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29 Nov ' 07:52
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n Sights....."Two centuries ago, a former European colony decided to catch up with Europe. It succeeded so well that the United States of America became a monster, in which the taints, the sickness and the inhumanity of Europe have grown to appalling dimensions."Frantz FanonLet us leave this Europe -- See below"Only after the last tree has been cut down,Only after the last river has been poisoned,Only after the last fish has been caught,Only then will you find out that money cannot be eaten." Cree Prophecy
"The postwar honeymoon, however, is clearly over. The great "capitalist revolution" touted by the Rockefellers is no more. "Humanized capitalism" is no more. Declining growth has now returned us to the age of "le capitalisme sauvage". It has triggered economic and sosial crisis in every Western country...The West, then, is itself locked in crisis. This is not a transient crisis or a "long cycle", as academic apologists would have it. It is a systemic crisis. The market system can no longer produce anything like proesperity...Government and industry leaders in the West are fully aware of the situation in one sense. They know what the statistics are. They know what the problems are. But they are not able to see that the source of the problem is the fact that, having 'achieved' very high levels of production, income and wealth, the present capitalist system has nowhere to go...Western countries are led by people who are constitutionally incapable of seeing that something fundamental is wrong... It is this blindness, grounded in confusion and fear, which has clouded the ability of Western leaders to think clearly about the risks of extending NATO into Eastern Europe. The Western system is experiencing a profound economic, social and political crisis.And Western leaders apparently see the [continual -GZ] exploitation of the East as the only large-scale 'project' available which might 'stimulate' growth, especially in Western Europe..."Sean GervasiWhy Is NATO In Yugoslavia?Heavy police presence as thousands take to the streets in protests against government plans to raise university fees.Debt-ridden country aims to save $20bn, enabling it to receive a bailout package from the EU and IMF.Country grinds to a halt as general strike by unions affects transport, media and petrol services.Students demonstrate in the Italian capital Rome against the government's reform plans that propose cuts of around USD 12 billion and 130,000 jobs.The French national railways (SNCF) has announced that the wave of anti-pension reform strikes in October has cost the company about 150 million euros.Thousands of people have staged demonstrations in Vienna and other big cities of Austria to protest against the severe cuts in the country's draft budget for 2011.Students have marched on the streets and occupied university buildings in several Italian cities on the third day of nationwide rallies protesting cutbacks in spending on universities.German protesters have gathered outside the parliament building in the capital city Berlin to show their anger at the government's austerity package.Portugal's Parliament has approved the government's austerity budget bill for 2011 to avoid a bailout through deficit-cutting measures.Hundreds of protesters have marched through central Athens to protest against austerity measures.EU debt dominos start to fall. Is Portugal next?Now that Ireland has become the second of the fiscally battered euro zone countries to reluctantly accept a rescue package, the question is not whether there will be more bailouts, but who comes next.
Portugal stands at the top of most analysts lists, even though its economic fortunes have improved a bit recently and its banking sector is in better shape. Its budget deficit and public debt levels also stand well below those of Ireland or Greece, the first of the debt-ridden countries on the periphery of the euro zone forced to accept financial aid from the European Union and International Monetary Fund.
China, Russia Quit Dollar
China and Russia have decided to renounce the US dollar and resort to using their own currencies for bilateral trade, Premier Wen Jiabao and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin announcedhttp://nation.foxnews.com/china/2010/11/24/china-russia-quit-dollarLet us Leave this EuropeFrantz Fanon
Let us waste no time in sterile litanies and nauseating mimicry. [Let us] Leave this Europe where they are never done talking of Man, yet murder men everywhere they find them, at the corner of every one of their own streets, in all the corners of the globe. For centuries they have stifled almost the whole of humanity in the name of a so-called spiritual experience. Look at them today swaying between atomic and spiritual disintegration...
Europe undertook the leadership of the world with ardour, cynicism and violence. Look at how the shadow of her palaces stretches out ever farther! Every one of her movements has burst the bounds of space and thought. Europe has declined all humility and all modesty; but she has also set her face against all solicitude and all tenderness.
She has only shown herself parsimonious and niggardly where men are concerned; it is only men that she has killed and devoured.
So, my brothers, how is it that we do not understand that we have better things to do than to follow that same Europe? That same Europe where they were never done talking of Man, and where they never stopped proclaiming that they were only anxious for the welfare of Man: today we know with what sufferings humanity has paid for every one of their "triumphs of the mind".Come, then, comrades, the European game has finally ended; we must find something different...
Europe now lives at such a mad, reckless pace that she has shaken off all guidance and all reason, and she is running headlong into the abyss; we would do well to avoid it with all possible speed...
When I search for Man in the 'technique' and the 'style' of Europe, I see only a succession of negations of man, and an avalanche of murders...
Two centuries ago, a former European colony decided to catch up with Europe. It succeeded so well that the United States of America became a monster, in which the taints, the sickness and the inhumanity of Europe have grown to appalling dimensions.
Comrades, have we not other work to do than to create a third Europe? The West saw itself as a spiritual adventure. It is in the name of the spirit, in the name of the spirit of Europe, that Europe has made her encroachments, that she has justified her crimes and legitimized the slavery in which she holds four-fifths of humanity.
Yes, the European spirit has strange roots. All European thought has unfolded in places which were increasingly more deserted and more encircled by precipices; and thus it was that the custom grew up in those places of very seldom meeting man.
A permanent dialogue with oneself and an increasingly obscene narcissism never ceased to prepare the way for a half delirious state, where intellectual work became suffering and the reality was not at all that of a living man, working and creating himself, but rather words, different combinations of words, and the tensions springing from the meanings contained in words. Yet some Europeans were found to urge the European workers to shatter this narcissism and to break with this un-reality.
But in general the "workers" of Europe have not replied to these calls; for the workers believe, too, that they are part of the prodigious adventure of the "European spirit"...
Today, we are present at the stasis of Europe. Comrades, let us flee from this motionless movement where gradually dialectic is changing into the logic of equilibrium. Let us reconsider the question of mankind. Let us reconsider the question of cerebral reality and of the cerebral mass of all humanity, whose connexions must be increased, whose channels must be diversified and whose messages must be re-humanized...
No, there is no question of a return to Nature. It is simply a very concrete question of not dragging men towards mutilation, of not imposing upon the brain rhythms which very quickly obliterate it and wreck it. The pretext of catching up must not be used to push man around, to tear him away from himself or from his privacy, to break and kill him.
No, we do not want to catch up with anyone. What we want to do is to go forward all the time, night and day, in the company of Man, in the company of all men. The caravan should not be stretched out, for in that case each line will hardly see those who precede it; and men who no longer recognize each other meet less and less together, and talk to each other less and less.
The Wretched of the Earth --Conclusion Chapter, 1961www.marxists.org/subject/africa/fanon/conclusion.htm
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23 Nov ' 11:21
Native Blood: The Myth of Thanksgiving
excerpt posted at http://www.uruknet.de/?s1=1&p=71821&s2=14
by Mike Ely, http://kasamaproject.org/2010/11/13/native-blood-the-myth-of-thanksgiving-3/
To share ... some truth with the stuffing.
It is a deep thing that people still celebrate the survival of the early colonists at Plymouth by giving thanks to the Christian God who supposedly protected and championed the European invasion. The real meaning of all that, then and now, needs to be excavated. The myths and lies that surround the past are constantly draped over the horrors and tortures of our present. Every schoolchild in the U.S. has been taught that the Pilgrims of the Plymouth Colony invited the local Indians to a major harvest feast after surviving their first bitter year in New England. But the real history of Thanksgiving is a story of the murder of indigenous people and the theft of their land by European colonialists–and of the ruthless ways of capitalism.
* * * * *
In mid-winter 1620 the English ship Mayflower landed on the North American coast, delivering 102 exiles. The original Native people of this stretch of shoreline had already been killed off. In 1614 a British expedition had landed there. When they left they took 24 Indians as slaves and left smallpox behind. Three years of plague wiped out between 90 and 96 percent of the inhabitants of the coast, destroying most villages completely.
After the first colonies were establlshed: the Pequod war
The Europeans landed and built their colony called "the Plymouth Plantation" near the deserted ruins of the Indian village of Pawtuxet. They ate from abandoned cornfields grown wild. Only one Pawtuxet named Squanto had survived–he had spent the last years as a slave to the English and Spanish in Europe. Squanto spoke the colonists’ language and taught them how to plant corn and how to catch fish until the first harvest. Squanto also helped the colonists negotiate a peace treaty with the nearby Wampanoag tribe, led by the chief Massasoit.These were very lucky breaks for the colonists. The first Virginia settlement had been wiped out before they could establish themselves. Thanks to the good will of the Wampanoag, the settlers not only survived their first year but had an alliance with the Wampanoags that would give them almost two decades of peace.
John Winthrop, a founder of the Massahusetts Bay colony considered this wave of illness and death to be a divine miracle. He wrote to a friend in England, "But for the natives in these parts, God hath so pursued them, as for 300 miles space the greatest part of them are swept away by smallpox which still continues among them. So as God hath thereby cleared our title to this place, those who remain in these parts, being in all not 50, have put themselves under our protection."
The deadly impact of European diseases and the good will of the Wampanoag allowed the settlers to survive their first year. In celebration of their good fortune, the colony’s governor, William Bradford, declared a three-day feast of thanksgiving after that first harvest of 1621.
How the Puritans Stole the Land
The peace that produced the Thanksgiving Feast of 1621 meant the Puritans would have 15 years to establish a firm foothold on the coast. Until 1629 there were 300 settlers in New England, scattered in small, isolated settlements. But their survival inspired a wave of Puritan invasion that soon established growing Massachusetts towns north of Plymouth: Boston and Salem. For 10 years, boatloads of new settlers came.
On arrival, the Puritans and other religious sects discussed "who legally owns all this land." They had to decide this, not just because of Anglo-Saxon traditions, but because their particular way of farming was based on individual–not communal or tribal–ownership. This debate over land ownership reveals that bourgeois "rule of law" does not mean "protect the rights of the masses of people." Some settlers argued that the land belonged to the Indians. These forces were excommunicated and expelled. Massachusetts Governor Winthrop declared the Indians had not "subdued" the land, and therefore all uncultivated lands should, according to English Common Law, be considered "public domain." This meant they belonged to the king... the colonists decided they did not need to consult the Indians when they seized new lands, they only had to consult the representative of the crown (meaning the local governor).
Training of the Massachusetts militia, 1637. The means of genocide and theft.
The colonists embraced Psalms 2:8. "Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession."
Since then, European settler states have similarly declared god their real estate agent: from the Boers seizing South Africa to the Zionists seizing Palestine.
The European immigrants took land and enslaved Indians to help them farm it. By 1637 there were about 2,000 British settlers. They pushed out from the coast and decided to remove the inhabitants.
The Shining City on the Hill
Where did the Plymouth and Massachusetts colonies of Puritan and "separatist" pilgrims come from and what were they really all about?
A self-serving historical lie -- The myth of coexistance and love promoted by Thanksgiving
Governor Winthrop, a founder of the Massachusetts colony, said, "We shall be as a City upon a Hill, the eyes of all people are upon us." The Mayflower Puritans had been driven out of England as subversives. The Puritans saw this religious colony as a model of a social and political order that they believed all of Europe should adopt.
The Puritan movement was part of a sweeping revolt within English society against the ruling feudal order of wealthy lords. Only a few decades after the establishment of Plymouth, the Puritan Revolution came to power in England. They killed the king, won a civil war, set up a short-lived republic, and brutally conquered the neighboring people of Ireland to create a larger national market.
The famous Puritan intolerance was part of a determined attempt to challenge the decadence and wastefulness of the rich aristocratic landlords of England. The Puritans wanted to use the power of state punishment to uproot old and still dominant ways of thinking and behaving.
The new ideas of the Puritans served the needs of merchant capitalist accumulation. The extreme discipline, thrift and modesty the Puritans demanded of each other corresponded to a new and emerging form of ownership and production. Their so-called "Protestant Ethic" was an early form of the capitalist ethic. From the beginning, the Puritan colonies intended to grow through capitalist trade–trading fish and fur with England while they traded pots, knives, axes, alcohol and other English goods with the Indians.
The New England was ruled by a government in which only the male heads of families had a voice. Women, Indians, slaves, servants, youth were neither heard nor represented. In the Puritan schoolbooks, the old law "honor thy father and thy mother" was interpreted to mean honoring "All our Superiors, whether in Family, School, Church, and Commonwealth." And, the real truth was that the colonies were fundamentally controlled by the most powerful merchants.
The Puritan fathers believed they were the Chosen People of an infinite god and that this justified anything they did. Calvinists who believed that the vast majority of humanity was predestined to damnation. This meant that while they were firm in fighting for their own capitalist right to accumulate and prosper, they were quick to oppress the masses of people in Ireland, Scotland and North America, once they seized the power to set up their new bourgeois order. Those who rejected the narrow religious rules of the colonies were often simply expelled "out into the wilderness."
The Massachusetts colony (north of Plymouth) was founded when Puritan stockholders had gotten control of an English trading company. The king had given this company the right to govern its own internal affairs, and in 1629 the stockholders simply voted to transfer the company to North American shores–making this colony literally a self-governing company of stockholders!
In U.S. schools, students are taught that the Mayflower compact of Plymouth contained the seeds of "modern democracy" and "rule of law." But by looking at the actual history of the Puritans, we can see that this so-called "modern democracy" was (and still is) a capitalist democracy based on all kinds of oppression and serving the class interests of the ruling capitalists.
The reality of colonial massacre and enslavement
In short, the Puritan movement developed as an early revolutionary challenge to the old feudal order in England... the soul of primitive capitalist accumulation. And transferred to the shores of North America, they immediately revealed how heartless and oppressive that capitalist soul is.
The Birth of "The American Way of War"
In the Connecticut Valley, the powerful Pequot tribe had not entered an alliance with the British (as had the Narragansett, the Wampanoag, and the Massachusetts peoples). At first they were far from the centers of colonization. Then, in 1633, the British stole the land where the city of Hartford now sits–land which the Pequot had recently conquered from another tribe. That same year two British slave raiders were killed. The colonists demanded that the Indians who killed the slavers be turned over. The Pequot refused.
The Puritan preachers said, from Romans 13:2, "Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation." The colonial governments gathered an armed force of 240 under the command of John Mason. They were joined by a thousand Narragansett warriors. The historian Francis Jennings writes: "Mason proposed to avoid attacking Pequot warriors which would have overtaxed his unseasoned, unreliable troops. Battle, as such, was not his purpose. Battle is only one of the ways to destroy an enemy’s will to fight. Massacre can accomplish the same end with less risk, and Mason had determined that massacre would be his objective."
The colonist army surrounded a fortified Pequot village on the Mystic River. At sunrise, as the inhabitants slept, the Puritan soldiers set the village on fire.
William Bradford, Governor of Plymouth, wrote: "Those that escaped the fire were slain with the sword; some hewed to pieces, others run through with their rapiers, so that they were quickly dispatched and very few escaped. It was conceived they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire…horrible was the stink and scent thereof, but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the prayers thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them."
Mason himself wrote: "It may be demanded…Should not Christians have more mercy and compassion? But…sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents…. We had sufficient light from the word of God for our proceedings."
Three hundred and fifty years later the Puritan phrase "a shining city on the hill" became a favorite quote of conservative speechwriters.
Discovering the Profits of Slavery
This so-called "Pequot war" was a one-sided murder and slaving expedition. Over 180 captives were taken. After consulting the bible again, in Leviticus 24:44, the colonial authorities found justification to kill most of the Pequot men and enslave the captured women and their children. Only 500 Pequot remained alive and free. In 1975 the official number of Pequot living in Connecticut was 21.
Some of the war captives were given to the Narragansett and Massachusetts allies of the British. Even before the arrival of Europeans, Native peoples of North America had widely practiced taking war captives from other tribes as hostages and slaves. The remaining captives were sold to British plantation colonies in the West Indies to be worked to death in a new form of slavery that served the emerging capitalist world market. And with that, the merchants of Boston made a historic discovery: the profits they made from the sale of human beings virtually paid for the cost of seizing them. One account says enslaving Indians quickly became a "mania with speculators." These early merchant capitalists of Massachusetts started to make genocide pay for itself. The slave trade, first in captured Indians and soon in kidnapped Africans, quickly became a backbone of New England merchant capitalism.
Thanksgiving in the Manhattan Colony
In 1641 the Dutch governor Kieft of Manhattan offered the first "scalp bounty"–his government paid money for the scalp of each Indian brought to them. A couple years later, Kieft ordered the massacre of the Wappingers, a friendly tribe. Eighty were killed and their severed heads were kicked like soccer balls down the streets of Manhattan. One captive was castrated, skinned alive and forced to eat his own flesh while the Dutch governor watched and laughed. Then Kieft hired the notorious Underhill who had commanded in the Pequot war to carry out a similar massacre near Stamford, Connecticut. The village was set fire, and 500 Indian residents were put to the sword. A day of thanksgiving was proclaimed in the churches of Manhattan. European colonists declared Thanksgiving Days to celebrate mass murder more than for harvest and friendship.
The Conquest of New England
By the 1670s there were about 30,000 to 40,000 white inhabitants in the United New England Colonies–6,000 to 8,000 able to bear arms. With the Pequot destroyed, the Massachusetts and Plymouth colonists turned on the Wampanoag, the tribe that had saved them in 1620 and probably joined them for the original Thanksgiving Day.
In 1675 a Christian Wampanoag was killed while spying for the Puritans. The Plymouth authorities arrested and executed three Wampanoag without consulting the tribal chief, King Philip...The Indians applied some military lessons they had learned: they waged a guerrilla war which overran isolated European settlements and were often able to inflict casualties on the Puritan soldiers. The colonists again attacked and massacred the main Indian populations.
When this war ended, 600 European men, one-eleventh of the adult men of the New England Colonies, had been killed in battle. Hundreds of homes and 13 settlements had been wiped out. But the colonists won.In their victory, the settlers launched an all-out genocide against the remaining Native people. The Massachusetts government offered 20 shillings bounty for every Indian scalp, and 40 shillings for every prisoner who could be sold into slavery. Soldiers were allowed to enslave any Indian woman or child under 14 they could capture. The "Praying Indians" who had converted to Christianity and fought on the side of the European troops were accused of shooting into the treetops during battles with "hostiles." They were enslaved or killed. Other "peaceful" Indians of Dartmouth and Dover were invited to negotiate or seek refuge at trading posts–and were sold onto slave ships.
It is not known how many Indians were sold into slavery, but in this campaign, 500 enslaved Indians were shipped from Plymouth alone. Of the 12,000 Indians in the surrounding tribes, probably about half died from battle, massacre and starvation.
After King Philip’s War, there were almost no Indians left free in the northern British colonies. A colonist wrote from Manhattan’s New York colony: "There is now but few Indians upon the island and those few no ways hurtful. It is to be admired how strangely they have decreased by the hand of God, since the English first settled in these parts."
In Massachusetts, the colonists declared a "day of public thanksgiving" in 1676, saying, "there now scarce remains a name or family of them [the Indians] but are either slain, captivated or fled."
Fifty-five years after the original Thanksgiving Day, the Puritans had destroyed the generous Wampanoag and all other neighboring tribes. The Wampanoag chief King Philip was beheaded. His head was stuck on a pole in Plymouth, where the skull still hung on display 24 years later.
The descendants of these Native peoples are found wherever the Puritan merchant capitalists found markets for slaves: the West Indies, the Azures, Algiers, Spain and England. The grandson of Massasoit, the Pilgrim’s original protector, was sold into slavery in Bermuda.
Runaways and Rebels
But even the destruction of Indian tribal life and the enslavement of survivors brought no peace. Indians continued to resist in every available way. Their oppressors lived in terror of a revolt. And they searched for ways to end the resistance. The historian MacLeod writes: "The first `reservations’ were designed for the `wild’ Irish of Ulster in 1609. And the first Indian reservation agent in America, Gookin of Massachusetts, like many other American immigrants had seen service in Ireland under Cromwell."
The reality of Thanksgiving -- and the founding of the United States in slavery and genocide
The enslaved Indians refused to work and ran away. The Massachusetts government tried to control runaways by marking enslaved Indians: brands were burnt into their skin, and symbols were tattooed into their foreheads and cheeks.
A Massachusetts law of 1695 gave colonists permission to kill Indians at will, declaring it was "lawful for any person, whether English or Indian, that shall find any Indians traveling or skulking in any of the towns or roads (within specified limits), to command them under their guard and examination, or to kill them as they may or can."
The northern colonists enacted more and more laws for controlling the people. A law in Albany forbade any African or Indian slave from driving a cart within the city. Curfews were set up; Africans and Indians were forbidden to have evening get-togethers. On Block Island, Indians were given 10 lashes for being out after nine o’clock. In 1692 Massachusetts made it a serious crime for any white person to marry an African, an Indian or a mulatto. In 1706 they tried to stop the importation of Indian slaves from other colonies, fearing a slave revolt.
Celebrate?
Why celebrate the survival of the earliest Puritans with a Thanksgiving Day? Certainly the Native peoples of those times had no reason to celebrate.The ruling powers of the United States organized people to celebrate Thanksgiving Day because it is in their interest. That’s why they created it. The first national celebration of Thanksgiving was called for by George Washington. And the celebration was made a regular legal holiday later by Abraham Lincoln during the civil war (right as he sent troops to suppress the Sioux of Minnesota).Washington and Lincoln were deeply involved in trying to forge a unified bourgeois nation-state out of the European settlers in the United States... the Thanksgiving story was a useful myth in their U.S. nation-building celebrating the "bounty of the American way of life," while covering up its brutal nature._____________________
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20 Nov ' 13:15
THE NATIONAL DAY OF MOURNING
On Thanksgiving Day, many Native Americans and their supporters gather at the top of Coles Hill, overlooking Plymouth Rock, for the "National Day of Mourning."
The first National Day of Mourning was held in 1970. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts invited Wampanoag leader Frank James to deliver a speech. When the text of Mr. James’ speech, a powerful statement of anger at the history of oppression of the Native people of America, became known before the event, the Commonwealth "disinvited" him. That silencing of a strong and honest Native voice led to the convening of the National Day of Mourning.
The historical event we know today as the "First Thanksgiving" was a harvest festival held in 1621 by the Pilgrims and their Native American neighbors and allies. It has acquired significance beyond the bare historical facts. Thanksgiving has become a much broader symbol of the entirety of the American experience. Many find this a cause for rejoicing. The dissenting view of Native Americans, who have suffered the theft of their lands and the destruction of their traditional way of life at the hands of the American nation, is equally valid.
To some, the "First Thanksgiving" presents a distorted picture of the history of relations between the European colonists and their descendants and the Native People. The total emphasis is placed on the respect that existed between the Wampanoags led by the sachem Massasoit and the first generation of Pilgrims in Plymouth, while the long history of subsequent violence and discrimination suffered by Native People across America is nowhere represented.
To others, the event shines forth as an example of the respect that was possible once, if only for the brief span of a single generation in a single place, between two different cultures and as a vision of what may again be possible someday among people of goodwill.
History is not a set of "truths" to be memorized, history is an ongoing process of interpretation and learning. The true richness and depth of history come from multiplicity and complexity, from debate and disagreement and dialogue. There is room for more than one history; there is room for many voices.COMMENTS ON THE DAY OF MOURNING
BY RUSSELL M. PETERSRussell Peters is Wampanoag, born and raised in Mashpee, less than twenty miles from Plymouth Rock. Mashpee was considered an Indian community and was, in fact, an Indian District within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, until it was illegally dissolved in 1870.
Mr. Peters has been involved in Native American issues at a state, local and national level. He is the President of the Mashpee Wampanoag Indian Tribal Council, a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 1976 to 1984, a member of the Harvard Peabody Museum Native American Repatriation Committee, a member of the White House Conference on Federal Recognition in 1995 and 1996, a board member of the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities, a board member of the Pilgrim Society, and the author of Wampanoags of Mashpee (Nimrod Press), Clambake (Lerner Publications), and Regalia (Sundance Press).
Mr. Peters’ notes that the Mashpee Wampanoag Indian Tribal Council is constantly working to improve the spiritual and material lives of their people. They are not opposed to demonstrations but are opposed to needless confrontations that serve no purpose for the Native American people they purport to serve.
"When Frank James, known to the Wampanoag people as Wampsutta, was invited to speak at the 1970 annual Thanksgiving feast at Plymouth, he was not prepared to have his speech revised by the Pilgrims. He left the dinner and the ceremonies and went to the hill near the statue of the Massasoit, who as the leader of the Wampanoags when the Pilgrims landed in their territory. There overlooking Plymouth Harbor, he looked at the replica of the Mayflower. It was there that he gave his speech that was to be given to the Pilgrims and their guests. There eight or ten Indians and their supporters listened in indignation as Frank talked of the takeover of the Wampanoag tradition, culture, religion, and land.
"This was a missed opportunity to begin a dialogue between the Wampanoags and the Pilgrims. Instead the `Day of Mourning’ began, and continues to this day. I commend Frank for taking the stand that he took, and we and our supporters recognize the token role the Wampanoags had played in this pageantry. It was not appropriate for the native people to feast in thanksgiving; instead we decided to fast and show by contrast our way of remembering our history.
"As the years went by, the numbers at the Massasoit statue increased and the presentations, skits and demonstrations did indeed show a contrast between feasting and fasting. Reporters arrived from local news media as well as the New York papers, the Atlanta Constitution, the Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times, and told the stories of the Wampanoag to the American people.
"Some of the Wampanoag people who live in the vicinity of Plymouth began to look at positive ways in which we could impact our lives, both past and present. It occurred to us that the Europeans had a history of the colonists, well documented, albeit quite Eurocentric. The history of the Wampanoag people in southeastern Massachusetts and Martha’s Vineyard was barely mentioned. Ironically, the Indian communities of Mashpee, Aquinnah (Gay Head) and Herring Pond still exist just a short distance away from the Plymouth Rock.
"The Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head is a Federally Recognized Indian Tribe. Their Tribal roll lists 1000 Wampanoags. Under the leadership of their chief, the tribe conducts daily business, economic development, as well as community and social activities for its tribal members. The Mashpee Wampanoag Indian Tribal Council, of which I am President, has a tribal roll of 1200 Wampanoags. It conducts business and other related activities on a daily basis. Our annual Pow Wow took place in Mashpee on July 3, 4 and 5, 1998. We own and maintain the Mashpee Wampanoag Indian Museum with plans to expand the facilities. We are very active in revitalization of our language which was taken from us by the colonists. And we are doing research and writing of the Wampanoag history, particularly concerning the relationship with the English and other European colonists during the early seventeenth century up to the present.
"These are some of the positive ways in which we can balance the scale of history and establish pride in the Wampanoag identity and heritage. Ours is as much a part of the American story as that of the Pilgrim, in fact more so since it was our land.
"While the `Day of Mourning’ has served to focus attention on past injustice to the Native American cause, it has, in recent years, been orchestrated by a group calling themselves the United American Indians of New England. This group has tenuous ties to any of the local tribes, and is composed primarily of non-Indians. To date, they have refused several invitations to meet with the Wampanoag Indian tribal councils in Mashpee or in Gay Head. Once again, we, as Wampanoags, find our voices and concerns cast aside in the activities surrounding the Thanksgiving holiday in Plymouth, this time, ironically, by a group purporting to represent our interests.
"The time is long overdue for the Pilgrims and the Wampanoags to renew a meaningful dialogue about our past and look towards a more honest future. Our history is a vital and dynamic part of pre-American and American history. We must be the ones who research, write, and interpret that history." -
15 Nov ' 14:20
Monday-Thursday, November 15-18, 2010
THE AFTERMATH OF THE FIRST THANKSGIVING
This is the time of the year when we are inundated with propaganda about the U.S. holiday, Thanksgiving. Recently, the History Channel showed its rendition. The same old story: weary Pilgrims were taught how to plant crops in the new land of America by some savvy Native Americans. Then, to thank the Indians and God, the Pilgrims held a celebration in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Everybody had a great time. This was brotherhood among human beings at its best. Then, the documentary went forward in time to the 18th century. What happened between 1621 and 1675 was completely ignored. Most U.S. history books rarely mention the fate of the Indians who helped the Pilgrims survive.
Growing up in the U.S., I was told that we should be thankful and Thanksgiving is the time for this. School teacher-after-school teacher told their students to "thank God" for what they had. There was never any thought or consideration whether the students did not believe in God. God was always present and had to be thanked once a year.
In the sixth grade, I had the audacity to ask the teacher, "What about poor people? Should they be thankful?" I got my ass reamed for making such a flippant inquiry. "Poor people especially have to be thankful," I was told. "God works in mysterious ways." I did not have the nerve to tell her I did not believe in God.
In my 12 years of schooling in Rhode Island and Fall River, Massachusetts, I was taught nothing about Native American culture of the area, except at Thanksgiving. In grammar school, it was obligatory for students to create a drawing with Crayola crayons that depicted the first Thanksgiving: some weary, but benevolent white settlers mingling with Native Americans over a feast. The Indians always looked savage and the whites so civilized.
We also were told that turkey was the main fare for the feast, but again we were told another lie. Fish and small fowl, along with native vegetables, some of which the Pilgrims were unaware, adorned the menu.
The Wampanoag Indians, under Chief Massasoit, welcomed the Pilgrims to Massachusetts and provided food for what we now call the first Thanksgiving. The goodwill between the two peoples lasted only a short time, however.
Eventually, Metacomet (Anglicized name, Philip), Massasoit’s son, became chief after his father’s death. During the time of the new regime, the Puritans were launching a land-grab from the Indians and were hostile toward the Natives, who had benevolently given them the rights to thousands of acres of land while asking for nothing in return.
When Metacomet called "foul," the Puritans upped the ante. He approached the governing authorities of the Puritans and complained that they were encroaching on Indian land and stealing their crops. When a court met, it was run by three Puritain judges who negated the complaints of Metacomet and then ordered the Indians to be disarmed. That was the last straw for the Indian leader.
Over the next few years, tensions rose with Indians and Puritans alike being killed in raids. The more the Puritans encroached, the more the Indians resisted.
In 1675, all-out war began. The name given to the war was King Philip’s War. Maybe it should have been the Puritan War, but history has been unkind to the Natives.
In the beginning, Metacomet’s forces were dominating. At one time, the Puritans were pushed back and were discussing going back to England. But, the Natives began running out of food. Their demise was at hand.
Within two years, most of the proud Wampanoag Indians were massacred. A nation that included more than 30,000 people with highly-organized governments and social structures became a shabby band of no more than 2,000 Indians at the end of the war. They were ordered into slavery. Until this day, they have never recovered. The descendants of the Wampanoags of the 17th century live today in southeastern Massachusetts and most live in poverty.
Metacomet was killed when the Puritans paid an Indian informant to spy on him and report his location. The turncoat Indian was the person who pulled the trigger and murdered Metacomet. His body parts were put on public display throughout the region. Within six decades of landing at Plymouth Rock, the whites had forever destroyed a culture that had inhabited the area for thousands of years prior to the arrival of the Mayflower.
One of Metacomet’s strongest allies was the Pocasset tribe, who went to war with the Wampanoag. The Pocassets were led by Weetamoe, a fierce warrior who held an unbending allegiance from her tribal members. When the Puritans turned the corner in the war, she fled and drowned trying to swim across the Taunton River. Like Matacomet, her body was cut into pieces and parts were displayed at various venues in southern New England.
The legacy of Metacomet should be that of America’s first resistance hero. However, few Native Americans have been given credit in U.S. history for acts of bravery, so he is still listed in our history books as a belligerent Indian who began a war against the civilized Anglos. According to white history, he was the perpetrator of the war, not the victim.
In 1675, the Boston Indian Imprisonment Act was established. It ordered the arrest of any Indian entering the city. To this day, the law is still on the books.
Despite living in a town where Native American names abound, (Pocasset School, Conanicus Street, Nonquit Pond, Sakonnet River, Quechechan River, and many others) in 12 years of school, nothing was mentioned about the origins of these monikers. Only within the last few years have I discovered that from the front porch of my house, looking across Mount Hope Bay, I could see the exact location of the murder of Metacomet in what is today’s Bristol, Rhode Island.
A tribal leader of the Kumeyaay Nation of southern California once told me that the two most sorrowful days of the year for Native Americans are Columbus Day and Thanksgiving. He could not understand why U.S. citizens in this day and age still celebrate the two days of Native American catastrophe with all the knowledge that has been forthcoming in the past few decades about the Native American holocaust.
Each year, at Plymouth, a mock Thanksgiving feast is held for the public to view. The clothing and the food are meant to be identical to those of the original Thanksgiving. A couple of years ago, the script for this event had to be re-written. Members of the Wampanoag tribe, who normally participate, decided to boycott the show. They have had enough.
Native American resistance leader Metacomet -
08 Nov ' 00:04
Torturer-in-chief: Bush brags about waterboarding
By Bill Van Auken
WSWS, November 6, 2010 In a memoir to be released next week, former US President George W. Bush boasts of having personally given the order to the CIA to employ the torture method of waterboarding. The book, titled Decision Points, includes Bush’s recounting that when asked by the CIA whether it could subject Khalid Sheik Mohammed, an alleged leader in the September 11, 2001, terror plot, he gave the reply, "Damn right." The former president added that he would do the same thing again to "save lives." The passage constitutes an even more explicit admission than Bush’s flip statement in a speech to an audience of businessmen in Grand Rapids, Michigan, last June. The ex-president then declared: "Yeah, we waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. I’d do it again to save lives." The claim that suspects were being tortured in order to "save lives" is entirely self-serving. In reality, Mohammed and others were subjected to waterboarding and other torture methods by interrogators who were told to come up with evidence linking the 9/11 attacks to Iraq in order to provide a pretext for the war that the administration was determined to launch in pursuit of US strategic interests. In a country governed by laws, international treaties and democratic principles, such admissions would provoke a public outcry, an intense political debate and the arrest and prosecution of George W. Bush. In the United States of America of 2010, however, the former president’s bragging that he ordered his subordinates to carry out torture has been greeted within the political establishment and the corporate media with an audible yawn of indifference. The news of Bush’s bragging about having ordered torture was broken by the New York Times Tuesday in one sentence in an online political blog. The so-called paper of record print edition relegated the matter to the ninth paragraph of a book review published in its Arts pages. The review merely quotes Bush as writing, "had I not authorized waterboarding on senior al Qaeda leaders, I would have had to accept a greater risk that the country would be attacked." In keeping with the Times policy, the word "torture" does not appear. The Washington Post carried an article on Bush’s statement on waterboarding on Thursday. In the book, the paper reports, "Bush makes clear that he personally approved the use of that coercive technique," which the Post acknowledges constitutes "a practice that many international legal experts say was illicit torture." The Post article states that the book "reiterates" Bush’s claim that waterboarding does not constitute torture. For the rest of the media, the confirmation that the former US president personally ordered the use of torture has received far less attention than Bush’s complaint in the memoir about how "deeply insulted" he was when rapper Kanye West stated on national television that "George Bush doesn’t care about black people" because of his administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina. There has been no response from the Obama administration or the Democratic congressional leadership to Bush’s confession. On Friday, a senior US State Department adviser attending a UN Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva was asked by journalists about the reports on the Bush memoir. "I think that the Obama administration defines waterboarding as torture as a matter of law under the convention against torture and as part of our legal obligation...it’s not a policy choice," the official, Harold Koh, responded. He went on to claim that "investigations are ongoing" to determine whether anyone could be prosecuted for the practice. "There has been a turning of the page" under the administration of President Barack Obama, Koh insisted. This is a barefaced lie aimed at mollifying international outrage over the US embrace of torture. There has been no "turning of the page." Rather, the Obama administration has systematically covered up for the crimes of the Bush White House, while continuing the criminal policies and methods introduced by its predecessor. Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder signaled that any investigation of Bush-era torture will be limited to whether anyone in the CIA went beyond the torture methods laid down in the Justice Department’s so-called torture memos drafted to legitimize the practice. Even this limited probe has gone nowhere as the powerful US intelligence apparatus has opposed it with undisguised hostility. As a result of Bush’s order, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times. Another alleged Al Qaeda leader, Abu Zubaydah, was waterboarded at least 83 times. The CIA acknowledged using the method against a third detainee, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. In 2005, it revealed that videotapes depicting the interrogations of these last two prisoners had been destroyed in an apparent attempt to eliminate evidence of torture. This technique and others even more hideous were used in countless other interrogations by both CIA and military interrogators from Bagram airbase in Afghanistan to Abu Ghraib in Iraq and numerous so-called black sites maintained by the US intelligence agency around the world. Bush’s memoir serves to confirm once again that these crimes were not merely the responsibility of a few overzealous CIA interrogators or "rogue" enlisted personnel, but rather were carried out at the direct bidding of the president of the United States. Waterboarding amounts to induced drowning, with the prisoner strapped to a gurney and water poured through a cloth over his mouth and nose. It can and has resulted in death. From the Spanish-American War onward, the US military treated waterboarding as a war crime, prosecuting both its enemies and, on several occasions, members of its own ranks, for utilizing this form of torture. The US State Department has regularly condemned foreign governments for torture on the basis of evidence that they utilize this barbaric method. Yet, under the Bush administration’s "war on terrorism," waterboarding and a litany of other methods ranging from sensory deprivation to sealing prisoners into boxes containing insects, to hanging them from the ceiling in shackles, were declared not to be torture but rather "enhanced interrogation techniques." This phrase represented virtually a literal translation of the term used by the German Gestapo 60 years earlier, Verschärfte Vernehmung, also as a bureaucratic euphemism for torture. The US media fell dutifully into line with this attempt to deny torture with a terminological sleight of hand. A study released by Harvard University’s Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy last summer found that after 70 years of describing waterboarding as torture, the leading US newspapers carried out an abrupt turn after the revelation that US interrogators were utilizing the method against alleged terror suspects. The study found a "sudden significant shift in how newspapers characterized waterboarding." Only 2 of 143 post-2003 articles dealing with waterboarding in the New York Times, for example, used the word "torture," while only 1 out of 63 articles in the Wall Street Journal did so. New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller dismissed the study as "tendentious," asserting that to describe waterboarding as "torture" would constitute "taking sides in a political dispute." The Democratic leadership, as was revealed last year, was repeatedly briefed on the use of waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation techniques," but did nothing to oppose these methods or to expose them to the American people. Among the first Democratic leaders to be informed about this use of torture was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Democrat, California), then the leading Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. If Bush feels no compunction over bragging about torture, it is in large measure because he knows that not it is not just he and his inner circle of accomplices who are implicated—Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, CIA Director George Tenet, Attorney General John Ashcroft and others. Rather, the entire political establishment is complicit, including the Congress, the Democratic Party, the courts and the media. The former president is also confident that he enjoys impunity on the issue of torture because the policies of the current administration are largely in continuity with his own. Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser at the White House in John Brennan, a former top CIA official who publicly defended the agency’s "enhanced interrogation techniques" as well as the practice of "extraordinary rendition," in which the agency abducted people and flew them to third countries to be interrogated and tortured. The Obama administration has repeatedly sent the Justice Department to court to quash challenges to extraordinary rendition, torture and domestic spying, invoking a sweeping claim to the "state secrets privilege" that essentially places the executive branch above the law on all matters that it claims touch on "national security". It has likewise kept open the US detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and continued use of military kangaroo tribunals for the purpose of trying suspects whose cases would be compromised in regular courts because of their interrogation under torture. And the Obama White House has gone even further than its predecessor, claiming the right to place American citizens on CIA "kill lists" to be assassinated by death squads or drone missile attacks without being charged, much less tried, for any offense. The United Nations Convention against Torture, signed by President Ronald Reagan 26 years ago, making all acts of torture criminal offenses under US law, applied to all those who either participate or are complicit in torture. The treaty implicitly rejects all the US rationales for its "interrogation techniques," stating that "no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture." Governments are required by the treaty to either prosecute those accused of torture or extradite them to another country that will do so. Bush’s memoir constitutes prima facie evidence that he is guilty of torture—as if any additional evidence were needed. The failure of the Obama administration to arrest him and others implicated in waterboarding and other torture methods makes it complicit in torture as well. This complicity in and indifference towards the crime of torture pervades all sections of the US ruling elite, its government, its political parties and its media. It is symptomatic of the profound erosion of democratic processes and democratic rights within the United States, which has been driven by a decade of uninterrupted imperialist wars of aggression abroad and unprecedented social inequality at home. Holding those responsible for these crimes accountable is a vital political task. It is required both to cleanse the political atmosphere of the stench of torture and unprovoked wars and to prevent, under conditions of an unprecedented crisis of American capitalism, these same methods being turned against working people in the US itself. Bringing those guilty of torture to justice can be carried out only by the working class mobilizing its political strength independently against both the Obama administration and the Republicans as well as the profit system that they defend, which is the source of militarism and the war crimes it engenders.
Cubans Wear A Moral Vest
March 22nd, 2010
June C. Terpstra, Ph.D.
http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2010/03/22/cubans-wear-a-moral-vest
In the film, Fidel, The Untold Story, there is an interview with Fidel Castro where he says he does not need a Kevlar vest to protect him from countless CIA assassination attempts because he wears a moral vest. I am back in Havana, Cuba today after visiting a natural medicine clinic in Santa Clara, Cuba; an agricultural cooperative in Matanzas, Cuba; a teacher training arts school in Matanzas; and ELAM, the incredible Latin American Medical School that trains and sends doctors to work all over the world. With each program or institution visited I wonder what it would be like to live in a country with values of social justice instead of values of profit and plunder. There are countless examples of those who wear a moral vest here in Cuba.
It is most certainly not easy for the Cubans to live their principles in the face of so much oppression from the USA. Their daily lives are restricted from the moment they wake till they sleep at night and not by the government. Running water, flushing toilets, toiletries, access to oil to run a tractor or a car, obtaining the parts to fix a car, obtaining medicines; these and more are scarce and make life difficult. It is interesting to me that while their form of socialism is so hated by USA elites it is based in hard work and contributions to the country; they are rewarded for the level of their commitment to social justice and the sharing of resources. This is not allowed under capitalism.
The homes and apartments in which Cubans live, whether or not they are allotted cars, their job appointments; all are based on education, level of commitment and hard work as evidenced in their contributions at work and in their communities. People from the USA have difficulty grasping the concept of a life where one does not pay rent or a mortgage or a car payment or for health care or school. Members of this delegation from the USA continue to ask questions about shareholders; how much cars cost; where the stores are located; and, how much oppression people here are facing without any real understanding of the fundamental changes this government is attempting to establish and manifest.
In the Cuban medical schools they are taught both traditional and natural medicine. These doctors are known and trusted around the world because they have been taught to care about the patient and not view them as a client to be charged money for profit. Just recently seven American women doctors trained in Cuba returned to work with the medical brigade in Haiti. All of the training done in Cuba is framed within the commitment to serve communities in need. On the contrary, the people of the USA are programmed to think hate of medicine not for healing rather as a mechanism to maintain disease to keep a drug and surgical industry as a profitable way to make money.
On the farms in Cuba the land is given to those who apply and they are allowed to live on the land and work for 90 days before they make their commitment and a cooperative board accepts them as a member of the cooperative association. Women and all races in Cuba have access to these opportunities and many incentives are provided because developing a self-sustaining Cuba has been critical since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Once one is a member they contribute to both their own sustenance and receive the resources and benefits of their hard work. Women and all races are present at every level of labor and leadership.
Education, intellectual life, and culture is highly respected and valued in Cuba. They have established a teacher training program for artists in music, literature, theater, dance and painting, and sculpture. The students pay nothing for this specialized education but they must make a commitment to teach at the end of their training. There is no job insecurity in Cuba ; the teachers of the arts will always have jobs! On the contrary, in the USA , the arts programs are always the first to be cut and many schools no longer have these programs for all the students nor are they offered on a daily basis. Which country is really a country of wealth?
Every place I have visited and talked with the people they express their commitment and passion for their culture and society. This is not my experience in the USA where the focus is rarely on producing art for the people. Producing art is for money and fame. Where ego is de-emphasized here; narcissism is encouraged in the West. Where good behavior is encouraged here, ugly and violent behavior is glorified in the USA. Where the women’s federations set up programs to counsel all family members in domestic crisis and teach them to live in ways that benefit the family; the USA model is to disconnect and provide a band-aid in the form of a shelter.
I am not telling you things are perfect here in Cuba. They are not. Most certainly, the effects of the embargo have been devastating. The effects of colonial racism and sexism have their own unique manifestations here as Cuban socialism attempts to rid itself of these internalized oppressions. However, the real Cuban people; not the ones who are sitting in Miami plotting the destruction of their own people out of their own greed and selfishness; the real Cuban people wear a moral vest and the examples they set for their children in the schools and hospitals and their daily life are visible to those of us to whom they open their doors.
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Dr. June Terpstra http://juneterpstra.com
One must endure without losing tenderness. Che
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31 Oct ' 10:21
IRAQ-PALESTINE COMMITTEE
Statement from IPC: October 30, 2010
Comrade Tariq Aziz
“We will welcome the Americans to Baghdad. Unfortunately, we’ve run out of candy, so we will have to substitute bullets.”
– Tariq Aziz, March 2003
–
We all are stunned and saddened by the abrupt announcement that Tariq Aziz has been condemned to hang. He was found guilty on bogus charges by the illegitimate court in Baghdad that tried various Ba’ath Party officials, including President Saddam Hussein. At that time, he received a sentence of 22 years in prison, assuring he would die before he again saw daylight. Now, he is sentenced to hang.
Tariq Aziz was a man of many skills. He was eloquent and represented the Ba’ath government internationally with great aplomb. Once imprisoned by the US, he was badgered into testifying against Saddam Hussein at the president’s equally phony trial. All he had to do was take the stand and make a few discrediting remarks about
Saddam Hussein and he probably would have been freed soon after. On the stand, Tariq Aziz did not denigrate Saddam. In fact, he praised him and said he was privileged to be a part of the Ba’ath administration. He refused to capitulate when he could have saved his own skin.
The following is an interview conducted by Malcom Lagauche with Ibrahim Ebeid, advisor to the Iraq Palestinian Committee, on May 9, 2008. Ebeid worked side-by-side with Tariq Aziz on many occasions and was a true comrade and friend to him. The interview begins with Lagauche speaking of the upcoming trial of Tariq Aziz in 2008.
Reminiscing Tariq Aziz
Tariq Aziz is about to go on trial for the murder of 42 people in Iraq in 1992. The verdict, as with all the socalled trials of the Ba’ath regime members, is a foregone conclusion. Aziz will be found guilty.
If you remember, the judge who sentenced Saddam Hussein to hang, Abdel-Rahman, quickly left Iraq shortly after the murder of the president and claimed asylum in Great Britain. Since then, little or nothing has been heard about him. But, mysteriously he returned to Iraq and will be the judge in Tariq Aziz’ case
The first time I saw Tariq Aziz on U.S. television was in the aftermath of Desert Storm. His voice was the only one that made sense of the political scene at the time. For once, I heard the truth about many items that had been twisted beyond recognition by the U.S. administration and media.
Aziz’ eloquence in the English language intrigued me. Most U.S. government spokespeople could have used an elementary school refresher course in English, yet there was an Iraqi who, like Baghdad Bob, spoke better English than the president of the United States.
The last time I saw Tariq Aziz on U.S. television was a few months before the illegal March 2003 invasion. At the time, the U.S. was calling the Iraqi government a supporter of global terrorism and also began to mention the Iraq/Al-Qaida link. The accusations were believed by the U.S. public. To this day, many Americans believe
Saddam was in cahoots with Bin-Laden in bringing down the U.S. trade center.
Tariq Aziz gave an extraordinary explanation of the difference between terrorism and revolution. He added that terrorism was the enemy of revolutionary movements. The TV program appeared at 3:00 a.m., so few people watched it. And, if more viewed the presentation, most would not have understood Aziz’ eloquent offering.
Shortly before the 2003 invasion, many U.S. pundits said that the Iraqi people would welcome the U.S.soldiers with flowers and candy. Aziz took another view. He stated, “We will welcome the Americans in Baghdad.Unfortunately, we’ve run out of candy and will have to substitute bullets.” His assessment was far more accurate than those of the myriad retired generals who painted a rosy picture of the impending military action.
There is much information about his savage treatment in prison after he turned himself in to U.S. authorities,so I will not delve into the issue here. I would like to publish an interview with a former comrade and friend of Tariq Aziz. He is Ibrahim Ebeid, a Palestinian-American activist.
ML: When did you first meet Tariq Aziz?
IE: I first met him in Baghdad in 1973. That was my first trip to Baghdad from the United States. I was a guest.
I knew him before, but not in person.
ML: What was your first impression?
IE: He was a young man. Very intelligent. He was my age so we related together
When I joined the Party in the early 1950s, most of my generation also joined the movement. I was living in Palestine at the time. What I heard from people is that Tariq Aziz joined the movement in the 1950s, even before the Iraqi portion was formally started in Baghdad, when it was underground.
After that, I went almost every year and I saw him frequently. We became friends. When I met Tariq Aziz, he was not in a high leadership position. Later on, he became a member of the leadership of the Iraqi branch of the Party. He was very committed.
ML: Tell us about the well-known assassination attempt against Tariq Aziz in 1980. You have good knowledge of this because you were at the scene on the day of the incident.
IE: I went from the United States to attend a conference on April 1, 1980 at Al-Mustansiriyah University.Thousands of students from the Arab world had assembled to attend various conferences. They were awaitingTariq Aziz to listen to his speech. Tariq had been scheduled to inaugurate the International Economic Conference,organized by the National Union of Iraqi students, in collaboration with the Asiatic Students Committee.
There was a young Iranian man in the crowd. When Tariq Aziz made his entrance, amid cheers, the Iranian hurled a bomb in his direction.
The president of the Student Union, Mohammed Dabdab, hollered, “Comrade Aziz, a bomb, a bomb!” Everyone threw themselves on the ground. Dabdab and Tariq Aziz were wounded, but two people, a male and a female, were killed.
The Iraqi authorities apprehended the perpetrator right away. According to later statements by pro-Iranians, they intended to kill the “unbeliever” Tariq Aziz
Because of the circumstances, Tariq Aziz was unable to give his speech. He supervised the taking of the injured in the ambulance then he went along with the ambulance and delegated someone else to deliver his speech. They decided to keep the conference going on.
On the day of the assassination attempt, I was there at the university. I talked briefly to Mohammed Dabdab and he asked me to stick around to see Tariq Aziz, but I had to leave to go to a Baghdad hotel to meet with some members of the Arab-American delegation. Minutes after I left, the attack took place.
ML: Did the incident bother Tariq Aziz immensely?
IE: It gave him more strength to continue practicing his principles.
ML: How many times did you meet Tariq Aziz?
IE: Many times. Every time I was in Iraq with a delegation, we went to dinner.
ML: What kind of human being was he?
IE: A very sensitive man. Very friendly. He cared for the people. He never behaved like a high-ranking man.He never looked down at people.
One time, he was speaking to an African-American delegation from the United States and he asked me to sit by him because I knew the people who were invited. He forgot the English word “avoid.” He asked me in Arabic and I told him. Then, he told the crowd, “You know, sometimes you forget the simplest words. Thanks to my colleague Ibrahim, I remembered it.” That’s the way he was, a very humble man. He remained that way even
after he took high command in the Party in the Foreign Relations Bureau and later as Minister of Foreign Affairs.
ML: Many naysayers say that Tariq Aziz should be tried because he was part of Saddam’s “inner circle.”
What’s your take on that?
IE: What I would say is that Saddam never had an “inner circle.” He had a leadership. The members of the regional leadership of Iraq were also the members of the Revolutionary Council. Every time they had a meeting, the whole Party met to decide the policies for Iraq. Saddam never took action on his own. They used to discuss things and the majority ruled. We read and hear that Saddam was a dictator. He was a leader, not a dictator and he was very intelligent in his leadership.
When he used to visit people in their homes, he used to ask them what they think, what they need and what the government should do for them. He used to take the notes himself. If he was hungry, he used to ask what they had to eat and sit down with them.
ML: What do you think about the U.S. treatment of Tariq Aziz and what’s the reason for the Americans to treat him in such a way?
IE: The reason is very obvious. A major reason for the war was to eradicate the leadership of Iraq and the Ba’ath Party. They went after the leadership because they think that by executing them, they killed the spirit of the Party and the Party would become weak and the hope for Arab unity and the radical changes the people called
for would be diminished. That’s why they came up with a new name for the area: the New Middle East. We don’t even call the area the Middle East. We hate that term. We call it the Arab Homeland
ML: Has this backfired on the U.S.?
IE: Of course. And you can see how the Party in the Arab world after Saddam’s execution has spread like fire.
ML: Not one person in the Ba’ath leadership turned on Saddam after the 2003 invasion. Some have been executed and some are awaiting the gallows. Each could have won his freedom and a handsome payday for testifying against Saddam, yet they chose death. Tariq Aziz, when he testified at Saddam’s trial, told the world he was proud to have served in his regime. This upset many observers because some in the U.S. administration
wanted him to denigrate the president. In your opinion, why did the regime members, including Tariq Aziz, show this incredible loyalty?
IE: They were committed to their principles. The leadership in the Party were elected according to their merit in the struggle.
Don’t forget, it was not only the U.S. that wanted to destroy the leadership of Iraq. Iran became a partner in the occupation of Iraq. Maybe they are getting more benefits than the United States.
ML: What will Tariq Aziz’ legacy be in the Arab world?
IE: He will go down as a well-respected person, whether they execute him or indirectly kill him by keeping him in jail until he dies. They don’t give him proper medicine and they don’t treat him well. They want him dead.
Ibrahim Ebeid’s Response to the Announcment of
Tariq Aziz Receiving the Death Penalty
(October 30, 2010) The news of death sentences against Mr. Tariq Aziz and his comrades, Saadoun Shaker, Abdul Ghani Abdul Ghafoor, Dr.Sabawi Ibrahim al Hassan and Abed Hammoud did not surprise us. These sentences took place to fortify the criminal policies of the occupying powers to rid Iraq of its capable and experienced
leaders to rule and rebuild Iraq after the illegal invasion of 2003.The judge who passed the assassination sentence was very rude; the expression on his face indicated hate and grudge. Three other judges refused to agree to authorize the sentence but they were forced to sign. We do not know even if there was kangaroo trial or not, but for sure his lawyers only found out about the sentence through the news media. This is American democracy exported through conquest and under the barrels of guns
The members of the legitimate leadership of Iraq experienced severe torture and inhumane treatment. The martyred president of Iraq was mistreated and tortured and the martyred vice president, Mr. Taha Yassin Ramadan, had to treat his wounds with water and salt. No one was spared the abuse of the malpractice of US democracy.
Some of the detainees died from torture, or deprivation of medical care or adequate nourishment. Some became very frail and died in their cells that were not fit for animals, let alone human beings.
Mr. Tariq Aziz, the legitimate deputy prime minister of the legal government of Iraq is no exception. His health is deteriorating very fast and he is rapidly approaching his death in a small decrepit cell. The health of Mr. Aziz is very grave. He suffered strokes. He has no teeth. He cannot speak clearly as a result of the strokes, diabetes and lack of teeth. He was sentenced to death by a court established by the United States to eliminate the leaders of Iraq and all the brains that were behind Iraq political and economic progress. Thousands of scientists, doctors, and educators were killed or forced to leave Iraq and Iraq was left for imported criminals to master the art of killing and daylight robberies. Schools, hospitals and all he institutions of Iraq are destroyed. Ignorance and illiteracy is spreading widely under the new generations of US “democracy and liberation”
Tariq Aziz never held any administrative post; he was a diplomat representing Iraq abroad. He was brilliant and respected locally and internationally, and he was a victim who was marked for assassination by the sectarian Dawa Party of Maliki. He was wounded at Al Mustansiriyah University in Baghdad while other students were
killed by members of Maliki’s party.
I had the honor to know Mr. Aziz and Mr. Abdul Ghani Abdul Ghafoor. They are intelligent, well-educated, and humble, and so are the others. They lived among the people and for the people and they are sacrificing their lives for the liberation of Iraq.
Tareq Aziz did not surrender to the Americans, as the news media say, but his sister informed the Americans where he was about with the intention of saving his life from a heart attack he suffered.
The butchers in Baghdad not only killed and tortured Sunni Muslims. Muhammad Hamza al-Zubaydi, a prime minister under Saddam was tortured to death at a U.S. jail in Iraq on December 2, 2005 at age 67. By the way he was a Shiite. Al Arabia TV broadcast a photo showing a US soldier stepping over his body.
The only reason Tariq Aziz will be hanged is revenge. He is not a criminal. His accusers and the cowardly hangman are the real criminals. He will die with dignity, like Iraq’s president did in 2006. In a reversal of places, the hangmen in 2006 wore masks, while the president refused to don a piece of cloth over his head as he took his last breath. Tariq Aziz and President Saddam Hussein have set a remarkable standard of integrity that all freedom fighters in the world admire. Their legacies will long outlive those of the quislings in Baghdad and the US imperialist actions.
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25 Oct ' 06:38
COIN, "FOLLOW THE MONEY"
An Analysis of the US Counterinsurgency Guide 2009
Posted by celticfire on October 21, 2010
http://southasiarev.wordpress.com/2010/10/21/an-analysis-of-the-us-counterinsurgency-guide-2009/
This was originally in Ang Bayan, Sept. 20th, 2010.
US Counterinsurgency Guide 2009: Guide to imperialist intervention and aggression and counterrevolutionary war
Executive Committee-Central Committee, Communist Party of the Philippines
The US COIN Guide was issued by the US government in January 2009. It presents US imperialism's current official doctrine in fighting revolutionary armed struggle in colonial and semicolonial countries.
It is allegedly the product of summed-up experiences in implementing "counterinsurgency" in various parts of the globe for the past 40 years and was the result of collaborative efforts of nine US government agencies and/or offices led by the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, Department of State.
The agencies involved in writing the US COIN Guide 2009 are the Department of State, Department of Defense, Department of Justice, Department of The Treasury, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Agriculture, Department of Transportation, Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the US Agency for International Development.
Through the document, the US government speaks as a sole superpower and self-appointed international policeman. It unabashedly presents the various types and levels of interference and intervention, which are undertaken with or without the permission of the targeted subject of `assistance' or client government, in the name of fighting "insurgency."
US imperialism estimates that it is armed revolutions that pose major and growing threats to the US' international power in the 21st century. With the crash of the international capitalist system in the Long Depression since 2008, the US anticipates the explosion of widespread people's dissent, armed revolutions and upheavals. US planners also anticipate only a remote possibility that the US will be embroiled in a thoroughly conventional war against other governments in the immediate future.
The Guide covers all aspects of COIN and intervention by the US' military and non-military agencies although it stresses the non-military components and tasks of civilian agencies. It clarifies that these are complementary to existing COIN manuals and guides issued by the US military.
In providing guidelines for US intervention, it noticeably avoids being colored by the jingoism, arrogance and unilateralism of Bush's "global war on terror." As a guide to COIN, it strikingly avoids Vietnam War-era terms and presentations. Its goal is to refurbish imperialist intervention to make it broader and more efficient, actively mobilize civilian agencies and personnel, and draw in more international and local agencies/actors.
The Filipino people have a particular interest in the US COIN Guide because ever since Bush declared the Philippines as the second arena in the "counter-terrorist" war, American troops have continued and expanded their direct intervention and permanent basing as well as their civil and military operations and foreign internal defense in the country. Although claiming to fight the terrorism of the Abu Sayaf bandit group, the growing targets of US intervention are the MILF and NDFP, with the COIN Guide being applied to the hilt against them.
The COIN Guide must be studied to enable us to more sharply monitor and grasp the operations and schemes not only of US troops but the aggressive networking being done by US Ambassador Harry Thomas Jr., the successive visits of high-ranking US officials, the USAID's prominent role, the enhanced military and economic aid, the psywar experts' hype of "Cory's legacy" upon her death and the support for Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III's candidacy and the aggressive promotion of reformist illusions after the election.
We also anticipate that the COIN Guide will likely have a major influence on the COIN plan that the Aquino regime will be drafting in place of OBL.
The use of the terms "insurgency" and "counterinsurgency" was purposely done by the imperialists and their puppets to evade the historic-political, national and class-societal bases and framework for the struggle between revolution and reaction. Such terms are also instruments in the effort to criminalize and isolate the armed revolution. It is part of the bureaucratic, technocratic and technique-oriented style, concept and presentation and muddles the issue of imperialist intervention and control and the suppression of the just and revolutionary struggle of oppressed nations and peoples.
Massive psywar operations simultaneous with violent armed repression
The document presents the counterinsurgency doctrine's formula–conducting massive psywar operations alongside violent armed repression with US imperialism playing a direct and calibrated role depending on its estimate of the needed level of intervention. The counterinsurgency doctrine has been redesigned and promoted in the name of counterterrorism, defense of democracy, reforming and stabilizing weak governments, resolving the people's poverty, long-term economic development and winning the people's support.
The massive psywar operations and violent armed repression formula should supposedly be undertaken simultaneously and molded into a single counterinsurgency strategy in every affected country. The counterinsurgency strategy has five components–the four tasks ("politics," "economy," "security," and "information") that all redound to "control" as the fifth component.
Of the four, the US COIN Guide states that "politics" is the key, and at its center lies the establishment of a prevailing political setup where formal democratic processes are credible and acceptable to the people. This is the key in a "counterinsurgency" strategy in the sense that it allegedly plays a decisive role in winning back the people from the insurgency to the fold of government and serves as the main framework for implementing the other components of the "counterinsurgency strategy."
If the illusion of a government that implements reforms, addresses the people's interests and advances the agenda of economic development can be created, they can supposedly "eliminate the reason for the insurgency's existence," win the people's support, marginalize the "insurgent" armed force and violently suppress it.
The components of the massive psywar operation, dubbed in the document as the "population-centric aproach" are the following:
1. setting up a credible government
2. creating so-called genuine indicators of economic development
3. mobilizing the reactionary armed forces in non-traditional military tasks such as participating in socio-economic projects and providing assistance during calamities in order to create an image of public service
4. implementing so-called reforms in the security sector which comprises the police, armed forces and judiciary in order to strengthen the reactionary state
5. actively seeking and collating information from the population to shape their psywar propaganda in the mass media and manipulate public opinion in favor of reactionary rule and against armed uprising
The violent armed repression of the people's armed resistance comprises the so-called "enemy-centric approach" and covers the usual military parameters–number of "insurgents" killed, number of firearms recovered, extent of reduction of areas covered, neutralizaton of the leadership, destruction of identified centers of gravity of the enemy; use of various strategies against the revolutionary armed forces: "soft" and "hard," direct and indirect, violent and non-violent, decapitation and marginalization.
The US will thus continue providing aid to the armed forces of affected governments in the form of financial assistance, equipment and resources, training and if needed, forces directly operating within the affected country as part of civil-military assistance or direct assistance in internal defense or direct military intervention by US troops.
The favored political atmosphere in a counterinsurgency strategy
US counterinsurgency strategy favors a political atmosphere that cultivates an image of reform in order to assert the legitimacy of the ruling system and government.
In determining the different ways of dealing with various forms of people's resistance, US imperialism presumes that it would be best for its interests if the political atmosphere is one that always provides opportunities to pacify dissent and resistance from the oppressed and exploited people. US imperialism also calls this the "release valve," a way of channeling heat whenever dissent intensifies and the people are determined to wage resistance. Among the "tried and tested" methods of US imperialism and its local reactionary co-conspirators are:
▪ formal democratic processes in the form of elections, referenda and judicial systems. The more credible these processes are, the better. For instance, in the recently concluded elections, we gathered from reliable sources that the US played a direct role, from choosing Noynoy Aquino as the favored candidate after sensing the people's sentiments upon former Pres. Corazon Aquino's death, helping form a "psywar team" that worked with the mass media in contesting other rival candidates for the presidency, manipulating the results of the automated elections to make it appear that Noynoy Aquino won through a landslide victory, and drumming up praise for the automated polls as an example of a clean and successful election.
▪ choosing a puppet who is acceptable to the people and is able to project a reformist image. This type of puppet can be used to continue creating the illusion among the exploited and oppressed people that there is "hope for change."
▪ implementing selective reforms that will not touch on substantive social issues, but are designed to deceive the people and lead them to "believe" in the ruling regime. Among the examples that can be cited are President Aquino's pronouncements and steps focusing on small and shallow reforms–a ban on the use of sirens by VIPs, the revocation of midnight appointments, an alleged call to respect human rights, the implementation of economic projects mainly attuned to providing infrastructural support for foreign investments, the establishment of a Truth Commission–while purposely avoiding the issues of implementing genuine land reform and genuine industrialization, raising workers' wages and defending national sovereignty.
US imperialism considers an acceptable political atmosphere as the key or the decisive component in ending or defeating "insurgency" in a country. Using such an atmosphere, it aims to accomplish the following:
1. To have an effective channel for various types of US imperialist assistance to the ruling system, among them financial aid, economic projects and military assistance.
2. To facilitate the legal basis for further and more unencumbered US imperialist intervention in the country's economy, politics and military.
A particular agenda of US imperialism in the Philippines is changing the reactionary constitution to eradicate obstacles to its unhampered control of the country's economy, politics and military
3. Win over what it calls the "insurgency's soft support" among the people. (They consider as "soft support" those who they believe only sympathize with the "insurgency" not for reasons of ideology or adherence to its political program but due to personal circumstances).
4. Forge effective unity among the different government units and agencies.
5. Mobilize the middle forces (especially the urban petty bourgeoisie) as the voice of their support among the people.
6. Isolate the revolutionary movement through "psywar operations" in the mass media and among the people in accordance with the line that "there is no longer any reason to fight."
7. Achieve the armed suppression of the revolutionary forces with a minimum of disquiet or opposition from the middle forces and the people.
Parallel implementation and the right relationship between psywar operations and violent armed suppression
Identifying an acceptable political atmosphere as the key component of "counter-insurgency" does not mean that the armed mode of eliminating the revolutionary forces shall take second priority to "reforms" and the "soft" approach.
Different sections of the US COIN Guide repeatedly point out that the right relationship between the various components is not sequential or serial but rather parallel and emphasize that the subject is armed resistance. It thus points out that the establishment of an acceptable political atmosphere should be accomplished alongside economic reforms (actually economic projects in accordance with the policy of globalization), armed suppression of revolutionary forces and mass intelligence and information gathering among the populace to be used against revolutionary forces and employed by the political entity in its `psywar operations' against the people.
In fact, among the important roles of an acceptable political atmosphere is to make the armed elimination of the revolutionary forces acceptable to the people.
The US COIN Guide is the doctrine now being applied by the AFP and used in guiding the extended OBL. The following operational principles of the AFP therefore remain: "holistic approach" which means the simultaneous conduct of operations in rural and urban areas, "operations in depth," identifying and striking supposed centers-of-gravity of the revolutionary movement, dissemination of what they consider as successful models of "counterinsurgency" such as the Palparan model, the Gomez model, the de Mesa model, the Bustillo model, and the "Cougar concept of clearing the RA and WA." But in accordance with the US COIN Guide, these principles will be made more deceptive and their psywar or CMO component enhanced.
The US has increased and upgraded its military asistance to the Aquino government and the AFP in the form of modern weapons, precision-guided missiles, state of the art equipment and training in intelligence gathering and the regular conduct of the Joint US-RP Balikatan military exercises.
The program of the reactionary and puppet Aquino government also includes the expansion of the AFP and the police in order to achieve a 10:1 ratio of reactionary troops to NPA fighters without abandoning the Abu Sayyaf and the MILF problem, and ostensibly to protect the country's growing population.
The US COIN Guide teaches quick adaptability and flexibility of strategy.
US imperialism prescribes psywar operations as the center of gravity of the counterinsurgency strategy against "protracted and complex insurgencies." But it immediately points out that the doctrine is only a guide and it expects that the strategy in the actual stage of conflict would not take a "linear" course but a combination of different approaches, strategies and methods.
Calibrated US intervention
The US defines various levels of intervention, from the lowest to the highest, in implementing the adopted counterinsurgency strategy in a particular country. Direct and open intervention is a sensitive matter that the US would not resort to as long as "low-profile" and "low-cost, small footprint" intervention works. It is always wary of public opinion in the US regarding direct armed intervention and the associated costs.
The US Mission's Country Team, in close coordination with the State Department, is the central element in managing the implementation of US COIN strategies, plans and programs in the target countries. The Country Team is headed by the Chief of Mission (COM) in coordination with the Department of State. The US ambassador himself acts as COM and represents the US president in the country concerned and is responsible for endorsing and implementing US policies as well as supervising all government employees in that country.
The US ambassador has extraordinary authority as the highest official in the country being subjected to intervention in times of crisis and unstable situations. In the absence of the ambassador, the Charge d'Affaires represents the Secretary of State as the highest official in that country.
The different levels of US imperialist intervention from the lowest to the highest includes Mission Augmentation, Single Expert Advisor, Civil-Military Assistance, Foreign Internal Defense, and Direct COIN Intervention.
Mission Augmentation. Mission Augmentation involves the deployment of an additional team of specialists on civil and military affairs to assist the Country Team in its tasks. The entry of the augmentation mission is covert. It is considered to be most suitable when the "insurgency" in a certain country is at its early stages. It is also the method of choice if the other levels of US intervention are too sensitive politically.
Single Expert Advisor. The Single Expert Advisor (SEA) is an adviser (either military or civilian) who is directly embedded in the staff of the government involved. The SEA shall be in close consultation with the affected government to give advice and training and assist elected government officials in handling the insurgency. He or she assesses the situation, develops plans and capabilities to support the affected government and gives advice in employing and tasking additional US personnel.
Civil-Military Assistance. Civil-Military Assistance involves the deployment of specialists as a Joint Inter-agency Task Force that will directly work with civilian and military agencies of the government involved. It can embed group members or set up detachments in key positions in the affected government to extend support, advice, technical assistance, education and training.
However, team members usually do not engage in direct confrontation with the "insurgency." It uses the Civil-Military Assistance Program to develop an Internal Defense and Development Strategy in consultation with the affected government and serve as conduit for assistance from the international community. It operates independently of the Country Team but under the COM. If the security threat is assessed to be severe, it can operate under a military authority. Unlike Foreign Internal Defense, it remains under civilian leadership and is just supported by the military. The US considers this level of intervention as less costly and sustainable in the long term. It intends to keep the small size of the civil-military assistance team and give it enough time before relief to increase its effectivity relative to cost.
In the Philippines, the level of US intervention can be assessed to be in the third level (Civil-Military Assistance) based on the US' own statement about its mission in the southern Philippines (Mindanao) against the Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiyah and supposed al Qaeda operatives in the area. Also present in different parts of the country is the so-called US Humanitarian Mission being enforced by US troops along with the AFP. It has also been proven in several instances that US troops are directly engaging in combat operations against the Abu Sayyaf, MILF and the NPA.
Foreign Internal Defense. Foreign Internal Defense involves the deployment of military teams usually from the US Special Operations Command to support the affected government. Its difference from Civil-Military Assistance is its military leadership although it also receives substantial support from various agencies of the US government. The scope, size, budget allocation and level of direct open intervention may vary but the level is definitely lower than Direct COIN Intervention.
Direct COIN Intervention. Direct COIN Intervention involves the outright deployment of sizable US troops to undertake a military counterinsurgency campaign in the affected country. Depending upon the objectives of the US, this can be the first option or measure (as in Iraq and Afghanistan) or the last resort if the intervention levels discussed above fail.
The US COIN strategy is bound to fail
The US COIN strategy is bound to fail in eliminating the legitimate and just resistance of the people against the domination of US imperialism and the local ruling class. It can be compared to a swimmer diving into the water with a heavy rock tied to his neck.
The heavy rock is precisely the objective of eliminating the people's legitimate and just resistance in order to perpetuate their rule, exploitaion and oppression. No real change can be expected so long as the people are oppressed and exploited. The US only intends to deceive them through token schemes in order to further squeeze and impoverish the people and weaken their struggle.
The severe crisis besetting the world and the country is unmistakeable. As exploitation and oppression worsen, the people's resistance will also intensify. Whatever volume of resources or number of personnel the US pours in will end up in the dustbin of history as it confronts a people determined to gain their freedom and achieve genuine democracy.
Our tasks
Although we are certain that the US COIN strategy will fail, it requires considerable effort to expose, fight and frustrate the scheme in part and in whole, in the short and the long run.
To be able to expose, resist and frustrate the US COIN strategy, we must accomplish the following urgent tasks:
1. Sharply draw the line between revolution and reformism. Firmly grasp, uphold and put to practice in every revolutionary undertaking the anti-imperialist, antifeudal and antifascist line. Reformism and any pretentions at instituting reforms can only be exposed and defanged by upholding the class struggle, the real and basic interests of the people against their class enemies.
2. Establish closer links with the masses through the advancement of the basic mass movement and mass struggles. Through this, we can reach the people in their millions, draw them to the path of armed revolution and strengthen the just basis of armed struggle.
3. Resolutely raise the people's war to a higher level. Fulfill the requirements to advance to the stage of full-scale guerrilla warfare and lay down the basis for advancing to the strategic stalemate.
4. Tirelessly raise the level of political consciousness of the people through intensive and extensive political education, propaganda work and cultural work.
5. Establish the broad united front of the oppressed and exploited, divide the ranks of the enemy, isolate and fight one chief puppet of the reactionary state after another.
6. Intensify tit-for-tat and intensive and extensive propaganda work in order to shatter all kinds of deception, expose the fascist crimes and counterrevolutionary designs of the US and its local puppet and other local ruling classes.
7. Expose and oppose US imperialist schemes in the country and bring these issues to the US and international arenas.
The leading Party organs and committees at the national and regional levels will formulate particular plans to direct the entire Party organization and the revolutionary movement at various levels.__._,_.___
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17 Oct ' 02:29
They hate us for our occupations
APIn this Sept 11, 2007 file picture, plumes of fire and smoke fill the sky after a suicide car bomb explosion hit fuel tanker trucks on the main highway south of Kabul, Afghanistan.In 2004, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld commissioned a task force to study what causes Terrorism, and it concluded that "Muslims do not 'hate our freedom,' but rather, they hate our policies": specifically, "American direct intervention in the Muslim world" through our "one sided support in favor of Israel"; support for Islamic tyrannies in places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia; and, most of all, "the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan" (the full report is here). Now, a new, comprehensive study from Robert Pape, a University of Chicago political science professor and former Air Force lecturer, substantiates what is (a) already bleedingly obvious and (b) known to the U.S. Government for many years: namely, that the prime cause of suicide bombings is not Hatred of Our Freedoms or Inherent Violence in Islamic Culture or a Desire for Worldwide Sharia Rule by Caliphate, but rather. . . . foreign military occupations. As summarized by Politico's Laura Rozen:
Pape. . . will present findings on Capitol Hill Tuesday that argue that the majority of suicide terrorism around the world since 1980 has had a common cause: military occupation.
Pape and his team of researchers draw on data produced by a six-year study of suicide terrorist attacks around the world that was partially funded by the Defense Department's Defense Threat Reduction Agency. They have compiled the terrorism statistics in a publicly available database comprised of some 10,000 records on some 2,200 suicide terrorism attacks, dating back to the first suicide terrorism attack of modern times - the 1983 truck bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, that killed 241 U.S. Marines.
"We have lots of evidence now that when you put the foreign military presence in, it triggers suicide terrorism campaigns, ... and that when the foreign forces leave, it takes away almost 100% of the terrorist campaign," Pape said in an interview last week on his findings.
Pape said there has been a dramatic spike in suicide bombings in Afghanistan since U.S. forces began to expand their presence to the south and east of the country in 2006. . . . Deaths due to suicide attacks in Afghanistan have gone up by a third in the year since President Obama added another 30,000 U.S. troops. "It is not making it any better," Pape said.
Pape believes his findings have important implications even for countries where the U.S. does not have a significant direct military presence, but is perceived by the population to be indirectly occupying.
For instance, across the border from Afghanistan, suicide terrorism exploded in Pakistan in 2006 as the U.S. put pressure on then Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf "to divert 100,000 Pakistani army troops from their [perceived] main threat [India] to western Pakistan," Pape said.
Imagine that. Isn't Muslim culture just so bizarre, primitive, and inscrutable? As strange as it is, they actually seem to dislike it when foreign militaries bomb, invade and occupy their countries, and Western powers interfere in their internal affairs by overthrowing and covertly manipulating their governments, imposing sanctions that kill hundreds of thousands of Muslim children, and arming their enemies. Therefore (of course), the solution to Terrorism is to interfere more in their countries by continuing to occupy, bomb, invade, assassinate, lawlessly imprison and control them, because that's the only way we can Stay Safe. There are people over there who are angry at us for what we're doing in their world, so we need to do much more of it to eradicate the anger. That's the core logic of the War on Terror. How is that workingout?
* * * * *
Akbar Ahmed, the Chair of Islamic Studies at American University, was on Bloggingheads TV yesterday with Robert Wright discussing convicted attempted Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad, and said this:
Take the case of Faisal Shahzad. He seems to be, if you put him in a category . . . he grows up with the reputation of being a party guy, a party boy in the tribal areas [in Pakistan]. . . . He then comes to America and all the pictures are of a modern young man. . . . He changes, but he changes, again, for interesting reasons. The media would have us believe that it's the violence in the Koran and the religion of Islam. But hear what he's saying. He's in fact saying: I am taking revenge for the drone strikes in the tribal areas. So he's acting more like a tribesman whose involvement in Pashtun values . . . one of the primary features of that is revenge, rather then saying I'm going to have a jihad or I've been trained by literalists . . . .
That is confirmed by mountains of evidence not only about what motivated Shahzad but most anti-American Terrorists as well: severe anger over the violence and interference the U.S. brings to their part of the world. The only caveat I'd add to Professor Ahmed's remarks is that a desire to exact vengeance for foreign killings on your soil is hardly a unique attribute of Pashtun culture. It's fairly universal. See, for instance, the furious American response to the one-day attack on 9/11 -- still going strong even after 9 years. As Professor Pape documents: "when you put the foreign military presence in, it triggers suicide terrorism campaigns . . . and that when the foreign forces leave, it takes away almost 100% of the terrorist campaign." It hardly takes a genius to figure out the most effective way of reducing anti-American Terrorism; the only question is whether that's the actual goal of those in power.
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09 Oct ' 06:38
Remembering Che! Rest in Peace, CheGuevara (June 14, 1928 – October 9, 1967). Long live your great spirit. Viva La Revolución!
The Revolutionary is not a portrait, It's a landscape
"The question is one of fighting the causes and not just the effects. This revolution is bound to fail if it doesn't succeed in reaching deep inside them, stirring them right down to the bone, and giving them back their stature as human beings. Otherwise, what's the use?"
"Hatred is an element of struggle; relentless hatred of the enemy that impels us over and beyond the natural limitations of man and transforms us into effective, violent, selective, and cold killing machines. Our soldiers must be thus; a people without hatred cannot vanquish a brutal enemy."
"Man really attains the state of complete humanity when he produces, without being forced by physical need to sell himself as a commodity."
CHE
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29 Sep ' 13:31
My Family Photo Album
Layla Anwar 
September 29, 2010
This is one of my Family photo albums, the nicest I've got...I have other ones, of close "brothers and sisters"...but I am keeping it for some other time. This one dates 2003-2004
I don't have words anymore...I packed them every morning early at dawn and sold them on the market...proved to be a bankrupt business - now you can relate to that - bankrupt.
So I decided to share some photos of my family instead...after all, you've all been very curious to know what I look like...so tonight, I will assuage your curiosity and quench that thirst of yours.Now they are consulting Jesus as to which door to knock next
Blond blue eyed Jesus is invoked
My beautiful home burning...
Iraqi Desert Sandstorm - can't stop God's Wrath.
Winning Iraqi hearts and minds
My family greeting you with flowers and candies
Martyred President Saddam Hussein's Palace - beats your 2nd hand Kentucky couch don't it ?
Oh the Humane American - feeds us with our own food.
Taking another break in our palaces...beats fucking Kentucky don't it ?
American dogs storming a Baath government office, little girl cries - will the antiwar dry her tears ?
Digital, biometric and crotch imprints. Will you recognize us now ?
Solidarity behind barbed wires - always.
Iraqi artificial leg in the winds...must have been a weapon of mass destruction
Another sectarian Shiite whore boy saying hello
Nothing beats Iraqi Tea...
Killing for sport
We have not stopped hating your fucking guts
That's what I said - we have not stopped hating your fucking guts
Finally found the Weapons of Mass Destruction
Whatever you do - these are my grounds, my land - always.
My family's hospitality despite your brutality. House raid by your brave boys - they are offered tea.Depleted Uranium Reconstruction of Falluja ----------------------------------------------- new pictures available upon request.
You don't scare us...
She ain't scared either...
You didn't even spare my elderly Grandma...
My Iraqi boy has finally become a blue eyed one - after you exploded in his face.
This is my Red wedding day....am ducking mortars, bombs and pieces of flesh
An American female neighbor....she loves being in the "third world"- you American guys need to get your... ahem ...functioning again.
Black American cow, finally saved by the White boys - Where are you Malcolm X ?Pig Faced ugly motherfucker.
American Iraqi reconstruction
Saddam already fucked you - the Hell that is Iraq.
Keep on crying and hugging - it ain't over yet - Iraq/Afghanistan
No more Western Feminist Pink Codes - Iraqi women are all alone.
Resistance Siempre- Always.
Big Rambo 23, died in 2004.
Exile - my permanent abode.
Broken, shattered lives...
Wouldn't even use this piece of cloth to wipe the sole of my old shoe, not even my cat's poop.
Your end and mine...20 feet underground.
My photo album was first published here - with American commentaries. They even stole the words...the words from the Death market...
I am very tempted to upload my Iraqi song - Where are you from and Where am I from !
I just need to be reminded always...photos are never enough.
Music-Composer : Iraqi artist Bashar Al Azzawi rendition of "Enta Mnen"old Iraqi folk song - Where are you exactly from ? uploaded on youtube by qwqfaris.
www.uruknet.info?p=70264Link: arabwomanblues.blogspot.com/2010/09/my-family-photo-album.html
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