the workers. No doubt a little help for the British Establishment in times like these from the Almighty will always come in handy. The Pope is also hoping to boost the fortunes of the Church after it has been shaken by scandals in one country after another.

This morning Benedict XVI arrived in Edinburgh for the first state visit to Britain by a pope. When the papal plane touched down at Edinburgh International Airport, he was greeted by the Duke of Edinburgh and senior Catholic figures, in a break with tradition said to illustrate the importance with which the visit is being taken by the British Establishment.

Accompanied by a retinue of diplomats, secretaries and officials from the Holy See – known as the seguito – the papal entourage travelled to Holyrood House Palace, Edinburgh, where the Pope was welcomed by the Queen. These details show that this visit has more than just a passing interest. In times of deep social and economic crisis, religion can be a very useful tool.

The visit will not only have a religious content, for the connection of the Vatican to politics is no small matter, and not just in Italy. In addition to attending the spiritual needs of his flock, Benedict will also address “civil society” (politicians) at Westminster Hall. On Saturday morning, the 83-year-old pontiff will pay a series of courtesy calls to prominent politicians, including David Cameron. He will receive the leaders of all three main political parties for short private audiences, before celebrating Mass at Westminster Cathedral.

In the midst of the most serious crisis of capitalism since the Second World War, with a growing mood of discontent, reflected in the militant speeches from the TUC and the beginnings of strikes against cuts and sackings, a little help from the Almighty will always come in handy. For the Lib-Con coalition government, the papal visit is a welcome distraction with which to direct the attention of working people away from this sinful world of cuts and crisis and upwards to the World of Heavenly Bliss to Come.

Dude, You Have No Qur’an: The Music Video

The Oka Standoff – 20 Years Later

By Steve da Silva, writings for BASICS, a free community newsletter in Toronto with Maoist leanings. For my own writings on the revolt at Oka, check out the article The Resistance at Kanehsatake: Looking Back 20 Years After the Barricades.

In 1990, Canada was taken to the brink of civil war for what on the surface appeared to be about a golf course and some sacred trees.  What was actually at stake, beyond the surface of things, was the fate of a nation, one that had suffered two and a half centuries of the colonial theft of their land, and was no longer going to take it.

This summer marks 20 years since the armed standoff between  Mohawk Warriors and the Canadian Armed Forces near Oka, Quebec, a small Quebec town whose mayor at the time, Jean Ouellette, was trying to push through plans for the expansion of a golf course and the construction of condominiums.  The land in question, however, had for decades, if not centuries, been the subject of a land claim upheld by the Mohawk nation of Kanehsatake, whose ancestral graves and grove of pine trees held to be sacred were situated on the land.

Upon announcement of the development plans, the Mohawks set up a peaceful blockade on a secondary road through the pine forest. After disobeying an injunction passed against them and holding the lines, on July 11, 1990 the Sûreté du Québec went on the attack against those maintaining the blockade, losing Corporal Marcel Lemay to an unknown bullet in the mix.

In a gesture of solidarity at a moment when the situation was dangerously escalating, the Mohawks of Kahnawake set up a blockade on the Mercier Bridge that joins Montreal Island to the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, shutting down traffic on a bridge that would see 65,000 cars a day move over it.  It was planned as an act of peaceful civil disobedience to bring to a speedy end the negotiations over the land – an action that presumed the government could be brought to the table in good faith.

With these acts, the small town of Oka and the struggle of the Mohawks were thrust into international attention for the course of the 78-day standoff.

While the media focused in the inconveniences faced by non-natives during the blockade, fueling hostility against the Mohawks, on August 14 Quebec Premier Robert Bourassa invoked the Emergencies Act and called in the Canadian Armed Forces, consisting of over 2500 troops, with tanks and reconnaissance aircraft.

The most serious attempt  at a resolution made by the Progressive Conservative Federal Government of Brian Mulroney was to offer to buy the land to halt the development, without resolving the question of Mohawks entitlement to the land.