Monthly Archives: June 2014

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US plans on sitting tight in Afghanistan for a long time: the plunder has only just begun

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Afghan refugee in Pakistan May 27 2014

You heard the skepticism here when Obama threatened to pull all US-NATO troops out of Afghanistan if Karzai didn’t sign the bilaterial agreement with the US by the end of last year. Bilateral means affecting both sides but doesn’t indicate parity or clarify if the affects will be adverse or beneficial to both. The provisions the US demanded meant continuing US domination in Afghanistan & preempted Afghan national sovereignty. It’s not clear why Karzai, the protégé of US colonialism, showed resistance rather than his usual compliance but his objections to the proposed agreement were absolutely valid–including demanding Afghan jurisdiction over US soliders committing war crimes in Afghanistan. The US wanted to be able to spirit offenders out of the country & try them in US military courts where they could give them the punitive equivalent of the naughty finger.

December 2013 came & went & no threatened troop withdrawal materialized when Karzai wouldn’t comply. Now the US claims the Afghan presidential elections winding up June 14th promise to deliver a new president they can work with. That’s probably because they’ve larded all the candidates with bribery money or threats. They’re lauding these elections as the first time in Afghan history that there’s been a democratic transition of power. How the hell do you have a democratic transition of power with thousands of foreign marines occuping your country & US-NATO drones bombing everything in sight? And, it might be added, with the CIA & other nefarious forces trucking in millions of under the table bonuses?

Why does the US insist on this agreement when they flaunt every international law already on the books? Only to render some kind of legal framework, even a flimsy one, to their continued occupation of Afghanistan.The millions of Afghanis living in exile will have to wait a few more years since today Obama announced to no one’s surprise that US-NATO forces would be staying on until 2016 rather than leaving in December 2014 as previously promised. It’s become tiresome to hear people blaming Bush for all Obama’s war crimes. Obama’s been in office six years & at least six more wars & troop deployments. It’s time he was held fully accountable for his crimes against the people of Afghanistan.

US out of Afghanistan! US out of Iraq! We demand the immediate withdrawal of all US-NATO forces & materiel. Bring the troops home now!

(Photo of Afghan refugee in Pakistan by Muhammed Muheisen)

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The on-going plight of Palestinian refugees

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Nakba 1968 May 27 2014

The issue of Palestinian refugees is not often enough examined & perhaps is not fully understood. But to understand the intransigence of Palestinian intifada, we need to look closely at the lives of the estimated 5 million Palestinians still living in refugee camps in Gaza & the West Bank, in Jordan, Lebanon, & Syria. Their right to return to their homeland is one of the most contentious issues in Palestinian politics–& perhaps in world politics–because while they languish in squalid camps by the millions, Israel is recruiting & transporting Zionists from around the world to take Palestinian lands & occupy their homes & villages.

The original nakba (catastrophe), when Zionist paramilitary & terrorist squads drove 750,000 Palestinians from their villages & lands was in 1948. That’s when Zionists formed the Jewish-only state of Israel–which is less a nation-state that an armed citadel & enclave of social hatred.

But when you look at a time-modified map of Israel’s expropriation of Palestine, you see that thousands more Palestinians are always being driven into refugee camps as Zionist settlers expropriate more & more of their territory. There have been major events like the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza & east Jerusalem, & refugees dramatically increased, but it’s been a nonstop problem since 1948.

The old pup tent camps have transitioned to concrete blockhouses & to what seem permanent urban slums with now a fourth generation of Palestinians coming of age in them. There are about 59 camps where the UN Rellief & Works Agency (UNRWA) provides social services. You can’t just walk into one of the camps claiming to be a Palestinian refugee uprooted by Zionist settlers & expect to get UN assistance. You have to register with the UNRWA & fit their criteria. Human diaspora isn’t that tidy a thing. The criteria leave a lot of Palestinians out in the cold without access to social assistance.

UNRWA is a peculiar UN agency; it was formed solely to address Palestinian refugees in the 1948 nakba & does not work with refugees in any other part of the world. There has been lots of criticism of UNRWA, especially from Zionists who claim it has an anti-Israel bias & covers for Palestinian terrorists–the usual crazy-pants charges of Zionism.

But there are also criticisms that it fosters dependence among Palestinians. That accusation could be considered the usual grist of anti-welfare gripers but a more compelling concern expressed is that UNRWA dampens the energies of intifada. There are photos from the 1948 nakba showing convoys of UNRWA trucks carrying Palestinian refugees to refugee camps. It’s not imprudent to ask whether they were rescuing refugees or facilitating ethnic cleansing.

All stages of the Palestinian exodus have been documented by the UNRWA. Their archives now include 525,000 negatives, photos, slides, films, video cassettes. With grants from Denmark, France, & the Palestinian private sector they are now digitizing the archives as part of UNESCO’s Memory of the World List archives. Most of the work is being done in Denmark but about 50,000 photos are being processed in Gaza (despite the possibility Israel could bomb them into smithereens). An online database now has close to 2,000 images.

As the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans proceeded in the US in the last decades of the 19th century & early 20th century, oligarchs like J.P. Morgan & Theodore Roosevelt originated natural history museums to house artifacts from indigenous cultures they were attempting to drive into extinction to serve the needs of capitalist expansion. They also commissioned photographers to go west to document native peoples before they went extinct. There are volumes of those photos which glorified Native Americans already vanquished & living in squalor on reservations. Despite the odious intentions & genocidal historic vision, the photos are invaluable.

So too, the photos of Palestinian nakba. But the UNRWA is no more to be trusted than J.P. Morgan. Those who believe in justice don’t want an archive of a vanquished people. Native Americans & Palestinians deserve more than a photographic record of their exodus; they deserve justice & the return of their rights & lands. Continuing Palestinian intifada is the only assurance of justice–& for that international solidarity is needed.

Palestinians & their supporters can draw on this archive as it becomes available to educate about nakba, diaspora, about the nature of Zionism, & to promote Palestinian solidarity & BDS.

This photo from the archive is Palestinians arriving in a refugee camp in east Jordan from either the West Bank or Gaza in 1968 after the occupation by the Israeli military.

(Photo by G. Nehmeh/AP/UNRWA photo archives)

 

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Pope Francis pays respect to founder of Israeli apartheid

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Francis and Herzl May 26 2014

Since symbolic gestures now carry such political weight, what does it signify when Pope Francis lays a wreath on the grave of Theodor Herzl, the ideological founder of Zionism?

Herzl is one of the first ideologues of Zionism, an ideology which holds Jews superior, rejects assimilation, & promotes a Jewish-only state which defies all of the democratic achievements of the revolutions that defeated feudalism & installed capitalism–like the separation of church & state.

Some claim Zionism is a romantic ideology, ennobling Jews. In fact, it’s a rancid ideology denigrating Judaism & every other human being on the planet. So what exactly is the pope honoring here?

Herzl died in Austria but had his corpse moved to Israel for burial. When Palestinian justice is won & there is a democratic secular state where Jews & Arabs can live together as brothers & sisters, they can move his corpse right back to Austria where it belongs.

(Photo of Pope Francis, Peres, & Netanyahu at Herzl’s grave; photographer unidentified)

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The importance of antiwar veterans to building opposition to war

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Vietnam vets May 26 2014

The best antiwar speeches have been by antiwar veterans of every US war. Testimony given by Vietnam veterans at the Winter Soldier tribunal in 1971 & by Iraq & Afghanistan veterans at the Winter Soldier tribunal in 2008 stand as the most powerful & wrenching indictments of US military policy.

While the US Pentagon uses Memorial Day to celebrate war, these veterans remind us of the crimes committed overseas in our names. And when they return to civilian life they, their families, & US society pay a price in PTSD, addiction, mental illness, homelessness, incarceration, suicide, violence. The antiwar movement, including its veteran activists do not glorify soldiers; nor do we vilify them.

These are excerpts from a talk I gave in Minneapolis to raise funds for Winter Soldier 2008. It pales in comparison to the indictments of war given by veterans but is intended as a tribute to antiwar veterans who continue to play a pivotal role in building opposition to US wars:
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“Of the many important participants in the antiwar movement—students, churches, women, civil rights groups, unions—there is one constituency with a towering moral authority no one disputes, and that is the veterans and active duty Gis. Their opposition to war cuts, like nothing else can, through the patriotic jingoism, racism and lies that justify war. That’s why the proponents of war are so relentless in trying to create antipathy between veterans and the antiwar movement. Everyone’s heard the story about Vietnam vets being met at airports by taunting and spitting protestors? This ugliest of slanders is intended to alienate people from the antiwar movement, in particular to isolate and demoralize veterans with misgivings or opposition to the war. It gives them no place to go for support.

In the early antiwar movement there was some confusion and discussion about the value of reaching out to veterans and Gis—but no one ever saw them as the enemies of peace; some doubted they could overcome the military brainwashing or stand up to the harassment they would certainly receive. That confusion decisively ended when hundreds and eventually thousands of vets and Gis began organizing against the war and made their opposition public with newspapers, petitions, and demonstrations and they approached the antiwar movement for collaboration and support.

Without the support of a mass civilian antiwar movement they were subject to intimidation, court martial, prison time, and often charges of mutiny or desertion in time of war, which carry a maximum penalty of death. You may not know that all of this was true in the first Iraq war in the early 90s. Black and Latino soldiers played a major part in this resistance because they were so outraged at the racism of the war against the Arab peoples.

As a result of our collaboration, defense campaigns were waged and demonstrations held to keep Gis from being prosecuted and jailed. We marched with veterans reaching out to soldiers and to support those victimized for exercising their legal right to oppose the war.

The respect we have for these brothers and sisters in the antiwar movement is signified by the fact that even today all marches are led off by contingents of veteran’s and Gis because they are a direct rebuke to the demagogues calling racist wars a fight for freedom and democracy. Thousands have been inspired and persuaded to oppose the war by their public speeches and protests

Many of the veterans who have been involved in this work for now more than 40 years are here tonight. They’re probably too modest to stand up and identify themselves but I think we should tip our hats to them and express our respect and gratitude for the remarkable contributions they have made to advancing civil liberties, the causes of peace and antiracism, and to making this a suitable world for human beings to live and love in.”

(Photo from the archives of the anti-Vietnam War movement)

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Pope says three Hail Marys and makes a good act of contrition for Israeli apartheid

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Pope Francis May 25 2014

Call me ungrateful, but I think the Pope Francis trip to Palestine & Israel is a mixed bag of symbolic gestures–like visiting Mahmoud Abbas & the West Bank, praying at the apartheid wall, & visiting Al-Aqsa mosque. Like all symbolic gestures, these are not meaningless but what they signify are evasions of Palestinian justice. They’re a political dog & pony show. What matters is that he is promoting a bantustate solution, is not calling for the right of return for Palestinian refugees, & not denouncing the West Bank occupation or siege of Gaza.

So what if he says a prayer at the apartheid wall!? It may rile Israel but it won’t advance Palestinian justice one iota. Pope Francis isn’t a rookie to politics & neither are his Vatican advisers. Millions of people around the world are outraged by Israeli apartheid & ethnic cleansing & the pope can get away with a wimpy-assed prayer & be lauded for it?

Some may call that incremental progress toward justice for Palestinians. Let’s call it what it is: a shameful deference to Zionism & maybe collusion.

Tear down that apartheid wall! No military aid to Israel! Support Palestinian justice by boycotting all Israeli products (barcode beginning 729), & supporting the cultural boycott of Israel.

(Photo by Ariel Schalit)

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Protests in Haiti against president Martelly

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Haiti May 25 2014

One look at this picture will explain the recent protests in Haiti denouncing president Michel Martelly, the sniveling protégé & accomplice of former dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier & the two Clintons in setting up Haiti as another sweatshop nation.

The man seen here is a resident of Petion Ville, a remote suburb of Port-au-Prince. Petion Ville is one of the richest areas in Haiti where all the diplomats, foreign businessmen (that’s the term for crooks & plunderers), & most of Haiti’s oligarchs live. It’s also a tourist haven with lots of chic bistros where you can see Duvalier dining with the likes of do-gooder & white savior, Sean Penn.

Petion Ville is mostly gated communities that are compared to Beverly Hills in LA where all the movie tycoons live, but with the treacherous addition of razor wire fencing. You’d think that wouldn’t be necessary in an enclave of such high-level thievery. The residents are neoliberal operatives & goon squads, not break & entry men. But shantytowns have emerged on the perimeters of Petion Ville, most likely by those displaced in the 2010 earthquake who still have no housing & who are hoping to find work in the swanky tourist clubs. The millions in relief donations had to be used instead to set up sweatshops & of course pay for the Clinton’s lavish indulgences.

In this photo, Haiti’s Ministry of Public Health is spraying chemicals to exterminate mosquitoes in one of the shantytowns. Well the caption doesn’t say it was one of the shantytowns but you certainly don’t think they would spray toxic chemicals on residents of a gated community, do you!? The health workers reported the procedure was to prevent diseases like chikungunya, dengue & malaria. If those diseases were just a threat to shantytown residents, no big deal. But those diplomats & robber barons have to be protected even if it means endangering the health of shantytown residents. Have you ever seen such stinking cynicism!?

(Photo by Hector Retamal/AFP)

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Solidarity with Zapatista struggle in Chiapas, Mexico

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Zapatista solidarity May 23 2014

The relationships between the US & other countries in the Americas are fraught with contradiction & complexity. All of them were colonized by Europeans but different regimes employed different strategies with the Indigenous peoples, all of the strategies barbaric. In the US, they were driven on to barren reservations; in most of the Americas, they were stripped of their lands by European colonizers & reduced to debt peonage. Genocide was the singular commonality.

As capitalism developed in the western hemisphere & as US militarism & colonialism dwarfed all others, many countries in the Americas became client states to US economic & military interests with a corrupt elite in collusion with US oligarchs. As we know from the many US interventions over the past 100 years, they are not colonies but they are not free either.

On the losing end of all this have been Indigenous peoples who have made land tenure the pivotal issue at every stage of their historic struggle to survive against colonialism & the encroachments of capitalism. Mexico’s history cannot be told without considerable focus on the land question. It was a central issue of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) under the leadership of Emiliano Zapata who demanded redistribution of agricultural land & formation of ejido (communal lands) for peasant farming. Some land reform came out of that revolution but the changes were provisional so they could be reversed at an opportune political time.

That opportune time presented itself when neoliberal agriculture financed by the IMF & World Bank was introduced into Mexico in the 1980s along with NAFTA in 1994. This required dismantling the ejido lands & converting to commercial plantations for export crops. The Mexican government facilitated this plunder (which politicians stood to make a bundle on) by modifying the constitution & favoring multinational agribusiness with tax credits, reduced trade barriers, & other shyster tricks. These policies devastated subsistence farming, as they were intended to do, impacting mostly on Indigenous farmers.

This is a lucrative scam they’ve got going. Now Mexico produces food primarily for export & imports food, mostly from the US. Hundreds of thousands of farmers & farm workers were dispossessed, impoverished, & forced to immigrate to the US while agribusiness is making out like a bandit.

This is part of the context for the development of the Zapatista movement in the Mexican state of Chiapas which has one of the largest Indigenous populations in the country. The Zapatistas emerged in 1994 in opposition to NAFTA & to neoliberal plunder. It is one of the most important & organized Indigenous movements in the world & has volumes to teach about how to & how not to organize a popular movement.

The Zapatista movement has always been under siege, even though early on they abandoned guerrilla warfare as a strategy. The Mexican government now employs paramilitary units rather than outright occupation. In a May 2nd paramilitary attack on the village of La Realidad in Chiapas, a school & clinic were destroyed & a Zapatista school teacher named José Luis Solís López (known as Galeano) was brutally murdered by machete & gun.

The Zapatista movement is calling for solidarity from around the world. There have been rallies in places like NYC, Limerick, Ireland, & elsewhere. This petition is one of the easiest ways to render solidarity with this historic struggle against the depredations of neoliberalism which is decimating farming communities & displacing Indigenous peoples around the world. Please take a moment to read it & sign it, knowing you are playing a small part in one of the most important political struggles for justice today: http://www.anattackonusall.org/sign-the-call/

Photo is people gathered in the Plaza of Resistance in San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, to show solidarity with the Zapatistas after the assassination of Galeano

(Photo by Marta Molina)

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African immigrants “rescued” by Spanish coast guard

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African immigrants May 23 2014

There’s a world of hope & dreams invested in these young men who were among a group of 22 immigrants from Africa, including two women & six children intercepted off the coast of Spain near the Canary Island of Gran Canaria. Half are sub-Saharan Africans, half are from the Maghreb region of northern Africa.

Their overcrowded boat described as “makeshift” ran adrift after it lost engine power & had to be rescued by the Spanish coast guard. “Rescued” of course is a qualified term for undocumented immigrants. They didn’t drown in the Meditarranean Sea like so many thousands of fellow immigrants but they will be incarcerated, processed, & most will be deported & dumped back somewhere on the African continent.

You can see how elated they are to be “rescued” because many have entire families dependent on their getting into Europe to find work & send money home; many are refugees fleeing war; many have been dispossessed by neoliberal plunder. All of them are desperate or they wouldn’t risk their lives in a makeshift boat that could prove their doom.

Working people around the world are inundated with agitation against immigrants, as if they’ve come to take our jobs or go on the dole. That’s a classic divide & conquer device that plays well among those fearful for their jobs, especially when it’s orchestrated with racism. So one of the most promising political developments in several countries is that immigrants are standing up for their rights fearlessly. Our heartfelt solidarity with their struggles.

Immigration is a human right! Open the borders! Tear down Fortress Europe!

(Photo by Borja Suarez/Reuters)

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Fast food workers on strike!

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Fast food workers May 23 2014

This is another photo of the protest at McDonald’s headquarters outside Chicago by 2,000 fast food workers & supporters from church, union, & community groups. Things are going to get rough if they’re already bringing out riot cops just to guard the executive suites of the hamburger tsar.

This is labor history in the making & we can all be part of it by joining solidarity rallies in our own cities. Your name may not hit the history books but your deeds will.

(Photo by Jim Young/Reuters)

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McDonald’s workers on strike!

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McD strike May 23 2014

These riot cops are protecting McDonald’s corporate headquarters from about 2,000 fast food workers & supporters demonstrating for higher wages & the right to form a union without retaliation. The headquarters is located in Oak Brook, Illinois just outside Chicago, which is one of the wealthiest suburbs in the US & a suitable venue for McDonald’s CEO who earns $9.5 million bucks a year. McDonald’s workers earn minimum wage & pay about $400 a month for company health insurance.

The protest which drew 500 McDonald’s workers from over 36 cities, also included church groups, union activists, & community groups. McDonald’s can see that political tsunami coming at them & it’s certain all the other fast food joints are watching these developments with extreme alarm. And so are conservative union leaders since they’ve been sitting on labor militance for decades. This eruption among the poorest US workers will have a powerful effect on both unionized & non-unionized workers & help overcome the lethargy that marks the labor movement now. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say, marks the union leadership now.

Media reports McDonald’s is sweating about the public relations disaster such pro)tests are creating & a boycott of their stinking food is a real possibility. But a bigger problem than image faces the entire fast food industry which has been treating employees like chattel since the industry came on the scene in the 1950s.

Our fullest solidarity with these fast food workers. They bring new life to the US labor movement. It’s worth noting that many of these workers are immigrants.

(Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)