absent cause

Does imperialism still need to be fought? A reply to Mike Ely

2011-06-17T12:34:00.003-04:00

By Greg Butterfield

Despite our profound differences on many issues, I’ve always respected Mike Ely and his efforts to grapple seriously with the problems facing communists in our time. So it was with some disappointment that I read his piece “Perp Walking into the Future: Problems of Tankie Fantasy” on the Kasama Project website. Ely’s article comes off as a nasty piss-take on BJ Murphy’s “From China to Libya: A Critique of Kasama’s ‘Remembering the Rebels of Tiananmen,’” an article that makes important points and actually attempts to document them.

Ely tries to psychologically analyze “tankies” – that is, those who support the right of workers’ states and bourgeois-nationalist states to defend themselves against counter-revolution and imperialist subversion – accusing them of opposing the agency of the masses in favor of a “gray police state.” Much of it comes off sounding like a personal attack on Murphy, but throwing this blanket over many other genuine leftist fighters.

As offensive as it is, let’s focus instead on the political assertions underlying Ely’s article.

Ely’s version of “mass line” – that any rebellion is inherently good, and any existing workers’ state or bourgeois nationalist regime is inherently bad – is essentially an anarchist position, and leads into the same “above class” morass of supporting rebellion against any state, regardless of its class character and objective position in the global struggle of the workers and oppressed against imperialism.

Ely’s argument fetishizing any and all “popular uprisings” is an idealist one divorced from fact. In this it is similar to the received wisdom he expounds that a rightward political shift and/or pro-capitalist economic measures equals capitalist restoration (in China and the USSR), and that any government allied with these states is ipso facto not revolutionary.

This is simply inadequate for communists in the age of imperialist war and revolution.

Does imperialism still need to be fought?

Lenin’s analysis of imperialism and the national question was made to educate communists on the complexities of the struggle in the age of imperialist war and revolution. Ely’s position, in contrast, has no nuance: All existing states are capitalist and all capitalist states are equally bad.

Even if your position is that there are no “real” workers’ states today, this view is problematic. Is it really right for communists to support uprisings fueled (overtly or covertly) by imperialism against the governments of bourgeois-nationalist states?

If only the struggle were so simple! Someone rebels, you support them. No analysis is needed; no need to confront imperialism and its war machine in a serious way; no need to challenge the preconceived notions of students and intellectuals or the media disinformation aimed at working-class people.

But no. This path leads to would-be revolutionaries cheering on counter-revolutionary events.

BJ Murphy was absolutely correct to draw a parallel between support for the counter-revolutionary student movement in China and support for the counter-revolutionary “rebels” in Libya. The same ideological confusion leads to supporting both.

Imperialism may be a paper tiger in the long march of history. But it is not powerless. It has, in fact, been on the offensive for more than three decades. It has agency. It has loyalists of many stripes and the profits of stolen labor to fuel them.

It takes courage to stand up and support oppressed nations and workers’ states when they are under attack – when everyone from FOX News to the White House to social-democratic “radicals” are cheering on the other side as “revolutionary,” “democratic,” “liberators.” (It might be pertinent to point out that they use this same language when U.S. troops march in and occupy a country.)

Tiananmen Square and the Cultural Revolution

Ely upholds China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution as the model communists should strive for. I agree; the Cultural Revolution was the highest advance toward socialism that has yet been made. However, the GPCR was not some idealized phenomenon that can be replicated merely with the “correct” line. It took place in the context of a global revolutionary upsurge against imperialism, from Cuba to Vietnam to Paris to Oakland. It took place in a world that had a powerful bulwark against imperialism in the existence of the USSR (despite its revisionist leadership).

As we all know, history isn’t a constant upsurge; it’s a dialectical process. What is a workers’ state to do in a period of setbacks and imperialist offensive? Should it give up? Should the workers and oppressed willingly surrender hard-fought advances to their enemies and wait for some perfect revolutionary movement?

When Ely denigrates the Chinese workers’ state and its defeat of the counter-revolutionary rebellion of 1989, he’s actually running down one of the major lasting achievement of the Cultural Revolution – the strengthening and politicization of the People’s Liberation Army and Chinese society as a whole – which allowed China to weather the reactionary tide that swept away the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, despite the deeply damaging inroads of capitalism under Deng.

‘Those who cannot defend old positions will never conquer new ones.’

I find the above quote from Leon Trotsky’s collection “In Defense of Marxism” an excellent rule of thumb. Trotsky was polemicizing with those who wanted to abandon defense of the Soviet Union during the period of the Stalin-Hitler pact before World War II.

(The irony of quoting Trotsky in defense of regimes frequently associated with Stalin, against someone who to one degree or another upholds Stalin, is not lost on me. But of course there are many revolutionaries who uphold Stalin and do not share Ely’s view.)

It is quite a distortion of the views of me and my comrades in Workers World Party to say that we try to sell “gray police states” as an ideal form of socialism. I believe it’s a distortion of others’ views as well, not to mention a slander of the societies that revolutionary masses have fought and sacrificed to build and defend. It is, essentially, the crude anti-communist language of the ruling class.

For our part, WWP has always tried to present a balanced view of the accomplishments, problems and setbacks of workers’ states striving to build socialism and of bourgeois-nationalist regimes striving to be independent of imperialist domination. For this nuanced approach based in objective facts, we have been criticized from both sides: either we are apologists for evil dictatorial regimes, or we are too critical of genuine communist governments.

I don’t know of any serious communist who glorifies the need of a workers’ state or bourgeois-nationalist government to put down counter-revolutionary revolts and subversion. But it is the duty of communists to know which side of the class barricades to stand on, and to explain the situation forthrightly to workers and all of the people.

The forces behind the massacre in Tucson, Ariz

2011-01-10T09:36:00.002-05:00

Workers World Party Statement

Jan. 9 — Twenty people were shot, and six of them died, while attending a political rally for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson, Ariz., on Jan. 8. The authorities are now saying they have evidence that the shootings were an attempted assassination of the Democratic Congresswoman, who is in critical condition.

The shooter, 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner, was captured on the spot by people attending the rally in a supermarket parking lot and turned over to police. He is reported to be a mentally deranged person with a recent history of fascination with right-wing rhetoric.

At this point, no evidence has surfaced in the media or from the authorities that Loughner had accomplices in the massacre of so many people. However, evidence of a conspiracy may turn up later. Let’s not forget, all information is in the hands of the FBI and the Arizona authorities — the capitalist state.

But whether Loughner acted alone or with accomplices, this was a political act. It was not another Columbine. Its target was a politician who had already been verbally attacked and threatened by the far right. It must be seen in the context of the poisonous anti-worker, anti-immigrant, sexist, racist, anti-Muslim, anti-gay and anti-Obama offensive of the Republican right, working through the Tea Party, that has allowed a neo-fascist movement, even further to the right, to ride on its coattails.

Arizona has been the epicenter of this movement. Even the sheriff of Pima County, Clarence Dupnik, said that Arizona had become “the capital for prejudice and bigotry.” John McCain, the Arizona senator who ran for president in 2008 with Sarah Palin, is a war hawk for the Pentagon, which practically owns the state. However, McCain isn’t right-wing enough for Palin, who on her website during the 2010 elections showed a map with Representative Giffords’ district behind the crosshairs of a rifle accompanied by the words, “Don’t retreat, RELOAD!”

But this appeal to violent reaction is not just an Arizona phenomenon. Dozens of states are planning to model their immigration laws on Arizona’s infamous SB1070, signifying that powerful forces in the ruling class are getting behind this anti-immigrant racism.

The right and far-right — and often the “middle,” too — have been using the capitalist economic crisis to scapegoat immigrants, Muslims, unions — anyone but the super-rich who have milked not only workers’ wages and benefits but government social funds to keep their profits coming in despite the crisis.

The ultimate responsibility for this bloody act lies with the millionaires and billionaires who have financed the right in the recent period, beginning with the racist “town hall” meetings against the weak health care bill. They poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the last election to promote Tea Party candidates and the right wing in general.

At a time of economic crisis and mass unemployment that has lasted for more than three years, this kind of divisive, scapegoating politics serves the interests of the entire ruling class, all the way up to the summits of finance capital.

The FBI has now taken over custody of Loughner and the case. This is the same FBI that has been lawlessly raiding the anti-war movement and persecuting solidarity activists.

The FBI stood passively by when armed vigilantes calling themselves the Minuteman Project formed what amounted to a fascist militia along the Arizona-Mexico border and openly hunted down undocumented workers. The capitalist state was totally complicit in this crass violation of bourgeois legality. And on Jan. 6, a member of the Border Patrol fatally shot an unarmed Mexican youth, 17-year-old Ramsés Barrón Torres.

The FBI, Homeland Security and other government agencies spy on and monitor groups and individuals all over the U.S. Reportedly, the killer mentioned the American Renaissance Party, a known fascist group, on his Facebook page. This together with his behavior and other signs, such as recommending Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” would have made him a suspect to be watched — if that’s what the capitalist state was looking for. But they close their eyes to the activities of ultra-right and fascist groups.

The Obama administration has responded weakly to this massacre, trying to reduce it to a non-political event — in the same way that Washington stood by while the semi-fascist Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona’s Maricopa County was creating a police state for undocumented workers. While this resurgence of reaction is pushed mostly by Republicans, it also feeds on the weakness of the Democratic leaders, who have compromised and retreated on every issue, from health care to Social Security to workers’ rights.

This atrocious act is a wake-up call. The people cannot rely on the capitalist government to protect them from the ultra-right and the fascists. Progressive organizations, community groups, unions and all fair-minded people need to unite in a massive response to the hate and prejudice spewed forth every day in the political establishment and the media. They can be turned back. Now is the time.

No New U.S. War in Korea!

2010-12-02T10:08:00.003-05:00

Friday, Dec. 3rd * 5:00 - 6:30 pm * 33rd Street & Broadway, New York City

United Rally: Speakers from Nodutdol for Korean Community Development and all supporting organizations

Join together to say:

STOP U.S. War Threats Against Korea
U.S Troops OUT of Korea!
End the Sanctions Now!
We need Jobs, healthcare & education, Not War
Opposing war is not a crime: Stop FBI harassment of antiwar activists!

On Nov. 23, the government of South Korea mobilized 70,000 troops for a week of military maneuvers just off the border of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea. The DPRK said that these military maneuvers simulated an invasion of the north.

The military deployment was provocatively held right off the sea borderline between the north and the south. This is an area considered to be disputed territory.

On Nov 23, at 1:00 p.m., South Korean forces fired many shells into waters right off the DPRK. This is an area that the north has a longstanding claim to be within its territory. This claim had been accepted by prior south Korean governments.

An hour and a half later, the DPRK retaliated to what it saw as an attack on its territory by firing shells at the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong.

And now the U.S. has announced plans to send the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS George Washington and its battle group including war ships, destroyers and hundreds of fighter jets back into the area to participate in new war maneuver provocations.

The U.S. military has been involved in all war maneuvers by South Korea, back to the 1950-53 war, and has occupied South Korea since the end of World War II.

Why isn’t the media asking why the U.S. is orchestrating a massive military deployment of troops, ships and aircraft right on the border of the DPRK?

A unified action initiated by: International Action Center

Initial endorsements: BAYAN USA Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines, Bailout the People Movement, Bolivarian Circle – Alberta Lovera NY, December 12 Movement International Secretariat, Honduras Resistencia USA, Filipinas for Rights and Empowerment – FiRE, Fight Imperialism Stand Together – FIST, Jersey City Peace Movement, Movement Against War & Occupation – MAWO, Pakistan USA Freedom Forum, May 1st Workers and Immigrant Rights Coalition, Peoples Video Network, United National Antiwar Committee – NY, International League of Peoples Struggle

For more information call 212-633-6646

International Action Center, 55 West 17th St, #5C, NY, NY 10011

http://www.iacenter.org/

NYC: Stop FBI Repression - Rally at Rep. Nadler’s Office 12/2

2010-11-29T12:06:00.004-05:00

Stop FBI Repression & Grand Jury Witch Hunt of Anti-War Activists!

Thursday, December 2 · 5:00pm 201 Varick Street (corner of Houston Street), NYC

Part of the week of nationally coordinated actions to STOP FBI REPRESSION and CALL OFF THE GRAND JURY WITCH HUNT

On Sept. 24, the FBI raided the homes and offices of antiwar activists in Minneapolis/St. Paul and Chicago. 14 people were served with Grand Jury subpoenas. All of the activists refused to cooperate with the fishing expedition aimed at targeting antiwar and solidarity activists as part of the “War on Terror.”

Three activists from Minneapolis/St. Paul — Tracy Molm, Sarah Martin and Anh Pham — are being called back before the Grand Jury in Chicago. If they refuse to testify, they could be jailed indefinitely. We need to build a movement to defend these activists and the others who have been targeted by the FBI.

On Thursday, Dec 2, at 5 pm, we will hold a rally and meeting at Congressman Jerrold Nadler’s office. As the Chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, Rep. Nadler has an important role to play in defending the civil liberties of all.

A delegation of of lawyers, civil and human rights advocates, union members, peace activists and other concerned New Yorkers will be going up to Nadler’s office to ask that he take immediate action to stop the Grand Jury witch hunt against antiwar activists. Please turn out to challenge the dangerous escalation of the government interference and repression against the anti-war movement!

Update on subpoenas and grand jury

Three active Twin Cities anti-war and international solidarity activists, Tracy Molm, Anh Pham, and Sarah Martin have received word from the U.S. Attorney’s Office that that they will be called to appear in front of a Chicago Grand Jury. This is a continuation of a campaign of federal intimidation of anti-war, labor and international solidarity activists that started on September 24 with raids on homes and offices in Minneapolis and Chicago and FBI visits to activists in other cities.

“Saying these three activists should appear in front of a Grand Jury represents a dangerous escalation of the government interference and repression against the anti-war movement. This is a scare tactic to dampen the right to speak out against U.S. wars and interventions around the world,” said Jess Sundin of the Anti -War Committee.

“The FBI campaign against anti-war activists is a major threat to anyone who questions U.S. policies around the world. Many of those who had been targeted in these raids are long-time peace, labor and social justice activists,” said Mick Kelly of the Committee Against FBI Repression.

For more information: http://www.stopfbi.net/

Week of Action Nov. 29 - Dec 3: Stop FBI and Grand Jury Repression

2010-11-28T18:28:00.003-05:00

We are calling for a week of action to stop the FBI and Grand Jury repression for the week of Nov. 29 - Dec. 3. We are urging activists to focus on U.S. Congress people, demanding that they take action to stop the Grand Jury. Go to their congressional offices, or if that is not practical, to your Federal Building.

Three activists from the Twin Cities, Tracy Molm, Sarah Martin and Anh Pham are beingcalled back before the Grand Jury in Chicago, and we need to build a movement to defend these activists and the others who have been targeted by the FBI.

Dozens of actions around the country are already planned. Please contact us ASAP atstopfbi@gmail.com so we can list your action.

Actions and protests

NYC: Stop U.S. War Threats Against Korea, Jobs or Income for the Unemployed!

2010-11-28T18:12:00.003-05:00

Tuesday, Nov. 30th. 5:30 pm:

Action at the tree lighting at Rockefeller Center

50th St. & 5th Ave., Manhattan

(If unable due to holiday crowds to get to that corner, come to 53rd & 5th Avenue 646-353-2708 for more information)

On Nov 30, U.S. nuclear powered aircraft carrier, destroyers, missile launchers, submarines and jet aircraft will have moved to the other side of the planet to threaten a new war against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

On November 30, millions of unemployed workers will be totally cut off unemployment benefit extensions, because Congress is too busy continuing billionaire tax breaks, Federal Reserve bank bailouts, and the trillion dollar war budget.

GE, a major war profiteer and owner of the GE Building, along with NBC and MSNBC, all located at Rockefeller Center. Join us at the Rockefeller Tree Lighting as we demand Unemployment Benefits & Jobs, Not a Trillion $ Budget for War Profiteers.

The Tuesday Tree Lighting action is co-sponsored by the International Action Center and Flashmobsfor jobs, an organization of the unemployed.

Monday starting at 2 pm and going through the evening there will be a work session at 55 W. 17th, Manhattan, 5th floor. Any train to 14th St.

We are making creative displays and flyers for the Tuesday action. Your help is needed.

CALL TO ACTION: Online Demonstration for Peace in Korea - Sun 11/28 and Wed 12/1

2010-11-28T09:28:00.002-05:00

Thanks to Nodutdol. Graphic by Jacob Anikulapo.

President Obama is sending the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS George Washington (carrying 75 warplanes and a crew of over 6000) and other warships for additional war-games with the South Korean military beginning this Sunday, November 28.

Please read the following fact sheet that outlines the current situation, key facts and historical context to this ongoing armed conflict. Click here to download the factsheet.

This only escalates the already tense situation on the Korean peninsula and brings us dangerously closer to an all-out war. And the blogosphere is already full of hate-mongering rhetoric calling for “retaliation” after the tragic incident on Yeonpyeong Island earlier this week. Two civilians and two South Korean soldiers have died. We say: NO MORE LOST LIVES.

We need all those who stand for peace to call for deescalation on the Korean peninsula and an immediate end to the U.S.-South Korean war games. On Sunday, November 28, from 12 noon to 3 pm EST (9 am to 12 noon PST) and Wednesday, December 1 from 7 pm to 10 pm EST (4pm to 7 pm PST) Join the National Campaign to End the Korean War in a coordinated online demonstration!

1. Barrage the White House and State Department with emails and urge President Obama and State Secretary Clinton to immediately stop the joint U.S.-South Korean war maneuvers, and sign a Peace Treaty to end the state of war that has existed for sixty years on the Korean peninsula.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact
http://contact-us.state.gov

2. Post replies on online media sites and blogs where they are discussing the issue and beat back the war-mongering rhetoric with calls for de-escalation and a peaceful resolution. Refer to the attached factsheet for talking points. Some suggested sites (and their Twitter accounts) are:

• CNN (Twitter: @cnn)
• The New York Times (Twitter: @nytimes)
• The Washington Post (Twitter: @washingtonpost)
• The Huffington Post (Twitter: @huffingtonpost AND @huffpostpol)
• NPR (Twitter: @npr)
• BBC News (Twitter: @BBCBreaking AND @BBCNews AND @BBC_HaveYourSay)
• Yahoo! News (Twitter: @YahooNews)
• Voice of America (Twitter: @VOA_News)
• ABC News (Twitter: @abcnews)
• Foreign Policy (Twitter: @FP_Magazine)
• Reuters (Twitter: @Reuters)
• Associated Press (Twitter: @AP)
• Politico (Twitter: @politico)

3. Post links to articles calling for diplomacy on listserves, blogs, Facebook and Twitter. Some suggested articles are:

• “North Korea’s Consistent Message to the U.S.”
by former President Jimmy Carter in The Washington Post, November 24, 2010
• “Retaliation, Retaliation”
by Paul Liem of the Korea Policy Institute, Nov 25, 2010
• “Crisis in Korea?”
by John Feffer, Co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus in The Huffington Post, Nov 23,2010
• Obama’s Only Choice on North Korea
by Tim Shorrock in the Daily Beast, Nov 24, 2010
• “Crisis in Korea?” Tim Shorrock: Direct Talks With North Korea Are the Only Answer to End Korean War
Tim Shorrock on Democracy Now, Nov 24, 2010
• “A Return Trip to North Korea’s Yongbyon Nuclear Complex”
by Siegfried S. Hecker, Nov 22, 2010
• ““Review U.S. Policy toward North Korea””
by Bob Carlin and John Lewis in The Washington Post, Nov 22, 2010

4. Change your Facebook and Twitter pictures with the “One Corea” image. You can also use this image for your own blog or website. Click here to download the image. (Helpful Facebook tip: Don’t forget to adjust the thumbnail size after you change your picture)

5. Have Twitter? Use the hashtag #koreanpeace in your tweets to make this a trending topic. You can also donate a tweet (click here): I stand for peace on the Korean peninsula. It’s time to end the 60 yr old Korean war. #koreanpeace http://endthekoreanwar.org/

6. Have Facebook? Donate a status update: I stand for peace on the Korean peninsula. It’s time to end the 60 yr old Korean War. Learn more at http://endthekoreanwar.org

7. Tweet your elected officials and other world leaders about the escalating tensions on the Korean peninsula and demand an immediate halt to the U.S.-South Korean war games.

• Look for you Members of Congress on Twitter. Click here to look for their twitter accounts.

• U.S. President Barack Obama (@barackobama), the White House (@whitehouse) and the U.S. Department of State (@StateDept).

• South Korean Blue House (@BluehouseKorea) and the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Trade (@mofatkr)

• United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon (@secgen) and the United Nations (@UN)

People's Korea, Juche and the struggle against revisionism

2010-11-16T11:41:00.004-05:00

Over at Fuck Yeah Marxism-Leninism, lovewithoutsound asked: "How is Juche NOT revisionist?"

And I responded:

For those who may not be familiar with it, the Juche Idea (literally translated as “the spirit of self-reliance”) was put forward as the guiding idea of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) starting in the mid-1950s. It teaches that “the people are the masters of everything and decide everything,” and that the Korean people are the masters of Korea’s revolution. It is a creative application of Marxism-Leninism to the particular situation of divided Korea — the north, constructing socialism, and the south, occupied and dominated by the U.S.

Kim Il Sung, leader of the Korean Revolution and founder of the Workers’ Party, outlined the three fundamental principles of Juche in his 1965 speech “On Socialist Construction and the South Korean Revolution in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea”:

1. “independence in politics” (chaju)

2. “self-sustenance in the economy” (charip)

3. “self-defense in national defense” (chawi)

I think there were two major factors in the development of Juche ideology.

The first was the project of national liberation of Korea (Chosun), a people under siege and occupation for centuries, even before the arrival of Western colonial powers on the scene. I have written elsewhere about this aspect of the Korean Revolution.

The second factor was the tragic Sino-Soviet split that divided the socialist camp and ultimately gave imperialism a wedge to turn comrade against comrade. North Korea was literally, geographically, stuck in the middle of this struggle between the (truly) revisionist leadership of the USSR and the Maoists in China. The DPRK had to navigate very carefully, preserving its trade and security relations with its neighbors while also promoting revolutionary socialism. Juche was the ideological means to do this.

As it turned out, Kim Il Sung was quite correct in his approach. While Korea’s global revolutionary aspirations were more in keeping with China’s, its leaders also saw the danger of a full-on split in the socialist camp. And what started out in China as a revolutionary line struggle against the revisionist leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union turned into a reactionary campaign against the USSR as the “main enemy,” collusion with imperialism, and unprincipled attacks on national liberation movements that got aid from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. (For more background, read Vince Copeland’s “History of USSR-China Relations.”)

In the imperialist era, the hallmarks of revisionism have been abandonment of the class struggle, abandonment of internationalism, and compromise with imperialism. If we look at the practice of socialist Korea, we can see that none of these have come to pass.

The DPRK and the Workers’ Party defend the workers’ state and the continuing struggle for socialism and communism. They have not tried to come to a rotten compromise with U.S. imperialism despite the constant danger of attack from the occupied south. (Of course, the DPRK has been trying for almost 60 years to get the U.S. to sign a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War).

Although not as widely appreciated as Cuba, the DPRK has remained a bastion of socialist internationalism. In fact, back in 1992, socialist Korea hosted the first major conference of communist and workers’ parties following the collapse of the USSR, which issued the Pyongyang Declaration, “Let Us Defend and Advance the Cause of Socialism.” Over 250 organizations worldwide signed on to the statement.

As I’ve written before, I think it can be hard for leftists to understand and appreciate the dynamics of the Korean Revolution because it outwardly appears so different from what our expectations of what a socialist revolution “should” look like. But if we get past the surface to appreciate the actual conduct of the DPRK, I think it is clear that it is guided by revolutionary communist principles, not revisionism.

--redguard

Fuck Yeah Marxism-Leninism

On World Socialism: Response to a Question on Fuck Yeah Marxism-Leninism

2010-11-15T16:33:00.006-05:00

Over at Fuck Yeah Marxism-Leninism, preflightlapdance asked: In response to your belief that one day the whole world will be socialist, does the objective failure of many of the world's socialist states not temper that enthusiasm just a bit?

And I responded:

I received a few questions like this, also from seleucusnicator and butterfliesandbeaches, so I’m going to answer them all in one go.

I’m probably one of the older folks on Tumblr – pushing 40 – so I feel confident in saying that we have all lived our lives in a period of deep reaction on a global scale, since the late 1970s at least. The 60s generation and their wonderful stories of struggle seem to come from another planet altogether. No wonder it is hard for many people to imagine a socialist world.

However…

The great contradictions of capitalism and imperialism, exposed by Marx, Engels, Lenin and many others, have not changed fundamentally in the past century. They haven’t gone away. In fact, in the world around us right now, we can see them sharpening.

We are still living in the epoch of imperialist war and socialist revolution. Like any great historical period, it does not proceed in a straight line, but with forward charges and humiliating set-backs, twists, turns and diversions. Remember that it took capitalism at least 400 years to consolidate itself on a global scale, and capitalism is a system that generates itself spontaneously. Socialism, on the other hand, requires a high degree of consciousness among vast masses of people.

During the last 30 years, the profit system got a big boost, first from the high-tech revolution and second from re-conquering the territory and labor of the former USSR and Eastern European socialist bloc. But it was a brief respite for the bosses. Today even the drug of enormous war spending isn’t working. Global capitalism has run aground with no relief in sight.

The socialist revolutions and socialist-oriented national liberation struggles of the Twentieth Century took place on the periphery of imperialism, where it proved easier to break the chains. Without exception, these great revolutions unfolded in countries and regions of the world held down and kept underdeveloped by colonialism and imperialism. Each one had enormous internal obstacles to overcome along with the unrelenting war of U.S. and other capitalist powers against them, through direct military intervention, nuclear threats, internal subversion, economic blockade, etc.

In the years following 1917, no one in the Bolshevik Party (and I mean no one, despite later claims by some) thought that the revolution would survive unless there was a socialist revolution in a major imperialist country. As we know, unfortunately that didn’t happen.

Lenin had already laid the basis for understanding why in his groundbreaking study of Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism, where he showed how monopoly capital created a labor aristocracy dependent on crumbs from the super-exploitation of oppressed nations. These labor lieutenants of capital were able to divert the struggles of the workers into safe liberal and social-democratic channels over a long period.

The eventual downfall of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and dangerous compromises with capitalism like those undertaken by the current leaders of China, are not the result of inherent flaws in socialism. The combination of economic hardships of underdevelopment, imperialist military threats, and lack of revolutionary support from the West is what caused the difficulties and political decay that plagued many of the workers’ states attempting to build socialism. What is most amazing – and in my opinion is further proof of socialism’s vitality – is that the USSR survived over seven decades in spite of all this (and incidentally, defeated Nazism in the bargain)!

While imperialism’s fundamental contradictions haven’t changed, one thing has: its constant drive for expansion has now created a vast working class all over the world, and a highly-skilled one in many places. While communists and socialists the world over were fighting just to hold on to our ideas and organizations, the bosses were busy creating more of their own gravediggers.

Today we see that, far from building up a labor aristocracy, the big capitalist powers are tearing down the working class in their own countries, forcing them into a race to the bottom against super-oppressed workers who are no longer isolated from the means of production, thanks to the high-tech revolution. Also, as it becomes more and more difficult for the growing global working-class to find decent jobs, immigration is increasing. Ultimately, I believe, all this is laying the basis for more militant fight-back in the imperialist countries and great international class solidarity.

I highly recommend Fred Goldstein’s recent book, Low Wage Capitalism, which analyses these developments in greater depth.

As far back as 1940, the revolutionary communist Leon Trotsky predicted the “shifting of revolutionary gravity” from East to West. It seems that this prediction is finally poised to become fact – if not tomorrow, than at least in the near future, historically speaking. Whether that means years or decades, no one can predict.

(This is not to discount the importance of the new wave of socialist struggles throughout the rest of the world, which will grow along with the burgeoning working class, and which today provides such an inspiration and breath of fresh air – from Nepal to Venezuela.)

Trotsky also observed that while it is easier to start a revolution on the periphery of imperialism, it is harder to carry it through because of the low social and economic level imposed from outside. In contrast, in the imperialist centers, it has proven much harder to begin the revolutionary struggle – but once workers’ power is consolidated here, it will be relatively easier to convert to a high level of socialist economic equality. And perhaps most importantly, removing the jackboot of U.S. imperialism from the necks of the world’s people will free them to make quick work of their local ruling classes.

Imperialism is dangerous, deadly – never more so than when it’s backed into a corner. But as Mao argued in the face of the U.S. nuclear arsenal – and as the Vietnamese and many other people showed in practice – it is not invincible. If humanity is to survive, there really is no choice but for the working classes to enter onto the road of planned, sustainable economies that provide everyone with their basic needs.

http://fuckyeahmarxismleninism.tumblr.com

Two petitions, two approaches toward defending Iran

2010-10-30T10:52:00.002-04:00

By Phil Wilayto

After a period in which defending Iran hasn't been very high on the agenda of most U.S. anti-war activists, there are now two petition campaigns opposing war and sanctions against Iran.

One effort is led by a New York City-based organization more known for defending Cuban “dissidents” who openly take U.S. money to try to undermine the Cuban Revolution. The other was launched by an independent Tehran-based organization formed to promote Iranian solidarity with Cuba, Venezuela and other progressive countries in Latin America.

Curiously, it's the first campaign that seems to be getting the most support.

The first petition is the product of the Campaign for Peace and Democracy, an outfit formed in 1982 as the Campaign for Peace and Democracy/East and West, with the goal of promoting anti-socialist movements in the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries. While claiming to oppose injustice in both the U.S. and in countries targeted by Washington, its campaigns are virtually all directed at undermining governments under attack by Western powers.

In the case of Cuba, the CPD went to bat for about 75 Cuban dissidents imprisoned in 2003, some of whom had openly accepted money from the U.S. for counterrevolutionary activities. Here is how the CPD itself described the 75:

“Many of them, as well as other Cuban dissidents, have met with James Cason, head of the U.S. Interests Section in Cuba, and some have received duplicating materials, funding or other resources directly from the U.S. government or from NGOs funded by Washington.” (1)

The CPD takes the same approach toward Iran, stating that “We too would like to see a regime change in Tehran, but one brought about by the Iranian people themselves, not by Washington.” (2)

Like Cuba, Iran isn't targeted by the U.S. because of any issue of democracy or human rights. (Both the U.S. and the CPD are stunningly silent about human rights abuses in U.S. client states like Saudi Arabia or Honduras.) Instead, it's because, like Cuba, Iran refuses to go along with the dictates of the Empire, a dangerous position to take anywhere, but especially in the oil-rich Middle East.

So it's not surprising that the CPD includes this line in its petition opposing war and sanctions against Iran: “We support those who struggle for democracy and social justice inside Iran.”

The statement may seem innocuous enough, what does it really mean?

In the West, we're told there are two sides in Iran: the people, and a repressive government. Period.

What we're not told is that the major division in Iranian society today is class. While the major industries like gas and oil are owned by the government, there is a substantial private sector with its own economic and political agenda, and it is this sector that is the social basis for the anti-government movement. Even the Western media admits that it was mainly the middle and upper classes that supported last year's main presidential challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi, and the protests that followed the 2009 election, while it's the poor and the working class that provide the political support for the administration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Surely, many of those who took to the streets in Tehran and other cities were motivated by a sincere belief that the election was unfair, and also wanted a loosening of what they saw as social and political restrictions. And some of these suffered unjustly for taking part in the protests, as both President Ahmadinejad and the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have admitted.

But there also are other forces opposing the Iranian government.

There are the royalists, who want to bring back a Shah. There are the armed groups that carry out attacks on government forces, such as the PKK in the Northwest, Jundallah in the Southeast and the MKO, which until recently operated with virtual U.S. protection from bases in Iraq. Even though some of these organizations have been exposed as receiving substantial financial and military support from the U.S. (3), they all claim to be promoting “democracy and social justice.”

Then there are the ideological elements in the “pro-democracy” movement that promote a bona fide neocon program of privatization, deregulation and massive cuts in social services.
And there's the matter of the tens of millions of dollars spent by first the Bush/Cheney and now Obama administrations to support Iranian “dissidents.” (4)

The CPD petition in effect asks U.S. activists to declare their unconditional support for all these forces, without distinction.

This isn't the first time the CPD has tried to promote its politics in the anti-war arena. Its petition is based on a resolution that the organization unsuccessfully introduced at the mass anti-war conference held this past July in Albany, New York. That gathering, called the United National Anti-War Conference (UNAC), was attended by 750 activists representing virtually every anti-war organization in the country, making it the largest peace conference held in the U.S. in decades.

The CPD resolution, which condemned the Ahmadinejad government along with war and sanctions, was defeated by a 2-1 margin, after the conference attendees accepted the argument that it wasn't the role of the U.S. movement to take sides on internal matters in Iran.
Instead, a resolution against war and sanctions initiated by the Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality and co-sponsored by the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the International Action Center, a resolution that purposely did not address internal issues in Iran, passed unanimously.

Just as there was an alternative to the CPD resolution at the Albany conference, there is now an alternative to the CPD petition.

In mid-October, a nongovernmental organization in Iran called House of Latin America, or HOLA, invited several anti-imperialist organizations from the U.S. to Tehran with the goal for building the movement against war and sanctions against Iran. Among those who attended were representatives of the International Action Center, ANSWER Coalition, Toronto Coalition Against the War and the American Iranian Friendship Committee.

HOLA was started about five years ago to promote solidarity with the peoples of Latin America. Its activities have included organizing solidarity trips to Nicaragua and Venezuela, hosting a talk by Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, translating a book by Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and facilitating a visit to Iran by the son and daughter of Che Guevara to participate in a commemoration of the 40th anniversary of Che's death.

HOLA proposed setting up a new campaign called Solidarity with Iran or SI, which is promoting its own petition. This one spends more time detailing U.S. threats to Iran, defends Iran's right to develop nuclear power for peaceful energy purposes and doesn't take a position on Iran's “pro-democracy” movement.

U.S. progressives who want to add their voices to the movement to oppose war and sanctions against Iran would do well to look into who is promoting which campaigns, and why. Otherwise, we can risk squandering our limited political capital in the service of those whose goals are diametrically opposed to our own.

The CPD petition can be found at http://www.cpdweb.org/stmts/1015/stmt.shtml.
A copy of the HOLA petition has been posted by the Defenders at http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/si-dfje and the International Action Center at http://www.iacenter.org/iran/iran-signon101610/

Phil Wilayto is a longtime community and anti-war activist based in Richmond, Virginia. He is editor of The Virginia Defender newspaper and author of “In Defense of Iran: Notes from a U.S. Peace Delegation's Journey through the Islamic Republic.” (www.DefendersFJE.org/dpi). He can be reached atDefendersFJE@hotmail.com.

1 - “Statement Protesting Repression in Cuba” - http://www.cpdweb.org/stmts/1002/stmt.shtml)
2 - “Iran: Neither U.S. Aggression nor the Theocratic Repression - A call for a new, democratic U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East” -http://www.cpdweb.org/stmts/1005/stmt.shtml
3 - “Preparing the Battlefield: The Bush administration steps up its secret moves against Iran” - The New Yorker, July 7, 2008 -http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/07/080707fa_fact_hersh
4 - “U.S. grants support to Iranian dissidents” - USA Today, June 28, 2009 - http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-06-25-iran-money_N.htm

WWP National Conference - New Urgency in the Struggle for World Socialism

2010-10-30T08:33:00.004-04:00

2010 WWP Conference Invitation Letter

Workers World / FIST STATEMENT: SOCIALISTS UNITE!

New York: Help the Freedom Party win Nov. 2

2010-10-30T08:25:00.001-04:00

Dear sisters and brothers,

If you can volunteer to distribute Freedom Party literature near polling stations in Manhattan anytime on Tuesday, Nov. 2 between 6 a.m. when polls open, to 9 p.m. when the polls close:

COME TO A MEETING FOR ELECTION DAY VOLUNTEERS IN NEW YORK ON SUNDAY, OCT. 31, 5 P.M. AT THE SOLIDARITY CENTER, 55 WEST 17TH STREET, 5TH FLOOR IN MANHATTAN

(Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island are having their own meetings. Call 347-636-3660 for info.)

IF YOU ARE REGISTERED TO VOTE IN NEW YORK STATE - VOTE FOR THE FREEDOM PARTY - GET YOUR NEIGHBORS AND FRIENDS TO VOTE AS WELL!

With next week’s elections dominated by Wall Street money, Tea Party bigots and Democrats who are running to the right, there is actually something really important and exciting happening in New York State.

That something is the Freedom Party, a new mass party with radical Black and Latino/a leadership that’s dedicated to an independent struggle against racism, economic and social injustice at the polls and in the streets.

The Freedom Party is running resident revolutionary City Council member Charles Barron for Governor; community activist and educator, Eva Doyle, for Lieutenant Governor; and activist and people’s lawyer, Ramon Jimenez, for Attorney General.

The Freedom Party is not just a electoral operation; it is a progressive, revolutionary mass party with a growing base that could play a decisive role in the struggle to defend communities of color and the working class in the struggle for survival that we all face.

If we get the vote out state-wide for the Freedom Party, we can win a place on the ballot for the Freedom Party in future elections. At this critical moment, establishing the Freedom Party as a force in NYS would be a big victory for poor and working people, and a huge upset for the two Wall St. parties and the rest of the establishment which works overtime to suppress any real independent opposition from the left. Please help on Tuesday, Nov. 2, by volunteering a few hours to distribute Freedom Party literature at polling stations.

If you can help, come to the meeting for poll volunteers this Sunday evening at 5 p.m at the Solidarity Center, 55 W 17th St., 5th floor in Manhattan, or call us at 212-633-6646 and leave your name and number. We will get back to you.

Thanks,

Larry Holmes,

For the Freedom Party

Stop FBI National Meeting, Nov. 6 in New York City

2010-10-27T05:40:00.002-04:00

The Committee To Stop FBI Repression is convening a national meeting in New York City on November 6th, 2010, at 6:30 pm. We want to invite all those interested in building the movement against FBI raids and the Grand Jury attempt to criminalize anti-war and international solidarity activists. We have done nothing wrong and we are speaking out and organizing to have the Grand Jury called off. We have a lot of work pressing uponus, and while the attack is bad, it offers our movement an opportunity to unite, strengthen, and grow!

On September 24th, the FBI raided two homes in Chicago, and five homes in Minneapolis, along with the Anti-War Committee office. Armed and threatening, the FBI turned people’s homes upside down and took their computers, cell phones, documents, newspapers, framed photos and children’s art work. All together fourteen anti-war and international solidarity activists in Minnesota, Illinois, and Michigan were subpoenaed to appear before the Grand Jury.

The anti-war and civil liberties movements responded quickly and with great spirit. Over 60 cities protested, with a report from Springfield, MA, coming in just today. Activists passed out 12,000 fliers at the One Nation rally in Washington D.C. In Minneapolis, more than 500 rallied at the FBI offices in response to the repression. More than 1300 people marched in Chicago against war and repression on October 16th. The national call-in days are flooding the White House receptionists and shutting down Eric Holder’s answering service. The personal appeals targeting politicians and those with power are important. This is all great and leads us to NYC (looking for a space to hold 100 people in Manhattan) on November 6th to get more organized and congeal a leadership that will beat back this attack and others that are coming.

Here is an important update--each of the fourteen activists subpoenaed to appear signed a letter from the lawyers stating they would NOT testify. The Assistant U.S. Attorney, Brand Fox, told the lawyers he would withdraw the subpoenas, but he would say nothing more. So this is not over yet. The government is not likely to let go. The government has a number of options—more raids, arrests, new subpoenas, or offering immunity to some with the threat of jail if they do not speak. For the time being, the FBI continues to harass other anti-war activists at their homes and work places, trying to divide and intimidate. So we need you to remain vigilant, to help us organize, and to work towards a defense that continues to put U.S. war and occupation on trial.

Thank you,
Tom Burke, for the Committee To Stop FBI Repression

http://www.Stopfbi.net/

Why Mumia's Nov. 9 hearing is so critical

2010-10-27T05:38:00.002-04:00

The only legal options to be considered at the Third Circuit's November 9 hearing are whether Mumia Abu-Jamal is to be executed or get life in prison without parole. Clearly neither of those two options is acceptable.

To fully grasp the significance of the hearing, one needs to revisit Federal District Court Judge William Yohn, Jr.'s decision of December 18, 2001. In that ruling the judge upheld Mumia's conviction but at the same time threw out his death sentence on the grounds that the verdict form used by the jury for sentencing at his trial violated the U.S. Supreme Court's Mills precedent and therefore entitled Mumia to have his death sentence overturned.

Yohn then gave the state 180 days to convene a new jury trial only on the issue of Mumia's penalty, in which the choices would be either death or life in prison without parole. On the other hand, if the state did nothing, Yohn ruled that Mumia would automatically be sentenced to life in prison without parole.

At the time Judge Yohn stayed his ruling on the death sentence while the state appealed his decision to the next higher level of federal court, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. (At the same time Mumia cross-appealed Judge Yohn's decision upholding Mumia's conviction.) Mumia was therefore never removed from death row and remains there to this day.

On March 27, 2008, the Third Circuit upheld Yohn's decision on the death penalty on a 3-0 vote. Again the decision was stayed while the state appealed to the highest federal level, the Supreme Court. (In the same decision, the Third Circuit rejected Mumia's appeal on the conviction by 2-1 and, as before, Mumia cross-appealed that ruling.)

On January 10, 2010, the Supreme Court ordered the Third Circuit to reconsider its decision on the death sentence in light of its simultaneously-issued ruling unanimously rejecting an appeal from a white-supremacist named Spisak. That man admitted to killing at least two people in Ohio and openly wished to have murdered more. He had appealed his death sentence also as a violation of Mills, but involving a different aspect of it than Mumia's case.

The Sixth Circuit, as did the Third Circuit in Mumia's case, ruled that the death sentence should be vacated, but the Supreme Court ruled that the Mills precedent did not apply in Spisak's case, and that therefore execution rather than life in prison was the appropriate penalty. Based on that decision, the Supreme Court immediately applied the same argument to Mumia's case and asked for the Third Circuit to reconsider the issue of execution for Mumia as well.

Thus, the hearing on November 9th is on Mumia's penalty only. The choices before the court are either to sustain Yohn's and its own earlier decisions or to reinstate the death penalty, clearing the way for Mumia's possible quick execution.

If the Third Circuit reaffirms its earlier decision to sentence Mumia to life in prison without parole, the state will most likely appeal to the Supreme Court. (This is exactly what happened with Spisak, after the Sixth Circuit upheld its own earlier ruling which had overturned the man's death sentence.) But in the unlikely event that the state doesn't appeal, it will then have 180 days to implement Judge Yohn's decision.

Of course if the Third Circuit rules against Mumia, he will appeal to the Supreme Court. However, the odds for relief are small, given the increasingly reactionary nature of that court.

Thus, Mumia's legal situation is extremely dangerous. His life truly is on the line, for no matter how the court rules, the only two choices under this legal system are either execution or life in prison without parole and, for the moment, the prosecution, with all its allies and backers, is fighting very hard for execution.

THAT'S WHY WE ARE CALLING FOR ALL THOSE WHO POSSIBLY CAN TO COME OUT TO PHILADELPHIA WITH US ON THE 9TH. WE MUST STAY THE HANDS OF THE EXECUTIONERS AND PRY OPEN THE PRISON GATES FOR MUMIA'S RELEASE.

FREE MUMIA!
ABOLISH THE RACIST DEATH PENALTY!
FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS!

To make reservations for bus tickets from NYC to Philadelphia on November 9th, call 212 330-8029.

Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition
http://www.freemumia.com/
info@freemumia.com
(212)330-8029

65th anniversary of the Workers’ Party of Korea and the question of ‘succession’

2010-10-11T15:02:00.008-04:00

By redguard

Speculation about the future of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (the socialist north) and its leadership has filled the U.S. corporate media in recent days. Amidst gala celebrations marking the 65^th anniversary of the communist Workers’ Party of Korea and the recent election of its new Central Committee, U.S. officials, media and “experts” are rife with conjecture about the promotion of Kim Jong Un to the post of vice-chair of the WPK’s Centeral Military Commission.

Kim Jong Un is the third son of Workers’ Party General Secretary Kim Jong Il and the grandchild of Kim Il Sung, the revolutionary leader who founded the Workers’ Party and the DPRK. The capitalist media claim that Kim Jong Il is sickly and they present Kim Jong Un’s promotion as evidence of his coming “succession” to leadership of North Korea and of a “family dynasty” akin to monarchy.

The anniversary of the Workers’ Party and the survival of the DPRK are certainly cause for celebration by the Korean people and the working class everywhere. Korean communists and their friends and comrades worldwide are justly proud that their socialist revolution survived the counter-revolutionary tide of the 1990s and continuing threats by the U.S. and its allies.

The U.S. militarily occupies South Korea with troops, nuclear weapons and a concrete wall that bisects the peninsula. Washington politically and economically dominates South Korea. The U.S. and South Korea routinely carry out war games and other provocations against the north.

At an October 10 military parade in Pyongyang marking the Party’s anniversary, Ri Yong Ho, chief of the General Staff of the Korean People’s Army, noted that “Should the DPRK come under attack, the KPA will smash the enemies with merciless and just retaliatory strikes.”

CONFUSION OF THE WESTERN LEFT

Sadly, there is a lack of understanding of the Workers’ Party’s accomplishments in the West, including among many who call themselves communists, socialists, anti-imperialists and progressives.

Part of this is based on a simple lack of information. Although depicted as a “hermit kingdom” in the bourgeois media – a term that itself goes back to the pre-revolutionary 18^th and 19^th century when Korea struggled to be independent – the true cause of north Korea’s isolation is the unceasing state of war by U.S. imperialism and its allies since 1950. Washington still refuses to sign a peace treaty with the north.

In addition, it must be said, the frequent animosity toward the DPRK by Western leftists is a reflection of cultural imperialism (transmitted through the mass media), assumptions about what a revolutionary process “should” look like, and bias rooted in the Korean War-era demonization of the north.

Few workers and oppressed people in the U.S. have the opportunity to learn, for example, about the Joeson Empire that preceded modern Korea, and how it was constantly under occupation or threat of occupation for centuries by larger, more powerful neighbors like Japan, and later by the Western colonial powers.

For the first half of the Twentieth Century, Korea was brutally occupied by Japan – only to have that occupation continued by the U.S. in the south immediately following World War II.

An essential part of the project of Korean liberation promoted by Kim Il Sung and his comrades was to re-establish the national identity and traditions trod upon by colonialism, east and west. It was possible to do this in the north, while at the same time moving forward with rebuilding the country, technological modernization and elimination of caste and class oppression, following liberation and the defeat of the U.S.-led war from 1950-1953.

One aspect of this reclamation of Korean identity has been the symbolic importance to the nation of Kim Il Sung and his family. For those of us raised in Western imperialist countries (which claim to be meritocracies, though they are nothing of the sort), it can be hard to wrap our heads around this.

However, it helps to understand the place of Kim Il Sung in Korean history, as the acknowledged liberator of a people oppressed from outside for centuries, while at the same time standing for the end of feudal and capitalist exploitation. Within the context of Korean history, Kim Il Sung was Simon Bolivar, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara rolled into one.

The struggle of Kim Il Sung and the WPK was also of great importance to the world working-class movement. Hand in hand with volunteers from revolutionary China, the Korean people handed U.S. imperialism a major defeat in the Korean War. Later, they successfully maintained the DPRK’s independence and friendly relations with both China and the USSR during the challenging years of the Sino-Soviet split.

COLLECTIVE LEADERSHIP

Those who are familiar with the Workers’ Party know that a collective leadership developed in the wake of Kim Il Sung’s death in 1994 and the passing of the original revolutionary generation from the scene. It was several years before Kim Jong Il assumed the title of party general secretary. During this period the WPK leadership worked out its perspective for the best way forward for the Korean Revolution. *

This important work went on in the midst of grim international circumstances. The grave consequences of the counter-revolution in the USSR and Eastern Europe were being felt economically and politically by socialist trading partners like the DPRK and Cuba. Smelling blood, the Clinton administration mounted an aggressive campaign of economic and diplomatic sanctions and military threats.

But, as in Cuba, imperialism’s efforts failed. The Korean people, like their Cuban comrades, were victorious in maintaining their independence and fending off capitalist counter-revolution.

Friends of the DPRK may ask whether carrying on the symbolism of Kim Il Sung’s family is the best way to advance the Korean Revolution. But whatever our understanding (or lack of it) for this process, the most important points for revolutionaries in the U.S. are these:

1) The Workers’ Party of Korea has defended independence, socialism and revolution through one of the most challenging periods of working class history;

2) The WPK continues to aid the world anti-imperialist struggle and the might of the Korean People’s Army is an important brake on U.S. aggression in Asia;

3) The WPK continues to uphold the goal of international communism and working-class internationalism.

In the current media onslaught, we can already see the outlines of the coming imperialist offensive against the DPRK. As in the period following Kim Il Sung’s death a generation ago, the imperialists hope to take advantage of any transition to sow confusion, break solidarity and overthrow the Korean Revolution.

It is incumbent on revolutionaries in the imperialist centers to refuse to be pawns in this counter-revolutionary game, to oppose economic, diplomatic and military war moves, and to educate the progressive movement and the working class about the significance of Korea’s historic struggle.

Long live the Workers Party of Korea and the DPRK!

U.S. out of Korea – For reunification of the Korean peninsula!

* On a personal note, I have great respect and compassion for Kim Jong Il, a man personally devoted to art and culture, who might have chosen a very different life for himself, but instead did his duty to the revolution and his people. He has done much to uphold socialism and is deserving of respect, not the belittlement and racist caricatures of the capitalist media (too often repeated by “progressives.”)

October 4 & 5: Say NO to the FBI Witch-hunt!

2010-10-03T22:02:00.003-04:00

On Tuesday, Oct. 5, the first of 14 solidarity activists targeted by the FBI will appear before a Chicago Grand Jury. Let’s show the Inquisitors we will not let them silence our movement!

New York City, TUESDAY OCT. 5 — RALLY AT THE FEDERAL BUILDING, 4:30 to 6:30, 26 Federal Plaza, Broadway side, all trains to Chambers Street or City Hall. Actions in cities across the country.

Monday, Oct 4, is National Call-in Day! Call President Obama 202-456-1111 and Attorney General Eric Holder 202-353-1555 to demand an end to repression against antiwar and solidarity activists, immediate return of all confiscated materials, computers, cell phones, papers, documents, etc., and no grand jury proceedings against antiwar activists.

Last week there were coordinated national actions in 43 cities protesting the latest FBI raids.

Sign the petition now: www.iacenter.org/stopfbi

Meredith Aby: Why I am not testifying on October 5th

2010-10-03T21:58:00.001-04:00

Dear family and friends,

Many of you will have heard about the FBI raids of peace and international solidarity activists’ homes on September 24th, and the grand jury subpoenas of activists around the country, focused in the Midwest. Some of you have not. I want to let you know that I was one of those raided by the FBI and given a subpoena to appear before a grand jury, which is investigating “material support of terrorism.” I am grateful for the support I have received from you so far, and am hoping for your continued support through this trying time. This is a very confusing attack on me and my fellow activists, so I hope this letter will help provide some insight into what has happened, and what might happen in the future. Many of you know a lot of this information, but some may not, and since I am sending this to a wide spectrum of supporters, I am going to over explain rather than risk leaving too many questions unanswered.

The Anti-War Committee: I am a founding member of the Anti-War Committee, whose office was also raided that day. As our name implies, we oppose wars perpetrated and financed by the United States, and work to change US policies of imperialism and war. In particular we have done work opposing US military aid and presence in Afghanistan, Iraq, Colombia and Palestine. We do not finance terrorists (or anyone—we barely make rent on our office). We have done nothing wrong. As a Committee, and as individuals, we are engaged in constitutionally protected activities of free speech and right of assembly (www.antiwarcommittee.org for more information).

Palestine & Colombia: We are particularly being targeted for our solidarity work with Palestine and Colombia. Ironically, the reason we do solidarity work with these people is because in Palestine and Colombia activists who work for social justice and who speak out against U.S. policy or against their repressive government (which is funded and supported by the U.S.) are targeted for oppression. I have seen this first hand. I went to Palestine in 2002 and saw how the Israeli government uses collective punishment (home demolitions, bombing of apartment buildings, cutting off food) to pressure Palestinians to stop demanding their own freedom. In Colombia in 2004 and 2006 I met with campesinos (peasants) who told me about massacres committed by government sponsored death squads conducted in order to push them off their land for oil companies or to silence them from protesting U.S. free trade policy. I have spoken out across the country about how our tax dollars fund this oppression and I thought I had the right to criticize governments that don’t allow organizing or speech.

Material Support of Terrorism: “Terrorists” are anyone the State Department decides should be on the “Foreign Terrorist Organization” list. There is no review, oversight or appeal of this decision. The FMLN (the current party in power in El Salvador) was on this list, the African National Congress (movement in South Africa fighting apartheid in the 80’s) was on this list. “Material Support” is not just about whether someone sends money to a designated “terrorist” organization. A recent Supreme Court ruling (Holder vs. Humanitarian Law Project) affirms that any form of communication with a designated “terrorist” is considered “material support.” In that case, the Humanitarian Law Project was trying to assist with setting up fair elections in Turkey and Sri Lanka, a project which necessarily involves discussions with all parties. Under this law, Jimmy Carter could potentially be charged with a felony for helping to organize fair elections in Lebanon, where he, of course had to coordinate with Hezbollah. The Justice Department claims that speech with anyone is ok, as long as it is not “coordinated,” but has refused to define what “coordinated” means. (more here:http://ccrjustice.org/holder-v-humanitarian-law-project)

The Grand Jury: Computers, files, papers, cell phones, and many other materials were confiscated in the raids. All that will be gone through to look for any connection to anyone or anything that might provide evidence of “material support.” At this point, we don’t know who they want to indict. Those of us who have been subpoenaed have been ordered to come to a grand jury hearing in Chicago, the first appearance being on October 5th. At that hearing, there is no judge and no lawyer. The prosecutor can ask anything they want, about who you know, what you think, who you’ve met, what you’ve said. The Department of Justice is “fishing,” trying to piece together random information in a witch hunt similar to the McCarthy era. If we refuse to put ourselves or others at risk by not speaking, we can be jailed for the duration of the Grand Jury. (http://grandjuryresistance.org/ for more information on grand juries, including how they have been used to silence activists throughout history).

Where we are: I, and many other activists, have pleaded the fifth, and chosen not to testify. I cannot in good conscience be a part of this judicial witch hunt. People who fight for peace and justice should not be called terrorists or have their lives turned upside down like mine has been. By refusing to testify I put myself at risk of going to jail. The next legal step is in the hands of the Department of Justice. They could cancel the Grand Jury. They could carry on, but decide not to bother with us. They could send us letters again, giving us the option to talk or go to jail. We don’t know when they will take the next step, or what it will be. We do know what our next steps will be. We will not be silent. We will not allow the harassment of activists to quiet our opposition to immoral policies. We will continue to speak out against the unjust investigation, the unjust law, and the unjust foreign policies of the US government. The peace community is strong, and are already showing amazing solidarity around the country. Some of you have seen this again and again over the decades and have played a role before. Some of us are young enough to be experiencing it for the first time, at least directly.What you can do: Regardless of how you feel about the political positions of myself, the Anti-War Committee, and other activists involved, please remember that we have done nothing wrong, and yet we stand a very real chance of jail time. If you would like to help, please do any or all of the following:

SPEAK OUT! Let others know what is going on, and ask them to take an action.

Sign the petition to stop the Grand Jury: www.iacenter.org/stopfbi

Monday October 4, Call Eric Holder, U.S. Attorney General (202-353-1555) and President Obama (202-456-1111) to demand (1) End repression of anti-war and international solidarity activists, (2) Return all materials seized in the raid (3) Stop the Grand Jury Subpoenas of activists. If you can’t make the call on Monday, any day will do.

Tuesday October 5, Hold a protest in your area, or join an already existing one. This is the first day of the subpoena hearings.Contact your representative and senators to change the material support law.

Donate to the Committee to Stop FBI Repression to fund our legal defense. Donate at stopfbi.net.

Anne and I have been overwhelmed by the love and support we have received from family and friends. I love you and appreciate your faith in me as I stand up for my convictions. I hope you’ll continue to stand by us as we defend our right to protest and organize for peace and justice.

Peace and solidarity, Meredith

Original posting here

Stop FBI Repression! National Days of Action October 4 & 5

2010-10-01T10:56:00.001-04:00

Thousands have come together in response to the FBI raids on seven homes and an anti-war office on Friday, September 24, 2010. Across the country organizations and individuals are standing together to protest the United States government’s attempt to silence and criminalize anti-war and international solidarity activists.

Jess Sundin said, “These raids and subpoenas are an attack on anti-war and other progressive movements. It is an attack on our freedom to speak, our freedom to assemble with like-minded people, and our freedom to tell the government that their actions and policies are wrong. It is an attempt to clear the way for more wars and occupations of other countries by the U.S. military.”

Protests against the intimidation and harassment have taken place or are planned for 39 cities across the country. From Minneapolis and Chicago ,to Los Angeles, Atlanta, Kalamazoo MI and Dallas Texas, The response has been tremendous an continues to grow.

We are calling for further actions to take place in the coming week as the first Grand Jury Subpoenas call for activists to appear on October 5.

Monday October 4 : Call Eric Holder, U.S. Attorney General: 202-353-1555

Demand :
**End repression of anti-war and international solidarity activists!
**Return all materials seized in the raid!
**Stop the Grand Jury Subpoenas of activists!

Tuesday October 5: Act in solidarity with activists called before the Grand Jury

Take action at local federal buildings and FBI offices! Organize demonstrations in your community!

Sign the Petition Now: www.iacenter.org/stopfbi

Funds for legal defense will be needed. We will announce where they can be sent in the next few days.

Reach out to your organization or community group and send a statement of solidarity.

Steff Yorek, a long-time antiwar activist and one of the activists whose homes was searched said, “The assistance and support we have already received has been tremendously encouraging, with your help we can stop this outrageous fishing expedition and attack on progressive movements.”

Click here to download the leaflet
***Please print and distribute at Oct 2 March in DC and in your community today!

Committee To Stop FBI Repression:
www.stopfbi.net
Email: stopfbi@gmail.com

NYC FBI PROTEST: 'From Colombia to Palestine, Solidarity is No Crime!'

2010-09-29T13:03:00.013-04:00

About 200 people marched and rallied outside the Federal Building in lower Manhattan Sept. 28 to protest FBI raids and Grand Jury subpoenas targeting anti-war activists. Chants included: “From Colombia to Palestine, solidarity is not a crime!” and “FBI-Gestapo, stop the raids now!”

A speak-out followed the rally in front of the Federal Building’s Broadway entrance, including representatives of the International Action Center, City Council Member and Freedom Party gubernatorial candidate Charles Barron, Al-Awday NY-Palestine Right of Return Coalition, Desis Rising Up and Moving, December 12th Movement, Bayan, National Lawyers Guild, Lynne Stewart Defense Committee, Workers World Party and others.

All of the speakers emphasized their solidarity with the targeted activists in the Midwest and the crucial importance for the entire progressive movement to mount a united resistance to this new escalation of police/government attacks on opponents of U.S. imperialism.

The demonstration was initiated by the International Action Center and supported by many other groups as part of a series of coordinated actions at FBI offices and Federal Buildings across the U.S.

Early on the morning of Sept. 24, FBI agents raided eight homes and offices of anti-war activists in Minneapolis and Chicago. They confiscated computers, books, documents, cell phones, passports, and even children’s drawings. The same day agents subpoenaed 11 activists in Illinois, Minnesota and Michigan to appear before a federal Grand Jury. Harassing visits and calls were paid to others in Wisconsin, California and North Carolina.

Search warrants and subpoenas indicated the government was looking for evidence of “material support” for resistance movements in Palestine and Colombia that the U.S. government has labeled “terrorist organizations.” The raided activists deny any wrong-doing.

Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision this year in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project (HLP), which found that speech could constitute “material support,” there is great concern that the government is now seeking to clamp down on people’s rights to oppose U.S. foreign policy. These raids constitute a new level of repression and attempted intimidation against the entire progressive movement.

In the days following the raids, demonstrations were held outside Federal Buildings and FBI offices in more than 30 cities demanding: 1) Stop the repression against trade union, anti-war and international solidarity activists; 2) Immediately return all confiscated materials; and 3) End the Grand Jury proceedings and raids.

The booklet If An Agent Knocks, recently updated by the Center for Constitutional Rights, is an important resource for activists to understand and protect their rights. The publication can be downloaded free from CCR’s web site at ccrjustice.org/if-agent-knocks-(-booklet). Protect your right to speak out and help others protect theirs!

Report and photos by redguard

UPDATED Emergency Actions in 27 Cities: Stop FBI Raids and Harassment

2010-09-26T18:02:00.002-04:00

The International Action Center supports the call below from the Minnesota Anti-War Committee for Emergency Actions at federal buildings and FBI offices on Monday and Tuesday, September 28 and 29 to Support Anti-War and International Solidarity Activists and Stop FBI Raids and Harassment, and urges you to participate in one of the actions listed below or to organize an action in your city if one is not already planned.

In solidarity,
Sara Flounders and John Parker, Co-Directors, International Action Center

------------------------

Emergency Actions to Support Anti-War and International Solidarity Activists

Stop FBI Raids and Harassment

We denounce the Federal Bureau of Investigation harassment of anti-war and solidarity activists. The FBI raided seven houses and an office in Chicago and Minneapolis on Friday, September 24, 2010. The FBI handed subpoenas to testify before a federal grand jury to eleven activists in Illinois, Minnesota, and Michigan. The FBI also attempted to intimidate activists in California and North Carolina.

This suppression of civil rights is aimed at those who dedicate their time and energy to supporting the struggles of the Palestinian and Colombian peoples against U.S. funded occupation and war. The FBI has indicated that the grand jury is investigating the activists for possible material support of terrorism charges.

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 Twin Cities Anti-War Committee, the Palestine Solidarity Group, the Colombia Action Network, Students for a Democratic Society, and Freedom Road Socialist Organization. These activists came together with many others to organize the 2008 anti-war marches on the Republican National Convention in St. Paul.

We ask people of conscience to join us in fighting this political repression, as we continue working to build the movements against US war and occupation.

Take Action:

Call the U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder at 202-353-1555 or write an email to: AskDOJ@usdoj.gov.

Demand:

**Stop the repression against anti-war and international solidarity activists.

**Immediately return all confiscated materials: computers, cell phones, papers, documents, etc.

**End the grand jury proceedings against anti-war activists.

Plan and Support national days of protest at FBI offices or Federal Buildings, September 27 and 28th.

A demonstration has been called at the Minneapolis FBI Office Monday, 4:30, September 27th (111 Washington Ave. S.).

In Solidarity, the Anti-War Committee – www.antiwarcommittee.org

-------------------------

The following is a list of the 27 planned protests that we have heard of so far, and the list is growing. Please participate in the one nearest you, or if there is not one in your city, organize one and let us know at iacenter@iacenter.org so we can publicize it and add it to the list. Please also be in touch with the Minnesota Anti-War Committee - www.antiwarcommittee.org

Monday 9/27:

 Minneapolis, MN - 4:30, FBI Office Monday, 111 Washington Ave. S.   

Duluth MN, Monday 4:30 PM Duluth Federal Building

Chicago, IL - 4:30 FBI building, 2111 W. Roosevelt Road.   

Kalamazoo, MI - 4:30 Federal Building, 410 W Michigan Ave   

Salt Lake City, Utah - 9 AM at Federal Building   

Durham, NC - 12 noon Federal Building, 323 E Chapel Hill St  

Buffalo, NY- 4:30 pm at FBI Building - Corner of So. Elmwood Ave. & Niagara St.  

Gainesville, FL 4:30 PM at FBI Building 

Houston, TX, 5:00 PM, Mick Leland Federal Building, 1919 Smith St. at St. Joseph Parkway

Tuesday 9/28:

NYC, NY - 4:30 to 6pm Federal Building, 26 Federal Plaza,   

Newark, NJ - 5 to 6pm Federal Building Broad Street   

Philadelphia, PA - 4:30pm Federal Building, 6th & Market,   

Washington DC - 4:30 – 5:30 FBI Building, 935 Pennsylvania Ave NW.   

Richmond, VA, , 4:30 PM, Federal Courthouse, 701 E. Broad St.,

Hartford CT, 4:30-6:30 pm, Federal Building

Boston, MA - 5 pm, JFK Federal Building   

Columbus, Ohio, Tuesday 5:00 PM, Federal Building, 200 N. High St.

Cleveland OH – Tues 4 pm Federal Building E. 9th & Lakeside, March to FBI Building

Detroit, MI - 4:30 pm McNamara Federal Building, Michigan Ave. at Cass  

Raleigh, NC - 9 am. Federal Building, 310 New Bern Ave   

Asheville, NC - 5 pm Federal Building,   

Atlanta, GA - Noon, Richard Russell Federal Bldg, 75 Spring St at MLK

Tucson, AZ - 5 pm Federal Building 

Los Angeles, CA - 5 pm, Downtown Federal Building, 300 N Los Angeles St  

San Francisco, CA, 5:00 pm,  Federal Bldg., 7th St. and Mission,

Wednesday 9/29:

Albany, NY - 5 to 6 pm Federal Building

Friday, 10/1:

Dallas, TX, , 7:00 pm at the Grassy Knoll, near 400 block of Elm

EMERGENCY ACTIONS: Stop FBI Raids and Harassment

2010-09-25T17:40:00.003-04:00

SUPPORT ANTI-WAR AND INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY ACTIVISTS

A call for action at Federal Buildings and FBI Offices

National call to action from the Twin Cities Anti-War Committee

We denounce the Federal Bureau of Investigation harassment of anti-war and solidarity activists. The FBI raided seven houses and an office in Chicago and Minneapolis on Friday, September 24, 2010. The FBI handed subpoenas to testify before a federal grand jury to eleven activists in Illinois, Minnesota, and Michigan. The FBI also attempted to intimidate activists in California and North Carolina.

This suppression of civil rights is aimed at those who dedicate their time and energy to supporting the struggles of the Palestinian and Colombian peoples against U.S. funded occupation and war. The FBI has indicated that the grand jury is investigating the activists for possible material support of terrorism charges.

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 Twin Cities Anti-War Committee, the Palestine Solidarity Group, the Colombia Action Network, Students for a Democratic Society, and Freedom Road Socialist Organization. These activists came together with many others to organize the 2008 anti-war marches on the Republican National Convention in St. Paul.

We ask people of conscience to join us in fighting this political repression, as we continue working to build the movements against US war and occupation.

Take Action:

Call the U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder at 202-353-1555 or write an email to: AskDOJ@usdoj.gov.

Demand:

Stop the repression against anti-war and international solidarity activists.
Immediately return all confiscated materials: computers, cell phones, papers, documents, etc.
End the grand jury proceedings against anti-war activists.

Plan and Support national days of protest at FBI offices or Federal Buildings, September 27 and 28th.

A demonstration has been called at the Minneapolis FBI Office Monday, 4:30, September 27th(111 Washington Ave. S.).

In Solidarity, the Anti-War Committee – www.antiwarcommittee.org

Activists Denounce FBI Raids on Anti-war and Solidarity Activists Homes

2010-09-24T13:07:00.006-04:00

Subpoenas, Searches, and FBI visits carried out in cities across the country
From Fight Back! News:
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, October 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).
Steff Yorek, a long-time antiwar activist and one of the activists whose homes was searched, called the raids “An outrageous fishing expedition.”
We urge all progressive activists to show solidarity with those individuals targeted by the U.S. Government. Activists have the right not to speak with the FBI and are encouraged to politely refuse, just say “No”.
Please contact info@colombiasolidarity.org or info@fightbacknews.org if you would like to provide support to the targeted activists.

ALERT! Activists' homes raided by FBI in Midwest, others targeted around U.S.

2010-09-24T12:49:00.001-04:00

THANKS TO INDYMEDIA AND KASAMA FOR ALERTING US.

Urgent - Community Meeting tonight! 5:30 pm Walker Church 3104 16th Ave S regarding the FBI Raids

On Friday morning, three houses in the Minneapolis area are believed to have been raided by SWAT Teams. While we have few details right now, the F.B.I. appears to be targeting people associated with the Freedom Road Socialist Organization. Besides the raids in Minneapolis, houses in Michigan, North Carolina and Chicago were also targeted.

Raids occurred at 1823 Riverside, above the Hard Times Cafe, and the 2900 block of Park Ave. One other raid is reported, as well. Outside Hard Times Cafe, three unmarked black SUVs (one with an Illinois license plate) sat in the parking area as of 10am, when a lawyer observed 8 FBI agents sitting in the residence examining materials. Otherwise the scene was calm.

Agents had broken in the door there at 7am Friday morning, breaking an aquarium in the process.

The Federal search warrants appear to be focusing on seizing electronic devices, international travel, and allegeing "co-conspirators." They do not authorize arrests.

The search warrant for 1823 Riverside, the residence of activist Mick Kelly, sought information "regarding ability to pay for his own travel" to Palestine and Columbia from 2000 to today. The warrant hyped potential documents indicating any contacts/facilitation with FARC, PFLP, and Hezbollah - what it called "FTOs" or "foreign terrorist organizations". It mentioned seeking information on the alleged "facilitation of other individuals in the US to travel to Colombia, Palestine and any other foreign location ins upport of foreign terrorist organizations including but not limited to FARC, PFLP and Hezbollah".

The wording of the warrant appears to indicate the government seeks to create divisions among social justice and international soldarity activists by hyping alleged connections to what they call "foreign terrorist organizations."

The warant also sought information on "Kelly's travel to and from and presence in MN, and other foreign countries [sic] to which Kelly has taveleled as part of his work in FRSO [Freedom Road Socialist Organization", as well as materials related to his finances and the finances of FRSO, and all computer and electronic devices.

The federal warrant was signed by Judge Susan Nelson at 3:30pm yesterday, September 23.

More information as this story breaks. If you have info, please publish it to TCIMC as a comment or a new story.

Thousands March on 9/11 in NYC Against Racism and Anti-Muslim Bigotry

2010-09-12T18:24:00.007-04:00

THOUSANDS MARCH AGAINST RACISM IN THE “UNITY AND SOLIDARITY RALLY”

EVERY NATIONALITY IN NEW YORK COMES OUT IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE MUSLIM COMMUNITY

On the ninth anniversary of September 11, thousands of people marched against racism in a diverse show of solidarity that far outnumbered the Tea Party-led hate rallies.

“We had at least 10,000 people,” said Sara Flounders, one of the coordinators of the Unity and Solidarity Rally. “And the rally program – with speakers from the labor movement, immigrants' rights coalitions, and clergy from synagogues, churches and mosques – featured the dynamic diversity of almost every community in New York.”

Once the opponents of Park51 had made September 11 into a racist attack on Muslims, the question was whether progressive forces were going to allow this poisonous hate campaign to go unchallenged.

Today that question was resoundingly answered in a dynamic anti-racist rally that attracted over fifty speakers and featured noted personalities such as anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, former Congressperson Cynthia McKinney, and former U.S. Attorney Ramsey Clark.

Protesters carried a wide range of placards that read “Unity Not Racism,” “Tea Party Bigots Funded by Corporate $,” “No to Racism and Anti-Muslim Bigotry,” “Jobs, Schools, Healthcare, Not Racism and War” and “The Attack on Islam is Racism.”

Just naming the rally's co-chairs gives a modest idea of the breadth of the rally’s support: In addition to Flounders, they were Sayel Kayed of American Muslims for Palestine; Dr. Asha A. Samad-Matias of the Safrad Somali Association and the Muslim Women’s Coalition; Lucy Pagoda of the May 1st Coalition for Worker and Immigrant Rights; and Amadi Ajamu of the December 12th Movement. Another 48 diverse speakers and cultural groups gave greetings or performances.

The message from the nearly 50 speakers on the stage of the Emergency Mobilization action was a strong one of solidarity and unity — solidarity with the Muslim community in the United States and unity of all the forces who came that day in the struggle against all forms of racism and scapegoating, against U.S. wars abroad and for jobs, education and social benefits at home.

Larry Holmes of the Bail Out the People Movement rallied the crowd around the lead banner's slogan, "No to Racism and Anti-Muslim Bigotry - YES to Unity, Respect Jobs and Justice!" He explained the need to stand up to racism to build the unity needed in the fight for jobs and against war. Describing the mobilization, Holmes said, "We brought out the real New York City — a city of workers and peoples of color from all around the world. This mobilization started because we were forced to defend our Muslim sisters and brothers. It will continue because we have to open up the struggle against war, against racism, and for jobs, education and health care. There is much more to fight for and now we all know who we can count on.”

"What makes the Tea Party dangerous is that they are not in fact a grassroots organization," Flounders said. "They receive millions of dollars from oil billionaires like the Koch brothers and other allies of Wall Street."

"But knowing this makes it all the more impressive that a truly grassroots, people's mobilization like the Unity and Solidarity Rally -- without the benefit of buses coming from all over the country and without the backing of media personalities -- was able to outnumber the forces of bigotry on September 11."

"With the other unity rallies in Gainesville, Florida and Buffalo, New York, these displays of anti-racist solidarity represent the potential to turn the tide against anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant backlash and become a peoples' movement for jobs, housing and healthcare."

There will be a followup evaluation meeting this Wednesday, Sept 15 to discuss where to go from here, at the Solidarity Center, 55 W. 17th Street, 5th Floor. Let's keep this going for as long as it takes!
For more information and reports see:
www.iacenter.org/muslimsolidarity

To donate to continue this critical mobilization against racism,go to
www.iacenter.org/muslimsolidaritydonate

Picture gallery: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=69694&id=1668038703&l=4df3a40117

Photos by redguard

This 9/11 in Manhattan: A Time to Confront the Racists

2010-09-08T11:55:00.003-04:00

by Black Agenda Report executive editor Glen Ford

Not since the massive Klu Klux Klan marches of the 1920s have white nationalists strutted their stuff so proudly. The “media-validated” Tea Partyers are on a roll, and are even getting physical with Black folks in lower Manhattan, where they plan a national rally on 9/11. The anti-racist opposition will also be out in strength, in solidarity with Muslims and, hopefully, to strongly encourage white supremacists to find someplace else to gather.

“1:pm, lower Manhattan is the right time and place to respond.”

Most days, there are lots of better things for progressives to do than follow the Tea Party around. The largely media-made “movement” already gets outsized attention, drawing cameras, as author Paul Street says, any time one hundred white guys gather at a car dealership in suburban Chicago. The NAACP and Al Sharpton seek to circle Black wagons around Barack Obama’s corporate White House by pointing to the Tea Party, rather than Wall Street’s death spiral economy, Black mass incarceration and Obama’s wars, as the gravest danger to Black America. The Tea Party can be a huge diversion, an excuse to avoid confronting real power.

But Saturday, September 11, lower Manhattan is the right time and place to respond, not just to mounting provocations from the white nationalists of the Tea Party, but to those “mainstream” politicians, including Barack Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who have made disastrous concessions to the forces of racism.

Every utterance that urges organizers of the Cordoba House, a proposed community center with room for prayer, to respect the “sensitivities” (or, sometimes, “sensibilities”) of Muslim-haters, represents a great leap backward in U.S. history, to a time when the typical white American believed Blacks should not attempt to integrate neighborhoods and schools that did not want them. Such intrusions on white turf and hearth, although conceded as possibly within Black people’s legal rights, were deemed grossly “insensitive” to the feelings of whites. The onus was on the Black intruder, whose legal rights were morally trumped by white people’s right to be unmolested by the repugnant and scary presence of Negroes.

“’Mainstream’ politicians, including Barack Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, have made disastrous concessions to the forces of racism.”

There is not an iota of difference between such Thirties-, Forties- and Fifties-era attitudes, and Sen. Reid’s judgment that Cordoba House “should be built some place else.” Reid, of Nevada, fits right in with the 67 percent of New Yorkers surveyed in a recent New York Times poll who said the “mosque” planners should find “a less controversial location” – that is, someplace that, theoretically, wouldn’t upset the Muslim-haters.

Cleverer politicians question the “wisdom” of being Muslim in certain places. "I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there," said President Obama, back-peddling from earlier declarations of Muslim’s absolute right to worship two blocks from the former World Trade Center. The onus remains on the Muslim, whose judgment and “wisdom” are in doubt, rather than the racist, who comes in for no such critique (Obama doesn’t believe in racists or ghosts of Mississippi).

Anti-Muslim hysteria – which is really anti-people of color hysteria – seems to have acted as a time machine, transporting the nation back two, three or more generations. But of course, there are no time machines, and we are forced us to recognize that much of the vaunted racial “progress” (in white attitudinal changes) of the past half-century never actually occurred, or simply sloughed off like old skin.

“We are forced us to recognize that much of the vaunted racial ‘progress’ (in white attitudinal changes) of the past half-century never actually occurred.”

September 11, 2001, marked the end of an era that had seemed to have been marked by great progress in fighting racial profiling – or, at least, in making the practice disrespectable. Even Republican politicians denounced racial profiling as unacceptable and “un-American.” Morally and legally, Blacks and Latinos had won significant victories against the profilers – rare good news in the criminal justice arena. Then the Twin Towers came down, and profiling was instantaneously back with a vengeance, as if decades of work had never happened. Clearly, whatever changes occurred in most white people’s minds during the pre-9/11 era must have been ephemeral. Now, the other racist shoe is dropping, as the media-validated Tea Party white nationalists plant their racist flag in downtown Manhattan, with a national rally scheduled to prevent the “Islamicization of America.”

The term that is actually on their minds is “Niggerization,” since the home-grown model of white American racism remains relentlessly operative and is the only kind these crackers can actually navigate. That’s why a thirtyish Black man was surrounded a few weeks ago by white thugs at the Tea Party’s lower Manhattan outpost, presumably because his hat and shirt appeared…Muslimish. It turned out the non-Muslim, African American passerby was a construction worker at Ground Zero.

To be frank about it, the Tea Party, and racists in general, need to be put back in their place – at least in Manhattan, where that can theoretically be accomplished.

The Emergency Mobilization Against Racism and Anti-Islamic Bigotry rally begins at 1:pm Saturday, September 11, at City Hall, and then marches to the Muslim community center site a few blocks away. Over a hundred organizations and individuals have endorsed the event, including lots of Black ones. Bring energy and anger.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

Why we are marching on Sept. 11

2010-09-07T09:00:00.006-04:00

Emergency Mobilization Against Racism and Anti-Islamic Bigotry

Say NO to Racism and anti-Islamic Bigotry

Stand for Unity and Solidarity on Saturday, September 11

Saturday Sept. 11 in NYC-

1:00 p.m. Assemble and rally at east side of City Hall, then March

Rally at Park Pl. and Church St . (Manhattan)

Why we are marching on September 11th

The Emergency Mobilization Against Racism and Anti-Islamic Bigotry is organizing a rally for civil rights and religious freedom on Saturday, September 11th. This rally is a response to the ugly and violent attacks, both verbal and physical, which are happening more and more frequently around the country. It is also a specific response to the hate-filled protest being called by a coalition of racist and anti-Islamic organizations on September 11th.

The wave of Islamophobia being stirred up against the proposed Islamic Center at Park51 in Lower Manhattan and Islamic institutions and people around the country has poisoned our nation’s climate. We feel we cannot remain silent and surrender the streets of New York City to the forces of hate and bigotry on this day. We must offer an antidote to this poison.

We called this rally for unity and respect only after the well-funded rally called by racist groupings on September 11 had become a national outrage. The MTA agreed to their inflammatory bus ads. The mainstream media gave extensive pre-publicity coverage, including program, speakers, websites and interviews for this September 11 rally of the racist forces. Such pre-publicity has never been given to progressive, anti-war or union struggles. In the face of all this we cannot remain silent.

Our rally will send a message many thousands strong, of unity, respect and solidarity in the face of the increasing climate of racism and bigotry against Muslims, Arabs and South Asians in the US.

These bigots have very consciously chosen the location of their rally – the proposed Islamic Community Center at Park Place and Church St in lower Manhattan (Park51) – in an attempt to intimidate the Center’s sponsors and the Muslim community as a whole. And they chose the date without regard to the feelings of the thousands of survivors, including many Muslim families, of what happened on 9/11.

This hatred and attempt at intimidation is typical of these groups’ actions all around the country, as mosques and community centers have suffered abusive picketing during Ramadan and other times of prayer; shooting attacks – such as the one this week in Carlton, New York; firebombings; desecration; and attempts to get town and city authorities to deny permits for much-needed expansion plans. These actions have already created an atmosphere that led to the horrific slashing of New York City taxi driver Ahmed Sharif, the desecration the very next day of a mosque in Queens, and fear of many more such heinous attacks.

We are rallying on 9/11 in lower Manhattan to let the racists know that we will be there every time they threaten our Muslim sisters and brothers, that we will not stand for abuse, intimidation, or attacks of any kind, anywhere, at any time.

Finally, we take note of and support the vigil that will be held on September 10th, and respect the choice of those who choose to show their solidarity on that day. Our action on the 11th is a supplement to, not a substitute for, that vigil, in keeping with our main emphasis:

Not one attack on Muslims, any day, anywhere!

Please join us on Saturday, September 11th, at 1pm on the east side of City Hall facing Brooklyn Bridge.

After this initial Unity Rally we will march at 2pm to Park Place and Church Street for a second rally.

For more information, flyers, endorsers see:

www.iacenter.org/muslimsolidarity

DONATE to the mobilization at iacenter.org/muslimsolidaritydonate

ENDORSE the mobilization at iacenter.org/muslimsolidarityendorse

Download flyers, Volunteer and Get Involved at iacenter.org/muslimsolidarity

Partial list of endorsers:

Al-Awda NY Palestine Right To Return Coalition

American Muslims For Palestine

Arab Muslim American Federation-AMAF

Bail Out The People Movement

BAYAN USA-Philippine American Alliance

Bethlehem Neighbor for Peace, Albany, NY

Black Workers For Justice

Bronx Greens

CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities

Casa Esperanza, Plainfield, NJ

Catholic Scholars For Worker Justice, White Plains, NY

Creative Nonviolent Resistance Against Injustice, Wyckoff, NJ

Dec. 12 Movement

Defenders For Freedom, Justice & Equality, VA

Democratic Labor Party, Dhaka, Bangladesh

Drum-Desis Rising Up & Moving

Families United For Justice In America-FUJA

Fight Imperialism Stand Together-FIST

Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition

Freedom Road Socialist Organization

Gabriela USA

Green Party Power to the People, New York, NY

Guyanese American Workers United

In the Name of Humanity

International Action Center

International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network

Islamic Leadership Council of New York

Jersey City Peace Movement

Labor for Palestine

Los Angeles Latino Muslims Association

Malcolm X Grassroots Movement

Masjid As-Salam, Albany, NY

May 1 Workers And Immigrant Rights Coalition

Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice

Million Worker March Movement

Millions For Mumia

MN Anti War Committee

Moratorium Now Coalition To Stop Foreclosures, Evictions & Utility Shutoffs

Muslim Solidarity Committee

New York City Labor Against the War

National Assembly

Nodutdol For Korean Community Development

North East Peace And Justice Action Coalition

NYC Coalition to Stop Islamaphobia

NYC Jericho Movement

Pakistan USA Freedom Forum

Pan Africa News Wire

Peoples Organization For Progress

Project Salam , Albany, NY

Queers For Economic Justice

Radical Women, Harlem, NY

Senegalese Workers Association

Socialist Action

South Bronx Community Congress

Stonewall Warriors

Take Back WBAI Coalition

The Peace Thru Justice Foundation

U.S. Palestinian Community Network, NY

Women In Black, Westchester, NY

Women's Fightback Network

Workers World Party

World Can't Wait

Individuals:

Cynthia McKinney

Edward Childs, Chief Steward, Unite-Here Local 26*, Somerville, MA

Colia Clark, Candidate US Senate- New York, Green Party Power to the People

Ramsey Clark

Dr. Joseph J. Fahey, Chair, Catholic Scholars For Worker Justice, White Plains, NY

Steve Gillis, Vice President, USW Local 8751*, Boston, MA

Basem Khader, Peace and Justice activist, Chappaqua, NY

Imam Ashrafuz Zaman Khan, President, North American Imams Federation - NAIF*

Rahman Khan, Chairman , Muslim Voters of America, Evanston, IL

Michael Kuzma, Democratic candidate, NYS Senate, 58th District, Buffalo, NY

Angaza Laughinghouse, President, UE Local 150, NC Public Service Workers Union*

Bishop Filipe Teixeira, OFSCP, Diocese of St. Francis of Assisi, CCA*

Dom Tuminaro, Professor, PSC-CUNY-AFT, AFL-CIO*, New York, NY

Fatema Zohny, Educator/Social Activist, Cornerstone Academy For Social Action*, New York, NY

*=For purposes of identification only

for full list see iacenter.org/muslimsolidarity

Emergency Mobilization Against Racism and Anti-Islamic Bigotry

c/o Solidarity Center 55 W 17th St #5C NYC 212-633-6646

iacenter.org/muslimsolidarity

9/11 NYC - Say NO to racism & anti-Islamic bigotry!

2010-08-30T09:15:00.003-04:00

Say NO to racism & anti-Islamic bigotry

Sat. Sept. 11, NYC

GATHER

City Hall Park 1 pm

MARCH

to Park Place & Church St

RALLY

for Unity & Solidarity 2 pm

JOBS NOT RACISM!

Emergency Mobilization ● 212-633-6646

IACenter.org/muslimsolidarity

SUPPORT Sept 11 Solidarity with Muslims against Racism and anti-Islamic Bigotry

2010-08-22T09:22:00.002-04:00

We say NO to Racism and anti-Islamic Bigotry
Stand for Unity and Solidarity on Saturday, September 11

On September 11 the Tea Party and its racist and right-wing allies plan to again demonstrate at the World Trade Center site. For months these bigots have attempted to whip up hysteria against a proposed Islamic masjid (mosque) and community center several blocks from the WTC.

On September 11, right-wing Christian fundamentalists plan a “Burn the Quran” day at a Florida masjid. These same forces targeting masjids around the country are waging a national hate campaign against all people of color and immigrants.

We need to stand up to these racist forces. Together our voices are strong.

In New York City the ugly demonstration of racism and bigotry against Muslims on September 11 at the World Trade Center must be countered with mass show of solidarity and unity.

We call on all working people, youth, students, immigrants, trade unionist, community and human rights activists – ALL those opposed to racism and bigotry - to stand on that day in defense of our Muslim sisters and brothers.

Like Hitler before them, the anti-Muslim bigots are seeking to whip up hatred against a religious minority in the midst of an economic crisis. They want to divert popular anger away from the banks and corporations who rob millions of their jobs and homes.

The racist anti-Muslim campaigns are also pro-war mobilizations. It is used to justify war against Palestinians. The overwhelmingly people in the U.S. today are against continuing the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or a new war in Iran.

These ugly right-wing campaigns are given enormous media coverage. They are an effort to push back and divide with racism and bigotry all those who want to end U.S. wars. The billions of dollars wasted on endless war must be spent here at home.

We need JOBS, health care and schools, not war and racism.

Say NO to Racism on Saturday, September 11.

Emergency Mobilization Against Racism and Anti-Islamic Bigotry

Initial Signers (list in formation)
Al-Awda NY Palestine Right To Return Coalition
American Muslims for Palestine
Arab Muslim American Federation - AMAF
Bailout the People Movement
BAYAN USA – Philippine American Alliance
Black Workers for Justice
Ramsey Clark
Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality, VA
DRUM - Desis Rising Up & Moving-
Ana Edwards, Chair, Sacred Ground Historical Reclamation
Families United for Justice in America-FUJA
Freedom Road Socialist Organization
Fight Imperialism Stand Together-FIST
Gabriella Network USA – Women’s Leadership
Steve Gillis, VP, USW Local 8751 Boston School Bus Drivers
Mike Gimbel, Chair, Local 375, AFSCME "Labor/Community Unity Committee"
Kosta Harlan, Students for a Democratic Society
Imani Henry, LGBT Activist, Playwright/Performer
In the Name of Humanity
International Action Center
Jersey City Peace Movement
Imam Ashrafuz Zaman Khan, Pres. North American Imams Federatiopn - NAIF
Angaza Laughinghouse, Pres, UE local 150, NC Public Service Workers Union
May 1 Workers and Immigrant Rights Coalition
Cynthia McKinney
Michigan Emergency Comm, Against War & Injustice
Millions for Mumia
MN Ånti War Committee
Moritorium Now Coalition to Stop Foreclosures, Evictions & Utility Shutoffs
Muslim Solidarity Committee
Nodutdol for Korean Community Development
North East Peace and Justice Action Coalition
Pakistan USA Freedom Forum
Pan Africa News Wire
Peoples Organization for Progress
Peoples Video Network
Queers for Economic Justice
Richmond Jobs With Justice
Stonewall Warriors
Senegalese Workers Association
Bishop Filipe Teixeira, OFSJC, Diocese of St. Francis of Assisi, CCA
The Peace Thru Justice Foundation
Phil Wilayto, Author
Women’s Fightback Network

(Planning meetings being scheduled. Contact us for information.)

Endorse this Call to Action at
http://www.iacenter.org/moslemsolidarityendorse

NYC: Protest India's 'Operation Green Hunt' Aug. 13

2010-08-04T16:19:00.002-04:00

Sanhati, and other organizations and individuals, are organizing a protest against the Indian government's insidious war, named "Operation Green Hunt," which has been unleashed on the inhabitants of the forested regions of East-Central India.

We urge you all to join us in this protest at the Consulate in New York City (3 East 64th Street) on August 13 at 11 a.m.

Contact: communications@sanhati.com

Kindly inform others about this protest by circulating this email.

The protest will approximately coincide with Indian Independence Day
(August 15) to emphasize that the promises of independence have remained largely unfulfilled for a large section of the population, including the tribal peoples.

In its current phase, this war is concentrated primarily in the forested regions of East-Central India, stretching from the states of Chhattisgarh to Jharkhand and West Bengal. This region is home to significant amounts of natural resources.

Big corporations, both Indian and foreign, are plundering these natural resources for quick profits and plan to continue doing so while paying almost no attention to the enormous environmental and human costs inherent in their ventures. The state and central governments continue to welcome these big corporations with open arms by signing an unknown number of memoranda of understanding with them—whose details have been kept secret. A recent report by the Ministry of Rural Development, on the other hand, described these trends as one of the biggest land grabs since the time of Columbus.

Yet these forested areas house not only natural resources. This region is home to a large section of India's roughly 100 million Adivasis (i.e., the tribal population). Using all means at their disposal, the Adivasis resisted the government's efforts to forcibly drive them from their ancestral lands. Drawing on the Fifth Schedule of the Indian Constitution, which is devoted to Adivasi rights and provisions for their protection, Adivasi activists challenged the government's expropriations.

Instead of addressing the genuine grievances of the Adivasis, the Indian government has cracked down on their legitimate protests in violation of the letter and intent of the Indian Constitution. Peaceful resistance movements across this region have been met with police brutality and military might; this forced the arming of a section of the resistance movement. State-assisted vigilante groups like the Salwa Judum in Chhattisgarh and Harmad Bahini in West Bengal were a response of the state to the armed resistance of the Adivasis.

When that failed, Operation Green Hunt -- a further escalation and
militarization of the State's response -- emerged. Such militarization
is facilitated by the Indian government's military cooperation with the United States and Israel.

Sections of civil society have been urging the central government to stop Operation Green Hunt and begin negotiations with the diverse people's organizations opposing the looting of natural resources. The response of the government to the idea of dialogue has in general not been encouraging in view of the plans of increased militarization, human rights abuses committed by the security forces, suppression of dissenting voices, and abductions and killings of the leaders of people's organizations.

In this context, Adivasis in India, and all the people who are with them in this struggle for freedom from exploitation and oppression, need your support. Join us to protest against Operation Green Hunt and the increasing violence of the Indian State on democratic movements on August 13, 2010 at 11 a.m. in front of the Indian Consulate in New York City.

Oppose the biggest land grab since Columbus!

Oppose Operation Green Hunt!

Oppose the war on people!

###

Sanhati (www.sanhati.com) is a forum of activists, professionals, workers, academics and intellectuals that stand in solidarity with peoples' struggles against corporate capital and for the upholding of democratic rights in India. The group strives to be an integral part of the international search for alternatives to the capitalist social order.

###

BACKGROUND NOTE

India Shining, so claimed the BJP-led government. Today, the Congress-led regime might boast that it successfully increased annual economic growth from 5.6% to 8.3% in the last six years, while criticizing the previous BJP-led alliance.

Between the 5.6% and 8.3%, there lurk other stories. About three-quarters of India's people live on less than Rs. 20 per day, while almost half of the women in India are still illiterate and about 80% of households do not have access to safe drinking water.

Between 1997 and 2006, there lurk other stories. Nearly 170,000 farmers committed suicide by drinking pesticide because they could not keep up with demands to repay their loans. In addition to the agrarian crisis, whatever little access the poor had to common property resources has come under increasing attack by the Indian government in the guise of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) and other "development" projects related to mining, industrial development, information technology parks, and so forth.

Immeasurable stories such as these are grafted onto the underbelly of
neo-liberal economic "development" in India. A recent report, penned by the Indian Ministry of Rural Development, described these trends as the biggest land grab since Columbus. In truth, it wouldn't be hard to keep citing official statistics revealing not only the shadows within the Shining India myth, but huge pockets of darkness. To be perfectly honest, none of this is new. If there is one image of India that has persisted in the Western media, it is the image of bone-thin, bare-bodied children with swollen bellies, scavenging for food-crumbs in trash-cans next to stray dogs and wild birds.

But something has changed in the last five years.

India, like many other parts of the world, has seen the emergence of a
whole spectrum of mass movements challenging the global neo-liberal
onslaught in many different ways. These movements are not attempts to
"brainwash" the masses by English-spouting city-bred students or
intellectuals with romantic dreams of social change. On the contrary,
these movements are being led by the very people who have been
persistently excluded from reaping the benefits of development and growth -- in short, the people who live in the pockets of darkness within the so-called shining India.

The oppressed of India have shown an unwillingness to stay oppressed for eternity, despite the policy of the government to "kill the poor and not the poverty." These struggles are primarily about defending their lands, rivers and homes from corrupt officials and swindlers. Moreover, these movements have demonstrated that not only has the government failed to deliver on the promises of the basic rights of the Indian constitution itself, the interests of the most economically disadvantageous people have seriously been compromised by its almost total and unconditional submission to the interests of corporations
like Mittal, Vedanta, Tata, Essar, Salim, Jindal, and POSCO.

Instead of improving governance while addressing dissent and discontent in an inclusive way, as befitting any democratic government, the Indian government has unleashed severe state violence. The government of India has launched an insidious war nicknamed Operation Green Hunt. While the terror initiated by the government since 2009 is by no means unique in view of the history of the state repression across India (e.g., West Bengal, Orissa, Kashmir, the Northeasten states, Punjab, and Andhra Pradesh), Operation Green Hunt is unprecedented both for its array of military force and its media mobilization.

Since last year, more than 100,000 military and paramilitary troops have been sent into Adivasi (i.e., indigenous) areas. Moreover, it was recently announced that 36 battalions of Indian Reserve Forces will be added to the 105 already raised, along with 16,000 more "Special Police Officers" (civilians trained and armed by the government) bringing their total strength to 30,000. Through this new military campaign, which almost brings to mind histories of colonial occupation of land, the military "occupiers" are to gradually spread into one "sanitized" area after another.

Some additional relevant facts:

* Twenty Warfare Training Schools are being built in India.

* Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently spent $18 billion in the US to buy huge amounts of military supplies and munitions. This included
state-of-the-art global positioning systems and night-vision-capable
automatic rifles.

* Drones are being purchased from Israel and the Israeli Mossad is
training Indian police as snipers. The aim of the training is to enable assassination of the leaders of diverse mass movements. The recent murder of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) spokesperson Azad, who was also the party's emissary for negotiations on a ceasefire, clearly reflects one aspect of the government's modus operandi (i.e., targeted killings).

* According to numerous reports, dozens of indigenous people are being
killed each week in the Adivasi regions.

* The Communist Party of India (Maoist) has been declared India's "gravest internal security" threat and has been banned. Bans have also been imposed on other democratic organizations on the claim that they are frontal" organizations of CPI (Maoist) and the witch hunt against these civil rights activists continues unabated.

* The last few months have seen the arrests of increasing numbers of media personnel, journalists, writers, and intellectuals who have shown the slightest sympathy to people's struggles in the Adivasi heartland. The discussions within the ranks of the police forces in the state of Chattisgarh as to whether the Booker Prize winning writer Arundhati Roy is to be charged under an "anti-terrorism" law following the publication of her essay "Walking With the Comrades" is a case in point.

* The state of Gujarat has joined Operation Green Hunt by alleging that "Maoists" are attempting to expand their networks into Gujarat and in particular the tribal regions of South Gujarat. Several activists have been arrested. This witch-hunt of the Gujarat police amounts to a systematic effort by the state government to suppress all manner of dissension and opposition.

* Operation Green Hunt includes widespread incidents of rape committed by the security forces. Recently, about 50,000 women tried to march into Jhargram town in West Bengal to protest against these rapes (see
photograph above). The marchers included school students in uniform,
teachers, housewives and even many elderly women. Widespread rape is a
progeny of Operation Green Hunt.

* The Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), one of a number of
anti-democratic Acts, continues to give Indian troops immunity from civil legal action and promotes human rights violations. The Naga People's Movement for Human Rights has aptly observed that this Act is a systematic tool of the Indian government that contributes to terrorizing and dehumanizing civilian populations. This Act also protects security personnel in Kashmir guilty of killing and torturing the people of the valley.

The Indian state, in other words, has declared war on its own people. It has declared war precisely on those sections of the population who have always been at the receiving ends of multiple forms of systemic and institutional oppression. Instead of addressing the genuine grievances of Adivasis facing forcible displacement and dispossession, the Indian government has cracked down on their legitimate protests in flagrant violation of the letter and intent of the Indian Constitution.

Foreseeing the disastrous impact that Operation Green Hunt will have on the common people in those regions, different sections of civil society have called for a dialog between the state and various sections of the resistance, including the CPI (Maoist) and different people's organizations, involved in struggles in the Adivasi regions. Several attempts to make progress in these efforts failed, with different politicians, bureaucrats and security officers continuously attempting to scuttle negotiations.

A glimmer of hope had risen due to the civil society initiative
represented by Swami Agnivesh, with the Union Home Minister and Azad, as spokesperson of CPI(Maoist), responding to him in a letter detailing the suitable conditions under which a dialog might begin. It is reported that Azad was on his way to consult other members of CPI (Maoist) in order to decide future steps for proceeding with this initiative when he was allegedly abducted and killed, thus throwing the possibility of negotiations into disarray. The murder of a spokesperson of a political organization, with which dialog is supposedly being planned at this crucial juncture, raises serious doubts regarding the government commitment to such a dialog.

In this situation, the activists in India need your presence support. Join us to protest against Operation Green Hunt and the increasing violence of the Indian State on democratic movements on August 13, 2010 at 11 a.m. in front of the Indian Consulate in New York City. We have chosen August 13, as this date roughly coincides with Indian Independence Day, when the country became a sovereign nation-state following its colonial occupation by Great Britain. We would, therefore, like to record our protest and remind the public that the promises of the Indian independence have not only remain unfulfilled, but the current Indian government has resorted to military repression to quell democratic dissent in a way uncannily similar to the erstwhile British overlords. We invite all in diaspora, the international community of media activists, human rights workers, academics and intellectuals and artists to join us.

Calling All Abolitionists - Stand Up for Mumia Abu-Jamal

2010-07-29T10:29:00.000-04:00

We, the undersigned, strongly condemn the letter, signed by some US members of the steering committee of the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, opposing Pennsylvania death row prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal’s participation in the World Congress Against the Death Penalty and claiming that highlighting his case hurts the cause for abolition in the U.S.

(Seee http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/116. See also Dave Lindorff’s article about this at http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/117.)

We stand in solidarity with Mumia, who has spent the past twenty-eight years on death row, the victim of a trial and court procedures fraught with racism, and police, prosecutorial and judicial misconduct. Mumia currently faces a grave threat: the US Supreme Court has accepted an appeal to re-instate Mumia’s death sentence, and Philadelphia’s District Attorney has pledged his intention to pursue his execution. Mumia urgently needs our support, and we call for a new trial for him now. We reject any call by abolitionists to put “coalition-building” with law enforcement over and above the struggle for justice of any death row prisoner, be they innocent or guilty. We also reject the logic of having police organizations that fight tooth and nail for the execution of those with unpopular views as a partner or ally. Many police organizations – as well as prosecutors and judges-- have organized against our efforts to win justice for Mumia, and have served as guardians of an unjust “justice” system.

We deplore divisive strategies that seek to exclude death row prisoners from our movement. We call on all participating organizations in the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty to re-affirm their support for Mumia Abu-Jamal and all death row prisoners in our struggle to end the death penalty worldwide.

Signed:

Albany Social Justice Center

Danielle Allen, Willis, TX

Anthony Arnove, Co-Author, Voices of a People's History of the United States

Sylvia Barnard, Professor, University at Albany

Barbara Becnel, Stanley Tookie Williams Legacy Network

Megan Behrent, Delegate, United Federation of Teachers/AFT*

Medea Benjamin, Co-Founder, CODEPINK

Roland Bialke, Berlin, Germany

Kwame Binta, UNIA-ACL

Heidi Boghosian, Executive Director, National Lawyers Guild

Campaign to End the Death Penalty

Center for Constitutional Rights

Uwe Darius, Mumia Abu-Jamal Bundnis, Nuremberg, Germany

Educators for Mumia Abu-Jamal

Johanna Fernandez, Department of History, Baruch College/CUNY

Glen Ford, Executive Editor, Black Agenda Report

Frances Goldin, Literary Agent

Freedom Socialist Party

Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition

Schohreh Golian, Hamburg, Germany

Marty Goodman, former Executive Board Member, Transport Workers Union Local 100, NYC*

Arun Gupta, The Indypendent*

Teresa Gutierrez, May 1st Coalition

Ron Hampton, Executive Director, National Black Police Association

Noelle Hanrahan, Prison Radio

Sue Harris, Co-Director, Peoples’ Video Network

Howie Hawkins, Green Party Candidate, Governor of New York

Lawrence Hayes, Former New York death row prisoner

Laura Herrera, Co-Coordinator, Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal

Larry Holmes, International Action Center

Stanley Howard, exonerated death row prisoner; currently incarcerated in IL

International Action Center

International Concerned Family & Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal

International Socialist Organization

Jericho Amnesty Movement

Kathy Kelly, Voices for Creative Nonviolence

Kevin Cooper Defense Committee

Nada Khader, Executive Director, WESPAC Foundation

Andreas Komrowski, Berlin, Germany

Joachim Kuebler, Germany

Sis. Marpessa Kupendua, Afrikan Frontline Network

Monica Moorehead, Millions for Mumia

Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal (LAC)

Wolfgang Lettow, Gefangenen Info, Berlin, Germany

Candace Lider, Troy Area Labor Council

Lee Loe, Co-Editor, Houston Peace News

Jeff Mackler, Director, Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal

Claude Marks, Director, Freedom Archives

National Black Police Association

Peter Nowack, Journalist, Berlin, Germany

Kiilu Nyasha, San Francisco Bay View Newspaper

Out of Control: Lesbian Committee to Support Political Prisoners

Positive Anti-Crime Trust, Inc.

Prison Activist Research Center

Michael Ratner, President, Center for Constitutional Rights

Yusef Salaam, Exoneree, Central Park jogger case

Dagmar Schimmel, Berlin, Germany

Navdeep Sidhu, M.D., Goettingen, , Germany

Joan Stallard, Washington, DC, Coordinator, CODEPINK

Michael Letwin, Former President, Association of Legal Aid Attorneys/UAW Local 2325

Mark Lewis Taylor, Princeton Theological Seminary*

Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement

Andy Thayer, Chicago Coalition Against War & Racism; Co-Founder, Gay Liberation Network*

Marissa Torres, Chapter Chair, United Federation of Teachers/AFT*

Carlos Villarreal, Executive Director, National Lawyers Guild, San Francisco Bay Area Chapter

Donna Wallach, Justice for Palestinians, San Jose, CA

Barry Weisleder, Socialist Action/Ligue pour l'action socialiste, Canada

Cornel West, Professor, Princeton University

Gerd Wildenbruch, Berlin, Germany

Paul Wright, Editor, Prison Legal News

Dave Zirin, Author, Bad Sports: How Owners Are Ruining the Games We Love

*organization for identification only

If your group would like to sign onto this statement, please contact nyc@nodeathpenalty.org.

Now Available: Absent Cause #4 - Survival

2010-07-13T16:18:00.004-04:00

Not a “reality” show, but the stories of real-life survivors in prose, poetry, artwork and photography.

Featuring contributions from:
Emily Henochowicz
Victoria Law
Andria Alefhi
Jaimie Hashey
Deirdre Sinnott
Noemi Martinez
Walaa Quisay
Alison Roh Park
redguard
and many more!

Warning: This zine contains potentially triggering pieces about domestic and social violence, childhood and adult sexual abuse, depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, eating disorders, substance abuse, and dealing with abuse perpetrators.

To order:
$3 plus $1 shipping
http://www.etsy.com/listing/51429734/absent-cause-4-survival
redguard@gmail.com

By mail: Absent Cause
PO Box 1568
New York, NY 10276

Trades welcome!

Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono & Friends sing "With A Little Help From My Friends"/"Give Peace a Chance"

2010-07-09T20:09:00.002-04:00

Ringo Starr's 70th birthday concert at Radio City Music Hall, July 7, 2010

Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney & Friends perform "Birthday"

2010-07-09T20:04:00.001-04:00

The encore of Ringo Starr's 70th birthday concert at Radio City Music Hall, July 7, 2010.

Ringo Starr's Peace Dreams

2010-07-08T12:22:00.012-04:00

Journalists are taught to lead with the big news, so here goes:

Last night, surprise guest Paul McCartney joined his former bandmate Ringo Starr onstage and played The Beatles’ song “Birthday” at the finale of the drummer’s 70th-birthday concert at New York’s Radio City Music Hall.

Okay. More on that later!

My daughter Ripley and I went to the concert, a stop on Ringo’s 11th summer All-Starr Band tour. I’ve wanted to go to one of these shows for years, but didn’t, because of money, scheduling, whatever. But Ripley has been very eager to see the surviving Beatles, and Ringo is her favorite.

I had never seen any of The Beatles in person either, and was very excited to share the experience with Ripley, because the band has played such an important part in my own life (including my evolution toward a revolutionary perspective in my teenage years.) This seemed like a good time for us to go. Ringo is extremely spry for 70 – he looks at least 20 years younger. But even he won’t be around forever.

In line outside Radio City and again after we found our seats, speculation was buzzing through the crowd. Would there be special guests jamming tonight? Would Yoko Ono be there? Would Paul? I didn’t want to get my hopes up.

In fact, even without special guests, it was an amazing concert. I was blown away by the musicians assembled for the latest version of the All-Starr Band. All were excellent singers and musicians: Edgar Winter, Gary Wright, Wally Palmer of the Romantics and Richard Page of Mr. Mister. Each of them played two of their memorable hits interspersed with selections from The Beatles and Ringo’s solo catalog.

The standout performer of the night was guitarist Rick Derringer. As Rolling Stone blogger Andy Greene said in his excellent write-up today, Derringer’s “killer chops elevated every single song of the evening.” His passionate guitar solo on “Rock and Roll Hoochie Coo” was the most amazing axe-playing I’ve experienced since I saw Lindsey Buckingham on Fleetwood Mac’s 1997 tour.

The venue itself was excellent, giving full reign to the gorgeous psychedelic backdrop and lightshow.

Let’s talk about Ringo

Ringo has called himself the world’s luckiest Beatles fan, since he go to go along for the ride and witness firsthand the songwriting titans John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison at work.

This is typical of the man and his extreme modesty, underplaying both his own musical talents (some peers contend that Ringo invented rock drumming as we know it) and his equally important role as a unifier and peacemaker within the band.

Aside from his first couple of solo records that spawned hit singles in the early 70s, his post-Beatles recordings are virtually unknown outside of a niche following. But Ringo continues to record and tour regularly.

I want to argue that his body of work is well past due for reassessment, with an eye toward his work as a chronicler of Liverpudlian and Beatles history through song, and his dedication to promoting the ideals of John Lennon and the 1960s.

The thought has crossed my mind before, but it really struck me at last night’s show: Aside from Yoko Ono herself, I can’t think of anyone who has continued to promote and speak out for Lennon’s legacy more than Ringo.

His most passionate performance at the birthday concert was a track from his recent album Y Not entitled “Peace Dream,” co-written with Gary Wright. The song references Lennon by name and goes on to say:

Last night I had a peace dream.
You know how real dreams can be?
The world was a better place for you and me,
(Try to imagine...)
No need for war no more.
(Try to imagine...)
Better things worth fighting for.
No more hunger, no more pain.
We'll make our dream come true some day.

This isn’t some throwaway song. It echoes many others throughout Ringo’s large body of work, and started even before Lennon’s death in 1980.

There is absolutely no reason Ringo Starr has to sing about war, hunger, and pain. He could safely and profitably coast through playing greatest hits. He does it because it is heartfelt – it matters to him, John’s legacy matters to him, the ‘60s ideals of peace, love and equality continue to matter to him.

As radicals and revolutionaries we might consider him politically naïve. But there isn’t a trace of cynicism in his ongoing expressions of ‘60s ideals. He truly believes in them, even after the other Beatles and most of their peers (even Lennon himself, at least for a time) had given up, sold out, or “turned inward” toward spiritualism (in the way only those with boatloads of money can).

(It seems appropriate to mention that Richard Starkey was raised among the poorest section of the Liverpool proletariat in the World War II and post-War years. If The Beatles as a whole were from the wrong side of the tracks to the rest of the pop culture world, then Ringo was from the wronger-side even from the rest of them. I think this is more than incidental to his fidelity to ‘60s ideals.)

A little help

So back to the birthday concert. As the All-Starrs’ set was wrapping up, musicians like Joe Walsh, Jeff Lynne and members of the E-Street Band made their way onto the stage and joined Ringo his usual closing number, “With A Little Help From My Friends,” from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Ringo’s son Zack Starkey popped up and started playing his father’s drum set. The audience was standing, swaying, singing along. Then Yoko Ono ran out onto the stage, embraced Ringo, and brought down the house. Then came a chorus of "Give Peace a Chance."

As the song ended, Ringo’s grandsons appeared stage right, wheeling out an enormous birthday cake shaped like his famous Beatle drums.

Finally, Ringo said goodnight, and walked off, stage left, singing “Happy Birthday to me.” The lights went down.

Nobody in the audience moved. Still standing, a chant went up: “One more song! One more song! One more song!”

The All-Stars returned to the dark stage. Ringo was at the drums. There would be an encore.

Then it happened. McCartney ran out on stage and burst into The Beatles’ classic “Birthday.” The crowd roared. The two survivors were on stage, playing together, before our eyes. Like any past Beatles concert, it was virtually impossible to hear the music. I don’t think anyone cared.

Personally, I don’t care for Paul McCartney as a person. To me he is the opposite of Ringo – an apolitical cynic who was only too happy to discard the trappings of the ‘60s when it was no longer popular and profitable. That said, it was still moving to see him break into tears when he embraced Ringo after the song.

I started sobbing myself as the crowd streamed out into the steamy New York summer night. I pulled Ripley aside and gave her the clichéd talk about how this was a night she would remember all her life and tell her grandchildren about. She saw my tears and was worried that I was very tired.

Photos by redguard

Happy birthday, Frida!

2010-07-06T06:03:00.002-04:00

Today, July 6, 2010, is the 103rd birthday of the great revolutionary artist Frida Kahlo. Her work, still so deeply underappreciated and misunderstood by the mainstream "art world," is so beloved by people worldwide that even Google had to give her props today.

But let's get real, shall we? Frida was a communist, a feminist, a gender-queer, a survivor. She grew up in the midst of the Mexican Revolution. She came of age in the aftermath of Russian Revolution and its influence on Latin American radical movements. She had the great, contradictory fortune/misfortune to link up with that other historic Mexican revolutionary artist, Diego Rivera. If she were alive today, she would kick imperialist, corporate Google's virtual ass.

May Day 1929, Mexico City

Marxism will Heal the Sick, 1954

In her famous body cast

Childhood polio and a horrific trolley crash during her teen years irreperably damaged her body. They caused her great pain, limited her mobility, prevented her from having the children she wanted so much. In painting her pain, her hope, her despair, her self-portraits speak to all survivors.

The Broken Column, 1944

Very Ugly, 1933

Self Portrait with Cropped Hair, 1940

People mostly think of Frida’s self portraits, but her work was also macabre, political and genre-defying.

What the Water Gave Me, 1939

The Suicide of Dorothy Hale, 1939

The Deceased Dimas, 1937

Dear Frida, comrade, artist, survivor, thank you.

Frida Kahlo - July 6, 1907-July 13, 1954

What to the slave is your 4th of July?

2010-07-04T12:17:00.001-04:00

“For revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.”
-- Frederick Douglass, What to the Slave is your Fourth of July?

Stand with radical lawyer & political prisoner Lynne Stewart

2010-07-01T19:08:00.002-04:00

Radical human rights attorney Lynne Stewart has been falsely accused of aiding terrorism. On Tuesday, April 9, 2002, she was arrested and agents searched her Manhattan office for documents. She was arraigned before Manhattan federal Judge John Koeltl.

It was an obvious attempt by the U.S. government to silence dissent, curtail vigorous defense lawyers, and install fear in those who would fight against the U.S. government’s racism, seek to help Arabs and Muslims being prosecuted for free speech and defend the rights of all oppressed people.

Lynne’s bail has been revoked, and she is now being held in jail after the Second Circuit ruled on her and the government’s appeals on November 17, 2009.

Upcoming NYC events:

July 8, 2010
6pm - 10pm
FUNDRAISER FOR LYNNE

Voicing Suport for Lynne will be:
Ramsey Clark
Ward Churchill
Fred Hampton Jr.
Ralph Schoenman
and many more !!!!!!!

Judson Memorial Church
55 Washington Square So.
NY, NY 10012
http://www.judson.org
This is a fundraiser, suggested donation is $20.00

July 14, 2010
5:30pm March from Tom Paine Park (Worth St. between Centre & Lafayette Streets)
3 blocks to Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC- where Lynne is detained)

7-9pm Vigil in Support of Lynne
At Metropolitan Correctional Center 150 Park Row

JULY 15, 2010
SENTENCING DAY
Sentencing is at 2:30pm, we will be there at 11am
Federal Courthouse
500 Pearl Street
NY, NY
Doors will open at 2pm
LET’S PACK THE COURT!!!

Support the Committee to Defend Vicky Pelaez

2010-07-01T18:48:00.004-04:00

Radical journalist Vicky Pelaez and her husband, Juan Lazaro, are among those rounded up and accused of being "Russian spies" in the latest FBI frame-up targeting immigrants and progressives. The new defense committee, initiated by the progressive Peruvian community in the New York City area, held a protest and news conference at 500 Pearl Street July 1.

Bulletin #1 of the Committee to Defend Vicky Pelaez

212-631-7555

Vicky Pelaez Slandered

The Committee to Defend Vicky Pelaez declares its unconditional support for a woman who, for over twenty years has shown herself to be honest, loyal to her principles and tenacious in the pursuit of the truth.

Today, June 30, 2010, the lawyer Carlos Moreno, legal advisor for the Committee to Defend Vicky Pelaez, visited Ms. Pelaez in Federal Detention Center MDC in Brooklyn. The lawyer, on behalf of the Defense Committee, spoke with Ms. Pelaez for nearly an hour, despite intimidation by officials of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Ms. Pelaez repeated her innocence and stated that this accusation against her and her husband, Juan Lazaro, is a political persecution based on the criticism that she made in her columns against the erroneous policies of the United States. We, representatives of the Defense Committee, support Ms. Pelaez, understanding, as she understands, that this is a political persecution that ignores the most minimal rights of due process. We reject the demonization of Vicky Pelaez by the United States government. The frivolous indictment against Vicky Pelaez and Juan Lazaro is an offense against the so-called democratic rights that the US claims to guarantee to its citizens.

The accusatory document alleges that Vicky Pelaez has been accused of Conspiracy to Act as an Unregistered Agent of a Foreign Government, in violation of Section 951 of Title 18 of the United States Code. She is also accused of conspiracy to launder assets in violation of Sections 1956 (a)(1)(A)(i) and 1956 (a)(1)(b)(i) Title 18 of the U.S. code. These charges are nothing more than slander disguised by legal rhetoric.

We strongly reject the attempt by the US to defame a journalist who, for more than 20 years, has shown her adherence to truth, even when this truth upsets many people, including those in power in the US.

If being loyal to principles, being consistent in ones ideas, criticizing what is wrong means being a spy, we all spies! If one calls things by their name, if one says that the invasion of Iraq was premeditated genocide, means being a spy, we all spies! If one says that Afghanistan is the Vietnam of our time means being a spy, we all spies!

Vicky Pelaez knows, as we also know, that the charges against her are malicious and false.

There is no question that Vicky Pelaez and her husband, Juan Lazaro, Professor of Latin American Affairs at Baruch College, are faithful fighters for truth, no matter whom this upsets. This indictment against them seeks to isolate them from the community, to intimidate people who know the truth about Vicky Pelaez and who know that she is a serious, honest, professional journalist, loyal to the truth, qualities also demonstrated by Juan Lazaro as Professor.

No one should feel afraid to raise their voice in favor of Vicky Pelaez! No one should allow the US Government to trample on its own Constitution! No one should doubt for a moment Vicky Pelaez’s integrity!

The Committee to Defend Vicky Pelaez says, as the tank drivers of the heroic Republic of 1936 said, we live and we will continue to fight!

Write to Vicky Pelaez at:
Vicky Pelaez/Register No. 90568-054
MDC Brooklyn
Metropolitan Detention Center
P.O. Box 329002
Brooklyn, NY 11232

Visit Vicky Pelaez at:
80 29th Street
Brooklyn, NY 11232

Fighting Facebook’s censorship against the left

2010-07-01T10:35:00.002-04:00

By Greg Butterfield

“They came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.”
- Pastor Martin Niemöller of Germany, 1946

July 1, 2010 – In recent days, the U.S.-based social-networking monolith Facebook has begun an all-out assault on its members, deleting three active groups that advocated for progressive and radical causes, permanently banning the accounts of four individuals who administered one group, and sending threatening messages to others.

The groups deleted include Boycott BP, a campaign against the Big Oil company responsible for one of history’s worst ecological disasters; the PFLP Solidarity Group, based in New Zealand with members around the globe, in support of the Palestinian resistance movement; and Free Ricardo Palmera, a group advocating support for a leftist Colombian guerrilla leader who is imprisoned in the United States in violation of international law.

Facebook is carrying out its censorship campaign against the left under cover of its arbitrary “terms of service.”

Josh Sykes, administrator of the deleted Free Ricardo Palmera group, received this message: “The group Free Ricardo Palmera! has been removed because it violated our Terms of Use. Among other things, groups that are hateful, threatening, or obscene are not allowed. We also take down groups that attack an individual or group, or advertise a product or service. Continued misuse of Facebook's features could result in your account being disabled.”

None of the affected groups were hateful, threatening or obscene in any way. And as anyone who’s familiar with Facebook knows, truly hateful racist, anti-Muslim, anti-women, anti-gay, pro-cop, pro-imperialist and pro-Zionist apartheid groups abound and their members post freely.

Marika Pratley, PFLP Solidarity Campaign coordinator and group administrator, said, “This was clearly a political attack against the PFLP and an attempt by Facebook to censor and shut down the solidarity campaign.

“The PFLP advocates a single secular state in all of Palestine, with equal rights for all, regardless of race or religion, and is the second largest group in the PLO. Facebook have deemed that support for the PFLP violates its terms and conditions while allowing many blatantly racist anti-Palestinian groups to continue to exist without such censorship.”

Facebook is well-known for invasions of personal privacy, but it also has a reputation for censoring leftist causes and national liberation movements. Since 2008, pages and groups supporting Cuba have sometimes been deleted without warning, including one administered by this writer. My personal account was also temporarily suspended.

Another Cuba supporter, an Egyptian-born student activist living outside the U.S., had her account permanently banned. So did a Palestinian student activist from New Jersey whose pro-Palestine liberation group was deleted.

While Facebook is notorious for making its members’ personal information available to Corporate America, police agencies and the U.S. government, it guards its own contact information zealously. Not only do members sign away their right of appeal to Facebook’s censors; it is almost impossible to lodge a protest. Difficult-to-access options that existed a couple of years ago, at the time of the earlier shut-downs, have been removed.

Victory for Boycott BP, big battles remain

The 700,000-member Boycott BP group was restored after a huge public outcry, including coverage on CNN. Facebook now claims the group was disabled “in error.”

While this is an important victory – and shows that Facebook CAN be pushed back – it is a harder road for lesser known cases like Palemro’s or more controversial causes like the Palestinian resistance movement.

It’s important to ask, which groups will Facebook target next? Supporters of political prisoners like Mumia Abu-Jamal? Supporters of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla? Opponents of U.S. war against Afghanistan, Iraq, Korea, and Iran? Supporters of the revolutionary movements in Venezuela, the Philippines and Nepal? Abortion-rights advocates?

Facebook may try to cover its censorship of groups like the PFLP Solidarity Campaign by pointing to the terrible June 21 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Holder V. Humanitarian Law Project, which criminalizes free speech under Material Support Statutes related to groups the U.S. government falsely deems “terrorist” – including longstanding national liberation movements in Palestine, Lebanon, Colombia, Nepal, the Philippines, etc., etc.

But the fact is, Facebook and the rest of Corporate America benefit from and hold enormous sway over the decisions of the Supreme Court – which, like the other branches of U.S. government, exists to preserve and strengthen the rule of capitalists. The bogus and unconstitutional decision of the Supreme Court must not become an excuse to let Facebook and its ilk off the hook.

Social networking sites have expanded to the point where they are an important and necessary component of all sorts of progressive social advocacy, from modest reforms to revolutionary social change. People all over the world rely on them, so it is especially ludicrous for Facebook to impose the rules of U.S. imperialist foreign policy on its members.

Social networks should belong to the people, not Corporate America. Taking the fight to Facebook now is an important step in that direction.

What you can do

On Facebook, a group has been set up called Stop Facebook Assault on Progressive Causes. Join and invite your Facebook contacts. Help them get informed and involved. If you or your group have been censored or threatened, let the group know.

Repost this article. Blog and email about the issue. Contact local and national media and let them know what you think about Facebook’s campaign against radical and progressive causes.

Call and write Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to demand an end to the censorship of left groups and progressive causes, and to threats against individuals Facebook members: 156 University Avenue, Palo Alto CA, (650) 543-4800. (If you come across better contact information for Zuckerberg and other Facebook big-wigs, please spread the word.)

The struggle continues!

Contact Greg at redguard@gmail.com

Leftist journalist targeted in "Russian Spy" sweep

2010-06-30T09:09:00.004-04:00

On June 29, Vicky Peláez, a progressive Peruvian reporter who had a Tuesday column in El Diario La Prensa (NYC), was arrested along her husband, Uruguayan photographer and professor Juan Jose Lázaro Sr., by the FBI under suspicion of espionage for Russia, along with several other people. Peláez's columns have appeared in Rebelión, at cubadebate.cu and other prestigious left publications. She is a defender of the Cuban and Venezuelan revolutions.

There appears to be FBI entrapment and, most strikingly, like the Rosenbergs, none of those arrested seem to have been in any position to have access to any secret information, military or otherwise. What were they spying on? For Peláez and Lázaro, "their pro-communist political views made them targets of the investigation."

Apparently they had been under surveillance for the better part of a decade. Why the arrests now? Could it be meant as leverage to prevent Russia from interfering with U.S. plans against Iran?

(Thanks to Berta Joubert-Ceci and Bill Cecil)

New York Times: Couples accused as spies were the suburbs personified

FREE VICKY PELAEZ & JUAN JOSE LAZARO SR!

FREE ALL U.S. POLITICAL PRISONERS!

Chicago 1968, Toronto 2010: In Defense of Militant Resistance

2010-06-29T13:41:00.005-04:00

Following is an excerpt from “In Defense of Militant Resistance,” a position paper issued by Youth Against War & Fascism for the Chicago Student Mobilization Conference in January 1968. YAWF was the youth organization affiliated with Workers World Party in the 1960s and 1970s.

The points made here -- in defense of youthful anti-war and anti-racist protesters' right to resist imperialism by militant street actions -- seem especially relevant in light of the current denunciations of the Toronto G8 protests by the capitalist media and governments, on one hand, and more insidiously by forces on the left, on the other.

"In Defense of Militant Resistance" was also important in laying the groundwork for YAWF's participation, alongside other militants, in the street battles of the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. The full document can be downloaded as a PDF file here.

Attacks on “adventurism” abound from those who spare no efforts to frighten every potential militant before every demonstration with lectures on the “unfavorable relationship of forces” and who gloat after every setback. Instead of defending the right of the demonstrators to take all measures against an illegal war, these opportunists blame the violence equally on “provocations by demonstrators” as well as the cops.

Of course, it is true that a few thousand demonstrators are no match for armed police squadrons -- in a serious test of military strength. But whoever points this out as a reason for opposing a demonstration, may as well oppose all actions of every kind which challenge the war machine.

Whoever argues against the preposterous notion that unarmed demonstrators expect to defeat armed cops in battle with their bare fists is just setting up a straw man. The demonstrators at the Pentagon, in Oakland, and at the New York Hilton showed the whole world how they felt about the war, and some showed that they could face violence in opposing the war, in common with those who are the victims of the war. But one would have to be completely out of touch with reality to think that they actually expected to overcome the police in a showdown battle.

Certainly, it is true that many of the young people who are challenging the U.S. social system for the first time seriously underestimate the enemy. They are not yet aware of the full social and political power they are opposing, and are not yet clear on the amount of political organization necessary to contend with it. But they are well aware of the armed power of the police, the national guard and the army. That power has been made very evident in Vietnam, Detroit, Newark, Watts and other places.

The great and wonderful thing about these youth is that after seeing all this, they are still willing to fight!

From the point of view of a genuine anti-imperialist leadership, the fact that some of these youth may be “adventuristic” is not critical. What is most significant, however, is that they are courageous and want to strike boldly at the imperialist Establishment, that they are militant and want to fight back. Mistakes will abound but they can be discussed afterward. These are the ranks from which some of the most valuable cadre of militants will surely come. They can only be regarded as friends and allies to be won over permanently to the struggle on a political basis.

Does is antagonize the workers?

While many conservatives criticize the new militancy by saying that it antagonizes the “respectable” middle class, there is still another view -- among radicals -- which holds that such tactics “alienate the working class.”

This approach runs roughly as follows: The strategy of militant resistance is advocated by highly individualistic persons of middle-class origins who despise organization and who engage in wild antics on resistance-type demonstrations.

It is very difficult, runs this argument, for the working class to be sympathetic to such alien-looking individuals performing such unfamiliar acts of protest. And since these persons are identified with the anti-war movement, the working class, which is the only class which can ultimate bring an end to the war, turns hostile to the movement and will be won over by reactionary forces.

It is preferable, continues this point of view, to proceed in a more orderly fashion, in a fashion more tolerable to the ordinary worker -- and in the meantime, devoted organizers can gradually educate the workers, win them over and then build a base for a true working-class, anti-war movement.

As far as it goes this argument appears perfectly all right and sounds like what any serious participant in the struggle would say.

However, the real burden of this thesis is to counterpose the current embryonic role of the anti-war resistance movement to the working class.

Approaching the working class is important and winning the workers on an orderly basis perfectly fine. Everyone in the anti-war movement should be in favor of this. What is false is to counterpose this task to the militant anti-war struggle.

As a matter of fact, the gigantic rebellions of Black people are already the greatest threat to the conduct of the imperialist war. The specter of an insurrectionary Black liberation movement forces the rulers to keep their eyes glued to the home front and to divert vast resources to enforce their rule over the ghettos. Furthermore, the Black uprisings are directed against general oppression of racist, ruling-class society, and one large part of that oppression is the disproportionate amount of dying which Black people do in Vietnam.

And of course it is the objective of all anti-imperialists to draw the entire working class into the anti-war movement. And it is absolutely true that the working class, which does the fighting and dying in all imperialist wars and which produces the entire wealth of society, will ultimately play the decisive role in stopping the war.

It is not unusual for workers to become confused and take a wrong position on anti-war militancy during a massive propaganda barrage by the Establishment to vilify the struggle. That is not surprising under present circumstances.

What is surprising, however, is that some people should, at the first mild hysteria, so quickly abandon their responsibility to defend the anti-war youth. And, still worse, they try to club the movement over the head by pointing to the present passive mood of some sections of the workers (which is the result precisely of the bosses' propaganda) and then demand that the militants cease and desist, lest they “turn the workers off.”

It would be far more helpful to explain to those workers who as yet don't understand that the rich war-makers are behind the attacks on the anti-war movement; that the police are responsible for the violence against unarmed demonstrators; that the entire war is illegal, anti-labor, etc., etc., etc.

Teresa Gutierrez on Anniversary of Coup in Honduras

2010-06-29T10:17:00.000-04:00

Teresa Gutierrez, International Action Center and NY May 1 Coalition, speaking at New York protest on the first anniversary of the U.S.-backed coup against Honduran President Zelaya. June 28, 2010

Honduras resists! One year after the U.S.-backed coup

2010-06-29T10:01:00.006-04:00

July 28 was the anniversary of the U.S.-backed military coup against Honduran President Mel Zelaya. Despite the bogus elections last year, and the death-squad killings of hundreds of activists and journalists, the National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP) is digging in for a long fight.

In a message to the Honduran people yesterday from exile in the Dominican Republic, Zelaya stated, “Everything indicates that the coup was planned at the Palmerola military base by the U.S. Southern Command and clumsily executed by incompetent Hondurans.” Recently, Hillary Clinton formally requested that the OAS recognize the current regime.

Demonstrations were held worldwide yesterday in solidarity with the Honduran resistance. In New York, a small rush-hour protest which gathered at Times Square and marched across 42nd Street and up 1st Avenue to the Honduran Embassy to the UN.

The protest was timed to coincide with a march of tens of thousands held in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital. Although it was hard for people to come out during a work day, about two dozen Honduran activists and supporters marched and rallied.

Demonstrators each wore a small placard with the name of an assassinated activist and their date of death. At the embassy, following some short talks in Spanish, each person read out the name she/he was wearing and we shouted, “presente!”

Groups represented included Casa de Las Americas, July 26th Cuba Solidarity Coalition, Alberto Lovera Bolivarian Circle, Center for Constitutional Rights, International Action Center, May 1st Coalition, and others.

More photos from the demo here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=51626&id=1668038703&l=2759a06ab5

Zelaya's statement on the anniversary: http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=359430&CategoryId=10718

Report from yesterday's mass protests in Honduras: http://hondurasresists.blogspot.com/2010/06/one-year-after-coup-resistance-is-alive.html

FNRP political manifesto on the anniversary of the coup: http://www.resistenciahonduras.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=457%3Apolitical-manifesto-of-frente-nacional-de-resistencia-popular&catid=99%3Aofficial&Itemid=348

Other upcoming NYC solidarity events:

Thursday, July 1: Museo del Barrio, Concert with Karla Lara, Popular Honduran Artist of the Resistance, 7 pm, 1230 Fifth Ave. Online RSVP required:
http://www.elmuseo.org/en/event/karla-lara

Friday, July 2: Brecht Forum, Discussion with Rodolfo Pastor, Ex-Deputy Ambassador to Washington from Honduras, and Karla Lara, Artist & Feminist in Resistance, 7 pm Reception, Event begins at 8 pm, 451 West Street
http://www.brechtforum.org/

Monday, July 5: Bluestockings, Feminists in Resistance from Honduras: How to Build Solidarity, 7 pm, 172 Allen St. http://www.bluestockings.com/

Wednesday, July 7: Tribeca Cinemas, Premiere of Honduras coup documentary 'We Are Not Afraid," 7 pm, 54 Varick Street, Q&A with filmmaker follows.
http://ccrjustice.org/

For updates: http://www.resistenciahonduras.net/

From Stonewall to Gaza to Toronto, People Fight Back

2010-06-26T22:47:00.003-04:00

This is great but kinda retro, of course. Smash Trans, Bi, Two-Spirit and all Queer oppression too!

Happy Pride!

Why are people raising hell in Toronto?

2010-06-26T22:37:00.005-04:00

Because the leaders of the so-called “Free World” are chilling and drinking their alcohol and snorting who the fuck knows what.

They are carrying out brutal wars against civilian populations while condemning Third World countries that have the temerity to defend themselves.

Business as usual for them because they plan to coast through the biggest economic crisis of nearly a century on the backs of poor and working people, people of color, women and queers, immigrants and Indigenous folk, etc.

Sometimes you have to SHUT THAT SHIT DOWN. This is one of those times.

On 60th Anniversary of Korean War: Tremendous Damage Done to People's Korea by U.S.

2010-06-25T05:59:00.006-04:00

This is an amazingly comprehensive report marking the 60th anniversary of the U.S.-initiated Korean War. Anyone who wants to understand the situation on the Korean peninsula today should read this.

And on a personal note, I want to force-feed this report to Western “leftists” who like to take holier-than-thou potshots at North Korea.

More than 100,000 people marched against U.S. imperialism in People's Korea on June 25, 2010, to mark the 60th anniversary of the Korean War.

KCNA on Tremendous Damage Done to DPRK by US

Pyongyang, June 24 (KCNA) -- The Korean Central News Agency released the following report Thursday to expose all forms of crimes the U.S. imperialists committed against the Korean people up to now since their occupation of south Korea:

The U.S. imperialists, chieftain of evils, committed the most barbarous and hideous crimes against the Korean people ever in the world history of wars during the last Korean War.

They committed thrice-cursed genocide, destruction and pillage during the war. They have regarded new People's Korea as a thorn in the flesh ever since their occupation of south Korea. They have persistently pursued an unprecedentedly harsh policy of isolating and stifling the system of the DPRK in wanton violation of the UN Charter and publicly accepted norms of international law, thus doing inestimably tremendous damage to it.

The Committee for Investigation into Damage Done by the U.S. to the Northern Half of Korea summed up all human and material damage brought by the U.S. imperialists to the northern half of Korea for the past six decades since they landed in south Korea on Sept. 8, 1945.

The total damages amount to 64,959,854 million U.S. dollars.

This calculation is based only on old records and official testimonies made by survivors. So it is presumed that there are much more damage that has not been ascertained.

The total amount will be incalculable if political, moral and cultural damages caused by slandering the sovereignty and dignity of the DPRK, destruction of treasures of lasting value including revolutionary sites, historic sites and relics and other precious cultural assets, infliction of moral pressure on the Koreans through the moves for a new war and threats of preemptive nuclear attack and vicious bourgeois ideological and cultural poisoning are included.

With nothing can the U.S. make full compensation to the DPRK for the damage it caused to the DPRK by impeding Korea's reunification after illegally occupying south Korea and, accordingly, inflicting moral pain and misfortune upon the Korean people for more than half a century-long tragic division and hindering the unified political, economic and cultural development of the north and the south of Korea.

The crimes committed by the U.S. imperialists against the DPRK are something beyond human imagination in view of their scope and protracted, barbarous and shameless nature.

The Korean Central News Agency releases a report on the newly surveyed and ascertained damage done by the U.S. imperialists to the northern half of Korea in order to disclose all forms of crimes committed against the Korean people and force them to pay for all of them.

Read the full report here.