City of Los Angeles made an extra effort to host fascists

The following article was taken from Liberation, the news source of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSLweb.org).

On April 17, nearly 2,000 counter-demonstrators overwhelmed a few dozen racists protected by a full mobilization of the City of Los Angeles.

The Nazi National Socialist Movement’s “Reclaim the Southwest” rally was intended to incite harassment and hate crimes against immigrants and promote the expulsion of all non-whites from the United States. The city of Los Angeles worked hand-in-hand with the Nazis to help flaunt their message of hatred in the midst of one of the most diverse cities in the country.

The NSM has been holding rallies throughout California and throughout the country to capitalize on the growing hardship for workers suffering through the economic crisis. While material conditions for workers deteriorate, there is an inevitable heightening of consciousness and an increased potential for being spurred into action. As the contradictions of capitalism push workers into political motion, the NSM and other right-wing organizations seek to point that motion in a reactionary direction. They put forth an agenda of racism, immigrant-bashing, anti-union propaganda and capitulation to the most right-wing sectors of the ruling class.

The Southern Poverty Law Center revealed that in 2009 far-right organizations and armed militias grew a shocking 244 percent after 10 years of dormancy. This shines a spotlight on the traction the ultra-right is getting during the economic crisis and the immediacy of the task to push back against it.

Progressives and revolutionaries must answer reactionary appeals to our class with a progressive appeal that argues for solidarity among all people and class unity against our common oppressors.

When the NSM audaciously applied for a permit to rally at City Hall in Los Angeles, there was a massive outcry demanding that the city deny the permit. Even though the NSM is a known terrorist organization that advocates and commits violent acts against immigrants, people of color, Jews and LGBT people—and that hate crimes increase when these groups hold rallies in an area—the city vehemently defended the Nazis’ “right” to hold their rally.

Falling back on the “free speech” argument holds no weight when that speech is designed to incite racism and violence, and is effective at it. While the city proudly stands up to defend the Nazis’ “free speech,” countless people and their families will have to defend themselves against the actual violence and harassment their speech produces.

The city did not merely support the racists right to rally. The Los Angeles Police Department held meetings with NSM leaders to assist them as much as possible, and, in many cases, went out of their way to add to the success and visibility of the Nazi rally.

While the city gave the Nazis a platform to recruit and inspire white-supremacist activity, the people of Los Angeles mobilized to stand up against it.

The Party for Socialism and Liberation and the ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) Coalition passed out thousands of flyers and made hundreds of phone calls to bring people out to the counter-demonstration. In the weeks leading up to the Nazi rally, the PSL and ANSWER both held a series of activist meetings and public classes on a Marxist perspective on fascism and how to fight it, and the historical struggle against the Ku Klux Klan in the United States.

Hours before the Nazis arrived, over 1,500 counter-demonstrators picketed in front of City Hall to confront the fascists. The diversity at the counter-demonstration was a true display of unity and embodied the opposite of what the Nazis were attempting to promote.

When the Nazis arrived—numbering around 40, wearing military equipment and carrying their own riot shields—it became clear that the event could only be held because of a massive mobilization of the city and the LAPD.

The entire City Hall property was militarized, as many hundreds of riot police brandishing tear-gas launchers and batons surrounded the park. The city donated the use of a dozen city buses to ship in the swarm of police. Between the cost of paying hundreds of officers overtime and utilizing city buses and workers, the city must have paid tens of thousands of dollars. The cost of hosting and defending the Nazis’ racist rally would go a long way in a city plagued by layoffs, furlough days, cuts to social services and a surge of pink slips for teachers.

To guarantee that no racists would be left out of the rally, a special parking area was set up for the Nazis at City Hall. Those wearing swastikas had their own VIP entrance to the rally, with a private parking lot safely behind police lines.

After gathering in their protected parking lot, the Nazis marched to the rally site in front of City Hall. The counter-demonstrators, who were chanting “Racists go home!” and “Immigrants ‘Yes,’ Racists ‘No,’ Nazi scum have got to go!” were kept a block away from the Nazis as they marched to City Hall. The press, however, were given a front row seat by the LAPD, so the entrance of 40 racists could be all over the news without the disruption of the nearly 2,000 anti-racists. At the rally site as well, the counter-demonstration was kept 100 yards from the Nazis, while the LAPD set up a press box for the media.

Even with the accommodations provided by the LAPD, the Nazi rally was drowned out by the counter-demonstration, and the Nazis complained that there were several NSM members who were trying to get to the rally but were too scared to pass through the crowd.

One white supremacist entered the counter-demonstration and removed his shirt, revealing Nazi tattoos, and began shouting racial slurs. As one would expect, the crowd confronted the racist, who was quickly saved by multiple undercover cops in the crowd, who immediately revealed their badges, escorted the Nazi behind police lines and delivered him safely to the rally.

When the Nazis were done, they were escorted back to their cars. After the frustration of being kept so far from the racists, hundreds of counter-demonstrators spontaneously marched behind the area where the Nazis parked, flanking the police line and massing at the fence that was protecting the Nazis. Not being able to leave Los Angeles without a fight, the Nazis were bombarded with objects being lobbed from the crowd as they tried to escape in their cars. When one of the Nazi’s cars broke down, they were forced to huddle behind their riot shields to escape the barrage as they tried to jump-start their vehicle.

In another display of the LAPD’s collusion with the fascists, the police took video and photos of the counter-demonstrators throwing objects and hunted them down and arrested them once the Nazis left. They trolled the dispersing crowd, pointing out demonstrators suspected of throwing objects and detaining them. On the other hand, the Nazis were allowed to throw rocks and other objects at the counter-demonstrators from behind the police line, ducking behind the police for protection. The Nazis were even shown on the evening news throwing objects at the counter-demonstration, but not a single one was arrested.

The story of the day for the corporate media was the raucous counter-demonstration, devoid of any criticism of the Nazis. The real story, however, was that without the full mobilization of the LAPD and the city the fascists’ demonstration simply would not have happened. The favorite chants of the day were “The cops and the Klan go hand-in-hand,” and “Cops, go home, we’ll handle this alone!”

The demonstration showed that the people of Los Angeles will not accept racism and immigrant-bashing. But the state encourages racism and immigrant-bashing—the capitalist system encourages racism and immigrant-bashing. Racism and bigotry are important tools for the capitalists to maintain their system, which is based on inequality and super-exploitation.

As much as the LAPD and the Nazis strived for a successful rally, the victory belonged to the people who stood up against it. Nearly 2,000 people stood shoulder-to-shoulder to say that we were against racism, against sexism, against homophobia, against scapegoating immigrants—and not only were we against it, but we would stand up and resist it.

The counter-demonstration was militant. While the press harped on the throwing of objects, the physical confrontations and the battles with the police, the people showed the city of Los Angeles and the LAPD that they cannot host the Nazis without a fight—and the Nazis know they cannot come to this city unless they are wearing helmets and carrying shields and are protected by a wall of 800 police.

The Nazi demonstration was a scar on the already mangled face of the LAPD and an embarrassment to the city. The counter-demonstration posed a display of unity and resistance to the Nazis and was a huge success.

The anti-racist forces came out of that demonstration victorious, but it was just one round in a fight that is intensifying in the United States. The PSL has already been battling racist organizations and politicians in southern California and throughout the country. It is a struggle that will no doubt continue. The ultra-reactionary, fascist bill that passed in Arizona is a clear sign that there are many more battles to come. We will be fighting in every one of those battles. If you want to fight with us, join the PSL.

US Military Attacking Haitian Unions

In Haiti, the laws guarantee the right of workers to unionize. However, it also states that if the bosses don't want to work with someone, then they can fire that person. Bosses have used this portion of the law to rid their property of unions. Instead of saying, "I don't want a union," the boss can just say, "I don't want to work with these people, and not because they're a union."

Due to the weakness of the Haitian state, the US Marines are now enforcing the rules of the Haitian anti-union bosses. They are ensuring that the status-quo remains in Haiti, that unions posses little to no power. The US military is doing the dirty work of the Haitian capitalist class and its international allies that have set up shop on the island.

Garment factories in Haiti are unsafe and could collapse at any moment, but the government doesn't do anything to change this and protect the safety of factory workers.

There are details on all of the above and more in the video below.

Nepali Maoists Announce Indefinite General Strike

The Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) has announced that it will start a nationwide general strike on May 2, 2010. The aim is to take down the current government, led by Madhav Kumar Nepal.

The Maoists said they will hold a mass rally in Kathmandu on May 1st, and they will begin an indefinite general strike if MK Nepal doesn't step down as prime minister.

The UCPN has threatened to shut down roads, businesses, and schools with their strike starting on May 2.

Maoist Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal, a.k.a Prachanda, said in a press conference recently that his party is taking such actions in order to ensure a new constitution is written and that the peace process is taken to a logical conclusion.

“If we did not take this step, the peace process would be unraveled by the government and the constitution will never be written. However, we are keeping all doors for dialogue open,” Dahal said, insisting that the current government was uncommitted to the peace process and the drafting of a new constitution.

The Maoists demand that MK Nepal resign immediately so they can form a national unity government under the leadership of their party, UCPN (Maoist). This will bring the political deadlock to an end.

The Maoists will bring thousands of party cadre to a rally to protest the 22-party ruling coalition on May Day.

Maoist Chairman Dahal warned that the government will be held responsible if the protests and strikes turn violent.

This comes at a time when the Nepali state has put all security agencies, including the army, on high alert by claiming that the Maoists are trying to capture state power. Analysts fear that the widening political differences could start new rounds of violence.

May Day in Richmond

Richmond, VA will be having a May Day parade this year, as well as workshops on various topics. Topics such as labor unions, public housing, student activism, and immigration.

Endorsed by 24 organizations The May Day group will rally and march in celebration of workers rights, and the upward struggle for freedom, justice and equality! We march for an end to all wars and occupations! We march for the right to food, housing & jobs for everyone! We march for the workers right to organize! We march for Women’s right of control over their own bodies! We march for education for all! We march for a living wage! We march against racism! We march for health care for all. And we march for the legalization of all workers, for no one is illegal!

::::WORKSHOPS::::

Friday April 30, 2010
William Byrd Community House
5:00pm – 10:00pm

Saturday May 1, 2010
Workshops @ Gallery 5
10:00am – 3:00pm

::::RALLY & PARADE::::

Saturday May 1, 2010
Abner Clay Park (Clay & Brook Rd in Jackson Ward)
4:00pm (Rally w/ Speakers)
5:00pm (Parade Begins)

Go to Maydayrva.org for more information.

Help Nepal this May Day

In the next few weeks, we could see a number of major events happening in Nepal. We could see the UCPN (Maoist) lead a people's revolt, we could see the drafting of a new, socialist constitution in Nepal, or we could see the intensification of Indian intervention in Nepal. May Day is almost here, and the Maoists are gearing up to intensify their revolutionary struggle. The deadline for a new constitution, May 28, is approaching rapidly. Maoist Vice Chairman Bhattarai has said thousands of people will take to the streets to establish a new system if their demands aren't met by the deadline. It is important to keep an eye on Nepal.

But there is more us Western revolutionaries can do other than sit here and watch. We can spread awareness, we can educate about Maoist struggles worldwide. International solidarity is a useful tool, especially in attempts to prevent US/Indian intervention in Nepal and other places.
There are numerous things you can do to support the revolution in Nepal this May Day. You can distribute leaflets at events and you can give a lecture (or something shorter). Whatever you want. I will be doing my part too.

If you are looking for leaflets to distribute, then I suggest this one.
http://kasamaproject.org/2010/04/25/kasama-project-internationalist-leaflet-for-may-first/

Now let's get out there and educate and organize, not just for Nepal, but for ourselves and the world.

Carmen M. is not alone

The following article was taken from The Industrial Worker newspaper.

Carmen M. is a member of the waiters’ and cooks’ base trade union (σωματείο σερβιτόρων μαγείρων). After returning from a short medical leave she was fired by her boss, Stelios Karezos, owner of VIA-VAI – a large coffee shop chain in Athens. At the meetings that followed in order to arrange for the salaries and compensation she was owed, Karezos was provocative against the worker as well as representatives of the base union. On March 23d, the day when the final settlement was to be made, Karezos realised the mass presence of members of the union and started photographing them with his digital camera. After a demand that he deleted the photos, he pulled up his shirt to show the gun he was carrying with him. The story continued at the local police station, where the police “suggested” to Carmen that she did not sue her ex-boss or he could counter-sue her, which would result in all of them being detained overnight. During the entire incident her ex-boss Karezos was repeating the phrase “now you got yourselves into trouble”…

The next day, March 24th late in the evening, Carmen M. was attacked by persons unknown as she was heading to her home. She was brutally hit on the head and abandoned bleeding and unconscious outside her house. The motive of the attack was not robbery since when she recovered Carmen still had her money and phone on her.

On March 26th members of the Union together with tens of others in solidarity blocked off the shop VIA VAI (3, Stadiou Str in Athens) for many hours while the up-to-that-point provocative boss Karezos hid in the basement. Similar interventions followed at the VIA VAI cafes on Panepistimiou Avenue (opposite Propylea) and on the corner of Mpenaki and Feidiou Street. On the evening of the same day Karezos got in touch with our union asking that he pays Carmen the money he owes her, claiming it was all a misunderstanding.

There are obviously no misunderstandings and no isolated incidents. Unpaid overtimes, “forgotten” medical insurance contributions, the non-payment of supplements, sackings, wage decreases, informal labour are all part of the reality we experience daily in the labour galleys.

Whoever dares to speak of this is faced with, on the one hand, the terrorism of the bosses that includes guns, threats, bouncers and sulfuric acid – and on the other hand, the terrorism of unemployment. All these take place at a time when the state, this time under the pretext of the financial crisis, re-defines the terms of paid employment in favour of the bosses; institutionalising the abolition of gained rights, opening a path for the intensification of exploitation and repression.

In this attempt of theirs, the state and bosses have found as willing allies the leaders of the sold-out trade unions, giving them future government and party positions in exchange. In this direction, the latter sign collective agreements that include the freezing or decrease of wages; they ignore the assassinations and butchering of tens of workers; they cover-up the mega-contractors’ bussiness and refuse to call for general strikes. When they do at times call for strikes under the pressure of the workers, they sabotage them themselves and repress them. A typical such example was the stance of GSEE (General Confederation of Workers) at the strike of March 11th, when in co-operation with the police it distanced itself from the base unions, which resulted to the attack of the latter by the riot police.

Within this bleak reality, the mass media are on an assignment to try convince us it is all happening for our own good, according to which “we must all make sacrifices in order for the economy and the country to be saved”. As it is well known, the journalist’s microphone reaches where the cop’s baton can’t. And so, on the one hand the mass media publicize the details and the name of the member of a union, pointing at them as responsible for the “labour accident” of the sold-out trade union leader Panagopoulos and on the other hand, smelling a “popular” story, they rush to publicise the case of VIA VAI, aiming at promoting the isolated character of the incident.

We are negative toward mass media because for us information is action that is connected to the medium – and for this reason action that brings us, as bodies, to the physical space of exploitation and struggle. It does not take place, then, at the stories of the 8 o’clock news but at the stories of the streets. And so, the bet is of our own structures of labour counter-information to develop; and this current struggle has such potential.

From our own labour experiences we believe that EACH OF US and ALL OF US TOGETHER must take responsibility for:

* The formation of Base Unions in all labour sections where they do not currently exist
* The support of existing Base Unions
* the strengthening of the General Assemblies of workers
* the overcoming of boards of directors and all mechanisms of mediation
* our lives and all that concern us

RESISTANCE to the terrorism of the bosses

SOLIDARITY between workers

SELF-ORGANISE in all workplaces

Nationalist Movement Leader Killed

Nationalist Movement leader and lawyer Richard Barrett, 67, was murdered Wednesday and his house was set on fire on Thursday to cover up the incident according to investigators. He was stabbed in the neck multiple times and bashed over the head according to Rankin County Sheriff Ronnie Pennington. Thirty-five percent of his body was covered with burns.

A motive was not disclosed, but the Sheriff said neighbor Vincent McGee, 22, was charged with murder on Thursday and three others were charged Friday. Albert Lewis, McGee' stepfather, and Vicky and Michael Dent, who live nearby, were charged with being accessories after the fact and arson.

Barrett traveled around the United States to promote anti-black and anti-immigrant views. He founded the Mississippi-based white-supremacist Nationalist Movement. The Nationalist Movement's activities include a "Warrior-Training Camp" and a poorly-made website.

White Nationalists of all kinds murder people all of the time, and now they have gotten a taste of their own medicine. While I don't advocate random murders, it is still good that there is one less racist nationalist running around. I laugh at the emotional pain his supporters and Nazi friends are experiencing.

Stalin's Purge of the Soviet Military

The following is the text to the YouTube video called "Stalin's Purge of the Soviet Military."

In May 1937, Marshal Tukhachevsky and Commanders Yakir, Uborevich, Eideman, Kork, Putna, Feldman, and Primakov were arrested. They had been under suspicion since the beginning of that month. Earlier in May, the Commissar system, used during the Civil War, was restored. This reflected the fear of Bonapartist tendencies within the army.

When German officer Blomberg visited the USSR in 1928, he found that, in his own words, “Purely military points of view step more and more into the foreground; everything else is subordinated to them.”

In 1930, ten percent of the Soviet officer corps was made up of former Czarist officers. Many soldiers had come from the countryside, where Kulak (landed, upper peasant) influence was still strong. So counter-revolutionary views were pretty strong in the Soviet military.

The French Deuxieme Bureau told journalist Alexander Werth that Tukhachevsky was pro-German. Czech officials told Werth that Tukhachevsky, on a visit to Prague, got drunk and said that an agreement with Hitler was the only hope for Czechoslovakia and Russia, and then he went on to verbally abuse Stalin. In the book “The Reign of Stalin” it was stated that Tukhachevsky spoke highly of the British Army and how Britain’s soldiers and people kept themselves subordinate to the British government.

US Ambassador to Moscow, Joseph Davies, said in 1937 that there was, indeed, a plot for a coup d’etat. This coup wasn’t necessarily anti-Stalin, but it was anti-political and anti-party according to Davies.

Robert Coulondre, French Ambassador to Moscow, said that the Lithuanian Minister had told him there was a plot to install a military dictatorship after the coup against Stalin.

Trotskyist author Isaac Deutscher once said, “All the non-Stalinist variants do concur the following: that the generals did indeed plan a coup d’etat.” Yakir, Uborevich, Kork, and Primakov were also in the plot according to him.

In the March 25, 1937 issue of a Paris Menshevik newspaper, the Socialist Courier, they wrote, "There is no question that the Germans have managed to have their agents in the U.S.S.R. penetrate the most responsible positions."

In his diary, Gobbels, a top Nazi official, wrote about some comments from Hitler on the case of a conspiracy in the Red Army. He basically said that Stalin had strengthened the Red Army be getting rid of defeatist and opposition currents within it. Who would know better about the strength of the Soviet Army than those who had to fight against it?

Kolkowicz, who was conducting a study for the US Army, said that, “Stalin embarked on a massive program that was intended to provide the Soviet Army with modern weapons, equipment and logistics. But he remained wary of the military’s tendency towards elitism and exclusiveness.”

Soviet General Vlasov played an important role in defending Moscow in 1941. He was captured by the Germans in 1942, and he decided to offer his services to Germany. After an interview with Himmler in 1944, he was allowed to create a pro-Nazi army in Russia called the Russian Liberation Army. Vlasov also called for an army free from Party control that was staffed with elitist professionals.

Other captured Soviet officers also stabbed the USSR in the back. To name a few, Major Generals Trukhin, Malyshkin, and Zakutny. There were many others who I didn’t name.

Then there was Soviet colonel G.A Tokaev who defected to the UK in 1948. He wrote a book called “Comrade X” where he admitted that he was part of an anti-communist organization within the military. He had joined it as early as 1933. At the head of the organization, he admits, there was a member of the Bolshevik Central Committee. The colonel considered the UK to be the most free and democratic country in the world!

Nazis had infiltrated many governments and militaries throughout Europe, including in France and Romania. To argue that there was no Nazi infiltration in the USSR, and that such a thing was impossible, is to ignore history and reality.

In short, the purge was justified and necessary to preserve socialism.

Source:
“Another View of Stalin” by Ludo Martens
“MIM Theory 6: The Stalin Issue” published by MIM

American Dream Less Achievable

Many African-Americans see owning a home as the way to live the "American Dream." A majority of them, however, feel that the dream is currently impossible. This is according to a Fannie Mae study.

Blackamericaweb.com reports that 19% of African-Americans surveyed who are currently renting a home will need to postpone buying one due to the economy. 73% of African-Americans surveyed said they feel that it is harder for an African-American to get a loan than the rest of the population. 61% feel that their children will have a harder time buying a home.

Housing shouldn't be bought and sold, it should be a guaranteed right for all people to access without complication and debt. Only socialism guarantees this.

Phoenix Police Officer Brutalizes Councilman

Note: Although my sources don't mention race as a factor in the incident, it is worth noting that Councilman Johnson is African-American and Authement is Caucasian.

Phoenix, Arizona Councilman Michael Johnson was the target of unlawful and immoral police action late last month. He was checking on his neighbor whose house was on fire when police officer Brian Authement, 27, wrestled him to the ground and handcuffed him.

Johnson, a retired detective, said he was woken up when he heard the sirens of a firetruck outside his window. He rushed outside and saw paramedic and fire department vehicles lining his street. He then saw that his neighbor's house was on fire.

"He's disabled and I wanted to make sure he was out of the house safely. I talked to the fire battalion chief and asked permission to talk to my neighbor. Then I was stopped by a young police officer," said Johnson.

The Councilman was neither disrespectful nor confrontational when Authement, the policeman, began pushing him.

"After repeated requests to talk to the officer's supervisor, I was told they don't have supervisor on the scene and 'we don't do it like that out here.' Instead, I was thrown to the ground and handcuffed, face down, in the middle of my street," the Councilman continued.

Authement's partners yelled at him to calm down and to leave Johnson alone, but he didn't listen.

Two Phoenix Fire Department officials back up Johnson's story. Asst. Chief Frank Cheatham and Capt. Courtney Jenkins were just arriving when they witnessed Johnson being brutalized. They said they saw the policeman put his knee in Johnson's back and threaten to drag him across the street. Johnson was recovering from prostate surgery and couldn't get up off the ground.

Cheatham said to the officers, "Do you know who he is? This is Councilman Johnson." According to the fire officials, Authement's reply was, "I don't care if he is the President of the United States."

"I plan to sit down with our chief and discuss the treatment of residents by our police," said Johnson. "This happens to people who can't say something or don't know who they can turn to. I'm going to be a voice for the voiceless and I'm going to be heard."

Thousands of incidents like this happen across the United States, and in other countries as well, each year. This shows that the police force is in serious need of change and is filled with bullies, elitists, and racists. Many people who abuse drugs also act in violent manners like Authement did, and it wouldn't be surprising if there is a drug problem in various police forces across the US.

U.S. military suffers major defeat in Korengal Valley, forced to retreat

James Circello, the author, is an Iraq war veteran and co-founder of March Forward! who deserted the military, refusing orders to deploy to Afghanistan in 2007. Taken from PSLweb.org

The U.S. military has retreated from a base in the remote Korengal Valley, Afghanistan, after spending over four years trying to hold the ground. The U.S. forces even negotiated the terms of their defeat, paying the resistance fighters and leaving them the base fully intact with buildings, fuel, generators and military equipment, in order to be allowed a peaceful retreat out of the valley.

The corporate media and, for the most part, the Pentagon brass have framed the forced retreat from the “Valley of Death” as a “shift” in strategy. This so-called shift has been eye-opening for the soldiers and marines who have lost friends and shed blood in the mountains of Afghanistan, while forced to defend an outpost which U.S. military commanders have argued is “a remote backwater of limited strategic value.”

Despite its “limited strategic value,” a startling 42 U.S. troops have been killed there, hundreds have been wounded, and a disproportionate number of Afghan civilians have perished. One of the last soldiers to die there took his own life, unable to cope with the daily horrors of a hopeless mission.

U.S. troops used as bait:

The soldiers stationed in the Korengal Valley had one mission: to act as sitting targets and wait to be attacked on a daily basis. The Afghans in the Korengal Valley were fighting because foreign invaders have occupied their country for nearly a decade. The U.S. military occupied the Korengal Valley to provoke them into a fight. This is the logic of empire.

The harsh reality that we have been used as nothing more than bait cannot be overlooked. The strategy of Korengal Valley—to place soldiers and marines in harm’s way in an attempt to use them as bait to lure the Afghan resistance into battle so that military fighter jets, helicopters and other resources could be called in to target the Afghan fighters and kill them using whatever equipment was available—has been a complete failure. The retreat should serve as a clear signal that our pain and suffering is of no concern to the officers and politicians forcing us to fight.

Specialist Robert Soto of Company B, First Battalion, 26th Infantry, was quoted in the New York Times. His words offer us a glimpse at this truth: “It hurts,” he said. “It hurts on a level that— three units from the Army, we all did what we did up there. And we all lost men. We all sacrificed. I was 18 years old when I got there. I really would not have expected to go through what we went through at that age.”

Even individuals from the officer class have commented on the absurdity of the outpost baiting tactics: “Realistically no one needs to be there,” said Maj. Ukiah Senti, the executive officer of Second Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment, Task Force Lethal, which oversees Korengal and neighboring areas. “We’re not really overwatching anything other than safeguarding ourselves.”

Just like the U.S. outpost that was overrun in Wanat in 2008, leaving 75 percent of the troops there dead or wounded in one of the deadliest attacks of the war, there was “no point” except to wait to be attacked. U.S. forces retreated from that outpost as well, defeated by the local population. All the U.S. troops who perished at Wanat, Korengal Valley and every other outpost in Afghanistan died because the generals did not know how to defeat the growing resistance. Instead of admitting defeat, the generals sent troops to an area where they were hated by the local population and left them to be constantly bombarded.

The generals knew full well that they could not defeat the resistance this way; the only goal was to keep them fighting to stave off defeat.

Afghan resistance to U.S. imperialism strengthens:

Korengal Valley is a microcosm of the entire country. The generals arrogantly thought that by occupying the valley. they would draw out and kill all the resistance fighters and eventually win over the local population. But their presence only infuriated the people and inspired countless more fighters to resist the occupation. This is the situation in all of Afghanistan. The Pentagon brass openly admit that the resistance forces cannot be defeated militarily. The goal in Afghanistan, like it was in Korengal, is to fight and die endlessly, while the generals figure out how to avoid the appearance of being defeated.

We are now being sent to fight a war that U.S. politicians know is unwinnable, a war in which it is impossible for military commanders to define “victory”, a war in which there is no foreseeable end. The Afghan resistance grows and intensifies by the month, as it has since the start of the war. In 2009, U.S. fatalities in Afghanistan were twice the number who died in 2008. The first three months of 2010 have doubled 2009’s numbers. A U.S. military defeat is inevitable, as civilian death tolls continue to rise, and popular sentiment shifts further against the occupation forces.

U.S. politicians refuse to accept this clear fact and will continue sending thousands to kill and die in the mountains of Afghanistan. The same politicians who had delivered speeches on the floor of Congress denouncing the Taliban are now openly declaring their intentions to strike an agreement with them. The same Taliban that was demonized by Bush and Obama, alike—the same ideology that the U.S. military was sent to remove from power—is now being offered positions of power in a new coalition government.

The goal of war in Afghanistan was never to “establish democracy” as Bush once stated or to fight against “terrorism,” but to create a government that would be friendly to U.S. corporate interests and serve as a staging ground for further invasions and interventions in the resource-rich region. At this moment, the soldiers and marines, the fighting men and women of the enlisted ranks, are being used as bargaining chips against the anti-colonial sentiments of the Afghan people. Washington must continue sending us to die in order to strike a better deal for U.S. corporate interests.

Soldiers, marines: Fight back!

As members of the enlisted class in the U.S. military, it is completely against our interests to continue fighting this criminal and illegal war in Afghanistan—a war waged on the basis of U.S. imperialist aggression and with the sole intent of becoming the dominant power in the region.

The people of Afghanistan want the same things that we do: the ability to live in peace, free from occupation, fear and death. The politicians in Washington, D.C., and the military brass—from the Pentagon to our Company CPs—will stop at nothing, however, in their attempts to conquer the people of Afghanistan. But this will never happen. The Afghan people will never accept colonialism. They will never bow down or break.

We are sent to our deaths by individuals who proclaim themselves to be our “leaders”—the U.S. officer corps—but this does not have to be the case. We have every right to refuse these illegal and criminal orders given to us by men and women who do virtually none of the fighting, none of the suffering, none of the dying. These officers build their careers on the blood and tears of the enlisted class. They will continue to send us to our deaths, until we stand up and and fight back.

This is not our war!

Companies reap profits from humanitarian projects

Taken from PSLweb.org.

For the past two years, the Canadian government has had knowledge of gross workers’ rights and child-labor law violations by companies contracted to help with post-tsunami construction in Indonesia. The violations of international labor conventions include using child labor and neglecting to pay workers. There have also been allegations of human trafficking.

The project has been funded by Canadian taxpayers and carried out by the Canadian International Development Agency and the Canadian Red Cross. Alex Asselin, a spokesperson for the CIDA, stated that the agency learned that workers were not being paid in April 2008. In 2007, a CRC employee reported dangerous working conditions and the withholding of salaries by contractors.

The CRC appointed Ernst and Young, an accounting firm, to look into the allegations but so far has refused to release the full report. Under capitalism, even humanitarian projects are characterized by the never-ending drive for profit at the expense of workers.

Right-wing settlers vandalize mosque and terrorize Palestinians in the West Bank

Taken from PSLweb.org (visit it!)

Israeli settlers vandalized a mosque in the town of Huwara, located in the West Bank, April 14. In the latest attack by Israelis from the Yitzhar settlement, several cars were set ablaze and hundreds of olive trees were unearthed. The masked men proceeded to spray-paint the Star of David and the word “Mohammed” in Hebrew. Various racist slogans were also spray-painted throughout the town.

The Israeli Defense Force speculates that the attack was a “price tag” for the recent freeze of expansion into the West Bank. Ultra-right settlers have threatened to indiscriminately attack Palestinians in retaliation. In December 2009, nine settlers from Yitzhar were arrested for setting a mosque on fire in Yasuf.

Israeli settlements are in clear violation of international law, which prohibits their construction on illegally occupied land. Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s refusal to permanently freeze the expansion shows the government’s unwillingness to engage in talks leading to a genuine peace settlement.

Harvard Study Shows that Insurance Companies hold Billions in Fast Food Stock

Harvard Medical School has released an informational study that 11 large companies that offer disability, life, and health insurance own $1.9 billion in stock in five of the largest fast food companies. As we are all aware, fast food restaurants have been highly criticized for selling incredibly unhealthy food.

The fast food companies include the Yum! brands (such as Kentucky Fried Chicken and Taco Bell), McDonald's, and Burger King. North American and European companies, including Massachusetts Mutual, Northwestern Mutual, and Prudential Financial were among the stock holders.

"The insurance industry cares about making money, and it doesn't really care how," says the senior author of the study, J. Wesley Boyd, M.D. "They will invest in products that contribute to significant morbidity and mortality if doing so is going to make money."

Boyd believes that the insurance companies are investing in unhealthy industries, which includes even the tobacco industry, because they make a profit from charging more for insurance from unhealthy people. So their aim is to make people unhealthy and charge them more.

"They can charge you more for life insurance if you have these negative health outcomes that people have as a result of eating fast food," said Boyd.

This only exposes the true nature of the private health insurance sector. They are driven only by profits, and will gain them by any means necessary. If we really want to have good coverage and not be stabbed in the back by those who claim to look our for our health, then we need a socialist healthcare system!

April 12 - Afghans in Bus Gunned Down by US

On the morning of April 12, in Kandahar, Afghanistan, US soldiers open fired on a bus killing 5 civilians and wounding 18 more. A woman and a child were among the dead, according to local authorities.

“They opened fire at us and I fell unconscious. The people who were killed were sitting in the seats just behind me,” said the bus driver.

"[The soldiers] opened fire for no reason," said witness Gul Mohammad.

Hundreds of Afghans took to the streets in protest after the shooting. The chanted "death to America" while blocking off roads and burning tires. They called for the removal of NATO/US forces from their country and denounced Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

“American and NATO troops firing from passing convoys and military checkpoints have killed 30 Afghans and wounded 80 others since last summer, but in no instance did the victims prove to be a danger to troops,” the New York Times has said.

The killings come at a sensitive time for the U.S. military, as it tries to rally support for a planned operation to sweep Kandahar of resistance fighters.

Arundhati Roy in Trouble

Chhattisgarh police are investigating, and considering, charges against activist and author Arundhati Roy for her latest essay "Walking With the Comrades," which documents what she learned while studying and interviewing the Maoist guerrillas in India. Legal action would be taken against Roy under the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act-2005 (CSPSA).

Vishwajit Mitra has lodged a complaint at the Telibanda police station in Raipur, pointing out that the contents and photographs of Arundhati Roy’s essay counted as an offence under the CSPSA.

"We are examining it to find out whether any offence has been committed,” the police told the media.

“This is clearly an attempt to cordon off the theatre of war and choke the flow of critical information coming out of the forests,” said Ms. Roy in a statement.

“There is very little news and no record of adivasis who have been killed [by Maoists] in remote forest villages or of the situation which can be described as a State of Emergency.”

Refuting charges that her article glorified the Maoist rebels, she called her essay “a writer's account of a journey behind the ‘battle lines' of Operation Greenhunt.” “I think it is crucial for the people of the country to know what is going on, on the other side, in order to make informed decisions,” Roy said.

The CSPSA has beed described as using language that is too broad, making the state able to arrest anyone on charges that violate the Act.

“The loose and broad language used to define and criminalise support for an unlawful organisation can, and has been misused in the past,” said Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhusan. “Under the Act, even a lawyer representing a Maoist in court or a doctor treating a wounded Maoist can be prosecuted.”

Human Rights activist Dr Binayak Sen was in jail for nearly two years under the same law for which action has been demanded against Arundhati Roy. Dr Sen was arrested on the charges of having links with the Maoists.

In the world's fastest growing supposed "democracy" journalists can be arrested and charged for simply publishing what they experienced and their opinions. India is not a democracy at all then! Hands off Roy and all journalists/writers! An injury to one is an injury to all!

Economy Reality Check

The following is an excerpt from a recent article by Doug Henwood from LBO Notes

March employment:

First, a few words on the U.S. employment report for March, released on Friday morning. While the headline job gain of 162,000 looked pretty decent, especially after the huge declines of 2008 and early 2009, 30% of the gain came from temporary workers hired to conduct the Census, and another 25% came from temp firms in the private sector. So more than half the gain was in jobs designed not to last.

There were a few bright spots. Manufacturing added 17,000 workers, its third consecutive monthly gain—a sterling performance for a sector that lost jobs for 35 months in a row, and was in its own private recession for a dozen years. Manufacturing employment is now below where it was in 1941—not as a percentage of the total workforce, but in absolute numbers, a period when overall employment nearly quadrupled. (Manufacturing was over 30% of total employment then; now, it’s 9%.) Employment in bars and restaurants also grew, good news for the sybarites among us.

The unemployment rate held steady at a very high 9.7%, and the broadest measure of joblessness, the so-called U-6 rate, which takes account of people working part time who want full time work but can’t find it as well as those who’ve given up the job search as hopeless, rose 0.1 point to 16.8%, an extremely high number. The probability of a person unemployed in February finding a job in March fell below 20%, to an all-time low (and these numbers, using a technique borrowed from the economist Robert Shimer, go back to 1948).

Average earnings fell by 0.1%, before adjusting for inflation. Despite the vaguely improving tone of the employment stats the labor market continues to be very weak.

We’re in a deep hole, and it’s going to take a long time to get out of it.

Recent Investigation Shows U.S. military covered up murders of Afghan civilians in Feb.

The following article by Kosta Harlan is from Fight Back! News:

An investigation into the killings of five Afghan civilians by U.S. forces on Feb. 12 has revealed that the U.S. tried to cover up its responsibility for the deaths.

On the night of Feb. 12, U.S. occupation forces entered a home in the Gardez district of Paktia province, east of the capital Kabul. The U.S. soldiers shot dead two Afghan men who were carrying weapons, then shot three pregnant women. The Afghans had been celebrating the birth of a baby. The U.S. initially claimed that the two men were Taliban fighters and that the three women were already dead when they arrived on the scene. In fact, the two men were a local police chief and a prosecutor.

The mainstream media followed this story without bothering to check with the inhabitants of the village. CNN reported the story with the headline, “Bodies found gagged, bound after Afghan ‘honor killing.’” CNN quoted a U.S. official as saying the women had been shot “execution-style” and that the killings had “the earmarks of a traditional honor killing.”

Now, an investigation has revealed that the U.S. lied about the killings and that the U.S. soldiers who shot the women tried to cover up their crimes. In a report printed in The Times, Jerome Starkey revealed that, “U.S. special forces soldiers dug bullets out of their victims’ bodies in the bloody aftermath of a botched night raid, then washed the wounds with alcohol before lying to their superiors about what happened.” It was not until an Afghan investigation was undertaken into the killings that the truth was finally revealed.

Abdul Ghafar, the son of the police chief killed in the raid, said, “My father was friends with the Americans and they killed him…I want to kill them. I want the killers brought to justice.” Mohammed Tahir, whose father was a prosecutor killed by U.S. forces in the raid said, “They teach us human rights, then they kill a load of civilians. They didn’t come here to end terrorism. They are terrorists.”

The three pregnant women who were shot dead by U.S. Special Forces had between them sixteen children.

This gruesome incident is further evidence, if any was really needed, to support what commanding General Stanley McChrystal said a few days ago: “We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat.”

In other news today, April 6, in Afghanistan, NATO forces killed four civilians – two women, a child and an old man, in an air strike.

Half of U.S. pays no federal income tax

"Tax Day is a dreaded deadline for millions, but for nearly half of U.S. households it's simply somebody else's problem.

About 47 percent will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009. Either their incomes were too low, or they qualified for enough credits, deductions and exemptions to eliminate their liability. That's according to projections by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research organization."

Click here to read the whole article on its original website.

On the Socialist Equality Party

The following article is divided into two sections. The first section is a letter from a reader about their experiences with ISSE/SEP members. The second section is a critique of the SEP's theory and political positions.

I would like to describe my experiences with the International Students for Social Equality and the Socialist Equality Party. Before I do that, let me say that the names and places will not be said in order to avoid restarting old, worthless drama.

A while back, I went to one of the ISSE events at a school. The event was on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I heard about the event when I met an SEP member from another city standing on the sidewalk passing out papers in order to advertise for the ISSE lecture. The unnamed party member seemed like a fairly nice guy. I talked with him for a while, but all he wanted to do was get into this competitive discussion (a borderline argument) about why I was wrong about my political position. His whole position seemed to be "Stalin is evil," as if Stalin was still around today causing trouble for Trotskyists like him. To be honest, I think a lot of Trotskyists really need to move on and realize that Stalin and Trotsky are dead and that there are more serious issues challenging the working class today.

This unnamed member made some seemingly dogmatic assertions about his party. He said that they were building support among the working class, which I found funny because he was basically trying to recruit in a middle-class school. All so-called "revolutionary vanguards" claim they are building a support base among the workers, but in reality these claims are often untrue.

Anyway, I was dragged to the ISSE event later that night by a friend of mine who mistakenly thought it was a good idea. The event itself was alright, the speaker didn't say anything that wasn't already common knowledge though.

I questioned the speaker about a few things related to Leninist theory, and he responded but he seemed annoyed that somebody would actually inquire about his party at one of their own events. I thought this was what they wanted. Anyway, I eventually asked a question that he didn't like, and so he started shouting like a child. I find this funny because the speaker must have been at least fifty years old. After the event, one of the ISSE kids approached me and scolded me for saying some things that she didn't like (as if we have to conform to her rules or something). And the kid basically promised to "get me."

As I left, some of the SEP/ISSE members mocked my voice, and I heard one of them make a homophobic remark towards me. Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure that individual doesn't speak for the entire organization. Still, one must wonder what kind of "socialist equality" is being taught in SEP circles if one of their members is making comments like that.

Another time I was talking with a different ISSE member (living in God only knows where) over the internet. This person made a ton of sectarian remarks. S/he called other socialist websites "petty-bourgeois" and stated that the workers would "eventually demand leadership from us [the SEP]." Some people might think this extreme arrogance is cute, but I think it is almost like narcissism, only for the party instead of the individual.

--------

Before we begin with the heavier part of The Partisan's criticism of the SEP, let us take a look at an excerpt from an article on their official news website, the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS).

As for the speakers, one had the strange feeling that you could have heard the exact same speeches at the rallies held two years ago when George W. Bush was still president. One had to wonder if Obama’s name was censored from their remarks. However, it is more likely that the silence on Obama was self-imposed... (Protest group covers for Obama and the Democrats, March 24, 2010)

The protest and rally to which the WSWS article is referring to is the March 20th, 2010 anti-war rally in Washington DC. As a member of multiple groups that sponsored my area's trip to the protest, I can testify that many, if not most, of the speakers at the anti-war rally spoke out against Obama's actions. These speakers and groups included Cindy Sheehan, representatives of Black is Back, InfoWars, and many others. People from other groups, including those that spoke, had their marching contingents chant anti-Obama messages such as "Hey Obama, we say no, the occupation has got to go!" It seems that the WSWS is just lying in order to make itself look like the only legitimate anti-war group around.

Furthermore, speaking out against the US government and its corporate masters as a whole is a lot better than simply speaking out against Obama (who is only a temporary representative of the elites).

Now, onto the more serious matters.

The SEP Statement of Principles has, as Trotskyists often do, said this.

The Fourth International, with which the SEP is aligned, emerged out of the implacable struggle waged by Marxist internationalists, led by Leon Trotsky, against... the betrayal of the program of world socialist revolution by the dictatorial regime headed by Stalin and his henchmen.

We all know that Stalin didn't do as much as he should to bring forth the international revolution, but he didn't outright betray internationalism. It was Stalin who eventually sent economic aid to the Chinese after their revolution. It was Stalin who aided the revolution in North Korea (which one could say has taken a turn for the worst). It was Stalin who, during the WWII era, backed guerrillas in Latin America (according to author Jon Lee Anderson). As a matter of fact, it was Stalin who paved the way for the establishment of socialism in Eastern Europe after WWII.

The SEP Statement of Principles also stands against identity politics, which it claims to be counter-revolutionary. In many ways identity politics can be reactionary, but it seems they have forgotten for oppressed nations the struggle for national liberation becomes inseparably bound up with the class struggle. Here are some quotes to back this up.

“…emphasis must necessarily be laid on their advocating freedom for the oppressed countries to secede and their fighting for it. Without this there can be no internationalism.” -V. I. Lenin, "The Discussion on Self-Determination Summed Up"

“Hence it is the task of the International everywhere to put the conflict between England and Ireland in the foreground, and everywhere to side openly with Ireland [the oppressed nation]” -Karl Marx, "Ireland and the Irish Question"

While at one of the ISSE events, the author learned that the SEP is against "protest politics" and doesn't take part in activism because of this. No really, this is actually what the ISSE members said. I have searched the WSWS and SEP web pages, but I haven't yet found one clear definition of "protest politics." It remains unclear to me whether these people see protesting as a useful tool to gain support and grow in number, or if they actually plan on replacing protests with ISSE study groups.

The SEP demanded as part of their "socialist" program that the private banks be nationalized by the US government. They stated that their program is a "socialist program that places the needs of the people before the profits and personal fortunes of the ruling elite.” So they are basically dressing up reformist politics in revolutionary-sounding words. According to the quote, we can assume that the SEP will allow for the continued existence of a ruling elite. At the same time, the SEP program says that they don't believe reformist politics can work. Wow, what doublespeak! See the third article linked to at the end of this blog entry for clarification of this.

Many claims have been made against SEP leader David North. Among them are claims that Mr. North is a CEO of a publishing company affiliated with the WSWS. This would not only explain North's anti-union politics, but it would also explain why a supposedly "socialist" website like WSWS has a copyright seal and claim at the bottom of its page. As a matter of fact, even dedicated Trotskyists who dislike North hold to the claim that North is a member of the bourgeoisie.

Anyway, this brief criticism is finished. To see what other people, including Trotskyists, have to say about the WSWS/SEP/ISSE, check out the URL's below. If you have any good criticisms of the SEP and company, leave them in the comments section.

"Where were you David North?"
http://www.internationalist.org/wherewasdavidnorth.html

"The SEP is a Crock"
http://www.indymedia.org.nz/article/73526/socialist-equality-party-crock

"With capitalism like this, who needs socialism?"
http://wspus.org/2009/02/capitalism-in-crisis-reforms-collapse-or-a-socialist-revolution/

"The WSWS Resorts to a smear campaign"
http://www.permanent-revolution.org/polemics/smear_campaign.htm

It is Pentagon Policy to Target Journalists

Apologists for the recently released video from 2007 showing US military personnel firing on civilians have been trying to make it clear that the soldiers "mistook" the journalists' photography equipment for weapons. Very few big-time media networks have covered the release of this video.

How trained soldiers could mistake photography equipment for weapons is hard to understand. There are pro-US militias operating in Iraq, so even if they did honestly mistake the media equipment for weapons, they still fired indiscriminately at targets that had done nothing to provoke them, targets that could have been their friends.

Pentagon Publicist Victoria Clarke said that journalists who were not approved by the Pentagon were "putting themselves at risk" by working in US war zones. Eason Jordan, former head of CNN's news division, admitted in 2005 that it is US military policy to kill journalists in the Middle East that aren't working for the Pentagon. During a panel discussion in Switzerland, Jordan said he "knew of about 12 journalists who had not only been killed by American troops, but had been targeted as a matter of policy."

Jordan was fired from CNN and faced harsh criticism from both Democratic and Republican politicians after his 2005 comment.

In 2003, Kate Adie, former chief news correspondent for the British Broadcasting Corporation, told Radio One Ireland that media not “embedded” with the Pentagon in Iraq would be targeted by the US.

Taras Protsyuk of the British news agency Reuters and Jose Couso of the Spanish network Telecino were killed by US troops in 2003 while at the Hotel Palestine in Baghdad. The United States military targeted the offices of Al Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV, two Arabic-language news networks, on the same day. This all happened simply because these journalists weren't approved by the Pentagon.

Below are the URL's to other Partisan entries about who really controls the American media.

Does the CIA Control the Media?
http://partisan-news.blogspot.com/2010/01/cia-controls-media.html

Pulitzer Prize Winner Reveals Media-Pentagon Connection
http://partisan-news.blogspot.com/2009/06/pulitzer-prize-winner-reveals-media.html

Palestinian Land Day: Struggle for self-determination continues

The following is adapted from a talk presented at a meeting of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSLweb.org) in San Francisco, April 2.

March 30, Land Day, commemorated the Palestinian people’s struggle for self-determination. This day is marked by Palestinians all over the world. On March 29, 1976, more than 1,000 Palestinians living within the 1948 borders of Israel marched through Jaffa, chanting and carrying Palestinian flags to denounce Israel’s plans to demolish over 500 homes. The next day, a general strike was held. Israel killed six Palestinians participating in the demonstrations.

Today, 34 years later, Israel continues to terrorize and evict Palestinian families and demolish homes across the West Bank and in Jerusalem. It is fitting on this occasion to go over the situation in Palestine and also to analyze the rift that has developed between Washington and Tel Aviv.

Gaza under siege

Dec. 27, 2009, marked one year since the beginning of Israel’s 2008-2009 brutal siege and invasion of Gaza. The three-week land and air assault on Gaza was a highly concentrated use of firepower directed overwhelmingly at civilians. As a result of Israel’s barbarity, opposition to the occupation around the world has escalated.

The beginning of the attack involved 54 warplanes bombing civilian and government buildings. During the first nine hours of the attack, 100 tons of munitions were dropped on the Gaza Strip. In all, 1,440 Palestinians were killed, including 926 civilians. Over 5,000 people were wounded and thousands of homes destroyed. Israeli forces targeted women and children, ambulance drivers, and schools and hospitals and destroyed as much infrastructure as they could. They used highly destructive weapons, including banned phosphorus munitions.

The Gaza Strip has the sixth highest population density in the world, with 1.5 million people forced into an area of 139 square miles. Four thousand homes were destroyed, leaving 50,800 Gazans displaced. The total damage has been estimated at over $2 billion.

Following the military attacks, Israel has strengthened its debilitating blockade on Gaza. Access to electricity, natural gas and other sources of fuel is severely limited. Palestinians living in Gaza are generally unable to rebuild their homes, businesses and schools, since Israel refuses to let steel and cement through the border crossings.

The situation of political prisoners

For decades, Palestinians, confronted with great violence, have tirelessly struggled against the crimes of the state of Israel. It is instructive to look at the situation of political prisoners in this so-called democracy.

A Palestinian researcher, Abdul-Nasser Farawna, a former political prisoner himself, has come up with statistics on Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. There are currently 8,200 Palestinians imprisoned, among them 320 children. The number of detainees who have died in detention is 197, and hundreds of detainees have died after their release due to health complications resulting from torture and medical negligence during interrogation. Hundreds of detainees have been in solitary confinement for several months, in some cases for several years, and are deprived of visitation rights.

A former Israeli military commander, Eran Erafti, detailed the widespread abuse and torture of Palestinian youth by occupying Israeli soldiers: “You take the kid, you blindfold him, you handcuff him, he’s really shaking. … Sometimes you cuff his legs too. Sometimes it cuts off the circulation.” Erafti acknowledged that some of the kids are as young as nine or 10.

Of the 9,000 Palestinians arrested in 2009 by Israel, 700 were children. These children are tried in military tribunals in which anyone over the age of 16 is tried as an adult.

The West Bank and the two-state ‘solution’

Since the formation of the state of Israel, its military strategy has not only been to conquer land, but also to drive out as much of the Palestinian population as possible. Nearly 80 percent of the Palestinian population was forcibly removed within the first year to make way for the new Israeli state. In the 1967 war, Israel seized the remainder of historic Palestine—the West Bank and Gaza. This created 300,000 more refugees. Settlers now occupy numerous homes left behind in Jerusalem by Palestinians expelled in 1948 and 1967.

The so-called peace plans under consideration are based on a two-state “solution.” To get an idea of what a two-state solution would look like, we could look at the allocation of resources in the West Bank. The daily life of Palestinians in the West Bank consists of dealing with checkpoints, a heavy military presence, and the apartheid wall that coils around their existence. Added to these burdens, Palestinians can look in any direction and see illegal Israeli settlements with lush green lawns, well-maintained swimming pools and, in some Israeli cities, huge leisure water parks.

Just minutes from these government-subsidized settlements, Palestinians live with limited and unstable access to water. According to an Amnesty International report issued Oct. 27, 2009, Israeli settlers, whose population numbers about 450,000, use four times as much water as the 2.3 million Palestinians in the West Bank—that’s over 20 times as much water consumption per capita. Between 180,000 and 200,000 Palestinians in rural communities have no access to running water.

Expansion of settlements in Jerusalem

The expansion of settlements in and around Jerusalem is very important to the apartheid state of Israel. Roughly 245,000 Palestinians and 200,000 Israelis live in East Jerusalem. Some plans for a two-state solution have involved making Jerusalem the capital of the state of Palestine—that is what Yasser Arafat hoped would happen. Israel has continued to build Jewish-only settlements in East Jerusalem, while bulldozing Palestinians’ homes, leaving many families with nowhere to go.

According to the Israeli Coalition Against Home Demolitions, 18,147 Palestinian homes were demolished by Israel between 1967 and 2006. This figure does not include homes that have been destroyed or significantly damaged by Israeli air or artillery strikes.

In 2009, Israel announced plans to build 40,000 homes in Jerusalem over the next 10 years, with at least 2,000 of them in East Jerusalem. The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories reports that 89 Palestinian homes were bulldozed in 2008 alone in East Jerusalem.

During U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden’s visit to Israel, Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu announced approval of plans to build 1,600 new apartments for Jews only in East Jerusalem. This is in open defiance of the international legal prohibition against building settlements on illegally occupied land.

U.S.-Israeli differences

Even though it is really a continuation of a decades-old expansionist policy, Israel’s recent announcement created somewhat of a rift between the U.S. government and Israel. During her March 22 speech at the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee summit, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that the building and expansion of settlements in East Jerusalem has hindered the “peace process.” But what is the real source of the rift between Washington and Tel Aviv?

For U.S. imperialism, Israel’s role is to serve as a watchdog and proxy army. But the reason the United States needs this garrison state to begin with is to help ensure its domination over the oil-rich region of the Middle East. The United States definitely needs the state of Israel, but it is also interested in the survival and stability of its client states in the region. For client states like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and others, Israel’s continued expansionism and belligerence poses a problem.

There is widespread sympathy for the Palestinian people and equally widespread hatred for the state of Israel among all the Arab people in the region, and beyond. The client states need to have something to show to their own people to pretend that they have done something for the Palestinian people. Otherwise, their chances of going the way of the Shah of Iran will be greater.

For this reason, for the survival of its client states, the United States really wants to get a phony peace process going. And that is the so-called two-state solution. The Obama administration is interested in pursuing this policy not out of sympathy for the Palestinian people but in pursuit of imperialist goals.

For Palestinians, the two-state solution is not a solution at all. In fact, Israel has made it impossible to implement a two-state solution. Throughout the 1990s, the Israeli government consistently blocked the implementation of the Oslo Accord. Successive Israeli governments have continually stepped up the building of settlements in the West Bank. The aim is to make the emergence of any kind of a real Palestinian state impossible, even one that encompasses only the West Bank and Gaza—a mere 22 percent of historic Palestine.

But even if a two-state solution were possible, it would not really be a two-state solution. It would be one state, Israel, and a series of Palestinian municipalities. Palestinians would still have to go through Israeli checkpoints to go from one part of Palestine to another, because the so-called Palestinian state would be disjointed. Israel would continue to control the air, the sea and the borders, and Palestine would not even have a military. Israel would continue to control water and other resources. The Palestinian so-called state would merely have control over city services.

The only just solution

It has become increasingly obvious that the only just and feasible solution is the dismantlement of the racist apartheid state of Israel as an exclusionary Jewish state, and the founding of one secular state for all of the inhabitants of historic Palestine, with the right of return for the approximately 6 million displaced Palestinians. This is not such a fantastic idea, but if this were to happen, the United States would no longer have its attack dog in the region.

The problem for the Obama administration today is that the right wing of the Israeli ruling class, headed by Netanyahu, is unwilling to go along even with a fake two-state peace process. Israel is interested in its own expansion and not overly concerned with the stability of U.S. client states. In fact, if things get out of hand in one of the Arab client states, that may create conditions for Israel to underline its indispensable role for the United States. U.S. imperialism does not specifically benefit from Israel’s expansionism, although it has largely been willing to go along with it because of Israel’s strategic role in U.S. policy.

It is hard to tell how far Washington is willing to push Tel Aviv to moderate its approach and play along with the fake peace process. This will depend on the calculation of the Obama administration on the costs and benefits of a confrontation with the Israeli state.

Both the United States and Israel are working toward subjugating the Palestinian people. Their differences in approach should not lead anybody to place any hope for the Palestinian people being granted their rights by the United States. As they have done for decades, the Palestinian people continue to wage their courageous fight, with the full consciousness that their freedom will only come as a result of struggle.

In this struggle, the Palestinian people need international support. The apartheid system in South Africa was finally brought down with the persistent struggle of the South African people aided by the kind of international support that made it impossible for imperialist countries to continue supporting it. Israeli apartheid, faced with the same array of forces, will eventually collapse.

Ireland - This is Criticial Because This is Class War

The following was originally published on http://www.eirigi.org/.

The proponents of capitalism never tire of telling us how it is not the state’s role to interfere in the ‘free market’ – that economic competition between private producers and investors is key to economic growth.

They never tired of telling us that incentives, in the form of profits, were essential to convincing ‘bold entrepreneurs’ to take investment ‘risks’. They never tired of telling us that this was the only way to successfully generate rising levels of economic growth and wealth that would, ultimately, it was argued, trickle down and benefit all of society. Nor did they ever tire of telling us that, if these investors happened to make bad investment decisions, then they alone would face the consequences; it was only fair that, in the same way as they were handsomely rewarded for the successful risks they were taking, so too should they suffer the losses when their investments failed. That is some of the logic of capitalism. So the theory went anyway.

On Tuesday [March 30], the Twenty Six County minister of finance Brian Lenihan exploded that particular set of myths with the announcement in Leinster House, that, far from the people being sovereign, they would, in effect, be paying the debts of private banks for decades to come. By his actions, Brian Lenihan has confirmed the contempt in which the political establishment holds the very people who elect them.

The detail of the further bail-out of the banking system is truly staggering in its scale: a total of €21 billion [£18.7 billion] to rescue a failed and corrupt system.

Of this total, €8.3 billion [£7.4 billion] will be pumped into Anglo-Irish Bank, for so long the play-thing of the Twenty-Six County state’s biggest property developers. It doesn’t end there either, as Lenihan announced that a further €10 billion [£8.9 billion] will be required for AIB alone. Prior to Tuesday’s announcement, AIB had already received €4 billion [£3.6 billion] of taxpayers’ money. To put this €21 billion in context, the combined health budget and education budget in the year that the bank guarantee scheme was agreed was €23 billion [£20.4 billion].

The consequences of this decision will be felt for a long, long time; the mass of people face unemployment, reduced public services and chronic levels of debt for generations to come.

The right of the people to quality healthcare, housing and education is being made subordinate to the interest of banks, speculators and developers. Workers pension rights are being sold off so that the fat-cats that bankrolled Fianna Fáil for decades can be saved.

On Tuesday, many of these property developers, almost all of whom regularly attended the Fianna Fáil fundraising tent at the Galway races during the so called boom years, had their loans transferred into NAMA. Among them were Liam Carroll, Bernard McNamara, Seán Mulryan and Johnny Ronan, the playboys of the Celtic Tiger, lauded by the corporate media as the men who were taking the big risks to build a thriving economy. These parasites, facilitated by their political wing in Fianna Fáíl, simply inflated the property bubble, forcing thousands of households to take out 100 per cent mortgages on homes that were incredibly over-valued. These householders are now expected to pick up the tab for this gambling greed.

The consequences of the bank guarantee scheme of September 2008; a scheme that Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, the Green Party and Sinn Féin all supported, is now painfully evident. Secret meetings between senior bankers and Dublin government ministers thrashed out a deal that was foisted upon an unsuspecting public. The loans and deposits of all banks were guaranteed on that September night in 2008 with little detail provided as to the exact state of the banks’ loan books. Any semblance of democracy has been truly torn to shreds and all that is offered is the tired Thatcherite mantra, ‘There is no alternative’.

No alternative, it seems, to bailing out the rich and powerful in Irish society with billions of euros of taxpayers’ money, while workers who actually created the wealth are consigned to the dole queues. With high rates of unemployment, bosses are using the recession to try and force down the pay and working conditions of those still in work. The deal agreed between ICTU negotiators and the Dublin government this week represents yet another shameful sell-out of public sector workers. It is utterly astonishing that union bosses are agreeing to a four year pay freeze and cuts in overtime for public sector workers while tens of billions is being spent bailing out the banks. The privatisation of sections of the public sector will follow unless workers demand that enough is enough.

This system has never been so clearly exposed as the fetter on human development it is as it was after Lenihan’s announcement. War has been declared on workers who are being treated once again as mere cogs in a profit-producing machine. That these egregious amounts of bailout funds can be made available now to rescue the capitalist banking system gives the lie to the notion that there is not enough money in society to take care of the totality of the social needs of people.

It is a lie that this type of society serves the needs of anyone but a small minority. We, the working people, need to take as our starting point in our understanding of this the fact that it is the working class alone who are the creators of wealth and that it is only through exploitation that wealth passes out of their control into that of the capitalist. Most importantly, we need to understand that this bank bailout presents stark and condemning proof, if ever more proof were needed, of the fact that, in this type of society, there is an irresolvable conflict between the interests of the capitalist class and those of the working class.

The task for socialists and republicans now is to find ways of highlighting this reality to the working and unemployed people that are the victims of capitalism. For it is only through effectively agitating and organising among our people that we will have a fighting chance of ever building the forces required for this economic system to be pulled off its hinges and a new, socialist one, built in its stead.

This is a critical task because this is class war.

2007 Video of US Soldiers Shooting Civilians Recently Confirmed

The WikiLeaks organization recently released a leaked video from 2007 showing American soldiers in Iraq indiscriminately shooting at civilians, including two Reuters journalists, from an Apache helicopter in Baghdad. A senior U.S. military official confirmed the authenticity of the video just this Monday.

Julian Assange, a WikiLeaks spokesman, said the video "shows the debasement and moral corruption of soldiers as a result of war. It seems like they are playing video games with people's lives."

In the video you can hear the soldiers laugh as they gun down Iraqi civilians saying "Light 'em all up." After the shooting ceased, a van pulled up to load the wounded civilians inside. At this moment the US soldiers began firing at the van, killing more civilians and wounding two children on the inside.

When U.S. troops arrive on the ground to investigate the scene, a U.S. military vehicle drives over the body of one of the dead. Two soldiers are heard laughing over the intercom of the Apache helicopter. The U.S. troops discover two badly wounded children, 10-year-old Sayad and 5-year-old Doaha, and a soldier makes a decision to evacuate them by air to a U.S. military hospital. The order is then revoked and the children are turned over to Iraqi police to be taken to a local clinic, where care is inferior and the wait to be treated is much longer.

The Reuters journalists who were killed were Namir Nour El Deen, age 21, and Saeed Chmagh, age 40.

"What Namir was doing was a patriotic work. He was trying to cover the violations of the Americans against the Iraqi people," said Nabil Nour El Deen, Namir's brother. "Is this the democracy and freedom they claim they have brought to Iraq?"

"This is another crime that should be added to the record of American crimes in Iraq and the world," Nabil added.

Reuters reported on July 16 2007, "The U.S. military said last week it had called in ‘attack aviation reinforcement’ after coming under fire from small arms and rocket-propelled grenades. Nine insurgents and two civilians ‘reported as employees for the Reuters news service’ were killed, the statement said.’”

As we now know, the 2007 statement from the military is a lie because the video shows that the civilians were armed only with video cameras and photography equipment (which the military said were "AK-47's and RPG's") and the US helicopter attacked first. This revealing video evokes many questions. How many of the killed "insurgents" over the years were actually harmless civilians? How many other lies has the American military told? Is the official claim of 1.5 million dead Iraqis actually a lot higher? One thing is for certain though, and that is every day similar statements are issued by NATO forces in the Middle East that contain falsehoods and half-truths.

US imperialist, number 1 terrorist!
END THE CRIMINAL WARS IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN NOW!

The Guardians of the Free Republics

An America patriot group calling itself the Guardians of the Free Republics issued letters to all 50 governors of the various American states this week. The letters demanded that the governors, regardless of what party they are with, resign from their posts or they will be "removed."

The FBI is now investigating these letters, but no trace of threats of violence can be found in the group's letters or website. They aim to work behind the scenes for peaceful restoration of the American Constitution, which they claim has been violated for several decades now.

Sam Kennedy, a Guardian Elder of the group, said that the "original government" movement should approach the Guardians Restore America Plan with Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela in mind.

"We would simply like to urge patriots everywhere to champion their faith instead of force, and allow The Restore America Plan an uneventful 30 to 60 days for visible implementation which will ultimately end the bogus prosecutions and terrorist activities once and for all," said Sam Kennedy.

The Guardians believe that the US government is a corporate-controlled machine put in place by the New Deal in 1933. They aim to dismantle the FBI, stop the government from taxing people's income, and to overturn the Downes vs. Bidwell case which ruled that the US Constitution doesn't necessarily apply to American territories.

It has been claimed that the Guardians are a non-partisan group that mixes left and right. The Guardians are believed to be a peaceful organization spawned from the anti-IRS Posse Comitatus movement of the 1980s.

"Traditionally, critique of the IRS has come from the right, such as the Christian patriot movement, but [sovereign citizen] movements also invoke a lot of left-wing ideas like anti-capitalism that are consistent with the times and the downturn in the economy, where people may have property liens against them," says George Michael, an expert on political extremism at the University of Virginia's College at Wise.

For those of you who want to know exactly what the Guardians of the Free Republics are all about, here are there immediate goals (taken from their website).

• Ending foreclosure and bank collection actions immediately (our first and seventh directives)
• Ending tax prosecutions immediately (second and sixth directives)
• Ending invasions, prosecutions and detentions for fictitious crimes against the state that lack an injured party other than insurrection, treason and frauds against the United States (third and eighth directives)
• Ending molestation on the byways (fourth and ninth directives)
• Production of sovereign identification and passports that do not proclaim subject-class citizenship (fourth and ninth directives)
• Restoration of the trappings of proper de jure governance (fifth and tenth directives)
• Restoration of the common law of the Land (third and eighth directives)
  reigning in of the admiralty color-of-law venue to the high seas (third and eighth directives)
• Restoration of the proper de jure judicial institutions such as the district court of the United States and the one supreme Court as constructed and restrained in the Constitution for the United States of America, c. 1787 (Phase 2, thirteenth through fifteenth directives)
• Re-absorption of the de facto judicial aberrations such as USDC into the de jure institutions (Phase 2, thirteenth through fifteenth directives)
  a PERMANENT TERMINATION OF TERRITORIAL GOVERNMENT OUTSIDE CONSTITUTIONAL LIMITATIONS beginning with voiding of the Downes v. Bidwell monstrosity (Phase 2, eighteenth directive)
• Arrest and shackling of the District Court of the District of Columbia (Phase 2, sixteenth directive)
• Recognition of sovereign status in the police databanks of the land (fourth and ninth directives) and a lawful and orderly removal of the corporate state as the ruler of every aspect of your life.
  
  And we will accomplish all of that – with your help – BEHIND THE SCENES, lawfully, peacefully, without violence and without risking civil war.

They also said this on their websites.

"Even the insidious law enforcement agencies that have become interwoven in the tiniest issues of our lives will see the benefits of a return to the land where they can once again devote their skills to enforcing law, forever spared the risks of acting as agents for tyranny and the tragedies of assaulting the women and children of the sovereign People, their own mothers, sisters, daughters and granddaughters."

The Guardians are a mysterious group, no doubt about it. It is right to be suspicious of them, and in the future it will be right to rebel, in one form or another, against them and their allies if their plan actually works. If their plan does accomplish it's goal (the restoration of the Constitution), then that will make it easier for the proletariat to seize state power because it will allow for a peaceful transition.

Marx said a peaceful transition of class power was possible in the USA, but the conditions of the country have changed since his time, making a peaceful revolution basically impossible. These Guardians could open the door for a peaceful revolution by, at least temporarily, returning the conditions back to Marx's time (by ending the police state and stopping corporate involvement in government). They will indirectly help us whether they want to or not. However, one should remain skeptical of these patriot groups, especially mysterious ones that lean towards libertarianism.

This article should in no way be mistaken for an analysis of any kind because the proper amount of details about the Guardians is lacking. All the Marxist movements can do is watch, see how this whole Guardians situation plays out, and then make our move.

Wachovia drug laundering settlement

This was originally written by Jonathon Miller of PSLweb.org.

Wachovia, a banking subsidiary of Wells Fargo & Company, agreed March 17 to pay a $160 million settlement for its role in laundering money related to the trade in illegal drugs, effectively closing a five-year investigation by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. Wachovia was accused of violations that permitted the laundering of $110 million in drug money; the settlement includes that amount, plus a $50 million fine.

The terms of the settlement stipulate that no money from the Troubled Assets Relief Program shall be used to pay the settlement. TARP was used by the U.S. government to prevent the failure of the largest banks in 2008.

However, Wachovia only exists because of the $25 billion in TARP funds given to Wells Fargo to aid its purchase of Wachovia in the same year. In other words, Wachovia is using the government-mandated largesse of U.S. taxpayers to avoid significant criminal penalties for its own illegal activities.

Additionally, in exchange for settling, Wachovia executives will not face criminal prosecution. SWAT teams did not break into their corporate offices and throw bank directors to the floor in handcuffs after pushing them up against the wall.

The class nature of the capitalist state could not be more obvious in this case. The “war on drugs” has terrorized and decimated communities, particularly oppressed Black and Latino communities since its inception in the 1970s. Powerful bankers facilitating large-scale drug trafficking, however, need not worry about criminal prosecution.

Racist war on drugs

Workers facing drug charges often must rely on overworked public defenders who urge the accused to plead guilty to the crime, rather than fight for their rights. Workers cannot pay exorbitant fines and often cannot even pay bail without throwing themselves and their families into crippling amounts of debt.

Furthermore, mandatory minimum sentences often require that the possession of a small amount of an illegal substance leads to imprisonment and a felony record. In many states, this bars the convicted person from voting and places significant barriers to employment and economic opportunity.

These measures are used particularly harshly against the most oppressed people in society. Although Black drug users only constituted 13 percent of the total in 2003, they represented 35 percent of those arrested for drug possession, 55 percent of persons convicted and 74 percent of people sent to prison, at a rate 13 times greater than that of whites. Latinos are incarcerated twice as often as whites.

Capitalist banks, government and drug profiteers

While the image most people have of a drug dealer is the small dealer standing on the street corner, in reality the drug trade is big business. For these large-scale operations, money laundering gives illicit money the semblance of legality. Both banks and drug cartels benefit from these illegal operations. The Wachovia settlement is the latest case to show the symbiotic relationship between high finance and the criminal drug trade.

The “war on drugs” is not a war on drugs at all. It is a pretext to incarcerate youth from oppressed communities. It is a pretext for billions of dollars in military aid to Colombia, among other client states, which has used these resources to repress working-class and revolutionary movements.

The $160 million settlement, while bigger than some of the civil fines imposed in the past, is still just a slap on the wrist for Wachovia. Any serious effort to deal a blow to drug trafficking would involve vigorous prosecution of money laundering—yet no such effort is taking place. That the government has not moved to do so goes to show it is a government of and for the capitalist class.