France in Mali: The longue durée of imperial blowback

The present intervention in Mali, however necessary and well-intentioned it is, may produce its own blowback [Reuters]

The current crisis in Mali is a product of French colonialism, and their intervention will sadly create more blowback.

The dispatching of French soldiers to beat back rapidly advancing Salafi militants in northern Mali represents the convergence of multiple circles of blowback from two centuries of French policies in Africa. Some date back to the beginning of the 19th century, others to policies put in place during the last few years. Together, they spell potential disaster for France and the United States (the two primary external Western actors in Mali today), and even more so for Mali and the surrounding countries.

Only two outcomes, together, can prevent the nightmare scenario of a huge failed state in the heart of Africa spreading violence across the continent. First, the French-led assault on the north must manage to force most of the Salafi fighters out of the populated areas presently under their control and install a viable African-led security force that can hold the population centres for several years. If that weren’t difficult enough, French and international diplomats must create space for the establishment of a much more representative and less corrupt Malian government, one which can and will negotiate an equitable resolution to the decades long conflict with the Touareg peoples of the North, whose latest attempt violently to carve out a quasi-independent zone in the north early last year helped create the political and security vacuum so expertly, if ruthlessly, exploited by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghrib (AQIM) and its allied radical groups.

The first and largest circle of blowback returns to French colonial policy in North and West Africa, which was responsible for the creation of most of the states that are involved in the present conflict. France began deliberately to colonise large swaths of West Africa at the start of the 19th century, gaining control of what today is Mauritania and Senegal by 1815, followed by the invasion of Algeria in 1830, Tunisia in 1881, French Guinea, the Ivory Coast, and the French Sudan (which would become Mali) – in the 1890s, Niger in 1903-4 and Morocco in 1912.

Carved from colonialism

It is impossible to know how the map of Africa would have evolved without European colonialism to shape it. What is sure, however, is that the European “scramble for Africa” that dominated the 19th century – and in which local rulers played a willing part whenever it served their interests – ensured that European powers would create the territorial foundation for modern nation-states whose borders bore little correspondence to the ethnic and religious geography of the continent. Mali in particular was composed of several distinct ethnic, linguistic and what today are considered “racial” groups. Its brief and ill-fated union with Senegal at the time of independence in 1960 highlights the artificial foundation of the region’s states and their borders.

The lack of consideration for local ethnic, religious and cultural dynamics and the colonial imperative to arrogate as much territory under one rule as possible created a situation in which states with areas over twice the size of France and population groups which had little historical or cultural reason to live under one sovereignty and had few natural resources of comparative advantages to support themselves, were nevertheless forced to do just that; first, under foreign rule, whose main goal – whatever the “civilising mission” proclaimed by Paris – was to extract as much wealth and resources as possible and enforce control by whatever means necessary, then under postcolonial indigenous governments whose policies towards their people often differed little on the ground from their colonial predecessors.

Indeed, even those countries which secured independence peacefully were structurally deformed by foreign rule and the establishment of states with borders that did not naturally correspond to the political and cultural ecologies of the regions in which they were created. As epitomised by the plight of the Mali’s Touareg communities (who are spread across the Sahel much like Kurds are spread across the countries of the Fertile Crescent), most states in West, North and Central Africa wound up including significant populations who were different from, and thus disadvantaged by, the group who assumed power. At the same time, post-independence governments were riven by corruption and narrow loyalties, with leaders who were most often unwilling to pursue or incapable of pursuing a truly national, democratic vision of development.

In such a situation, religion, which might have played a positive role in shaping morally grounded public spheres and economies, became marginalised from governance, while slowly taking hold in a toxic form among many of the region’s most marginalised peoples.

Supporting the wrong team

If France’s colonial history created the structures in which the present crisis inevitably has unfolded, a more recent set of policies constitutes the second circle of blowback; namely, France’s unreserved support for the Algerian government in its repression of the democratic transition that began in 1988 and was crushed in 1992. As is well known, rather than allow the Islamic Salvation Front – a Muslim Brotherhood-inspired group not that different in its roots and outlook than its Egyptian or Tunisian mainstream Islamist counterparts – to take power after its clear electoral victory in the first round of the 1991-92 parliamentary elections, the Algerian military cancelled the next round and began a crackdown that quickly exploded into a civil war between the military government and radical Islamist groups.

Faced with the choice of allowing a new, Islamist political actor take the reigns of power, France, joined by the US, chose to support the Algerian military, with whom it had retained close relations. In allying with an authoritarian, brutal and corrupt government the French, and the West more broadly, became party to a vicious conflict that saw the emergence of a dangerous terrorist group, the GIA (Armed Islamic Group), quite possibly controlled at least in part by the military itself, and the subsequent bloody decade-long civil war that cost the lives of well over 100,000 civilians.

The GIA in turn was the kernel out of which another group, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, and then al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghbrib, emerged. These groups focused their attention on North Africa for much of the last decade, but gradually moved more deeply into the Sahelian regions linking Algeria to Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Morocco.

Had France and the West not given unreserved support to the Algerian military, it is highly unlikely that these groups would have been created, never mind grown to their present position (a similar argument could of course be made about the main branch of al-Qaeda, which is so many ways was a direct product of unceasing US support for some of the most corrupt and brutal regimes in the world, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan).

As in so many other cases, France and its Western allies chose stability over democracy. In so doing it inevitably, if ironically, set the stage for the present chaos in which its troops are being forced to fight.

Supporting the wrong team… again

The third and most recent circle of blowback stems from France’s longstanding support for Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Specifically, French President Nicolas Sarkozy offered strong support for Ben Ali at the start of the crisis, specifically including, as foreign affairs minister Michèle Alliot-Marie described it, “the savoir-faire, recognised throughout the world of [French] security forces in order to settle security situations of this type”. The French president’s words embarrassed his government once the protests picked up steam to the point of creating a “crisis of credibility” that necessitated Sarkozy’s “admission of mistakes” in supporting Ben Ali against the revolutionaries.

So strong was Sarkozy’s embarrassment that when the Libyan crisis erupted, France took the lead in pressing for Western military intervention to force Gaddafi from power in order to absolve itself of its Tunisian sins. Yet it was precisely the launching of NATO’s air war and military support for the Libyan rebels that led to the exodus of well-trained fighters and significant weapons stocks from Libya into Niger, Mali and other parts of the Sahel in the wake of the crumbling of Gaddafi’s state. The chaos and spread of weapons generated by the Libya war put crucial numbers of men and arms into play in northern Mali at a particularly dangerous moment in the country’s history, when long oppressed Touaregs, who’d been recipients of Gaddafi’s largesse in the past (and some of whom in fact fought for Gaddafi), were once again primed to rebel against the central government.

This situation became even more ripe for chaos with the unexpected and apparently unintended military coup against the country’s soon to be retired president, Amadou Toumani Touré, in March, 2012, which created an even bigger power vacuum throughout the country.

The blowback’s blowback

Here we see decades, and indeed centuries, of French and broader European and American policies coming together to produce maximum chaos. This in turn was strengthened by the blowback from longstanding local conflicts, from the hostility of Mali’s military leadership to the extremely poor rank and file conscripts (which prompted the protests that sent the President to flight in March, 2012) to the inability of the broader Touareg rebel movement to set aside its tradition of violent resistance and embrace a younger generation of activists, who were advocating a revolutionary movement that was much closer to the soon to erupt Arab Spring than to the violent insurrection for which Touaregs had long been known. Almost a year later, the army has lost control over the majority of the country, while Touaregs have been largely sidelined from the revolt they started by Salafi groups aligned with al-Qaeda.

What is most interesting in this regard is that the present blowback had significant advance warning and should in fact have been anticipated by French and Western policymakers in the planning of the Libyan war. North Africa experts, such as Sciences Po political scientist Jean-Pierre Filiu, were pointing out already in 2010 that al-Qaeda in the Maghrib and other salafi fighting groups were moving away from their focus on Algeria and towards developing a strategic presence, and even “new theatre” in the Sahel, with the ultimate aim of destabilising those countries.

These jihadis “now represent a serious security threat in northern parts of Mali and Niger”, Filiu explained, because of numerous kidnappings, smuggling and other illicit activities the recruitment of a “new generation” of fighters from the many poor communities of the region. This reality of clearly increased operations by radical Islamist groups in northern Mali, coupled with the increase in Touareg agitation and Gaddafi’s well-known use of various nomadic groups as mercenaries, should have raised loud alarms among French and Western policymakers in the lead up to the decision to enter for Libyan civil war.

Indeed, on the US side, the American Ambassador to Mali warned already in 2004 that Mali is a “remote, tribal and barely governed swath of Africa… a potential new staging ground for religious extremism and terrorism similar to Afghanistan under the Taliban… If Mali goes, the rest goes”. This warning was made just as the US military was deepening its military presence across the continent, culminating in the creation of AFRICOM in 2008.

Given the clear attention being paid to the Sahel in the last decade by French and US policymakers, we can only assume that either they were utterly incompetent in failing to understand the inevitable results of Western military intervention in Libya, or saw that as a win-win situation, providing a new theatre in a strategically rising area of the world in which US, French and Western militaries could become increasingly engaged (and in so doing, keep rivals such as China further at bay).

Either way, just as previous African interventions generated the blowback that helped create the present Malian crisis, the present intervention in Mali, however necessary, well-intentioned and even wished for by the majority of Malians (to the extent the wishes of Malians can even be determined that clearly), will no doubt produce its own blowback, which will claim the lives of many more Africans, French, American and other Western citizens.

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V.I. Lenin on Religion

“Religion is the opium of the people—this dictum by Marx is the corner-stone of the whole Marxist outlook on religion. Marxism has always regarded all modern religions and churches, and each and every religious organisation, as instruments of bourgeois reaction that serve to defend exploitation and to befuddle the working class.”

– V.I. Lenin, “The Attitude of the Workers’ Party Towards Religion”

“[…] under no circumstances ought we to fall into the error of posing the religious question in an abstract, idealistic fashion, as an “intellectual” question unconnected with the class struggle, as is not infrequently done by the radical-democrats from among the bourgeoisie. It would be stupid to think that, in a society based on the endless oppression and coarsening of the worker masses, religious prejudices could be dispelled by purely propaganda methods. It would be bourgeois narrow-mindedness to forget that the yoke of religion that weighs upon mankind is merely a product and reflection of the economic yoke within society. No number of pamphlets and no amount of preaching can enlighten the proletariat, if it is not enlightened by its own struggle against the dark forces of capitalism. Unity in this really revolutionary struggle of the oppressed class for the creation of a paradise on earth is more important to us than unity of proletarian opinion on paradise in heaven.”

– V.I. Lenin, “Socialism and Religion”

“That is the reason why we do not and should not set forth our atheism in our Programme; that is why we do not and should not prohibit proletarians who still retain vestiges of their old prejudices from associating themselves with our Party. We shall always preach the scientific world-outlook, and it is essential for us to combat the inconsistency of various “Christians”. But that does not mean in the least that the religious question ought to be advanced to first place, where it does not belong at all; nor does it mean that we should allow the forces of the really revolutionary economic and political struggle to be split up on account of third-rate opinions or senseless ideas, rapidly losing all political importance, rapidly being swept out as rubbish by the very course of economic development.”

– V.I. Lenin, “Socialism and Religion”

“[Engels polemicized against those who] gave prominence to religious divisions rather than political divisions, and diverted the attention of some sections of the working class and of the other democratic elements away from the urgent tasks of the class and revolutionary struggle to the most superficial and false bourgeois anti-clericalism. Accusing the would-be ultra-revolutionary Dühring of wanting to repeat Bismarck’s folly in another form, Engels insisted that the workers’ party should have the ability to work patiently at the task of organising and educating the proletariat, which would lead to the dying out of religion, and not throw itself into the gamble of a political war on religion.”

– V.I. Lenin, “The Attitude of the Workers’ Party Towards Religion”

“[…] Engels frequently condemned the efforts of people who desired to be “more left” or “more revolutionary” than the Social-Democrats, to introduce into the programme of the workers’ party an explicit proclamation of atheism, in the sense of declaring war on religion. Commenting in 1874 on the famous manifesto of the Blanquist fugitive Communards who were living in exile in London, Engels called their vociferous proclamation of war on religion a piece of stupidity, and stated that such a declaration of war was the best way to revive interest in religion and to prevent it from really dying out. Engels blamed the Blanquists for being unable to understand that only the class struggle of the working masses could, by comprehensively drawing the widest strata of the proletariat into conscious and revolutionary social practice, really free the oppressed masses from the yoke of religion, whereas to proclaim that war on religion was a political task of the workers’ party was just anarchistic phrase-mongering.

Religion must be declared a private affair. In these words socialists usually express their attitude towards religion. But the meaning of these words should be accurately defined to prevent any misunderstanding. We demand that religion be held a private affair so far as the state is concerned. But by no means can we consider religion a private affair so far as our Party is concerned. Religion must be of no concern to the state, and religious societies must have no connection with governmental authority. Everyone must be absolutely free to profess any religion he pleases, or no religion whatever, i.e., to be an atheist, which every socialist is, as a rule. Discrimination among citizens on account of their religious convictions is wholly intolerable. Even the bare mention of a citizen’s religion in official documents should unquestionably be eliminated. No subsidies should be granted to the established church nor state allowances made to ecclesiastical and religious societies. These should become absolutely free associations of like-minded citizens, associations independent of the state. Only the complete fulfilment of these demands can put an end to the shameful and accursed past when the church lived in feudal dependence on the state, and Russian citizens lived in feudal dependence on the established church, when medieval, inquisitorial laws (to this day remaining in our criminal codes and on our statute-books) were in existence and were applied, persecuting men for their belief or disbelief, violating men’s consciences, and linking cosy government   jobs and government-derived incomes with the dispensation of this or that dope by the established church. Complete separation of Church and State is what the socialist proletariat demands of the modern state and the modern church.

The Russian revolution must put this demand into effect as a necessary component of political freedom. In this respect, the Russian revolution is in a particularly favourable position, since the revolting officialism of the police-ridden feudal autocracy has called forth discontent, unrest and indignation even among the clergy. However abject, however ignorant Russian Orthodox clergymen may have been, even they have now been awakened by the thunder of the downfall of the old, medieval order in Russia. Even they are joining in the demand for freedom, are protesting against bureaucratic practices and officialism, against the spying for the police imposed on the “servants of God”. We socialists must lend this movement our support, carrying the demands of honest and sincere members of the clergy to their conclusion, making them stick to their words about freedom, demanding that they should resolutely break all ties between religion and the police. Either you are sincere, in which case you must stand for the complete separation of Church and State and of School and Church, for religion to be declared wholly and absolutely a private affair. Or you do not accept these consistent demands for freedom, in which case you evidently are still held captive by the traditions of the inquisition, in which case you evidently still cling to your cosy government jobs and government-derived incomes, in which case you evidently do not believe in the spiritual power of your weapon and continue to take bribes from the state. And in that case the class-conscious workers of all Russia declare merciless war on you.”

– V.I. Lenin, “The Attitude of the Workers’ Party Towards Religion”

Workers Communist Party of Denmark (APK) says: No to French Invasion of Mali!

No to invasion in Mali!

Stop the wars of EU and NATO!

Statement from the APK

The APK proclaims its most profound rejection and protest against Danish participation in another imperialist war, this time against the African state Mali.

Behind the invasion in Mali is a dirty tactic, where the imperialist great powers,
with USA at the front, plays a double game, where they on one hand set the world on fire
by supporting and arm the terror organizations, while they afterwards send out their fire brigade
to “clean up”. They play the familiar game about invasion for humanitarian reasons and the war against terror. A terror USA, NATO, and France actively have been behind in both Libya and Syria.

The president of the European Commission, Barroso, proclaims his full support
to the invasion in Mali – the Nobel Peace honoured EU once again shows its true face in the African war.

Denmark is now a part of the invasion in Mali, regardless that we, as Villy Søvndal [1] emphasizes, ”only send transport aircraft” for help. The bombs and the land war is our allies in NATO and EU going to take care of.

The reasons for the invasion are by no means humane; it’s about gold, oil, uranium, and all the other riches, that are so numerous on the African continent. The old colonial powers return and lead a strong offensive not only in the Middle East but also intensively in Africa, where USA now is present in 35 countries.

Denmark out of the war coalition in Mali!

No to all Danish war participation!

Stop the wars of EU and NATO!

The Netpaper 15. January 2012

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[1] Foreign minister of Denmark.

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Party of Labour of Iran (Toufan): Condemn the Despicable Assassination of Chokri Belaid in Tunisia!

Chokri Belaid, a popular, prominent, and tireless fighter for the freedom and independence of Tunisia was assassinated in front of his house on the morning of February 6, 2013. Comrade Chokri was the general secretary of the United Party of Patriotic Democrats (PUPD) of Tunisia and a leading member of the Popular Front, a coalition of democratic and left wing forces including the Workers’ Party (PT) of Tunisia.

The criminal assassination of Chokri Belaid is one among a series of repressive acts and barbaric attacks against the activists of the Popular Front that have been carried out for a while with the backing and support of the Tunisian government led by Ennahda Islamic Party. As Comrade Hemma Hemmami, the spokesperson of the Front and the leading figure of PT stated: “The government as a whole is responsible for this crime”.

The barbaric assassination of Comrade Chokri Belaid reminds us of the gradually increasing offensive acts of the reactionary forces of the regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran, soon after they took power, against the advancement of the Iranian Revolution and against the secular and radical left forces in Iran.

Chokri Belaid strongly opposed the “elected” government of Tunisia dominated by the Ennahda Islamic Party, the Party that was put in power through conspiracy, deception, election rigging, and imperialist backing.

The assassination of Chokri Belaid is a vile act that stems from, on the one hand, the weakness and sagging power of the present reactionary rulers in Tunisia and, on the other hand, the advances of the Popular Front. The democratic and revolutionary forces in Tunisia are extending and deepening their influence among the labourers, toilers, deprived masses, and intellectuals. They are holding high the banner of their national-democratic revolution. This has frightened the regime and decaying forces. The assassins not only have targeted Comrade Chokri and PUPD, but also have targeted all democratic and left forces, the trade unions, the women organizations, all secular and progressive institutions. All these forces were and are under the offenses of the dark and reactionary forces backed by the Ennahda movement.

The Party of Labour of Iran (Toufan) strongly condemns the assassination of Chokri Belaid and expresses solidarity with his immediate family, with the United Party of Patriotic Democrats, and with the United Front. We call on all revolutionary and progressive forces of all lands to condemn the reactionary regime of Tunisia for this despicable act and other ongoing criminal offenses against the people of Tunisia.

The Party of Labour of Iran (Toufan) supports the struggle of the Tunisian people for the continuation of their revolution. We support the Popular Front, the force that is fighting for deepening the revolution and establishing a national and democratic order. We continue to expose the criminal Islamic regime of Tunisia headed by Ennahda, a regime that is backed by imperialists and the remnants of Ben Ali regime.

The Party of Labour of Iran (Toufan) supports the call by trade unions and the Popular Front for general strikes, for dissolution of the government, and for the formation of a new democratic constitutional assembly.

Long Live the Tunisian Revolution!
Down with Imperialism and Reaction!
Long Live International Solidarity!

The Party of Labour of Iran (Toufan)
February 7, 2013

WWW.Toufan.org
Toufan@toufan.org

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Communist Party of the Workers of France: No to French military intervention in Mali, No to the “sacred union” to support the war!

Position of January 12

The French government has decided to send French troops to Mali.

After the Ivory Coast and Libya, now it is Mali. This is a decision that involves France in a war in a former French colony.

This option was the only one that has been used since northern Mali has been in the hands of armed Islamist groups.

Since the beginning, [French President] Francois Holland asked the UN to give the green light to an international military intervention, in which the French General Staff and diplomacy would organize the concrete arrangements.

Men like Ouattara, put in place in the Ivory Coast by military intervention in which France played the lead role, Compaore, the head of Burkina Faso, who has continued to serve the interests of French imperialism in the region, regardless of the government in Paris, or Yayi Boni, an autocrat in Benin, serve as an “African” screen for this military intervention. Who can believe that ECOWAS would be able to set up a military force independent of the French army? On the contrary, it is clear today that the whole of the French military deployed in Africa has been mobilized for this intervention.

The justification for this French military intervention is the fight against armed Islamist groups who control part of the territory of Mali. They threaten the integrity of Mali and carry out a reign of terror in the areas they control. But their presence and the ease with which they are deployed reflect the existence of profound social, economic and political problems that the ruling regimes in Mali have not resolved, when they are not aggravated by their management of the country. This means that a military solution, let alone a foreign military intervention, will not resolve any of these problems, quite the contrary.

The Malian forces have denounced this situation and have from the beginning rejected a foreign military intervention; they stated that the question of the territorial integrity of Mali should be the responsibility of the Malian army. They were not listened to.

The military operation is complicated and can take time to mobilize the greatest resources. The victims are mainly Malian civilians caught in the crossfire.

The reinforcement of the “Vigipirate” plan is part of the strategy of tension and conditioning to convince the people of our country that they may be the target of attacks, whose perpetrators are linked directly or indirectly to Islamist groups acting in Mali. It is part of the government’s desire to create a climate of national unity, while it is carrying out an aggressive policy of austerity that strikes the masses.

Behind this intervention is the control of an area rich in strategic raw materials, particularly uranium that [the French company] Areva is exploiting in neighboring Niger and is also found in the subsoil of Mali.

For all these reasons, and because the war in the Ivory Coast, Afghanistan and Libya have amply shown that their justification by the fight against terrorism and the defense of democracy is a big lie, we express our total disagreement with the military intervention of France in Mali.

We reaffirm the need to put an end to the policy known as the “French-Africa,” a policy of economic domination and political and military intervention.

We affirm that it is up to the people of Mali, its democratic and patriotic forces, to find ways for a political solution to the crisis in their country.

Paris, January 12, 2013
Communist Party of the Workers of France

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Video: Free Syrian Army Cleric gives Terrorist Groups Permission to kill Alawite Women and Children

Interviewer: “Is it permissible to kill ‘Alawites — their women and their children — in retaliation for their actions?”

Muhammad Badi’ Moussa: “Yes, my brother. We have issued a communiqué to the ‘Alawites, in which we gave them a strong warning, which may be the last.

“Our brothers in the Free Syrian Army sent queries to scholars in exile, asking whether they were allowed to raid ‘Alawite villages, like the Zahra, Eqrima, and Nuzha suburbs of Homs. [...]

“Our brothers in the Free Syrian Army asked several sheikhs and scholars for a fatwa on whether they are allowed to kill ['Alawite] women and children, just as they are killing our women and children.

“The snipers are coming from the ‘Alawite suburbs, and the free Muslim women who were raped and kidnapped are being held in ‘Alawite suburbs.

“All the scholars said: Have a little patience. They must be warned first. We don’t want a civil, sectarian war to rage in Syria. [...]

“[The 'Alawites] know that they are a minority in our country, and that all the sects hate them and want to get rid of them. It is not in their best interest to follow the regime.” [...]

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International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations: Resolution on the West African Region and Mali

Since 2010, the West African region and particularly the sub-Saharan zone has been marked by the armed interference and intervention of the imperialist powers. The objectives of those actions are:

* Political, geostrategic and military, related to the struggle for the redivision of the world and of the African continent.

* Economic (access to the petroleum of the Gulf of Guinea and the Ivory Coast; to the uranium of Niger and the precious metals that abound in the region; to solar energy; cacao, coffee, etc.

* The struggle of the Anglo-Saxon (U.S. and Great Britain) and French imperialists to prevent the penetration into the region by new actors such as China, India, Brazil, etc.

* The will of the imperialist powers to crush any type of protest by the popular masses, who are condemned to misery and lacking in political freedom, as well as the repression that they suffer carried out by the corrupt puppet powers, and their desire to crush any revolutionary insurrectionary movement.

The military-political crisis after the military coup d’état of the National Committee for the Defense and Restoration of the State (CNRDE) of March 22, 2012, as well as the military occupation of the North of Mali, begun January 22, 2012, which covers two thirds of the national territory, an occupation carried out by the National Movement for the Liberation of AZAWAD (MNLA) and the “jihadists” (AQMI, ANSAR, DINE, MUJAO, BOKO, HARAM…) must be put in this context

The military-political crisis in Mali has grave consequences for the neighboring countries, particularly Algeria, Niger, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, etc. and the group of the countries of the west African region (destabilization of States, proliferation of arms, massive displacement of populations towards the South of Mali, and thousands of refugees in other neighboring countries).

The military-political crisis in Mali is also a threat to the interests of imperialism, particularly French imperialism, in that country and the whole region. That is why there are preparatory maneuvers for an open military intervention that the troops provided by the members countries of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) can carry out, with the consent and logistical support of the great imperialist powers (France and U.S.A.) and of the UN under the pretext of “making a secure transition,” of “restoring constitutional life” and of “restoring Mali’s territorial integrity.” This is a reactionary plan by the imperialist powers and their allies in the region to maintain and reinforce their domination.

Faced with this serious situation, the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations (ICMLPO):

* Denounces and condemns the puppet powers that have opened their territories (particularly in Mali, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Niger, Mauritania and Senegal) to the troops of imperialist aggression.

* Denounces and condemns the proclamation of independence of the State of AZAWAD by the MNLA, instrument of French imperialism.

* Denounces and condemns the crimes perpetrated against the peoples of the North of Mali by terrorist group AQMI and the Islamist groups ANSAR-DINE, MUJAO and the MNLA.

* Supports the brave resistance of the peoples, particularly of the youth, against oppression and medieval and obscurantist practices.

* Denounces and condemns the reactionary plan of the ECOWAS in Mali.

* Calls on the proletariat and peoples of the imperialist countries, particularly France, to support the Malian people in their struggle for a revolutionary solution of the military-political crisis.

* Calls for solidarity and support for the struggle of the peoples of the West African region against imperialist domination and their African lackeys.

Tunisia, November of 2012.

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International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations: Resolution on the Situation in Syria

The plenary of the ICMLPO, held for the first time in Africa, reaffirms its support for the right of the Syrian people to live under a democratic regime: a regime that guarantees freedom, equality, social justice and dignity, as well as assures the unity and total independence of the country, including the recovery of the Golan Heights occupied by Zionism since 1967.

The ICMLPO:

1. Denounces the dangerous development of events in Syria. The popular movement of protest has been transformed into a destructive civil war. The bloodthirsty repression is striking the people, and since the beginning, the Assad regime has rejected any democratic reform that would satisfy the aspirations of the Syrian people. This situation is the consequence of the foreign reactionary, imperialist and Zionist intervention, through Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which masked by the so-called “Free Syrian Army” and under the pretext of “saving the Syria people”

2. We reaffirm that this war has nothing to do with the interests of the Syrian people and their aspirations. On the contrary, it serves the reactionary forces of the country, the region and internationally. Syria is at the moment the place of confrontation between, on the one side the U.S., France and Israel and Arab and Turkish reaction that are trying to subject Syria to Western rule and make it break its ties with Iran and Hezbollah. On the other side, Russia and China are supporting the regime to preserve their strategic interests in Syria and the region, after having lost their influence in Libya.

3. We reject all intervention by NATO in Syria under any pretext, given the dangers that this represents for the Syrian people, the peoples of the region and world peace in general. The Conference calls on the Turkish people to oppose Turkey’s intervention in Syria. It sends a call to the workers and peoples of the Western countries, in the first place of the United States, Great Britain and France, whose leaders are threatening military intervention in Syria, to pressure their governments to stop them from carrying out their criminal strategy that caused disasters in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya, etc. in the past

4. It is up to the Syrian people, in all cases, to determine their own future. The ICMLPO calls on the Syrian patriotic and democratic forces to unite to save their country from the claws of the Assad regime and the armed gangs and to prevent the foreign powers from mortgaging their future and making use of a part of their minorities to undermine their unity. The ICMLPO calls on those forces to strive to build a new, democratic, secular, independent and united Syria in which the different religions and nationalities live together in freedom and equality.

5. Calls on the patriotic, democratic and progressive forces of the region to urgently mobilize and to undertake the necessary measures of solidarity to support the patriotic and democratic forces of Syria, forces that must act to end the slaughters perpetrated against the Syrian people, to stop the destruction of the country and prevent the foreign intervention, to facilitate dialogue among its inhabitants to achieve their aspirations and break with the tyranny and foreign domination.

Organisation pour la construction d’un parti communiste ouvrier d’Allemagne

Parti Communiste des Ouvriers du Danemark – APK

Parti Communiste d’Espagne (marxiste – léniniste) – PCE(ml)

Plateforme Communiste d’Italie

Parti Communiste des Ouvriers de France – PCOF

Organisation Marxiste Léniniste Révolution de Norvège – Revolusjon !

Parti Communiste Révolutionnaire de Turquie – TDKP

Parti des Travailleurs de Tunisie – PT

Parti Communiste Révolutionnaire de Côte d’Ivoire – PCRCI

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Tunisia’s ‘unfinished revolution’ — interview with Workers’ Party militant

By Peter Boyle

November 16, 2012 – Green Left Weekly – Abdel Jabbar Madouri (pictured above) has been a militant in Tunisia since his early secondary school days. He was jailed three times (in 1987,1993 and 2002) because of his political activism. After every arrest, he was tortured and then sentenced to more then 12 years in jail. Madouri spent four years in hiding during the Ben Ali regime. He was also deprived of the right to work or to obtain a passport.

Madouri is also novelist and member of the League of Free Writers and some of his novels were banned by the dictatorship. Today he is member of the national committee of the Tunisian Worker’s Party and is editor of its newspaper Sawt Echaab(People’s Voice).

Green Left Weekly interviewed Madouri by internet with with the assistance of and translation from Arabic by Tunisian journalist Haithem Mahjoubi.

* * *

The sacrifice of the young Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi opened a new wave of popular revolt across the Arabic countries and beyond to Spain and eventually the whole world through the Occupy movement. But how much has been gained by the revolution in Tunisia? Is the democratic space still opening up?

We can say that this revolution has achieved certain aims such as the abolition of the ex-ruling party (though elements of it still operate freely but with little public support), freedom of expression and media and also the dissolution of the hated secret police, if only in a formal way.

The revolution also achieved for the first time a democratic election despite some failures and lack of transparency and equal opportunity in the election campaigns. The election of the constituent assembly was one of the goals that people fought to achieve, unfortunately, the Islamic Ennahdha coalition exploited the revolution win a majority in those elections.

Many of the tasks of the revolution remain unfinished because of the strength of the forces of counter revolution seeking to circumvent the revolution. Among these unfinished tasks are the enforcement of accountability; an investigation and end to corruption in government institutions; a purge state agencies, bringing those responsible to account for crimes against the people – especially putting on trial those who murdered the martyrs of the struggle – and redress for their victims.

What has been achieved by the one-year-old Constituent Assembly? And did the workers’ movement and the left have much input into its decisions?

More then a year after the election, the Constituent Assembly has still not drafted laws that reflecting the demands of the revolution. With the majority of assembly members, of representatives, Ennahdha is able to pass laws for its own benefit. This has made it clear to the people that this is no revolutionary government but a government of a new dictatorship working against the completion of the tasks of the revolution.

The people’s rejection of this government can be seen in the growing demonstrations and sit-ins in public squares and in the streets in front of government offices.

So the revolutionary process is moving slowly along with the transitional to equality.

Amnesty International says there have been some reversals of the democratisation. Protesters, activists and journalists have been attacked. What is the situation for freedom of political expression and organisation?

The Ennahda government has used the Islamic fundamentalist Salafist militias to attack independent journalists so that it dominate public media and put its loyal supporters and allies in charge of the main media institutions. It has refused to put to into practice laws guaranteeing media freedom and establishing an independent commission for information.

So, journalists are still fighting for independence and freedom.

What is the state of the trade union movement? How strong is your party in the trade union movement? Is there a problem with corruption and co-option of trade union leaders by the capitalist parties and the state?

The General Union of Tunisian Workers (UGTT) is the biggest union in Tunisia. The UGTT has been organised since 1952 and is playing a very important role in fighting the government’s plans.

It is true that this union suffered from corruption during the Ben Ali regime, but after the revolution it has regained its integrity, energy and a leading role social and political struggles in cooperation all with other popular organisations.

The Worker’s Party is is very strong in the UGTT. The trade union movement is working with the newly formed Popular Front, which was launched in October by 12 political parties that are all active in the UGTT.

The constituent parties of the Popular Front are left-wing parties and progressive nationalists that participated in the revolution and suffered repression under former dictatorship.

The Popular Front is the now largest political force apart from the ruling Ennahda and the “Tunisia Appeal” party, which represents the remnants of the old regime.

How much danger does Tunisia face from the religious fundamentalists?

Islamic fundamentalism remains part of the political landscape of Tunisia and occasionally expresses itself through attacks on bars, artists and police. Some fundamentalists have been killed in clashes with the police.

But the popular resistance has led to the isolation and decline of the influence of the fundamentalists. The recent manifestations of Salafist violence is due to growing government complicity with these groups.

There have been some recent significant strikes in Tunisia. Can you explain what this was about?

We’ve been organising several workers’ campaigns to claim three main things. First, the passing and implementation of the laws to regulate working conditions which remain precarious for most workers. Second, wage increases to keep up with the rising cost of living and better working conditions, especially working hours and occupational safety. Third, regulation of employment and dismissal of workers in public institutions.

Can you explain the recent protests about women’s rights in Tunisia?

Since it came to power the current government has tried to circumvent the demand for women’s rights, especially in relation to polygamy, the regulation of the minimum age of marriage and gender equality in rights and duties. But its attempts have failed because of the resistance from civil society, including the women’s associations which are very strongly engaged. Still the struggle women’s rights in Tunisia remains strong challenge.

Will the elections promised for June 2013 satisfy the popular will in Tunisia? How well do you expect the left to do in this elections? What are the prospects of a new revolutionary upsurge?

The revolutionary forces are aiming to be influential in next June’s election and to use these elections as an opportunity to achieve the demands for which the people revolted.

Our most important goal is providing employment, freedom and ending our country’s dependency on the great imperialist powers.

It is certain that the left led by the Popular Front will be active and influential in this election. According the last opinion poll, the Workers Party had 6% of the vote and is in the fourth place. But it is expected that the Popular Front would get more than 15% of the vote in the coming elections.

Because of the deterioration of the living conditions of the Tunisian people and the government’s inability to deal with these situations, a second revolution in Tunisia is also expected. The Popular Front is ready for this eventuality and prepared to lead such a revolution to achieve its goals.

What is your party’s view of the developments in Libya and Syria? Are the imperialist powers beginning to successfully manipulate the “Arab Spring”?

The imperialist powers are collaboration with reactionary regimes in the Arabic region especially Qatar and Saudi Arabia and they have succeeded in thwarting revolution in Syria by converting it from a popular uprising to a devastating and dirty civil war.

In Libya, the situation looks somewhat different, especially since the Libyans began rebuilding state institutions. But the Libyan revolution needs to make a lot more struggle to achieve Libyan people’s demands.

The imperialist powers are working hard to control the situation in the countries of the so-called “Arab spring” so they are aiming to find help customers in the area especially after the coming to power of Islamist parties in Tunisia and Egypt and their collaboration with the imperialist-Zionist agenda. In the other side, there are the ongoing revolutionary processes and the parties that lead them in both these countries.

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Video: Afghanistan, Prelude to Soviet Invasion

30 Years since Sabra and Shatila

The Sabra and Shatila massacre was carried out on September 16, 1982, in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila and lasted for three days at the hands of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the Lebanese Phalange Party and the South Lebanon Army (SLA). The death toll in the massacres is not clearly defined. Estimates range between 3,500 and 5,000 dead, men and children, women and elderly unarmed civilians, the majority of whom were Palestinians, but also including Lebanese.

In that time, the camp was surrounded entirely by the South Lebanon Army and the Israel Defense Forces, which was under the command of Ariel Sharon and Rafael Eitan. The leadership of the occupying forces were under the command of the influential Falangist administrator named Elie Hobeika. The forces entered the camp and began the cold-blooded implementation of the massacre that shook the world without mercy, and away from the media, which later reported they had used knives and other methods in the liquidation of the camp’s residents.

The Massacre at Sabra and Shatila, Thirty Years Later

A Never-Ending Horror Story

by SONJA KARKAR

It happened thirty years ago – 16 September 1982. A massacre so awful that people who know about it cannot forget it. The photos are gruesome reminders – charred, decapitated, indecently violated corpses, the smell of rotting flesh, still as foul to those who remember it as when they were recoiling from it all those years ago. For the victims and the handful of survivors, it was a 36-hour holocaust without mercy. It was deliberate, it was planned and it was overseen. But to this day, the killers have gone unpunished.

Sabra and Shatila – two Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon – were the theatres for this staged slaughter. The former is no longer there and the other is a ghostly and ghastly reminder of man’s inhumanity to men, women and children – more specifically, Israel’s inhumanity, the inhumanity of the people who did Israel’s bidding and the world’s inhumanity for pretending it was of no consequence. There were international witnesses – doctors, nurses, journalists – who saw the macabre scenes and have tried to tell the world in vain ever since.

Each act was barbarous enough on its own to warrant fear and loathing. It was human savagery at its worst and Dr Ang Swee Chai was an eye witness as she worked with the Palestinian Red Crescent Society on the dying and the wounded amongst the dead. What she saw was so unimaginable that the atrocities committed need to be separated from each other to even begin comprehending the viciousness of the crimes. [1]

People Tortured. Blackened bodies smelling of roasted flesh from the power shocks that had convulsed their bodies before their hearts gave out – the electric wires still tied around their lifeless limbs

People with gouged out eye sockets. Faces unrecognisable with the gaping holes that had plunged them into darkness before their lives were thankfully ended.

Women raped. Not once – but two, three, four times – horribly violated, their legs shamelessly ripped apart with not even the cover of clothing to preserve their dignity at the moment of death.

Children dynamited alive. So many body parts ripped from their tiny torsos, so hard to know to whom they belonged – just mounds of bloodied limbs amongst the tousled heads of children in pools of blood.

Families executed. Blood, blood and more blood sprayed on the walls of homes where whole families had been axed to death in a frenzy or lined up for a more orderly execution.

There were also journalists who were there in the aftermath and who had equally gruesome stories to tell, none of which made the sort of screaming front page headlines that should have caused lawmakers to demand immediate answers. What they saw led them to write shell-shocked accounts that have vanished now into the archives, but are no less disturbing now. These accounts too need to be individually absorbed, lest they be lumped together as just the collective dead rather than the systematic torture and killing of individual, innocent human beings.

Women gunned down while cooking in their kitchens. [2] The headless body of a baby in diapers lying next to two dead women. [3] An infant, its tiny legs streaked with blood, shot in the back by a single bullet. [4] Slaughtered babies, their bodies blackened as they decomposed, tossed into rubbish heaps together with Israeli army equipment and empty bottles of whiskey. [5] An old man castrated, with flies thick upon his torn intestines. [6] Children with their throats slashed. [7] Mounds of rotting corpses bloated in the heat – young boys all shot at point-blank range. [8]

And most numbing of all are the recollections of the survivors whose experiences were so shockingly traumatic that to recall them must have been painful beyond all imaginings. One survivor, Nohad Srour, 35 said:

“I was carrying my one year-old baby sister and she was yelling “Mama! Mama!” then suddenly nothing. I looked at her and her brain had fallen out of her head and down my arm. I looked at the man who shot us. I’ll never forget his face. Then I felt two bullets pierce my shoulder and finger. I fell. I didn’t lose consciousness, but I pretended to be dead.”[9]

The statistics of those killed vary, but even according to the Israeli military, the official count was 700 people killed while Israeli journalist, Amnon Kapeliouk put the figure at 3,500. [10] The Palestinian Red Crescent Society put the number killed at over 2,000.[11] Regardless of the numbers, they would not and could not mitigate what are clear crimes against humanity.

Fifteen years later, Robert Fisk, the journalist who had been one of the first on the scene, said:

“Had Palestinians massacred 2,000 Israelis 15 years ago, would anyone doubt that the world’s press and television would be remembering so terrible a deed this morning? Yet this week, not a single newspaper in the United States – or Britain for that matter – has even mentioned the anniversary of Sabra and Shatila.”[12]

Thirty years later it is no different.

The political developments

What happened must be set against the background of a Lebanon that had been invaded by the Israeli army only months earlier, supposedly in ‘retaliation’ for the attempted assassination of the Israeli Ambassador in London on 4 June 1982. Israel attributed the attempt to Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) then resident in Beirut. In reality, it was a rival militant group headed by Abu Nidal. Israel wanted to oust the PLO from Lebanon altogether and on 6 June 1982, Israel began its devastating assault on the Lebanese and Palestinian civilian population in the southern part of Lebanon. Lebanese government casualty figures numbered the dead at around 19,000 with some 30,000 wounded, but these numbers are hardly accurate because of the mass graves and other bodies lost in the rubble. [13]

By 1 September, a cease-fire had been mediated by United States envoy Philip Habib, and Arafat and his men surrendered their weapons and were evacuated from Beirut with guarantees by the US that the civilians left behind in the camps would be protected by a multinational peacekeeping force. That guarantee was not kept and the vacuum then created, paved the way for the atrocities that followed.

As soon as the peacekeeping force was withdrawn, the then Israeli Defence Minister Ariel Sharon moved to root out some “2,000 terrorists” he claimed were still hiding in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. After totally surrounding the refugee camps with tanks and soldiers, Sharon ordered the shelling of the camps and the bombardment continued throughout the afternoon and into the evening of 15 September leaving the “mopping-up” of the camps to the Lebanese right-wing Christian militia, known as the Phalangists. The next day, the Phalangists – armed and trained by the Israeli army – entered the camps and proceeded to massacre the unarmed civilians while Israel’s General Yaron and his men watched the entire operations. More grotesquely, the Israeli army ensured there was no lull in the 36 hours of killings and illuminated the area with flares at night and tightened their cordon around the camps to make sure that no civilian could escape the terror that had been unleashed.

Inquiries, charges and off scot-free

Although Israel’s Kahan Commission of Inquiry did not find any Israeli directly responsible, it did find that Sharon bore “personal responsibility” for “not ordering appropriate measures for preventing or reducing the danger of massacre” before sending the Phalangists into the camps. It, therefore, lamely recommended that the Israeli prime minister consider removing him from office. [14] Sharon resigned but remained as Minister without portfolio and joined two parliamentary commissions on defence and Lebanese affairs. There is no doubt, as Chomsky points out “that the inquiry was not intended for people who have a prejudice in favour of truth and honesty”, but it certainly gained support for Israel in the US Congress and among the public. [15] It took an International Commission of Inquiry headed by Sean MacBride to find that Israel was “directly responsible” because the camps were under its jurisdiction as an occupying power. [16] Yet, despite the UN describing the heinous operation as a “criminal massacre” and declaring it an act of genocide [17], no one was prosecuted.

It was not until 2001 that a law suit was filed in Belgium by the survivors of the massacre and relatives of the victims against Sharon alleging his personal responsibility. However, the court did not allow for “universal jurisdiction” – a principle which was intended to remove safe havens for war criminals and allow their prosecution across states. The case was won on appeal and the trial allowed to proceed, but without Sharon who by then was prime minister of Israel and had immunity. US interference led to the Belgian Parliament gutting the universal jurisdiction law and by the time the International Criminal Court was established in The Hague the following year, the perpetrators of the Sabra and Shatila massacre could no longer be tried because its terms of reference did not allow it to hear cases of war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide pre-dating 1 July 2002. Neither Sharon nor those who carried out the massacres have ever been punished for their horrendous crimes.

The bigger picture

The length of time since these acts were carried out should be no impediment to exposing the truth. More than 60 years after the Nazi atrocities against the Jews in Europe, the world still mourns and remembers and erects monuments and museums to that violent holocaust. How they are done, to whom they are done and to how many does not make the crimes any more or less heinous. They can never be justified even on the strength of one state’s rationale that another people ought to be punished, or worse still, are simply inferior or worthless beings. It should lead all of us to question on whose judgment are such decisions made and how can we possibly justify such crimes at all?

The atrocities committed in the camps of Sabra and Shatila should be put in the context of an ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people. The MacBride report found that these atrocities “were not inconsistent with wider Israeli intentions to destroy Palestinian political will and cultural identity.” [17] Since Deir Yassin and the other massacres of 1948, those who survived have joined hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fleeing a litany of massacres committed in 1953, 1967, and the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, and the killing continues today. The most recent being the 2008-2009 Gaza massacre – that 3 week merciless onslaught, a festering sore without relief as the people are further punished by an impossible siege that denies them their most basic rights.

Thus were the victims and survivors of the Sabra and Shatila massacre gathered up in the perpetual nakba of the slaughtered, the dispossessed, the displaced and the discarded – a pattern of ethnic cleansing perpetrated under the Zionist plan to finally and forever extinguish Palestinian society and its people.

This is why we must remember Sabra and Shatila, thirty years on.

Sonja Karkar is the founder of Women for Palestine (WFP), a Melbourne-based human rights group and co-founder of Australians for Palestine (AFP), an advocacy group that provides a voice for Palestine at all levels of Australian society. She is the editor of the website http://www.australiansforpalestine.com. Her email address is sonjakarkar@womenforpalestine.org

Footnotes:

[1] Dr Ang Swee Chai, “From Beirut to Jerusalem”, Grafton Books, London, 1989

[2] James MacManus, Guardian, 20 September 1982

[3] Loren Jenkins, Washington Post, 20 September 1982

[4] Elaine Carey, Daily Mail, 20 September 1982

[5] Robert Fisk, “Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War”, London: Oxford University Press, 1990 [6] Robert Fisk, ibid.

[7] Robert Fisk, ibid.

[8] Robert Fisk, ibid.

[9] Lebanese Daily Star, 16 September 1998

[10] Amnon Kapeliouk, “Sabra & Chatila – Inquiry into a Massacre”, November 1982

[11] Schiff and Ya’ari,, Israel’s Lebanon War, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1984,

[12] Robert Fisk, Fifteen Years After the Bloodbath, The World turns its Back, shaml.org, 1997 [13] Noam Chomsky, “The Fatal Triangle” South End Press, Cambridge MA, p.221

[14] The Complete Kahan Commission Report, Princeton, Karz Cohl, 1983, p. 125 (Hereafter, the Kahan Commission Report). [15] Chomsky, ibid. p.406

[16] The Report of the International Commission to Enquire into Reported Violations of International Law by Israel during Its Invasion of the Lebanon, Sean MacBride, 1983 (referred to as the International Commission of Inquiry or MacBride report)

[17] United Nations General Assembly Resolution, 16 December 1982

[18] MacBride report, ibid. p.179

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The killing of US ambassador to Libya: who is to blame?

Washington sticks to the stupid policy of using Islamic fundamentalists for its own self-serving agenda. The Islamists who stormed the US embassy in Cairo carried Bin Laden portraits.

The founder of the Al Qaeda terrorist network began his murky career in Afghanistan, where he worked as a CIA agent fighting against the country’s legitimate government and Soviet forces deployed there.

America’s image suffered a major blow following the killing of US ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens in an attack against the American consulate in Benghazi on Tuesday. Throughout time, killing an ambassador has been regarded as a grave insult to the state he represented and has served as a pretext for many wars.

This time, however, there is no one to go into battle against. Ambassador Stevens was killed by those who came to power with American help not long ago. “I keep asking myself,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, in confusion, “how could this have happened in a country that the US helped to liberate?” Apart from asking questions, Washington is sending warships to Libya and neighboring countries and is hastily moving SEAL forces to protect US consulates in troubled countries.

However, US marines will hardly be able to do anything about what can well be described as an unprecedented anti-American uprising which has swept all countries of the Middle East and North Africa and had spread to India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, countries of Central Europe, and even faraway Australia.

The shallow and poorly made film denigrating prophet Muhammad became but a tiny spark triggering an explosion of a devastating force. It’s clear to any sober-minded individual that the “masterpiece” which was definitely watched by no more than a handful of Internet surfers couldn’t have set off millions of people in countries scattered all over the world.

The current unrest is the result of years-long discontent over the US doggedness in forcing American values on the rest of the world. On top of that, Washington sticks to the stupid policy of using Islamic fundamentalists for its own self-serving agenda. The Islamists who stormed the US embassy in Cairo carried Bin Laden portraits.

The founder of the Al Qaeda terrorist network began his murky career in Afghanistan, where he worked as a CIA agent fighting against the country’s legitimate government and Soviet forces deployed there. Given that the US continued to adhere to this tactic in subsequent years, the current lamenting over the unthankful Libyans in connection with the killing of Ambassador Stevens, who participated in person in the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi and was linked to Islamists, is either hypocrisy, or political short-sightedness.

I once asked 16th World Chess Champion Anatoly Karpov how many moves ahead he saw in chess and he answered that depending on the circumstances he calculated two or three, or sometimes six or seven moves ahead. It looks like the unfortunate “grandmasters” from Washington never see more than one move ahead. After invading Iraq and removing Saddam Hussein, the Bush-Cheney team stopped planning any further. As a result, the country has plunged into chaos and has become a terrorism hub and Al Qaeda base, thus being on the brink of falling apart.

Current developments in Europe, which was a US stronghold until now, have thrown Washington into outright confusion. The same is true regarding countries that have seen the Arab Spring, which hopefully, will not grow into an ‘Arab Winter’.

Intrigue-prone Republican candidate Mitt Romney is trying to cash in on the current state of affairs by lashing out at Barack Obama with accusations. Even though the current mess was started by the Bush-Cheney administration, the incumbent leadership will have to sort it out, no matter who comes to power in January next year.

And it will be years before this mess is sorted out eventually.

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Fighting the Bigger Oppressor First

A Syrian detainee, who was arrested over participation in the protests against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, is seen in a prison vehicle at Damascus police leadership building to sign his release papers 11 July 2012. (Photo: Reuters – Khaled al- Hariri)

By: Amal Saad-Ghorayeb

In March 2011, a commentator for al-Jazeera wrote: “Events in Egypt and Tunisia have revealed that Arab unity against internal repression is stronger than that against foreign threat.” While this may have been an over-generalization at the time, events in Syria have borne out this assumption. This is due to the deep polarization between Arabs who place primacy on opposition to the Syria regime’s authoritarianism and Arabs who view such opposition as secondary to Assad’s struggle against imperialism and Zionism.

In this essay, I will outline the main moral and intellectual considerations informing the resistance or anti-imperialist camp’s (known as mumanaists in Arabic) prioritization of confronting imperialism over other forms of domination.

The Violence in Syria is Misrepresented

Although supporters of the Syrian opposition often accuse this camp of being ready to countenance any type of violence, no matter how heinous, in the interests of the resistance priority, this accusation ignores the fact that the seeming consensus on the nature and scope of the violence in Syria is a purely manufactured one. Mumanaists do not view the current violence engulfing Syria as a dictatorial regime’s one-sided brutal suppression of peaceful protesters, as is commonly misrepresented in mainstream media, but rather, as a civil war by proxy that the Syrian army was dragged into as it sought to stamp out a US-NATO-GCC-backed armed insurrection.

While supporters of the Syrian uprising contend that this perception of the conflict is designed to reduce the cognitive dissonance produced by the regime’s brutality, few mumanaists harbor the illusion that the regime is not repressive. What they do believe, however, is that the extent of this repression has been grossly distorted by mainstream media. To bolster their argument, they point to a growing number of mainstream media reports which have admitted to the existence a singular master-narrative that is widely used to frame the conflict.

As acknowledged by the BBC in its recent self-study on its coverage of the “Arab Spring”, “journalism is not an exercise in simply relaying raw and untreated facts to the audience…This cannot be done without some sort of framework – if you will, a “narrative” – and therefore the construction of such a narrative by journalists should not be treated as if it were a sin in itself.”

Writing on Syria in the Sunday Times, Peter McKay contends that “It’s not simply uprisings by ground-down peasants against tyrants who repress them. It’s about a transfer of power to rival clans and/or religious groups. About a continuation of the old US-Russia Cold War stand-off.” In a similar vein, the BBC’s world news editor, Jon Williams, has recently admitted in a blog post on Syria that “stories are never black and white – often shades of grey.”

But such admissions are the exception rather than the norm in a psych-ops campaign that is stage-managed by US-NATO-GCC information warlords to bring about a military victory for proxy forces. At the helm of this campaign are politically embedded journalists, political activists and human rights representatives who work in concert to ensure that all coverage of the Syrian crisis remains confined within a carefully guarded body of self-referential “evidence.”

The effectiveness of this information warfare in enlisting public opinion in support of military intervention is substantiated by the aforementioned BBC report: “No doubt these reports…helped stimulate empathy for the [Libyan] rebel cause among the British public, and thereby to facilitate, if not actually bring about the NATO intervention – as similar reports had done in northern Iraq as long ago as 1991.”

Imperialism Cannot Be Equated with Authoritarianism

The second premise guiding the resistance camp’s position on Syria is that imperialism cannot be equated either morally or politically with authoritarianism, let alone demoted to a secondary rank. By contrast, the liberal democratic impulse driving the “Arab Spring” has led some to declare the obsolescence of anti-imperialism as a unifying force in the region. Al-Jazeera commentator Lamis Andoni epitomizes this view with her assertion that “The old ‘wisdom’ of past revolutionaries that liberation from foreign domination precedes the struggle for democracy has fallen.” In the new Arab Spring vernacular, revolutionary struggle is no longer synonymous with resisting US-NATO interventions and Israeli aggression, but has come to mean confronting internal repression even when that confrontation benefits the Empire and its colonial outpost, Israel.

Furthermore, this new liberal political discourse and the preeminent status accorded to securing internal freedoms has served to effectively remove Palestine from the forefront of Arab concerns. In effect, Palestine has been relegated to just another Arab nation which is responsible for freeing itself from its own domestic, i.e. intra-Palestinian, authoritarian rulers, over and above its Israeli oppressors. The mumanaists’ response to this logic is multi-pronged.

As a matter of principle, neither Palestine nor questions of national self-determination in general are viewed as fashions; justice doesn’t go out of style for truly conscientized and committed intellectuals and activists for whom Palestine remains the cornerstone of Arab political identity. What is more, the resistance camp sees this new trend of reducing Palestine to a national cause that belongs exclusively to the Palestinians as a very dangerous development that requires Arabs to unlearn generations of political socialization in order to expunge Palestine from their political consciousness.

Some supporters of the Syrian opposition have argued that the insistence on maintaining the primacy of the Palestinian cause over the concern with authoritarianism, and the concomitant precedence given to Israeli violence over the Assad regime’s repression, is tantamount to claiming that Syrian blood is cheaper than Palestinian blood. But this charge misunderstands the extent of Israel’s iniquity by locating it solely in Zionist aggression, human rights violations or in the circumstances of the occupation. The resistance camp conceives of Israel as the greatest injustice because of its very existence and the unprecedented nature of its oppression, which renders it not merely a human rights cause, but humanity’s cause.

As detailed by the Never Before Campaign for Palestine: “What happened in Palestine since 1947 has never happened before, in terms of the combination of the elements: brutality and racism of the occupier, the injustice of granting one peoples land to others, duration of this injustice, complicity and apathy of the civilized world as well as Palestinian people’s will to resist all that against all odds.”

Even on the level of violence alone, Israel’s violence by far exceeds any domestic repression in so far as it is systematic and genocidal violence that is deeply embedded in its military ethos and strategic culture. Indeed, the celebration of violence is part of its collective consciousness as illustrated by a number of recent examples on social media where many Israelis celebrated the killing of Palestinian children. More importantly for mumanaists, any parallels drawn with Israel are Zionist-enabling in so far as comparing Israel’s violence with that practiced by repressive Arab regimes, legitimizes Israel’s existence as just another authoritarian regime in the region.

Not only are such comparisons with Israel morally and ideologically indefensible, but the very equivalence between imperialism and authoritarianism is an intellectually flawed one that is rooted in a liberal-leftist tradition that conceives of all deployments of power as being equally coercive and oppressive, irrespective of the global hierarchy of power.

In the mumanaists’ conceptual hierarchy of oppression, imperialism and authoritarianism are situated in two entirely different levels of domination. This rank-ordering is not based on an ideological abstraction that is divorced from political reality or on the rhetorical value of anti-imperialist sentiment, but on immediate, practical concerns. Imperialism is not evil because it is practiced by the West, but because it harms people’s lives and interests. Empire kills; it kills vast amounts of people, whether it occupies countries directly or intervenes militarily, economically or politically, it is responsible for innumerable deaths, destruction and impoverishment of all those in its wake.

Thus, viewed from a purely utilitarian perspective, or according to a basic cost-benefit calculus, there is no comparison between the type of violence autocratic regimes exercise when they repress dissent and the death and devastation wreaked by Empire. This moral logic would still hold even if we were to set aside the Assad regime’s anti-imperialist and resistance credentials and assume it was neutral on Palestine; when faced with a choice between the Assad regime’s repression on the one hand and the threat of NATO invasion, coupled with the externally-instigated sectarian civil war and terrorism on the other, anti-imperialists and the majority of Syrians alike will choose the former, especially when they don’t have the luxury of rejecting both.

Resisting Regimes Safeguard Collective Rights and Freedom

If anti-imperialists place far greater political and moral value on resisting the Empire than on unseating autocratic regimes, then surely that is even more so the case when those regimes themselves resist imperialism. As in the case of Syria, anti-imperialist leaders are identified with a set of rights and a concept of freedom that is considered far more conducive to democracy, justice and dignity than the western liberal discourse of “human rights” which is informed by the “negative freedom” from authority.

While not rejecting liberal freedoms outright, anti-imperialists view liberal freedoms that stress the individual’s right to be free from government interference and coercion as being secondary to positive and liberationist conceptions of freedom which affirm human agency and self-determination. As critiqued by political theorist, Anthony Bogues, “when freedom morphs only into rights, then the very question of freedom itself is delinked from other forms of domination other than political authority.” Indeed, it could be argued that the universalization of the Euro-American-centric human rights doctrine that has come to dominate the Arab Spring freedom discourses, serves to obscure imperialism and foreign domination.

The great anti-colonialist thinker, Franz Fanon, anticipated this intellectual colonization by liberal rights discourses when he wrote: “History teaches us clearly that the battle against colonialism does not run straight away along the lines of nationalism. For a very long time the native devotes his energies to ending certain definite abuses: forced labour, corporal punishment, inequality of salaries, limitation of political rights, etc. This fight for democracy against the oppression of mankind will slowly leave the confusion of neo-liberal universalism to emerge, sometimes laboriously, as a claim to nationhood. It so happens that the unpreparedness of the educated classes, the lack of practical links between them and the mass of the people, their laziness, and, let it be said, their cowardice at the decisive moment of the struggle will give rise to tragic mishaps.”

Clearly cognizant of their deviation from the anti-imperialist struggle, Arab Spring intellectuals attempt to reconcile this disconnect between liberal freedoms and liberationist freedom by arguing that liberation from western hegemony and Israeli occupation can only be achieved once freedom from internal tyranny is won. Andoni contends that “combating internal injustice – whether practiced by Fatah or Hamas – is a prerequisite for the struggle to end Israeli occupation and not something to be endured for the sake of that struggle.”

But this logic operates in a geo-political intellectual void which elides any kind of world systems analysis’ recognition of the hegemony exercised by core nations over peripheral ones. In a world order characterized by an uneven division of labour, the notion of achieving any kind of comprehensive and far-reaching internal change without a commensurate change in the global balance of power, is futile.

If there cannot be genuine revolutionary change from within, given prevailing power disparities on the international level, then the expectation that domestic change will inevitably balance out global power asymmetries is nothing short of liberal self-delusion. It is precisely this reasoning which undergirds mumanaists’ claim that liberation from foreign domination is a prerequisite to genuine democratic change.

Furthermore, resistance intellectuals and activists maintain that there can be no progress or democracy in the Arab world so long as a colonial implant like Israel continues to exist in our midst, perpetually threatening our security. Viewed from this lens, liberating Palestine is the prerequisite for the democratization of the region.

As such, mumanaists prioritize a collectivist notion of rights that emphasizes people’s rights as opposed to human rights. In this collectivist understanding of the term, freedom is conceived as liberation from foreign domination and oppression and the pursuit of self-determination. In effect, to be free is not to be left alone, unencumbered by external constraints and hindrances, but to struggle for justice. Seyyid Hassan Nasrallah provides the clearest definition of what this freedom entails: “[it is] not just the blood of a man, the fate of a woman, the crushed bones of a child, or a piece of bread stolen from the mouth of a poor or hungry person. It is the issue of a people, a nation, a fate, holy places, history, and the future.”

In other words, the ultimate purpose of freedom for Arab mumanaists is not merely the protection of various civil and political rights of the individual, but the trans-historical collective right of the umma in its past, present and future manifestations. In this dispensation, freedom and democracy are not reduced to procedural aspects like elections and political reforms as they are in western liberal thought, but more substantially, the ability of peoples enjoying popular sovereignty to shape their own political identity, control their national resources and participate in determining their national destiny.

Amal Saad-Ghorayeb is a Lebanese academic and political analyst. She is author of the book, “Hizbullah: Politics and Religion”, and blogger at ASG’s Counter-Hegemony Unit.

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EMEP: Tunisian Workers Communist Party Changes Its Name

The leader of the Communist Party of Tunisian Workers (PCOT) Hamma Hammami gestures during a press conference on March 19, 2012 in Tunis. Tunisia is in a state of immobility five months after the election of members of the National Constituent Assembly (ANC) and three months after the appointment of a new transitional authority “, said Mr Hammami. AFP PHOTO/ FETHI BELAID (Photo credit should read FETHI BELAID/AFP/Getty Images)

Please note that this is a computer translation from Turkish and is not entirely accurate.

— Espresso Stalinist

Tunisian Workers’ Communist Party (PCOT) resulted in an on-site-standing name change debate. Party, the Workers’ Party of Tunisia as a way to continue after that.

Secretary-General of the party that Hamma Hammami, a tactical move in order to reach a wider audience, he said. Hammami, communism, religion, or that their decision is effective in keeping identical hostility, he said.

Hammami, change the name of the party does not mean that changes in the political line, Tunisian Workers’ Party, a Marxist-Leninist party would continue to fight, he said. There were no changes in the party’s program and constitution.

Hammami, “Tactical had to make a choice, or Islamists communism ‘is anti-religion,’ the propaganda would spend the time or the strength to tell you that’s not true, people use it to unite around the Party program, and thus the workers, the youth, the other sections of the struggle for socialism kazanabilecektik” he said.

Hammami who launched a propaganda campaign in this direction, distributing press party program stated that 500 thousand units.

Workers’ Party of Tunisia opened 60 new party organization in the region, the next step is planning to open dozens more recording Hammami, this process strengthened the party’s youth organization said. (FOREIGN NEWS)

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Hands off Syria: “Free Syrian Army” in Al-Qaeda’s lap – Brothers in Arms

[Photo: notice the Al-Qaeda banners coupled with the green, red and white flag of the "Free Syrian Army" in the front.]

As more photos depicting Syria’s so-called “Free Syrian Army” as fighting under the banner of Al Qaeda emerge, hiding Al Qaeda’s presence becomes more difficult for the Western press and the corporate-financier interests they represent. Therefore a simultaneous campaign is being waged to spin Al Qaeda’s presence as “recent” and “unexpected,” while attempts are made to repackage the militant group as “heroes.”

Video: Al-Qaeda Brigades Formed in Syria to Join “Free Syrian Army”

Tunisian Communist Workers’ Party: Statement

Please note this translation is done by Google from the original Arabic and will not be of high quality.

— E.S.

Statement
June 12 (June)

Found in recent acts of violence and vandalism, arson and intimidation of citizens carried out by groups of bearded announces affiliation of the current Salafi in different regions of the country of Tunisia, and targeting these criminal acts, public and private property and caused a state of terror and chaos, especially areas of Sidi Bouzid, Jendouba … All under the pretext of “defending Islam and the holy places” and as “addressing the law violators.”

Has handled the “troika” of the ruling with this business, despite the condemnation of the immense popularity with what caused disruption and confusion on the interests and demands of citizens, Petrakh blatantly depth of discontent in the political circles and civil society, despite the language of intimidation used by some authority figures (such as: “Has space “- Noureddine Beheiri -,” We will implement the law on any act of violence “- broad -,” We will come who are involved in the atonement “- President equitable Marzouqi) in order to ward off and remove the charge of complicity of power with this trend, which has become loose hands and completely out of law unchecked and that the testimony of all.

Having taken these actions oriented Ascending serious since yesterday under the pretext of “defending the sanctities” and “fight the unbelievers” in reference to the incident exhibition fees to “Alabdlah,” This has coincided escalation with the lawsuit inflammatory explicit launched by “Ayman al-Zawahiri,” the fighting and the Declaration of Jihad against the whoever does not accept application of Shariah espoused by al-Qaeda.

Has started since the time of burning and destruction of many institutions, each of the “Mr. Hussein”, and “Jendouba” and “Marina” and “neighborhood solidarity” to affect the headquarters of political parties (Communist Workers Party of Tunisia, the movement of national Democrats, the Republican Party …) and the headquarters of the General Union of Tunisian Workers, centers and areas of security (Alsajuma, Sousse, Hay Riad, dizziness Hicher …).

And the Tunisian Communist Workers’ Party condemns explicitly acts of violence and vandalism, looting, arson and expresses its solidarity with all affected parties and citizens and institutions, to assure care for the general national public opinion as follows:

- To stir up the call to the fighting between the Tunisian whatever Motaha Whatever the cover and the subsequent acts of violence, arson and sabotage can not in any way serve the interests of the Tunisian people, representing a serious threat to unity, but can only serve the interests of constituencies and parties hostile to the revolution , you want to pay the people of Tunisia in the maze of violence and fighting and serving foreign agendas that stand against the people’s liberation from all forms of plunder, exploitation and subordination.

- These repeated actions which are based most often on the pretext of “defending the religion and sanctities,” has been associated with – always suspiciously – a growing popular movement and the social and the escalation of the licit movement demanding goals of the revolution in dignity and social justice, taking on dimensions most dangerous as it is located employment religion and manipulate the feelings of Muslims and the involvement of Bmekdsat people in the conflict raging between the forces of the government to circumvent the Revolution, both within and outside the government.

- Held responsible head of the government, which seeks in all shapes to impose its hegemony and to continue to circumvent the demands of the revolution, seeking to criminalize all motionless my demand and certified speech inciting against all opposers opinion employee which in many cases, religion and religious institutions, deliberate inaction in dealing with this file and in the truth of the Tunisian about the fact that these groups are suspicious outlaw Almsemsrh and religion to justify acts of terrorism and criminal in the right of citizens.

- Open calls for serious and independent investigation on the violence and vandalism, arson and perpetrators held accountable and reveal their links and their funding sources. (Financiers).

- Calls on all democratic forces and civil to unite in the face of this blatant threat to the security and freedom of citizens of the country and the unity of real substance to achieve the objectives of the revolution.

It also goes the Labour Party to the general public including young people Salafi and invite them to not to be drawn behind these calls for fighting and rivalry between the sons of one people, because the interest of the Tunisian people in his unit on the basis of completion of tasks the revolution and against all the forces of counter-revolution internal and external that you want to return the country to the rule tyranny.

Tunisian Communist Workers’ Party
Tunisia 12 June 2012

This Is My Will: Muammar Gaddafi

This is my will. I, Muammar bin Mohammad bin Abdussalam bi Humayd bin Abu Manyar bin Humayd bin Nayil al Fuhsi Gaddafi, do swear that there is no other God but Allah and that Mohammad is God’s Prophet, peace be upon him. I pledge that I will die as Muslim.

Should I be killed, I would like to be buried, according to Muslim rituals, in the clothes I was wearing at the time of my death and my body unwashed, in the cemetery of Sirte, next to my family and relatives.

I would like that my family, especially women and children, be treated well after my death.

The Libyan people should protect its identity, achievements, history, and the honourable image of its ancestors and heroes. The Libyan people should not relinquish the sacrifices of the free and best people.

I call on my supporters to continue the resistance, and fight any foreign aggressor against Libya, today, tomorrow, and always.

Let the free people of the world know that we could have bargained over and sold out our cause in return for a personal secure and stable life. We received many offers to this effect but we chose to be at the vanguard of the confrontation as a badge of duty and honour.

Even if we do not win immediately, we will give a lesson to future generations that choosing to protect the nation is an honour and selling it out is the greatest betrayal that history will remember forever despite the attempts of the others to tell you otherwise.

Muammar Gaddafi was the leader and guide of the revolution of Libya. He died a martyr to the noble cause of the independence and sovereignty of his country, assassinated on 20 October 2011 by traitors in the service of NATO. This English translation of his will was published by the BBC on 23 October 2011; it is reproduced here for non-profit educational purposes. Note: In Islam, the body of a martyr is to be buried unwashed, like those of the followers of Muhammad who died at the Battle of Uhud, fighting against the Meccan army.

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Free Libya is Green Libya: Supporting the Real Libyan Revolution

by W. Yusef Doucet

“Will they now stand up and assume the real leadership necessary to make themselves relevant, or is overcoming their class allegiance to the Western bourgeoisie just too much to fathom? That’s probably too much to expect from a class trained to protect the interests of its benefactors in order to protect its own narrow interests. I guess this great task is up to the world’s African workers and peasants.”

For eight months now, NATO has executed an open crime against a sovereign African state and called it a democratic revolution. Libya was a stable, prosperous, debt-free country in Africa until it came under attack in February. The United States and the European Union cynically seized the opportunity provided by the genuine people’s movements in Tunisia and Egypt where the Western backed administrations were forced to remove their heads of state in attempts to manage the popular democratic movements in the streets. The U.S. and E.U. rapidly exploited the monarchist and “Islamist” resentment long present in Benghazi. The democratic aspirations of this opposition in Libya was dubious from the beginning, and within days of the actual opposition demonstrations that were not unusual in Benghazi, the “peaceful demonstrators” attacked a police station and suddenly emerged as a full-fledged armed faction. That U.S. and E.U. country Special Forces and intelligence forces had been on the ground from the very beginning arming and guiding what has become the National Transitional Council has become clear, and who denies the fact?

Even now, as this coalition claims to be the true and legal representatives of the wishes of the Libyan people, they represent maybe 5 percent of Libyans. They are an illegitimate entity thrust upon Libya by the force of NATO military power, and still they have not defeated the Jamahiriyah, the People’s Government of Libya. Through their actions, NATO has declared once again that no country can impart upon an independent path of development and an indigenous, culturally specific experiment with democracy. The West claims a monopoly on the meaning, form and practice of democracy, and the intellectuals, journalists and pundits in the West have shown themselves unable to remove the prejudices that convince them that democracy must look like and smell like the elite bourgeois democracy of the imperial countries. These are the same liberal bourgeois republics and constitutional monarchies that have perpetrated more than two hundred years of slavery, colonialism, and genocide attendant to capitalist production over the centuries. That doesn’t smell very good!

Through mainstream media, these professional talkers and writers made and continue to make the ground and air war palatable. Mainstream capitalist media rarely break with the official story offered by government. However on Libya, they have aggressively disseminated misinformation about Libyan society and the character of the uprising. Not every rebellion is a revolution. The media’s uncritical representation of the factions that would become the NTC cast them as democratic freedom fighters rather than investigate their reactionary monarchism and fundamentalism. Moreover, the media all but ignore the aggressive genocide taking place against the native Black population and migrant worker population. Early in the conflict, media spread the lie of “African mercenaries,” thus facilitating attacks against dark skinned Libyans and other Africans. Again, mainstream media reproduce the official story as a matter of course.

Unfortunately, the mainstream, corporate, pentagon friendly media were joined in the demonization of Gaddafi and the misrepresentation of the Jamahiriyah by the standard of progressive and liberal media in the United States, Democracy Now! and the Pacifica Network. Progressive/liberal media characterized the rebellion that began in Benghazi as a revolution rather than the counter revolution that it is. They provided airtime for opposition spokespersons and their supportive progressive and liberal analysts and pundits, which betrayed an antipathy to African and Arab revolutionary nationalism. They offered little to no air to voices in support of the Jamahiriyah; neither did they report on its democratic processes, again reproducing the government narrative. Those voices that make it onto Pacifica stations are brought on by independent producers like Dedon Kimathi at KPFK in Los Angeles and J.R. Valrey of Block Reportin’ at KPFK in Berkeley. Progressive/liberal media has been consistent in its unity with the mainstream on the question of Libya, revolutionary nationalist governments like Zimbabwe, and war in Africa, assuming their place in the continuum of the hegemonic narrative of empire. Much of the establishment Black press was only slightly better, refusing to criticize Obama directly, or doing so only obtusely, even when covering the anti-black violence of the NTC brigades. Tied to the two-party system, and especially the Democratic Party, the imperative to re-elect the undeserving Obama supersedes the duty to defend what was the most advanced country in Africa in regard to the human development of the population and a government that reached out to African Americans as members of the Pan-African nation. The Nation of Islam’s The Final Call’s coverage has been, on the other hand, exemplary.

Libya is the northern front in the re-assault on Africa. NATO countries engage in proxy war in Somalia while French troops continue muscularly to prop up the imposed government of Alassane Ouattara in Cote Ivoire, and now with troops on the ground in Central Africa, the U.S and Europe through AFRICOM has increasingly militarized their activities on the continent. These powers cannot abide African independence, nor will they allow China to continue to pursue its agenda in Africa unchallenged. As during the Cold War of the Twentieth Century, the US and EU again show their willingness to use African and Asian bodies in hot war to frustrate the interests of their competitors, this time capitalist-communist China. Where ever the U.S. and Europe are present in Africa, the countries are destabilized and in debt, and the people suffer. Despite their democratic rhetoric, their humanitarian rationalizations, and promises of economic growth, the Western presence in Africa, whether through diplomacy, covert and overt military intervention, economic investment, or settler channels, remains toxic. Now the poison flows through Libya, literally, as NATO has bombed both land and water with depleted uranium.

During the 1960s and 1970s, socialist and progressive sectors around the world recognized the heroism and thecorrectness of the Vietnamese people in their struggle against the U.S. inheritors of the French colonial project in Southeast Asia. The Vietnamese fought the most powerful military in the world and won the victory. Their struggle inspired revolutionaries across the Global South and among internal colonies in the Global North. Today Vietnam is a sovereign country.

Despite a number of independent journalists’ (e.g. Lizzie Phelan, Webster Tarpley, Stephen Lendmen, Gerald Perreira, and Thierry Meyssan) challenges to the dominant narrative on Libya, easily accessible on the internet and sometimes on cable news outlets like RT News, Libya still suffers from gross misrepresentations of the experiment in direct democracy and socialism embodied in the People’s Committees of the Jamahiriyah. Western professional progressives rarely take the vision expressed in the Green Book seriously, routinely falling into the “eccentric, flamboyant” Gaddafi” lazy reporting trap. The failure of what passes for leftist analysis in much of the U.S. and Europe to recognize the progressive and genuinely popular character of the Jamahiriyah makes them complicit in the disaster called the NTC that has befallen Libya. Nonetheless, the Libyan people continue to fight against the most powerful military alliance in the world, NATO. The NTC is nothing without NATO. The Green Resistance continues to fight. Libya is Vietnam. Can the Green Resistance rely on international support?

Libya is also Spain in the 1930s. During that struggle, the capitalist governments of the West stood by and watched the fascists bleed Republican Spain, despite material support from the Soviet Union, because in fact, they cared more about capitalist social relations and profits than they cared about democracy and the will of the Spanish people who elected the popular government. Today, they have destroyed the infrastructure of the most stable African country outside of Southern Africa, bombing them incessantly in support of racist, fascist and monarchist forces in the NTC who would have been defeated months ago if not for NATO air war. This time Russia failed to veto the key vote in the UN Security Council and can’t offer the same kind of material support, despite their distrust and defensive position vis-à-vis NATO. Their criticism of NATO since then, even as it helps challenge NATO’s narrative, still rings somewhat hollow. During the Spanish Civil War, progressive forces around the world organized themselves into international brigades to support the Spanish Republican and Loyalists forces materially and as brothers and sisters in arms. Can the international brigades today fly to Libya’s aid? Can African revolutionaries fight in Libya, knowing that the fight for Libya is the fight for Africa, and not care if they’re called mercenaries? What national African military will join the Green Resistance in its battle against a virulently anti-black, racist force in the NATO/NTC and the mercenaries they are now flying into Libya, like Xe (formerly Blackwater)?

Of course, now it is not so easy to offer material support or even ideological support to revolutionary movements. In the world of the Patriot Act, heightened security measures and full spectrum surveillance, one can quite quickly be arrested and disappeared for aiding and abetting “terrorism” if the group or movement one supports has been classified as a terrorist organization. Power has been very careful to police the degree to which groups and movements engaged in anti-imperialist and revolutionary struggle can be helped by exile and solidarity formations. The kind of fund raising and support that the ANC, the PAC, the PAIGC, the PLO, the IRA, the FMLN and similar movements enjoyed in the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s into the ‘90s is mostly illegal now. The governments of the NATO countries will not likely look easily on activists among their own citizens and residents dedicated to restoring the people’s government they have spent so much money and time bombing. The formation of a group like C.I.S.P.E.S. (Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador) or Witnesses for Peace who worked to support citizens and revolutionary parties in El Salvador and Nicaragua during the 1980s grows increasingly difficult in the current surveillance climate. Even so, those of us committed to African sovereignty, African continental and diasporic integration, to socialism and people’s democracy, and to a brighter future for humanity need to find ways to support the Green Resistance in Libya. We need to find ways to be international brigades for Libya. Free Libya is Green Libya.

More than two hundred years of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is long enough. Liberation struggles and revolutionary governments must be supported despite differences on some ideological points. The fate of an individual is not what is at stake. Despite his defamation in the mainstream Western press, Gaddafi is being mourned by millions in Africa and around the world. This attack has short-circuited the move toward African continental integration that Gaddafi championed. He acted independently in the interests of Libya and Africa, and offered real material support for the integration of Africa under one, gold standard currency, one army, and continental governing institutions. He supported revolutionary and national liberation struggles around the world. He was a genuine anti-imperialist. For many of us, the opinions of Minister Louis Farrakhan, Ms. Cynthia KcKinney and Warrior Woman of the Dine Nation matter more than the opinions expressed by the U.S. State Department and 10 Downing Street and disseminated by the New York Times, Le Figaro, CNN, AL Jazeera, et al. The Jamahiriyah is a genuinely popular government that has come under attack by the most powerful and advanced militaries in the world, yet they continue to hold out despite the loss of the revolutionary leader. Who speaks out? Who can help restore Libya and a united Africa? NATO, the UN and the NTC trivialized the African Union during this debacle, rendering the body all but ceremonial. Will they now stand up and assume the real leadership necessary to make themselves relevant, or is overcoming their class allegiance to the Western bourgeoisie just too much to fathom? That’s probably too much to expect from a class trained to protect the interests of its benefactors in order to protect its own narrow interests. I guess this great task is up to the world’s African workers and peasants.

W. Yusef Doucet is a faculty member of the Santa Monica College English Department. He co-founded and facilitated the Dyamsay Writers’ Workshop in Santa Monica, CA, the Third Root Writers’ Workshop in Pomona, CA, and a poetry reading series at the Velocity Café in Santa Monica, CA. Yusef is currently working on a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies at Claremont Graduate University. His research interests include Fanonian analysis, the policing effect of integrationist/post-racialist ideology and anti-blackness in the modern symbolic order. Yusef keeps a blog at freeignace.wordpress.com.

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Lenin on Colonialism

“For example, if tomorrow Morocco were to declare war on France, India on England, Persia or China on Russia, and so forth, those would be ‘just,’ ‘defensive’ wars, irrespective of who attacked first, and every socialist would sympathize with the victory of the oppressed, dependent, unequal states against the oppressing, slave-owning, predatory ‘great’ powers.”

 – Lenin, Socialism and War

“Socialists must not only demand the unconditional and immediate liberation of the colonies without compensation—and this demand in its political expression signifies nothing else than the recognition of the right to self-determination; they must also render determined support to the more revolutionary elements in the bourgeois-democratic movements for national liberation in these countries and assist their uprising—or revolutionary war, in the event of one—against the imperialist powers that oppress them.”

  — Lenin, The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination

“We welcome the close alliance of Moslem and non-Moslem elements. We sincerely want to see this alliance extended to all the toilers of the East. Only when the Indian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Persian, and Turkish workers and peasants join hands and march together in the common cause of liberation—only then will decisive victory over the exploiters be ensured.”

 – Lenin, To the Indian Revolutionary Association

“From these fundamental premises it follows that the Communist International’s entire policy on the national and colonial questions should rest primarily on a closer union of the proletarians and the working masses of all nations and countries for a joint revolutionary struggle to overthrow the landowners and the bourgeoisie. This union alone will guarantee victory over capitalism, without which the abolition of national oppression and inequality is impossible.”

 – Lenin, Draft Theses on the National and Colonial Questions

“[...] the Communist International should advance and theoretically substantiate the proposition that with the aid of the proletariat of the advanced countries, the backward countries can pass over to the Soviet system and, through definite stages of development, to communism, without going through the capitalist stage.”

 – Lenin, Report of the Commission on the National and the Colonial Questions

Video: Israel uses White Phosphorus & Attacks U.N. School in Beit Lahiya

Enver Hoxha: On Palestine, Zionism and Arab Liberation

WEDNESDAY
JULY 29, 1970

We Have Sympathy & Respect for the Arab People of Palestine

A delegation of «Al-Fatah», Movement for the National Liberation of Palestine, is coming to our country these days for an official visit. Yasser Arafat personally asked our embassy in Cairo for permission to send a delegation.

We have sympathy and respect for the Arab people of Palestine, because they are a brave people who are suffering. At the moment they are the only Arab people who are fighting all round the borders of Israel, while some Arab leaders, from those of Egypt to those of Lebanon, are merely talking, holding conferences, preparing… for compromises, etc.

The Palestinians, expelled from their land by the British colonialist government and from UNO in favour of Israel, are living in tents, in great hardship, in camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and elsewhere. The latest Israeli aggression increased the number of Palestinian refugees, so the only road of salvation left to them was that of the partisan war. And they began it, attacking the Israeli aggressors from outside, from Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, and from inside, in the territory occupied by Israel.

Thus, thanks to the struggle of the Palestinians, the Palestinian question has become an important national and international issue, which both the friends and the enemies of the Palestinian people are compelled to bear in mind and cannot fail to take into account.

Despite its nationalist tendencies, the «Al-Fatah» organization is progressive and democratic and the biggest and most powerful organization which, at the moment, has a correct line of struggle for the liberation of Palestine and the defeat of the anti-Arab, annexationist policy of the state of Israel, concocted by international Zionism and supported by the imperialists. This organization is not against the masses of the Jewish population whom, in its program, it accepts as citizens of the new Arab state of Palestine.

However, although the representatives of the feudal bourgeois cliques ruling in some Arab countries pose as pro the Palestinians’ struggle, they do not look kindly on this movement of resistance and, since they are unable to liquidate it, want to have it under control.

The resistance of the Palestinians has become a serious political and military obstacle, which these cliques are obliged to take into account. The King of Jordan, an agent of the British and the Americans, has made two or three attempts to liquidate the Palestinian partisans, who are stronger than this sold-out king. At these dangerous moments for the Palestinian guerrillas they ought to fight him to the end, to unite with the people of Jordan, in order to continue the war against Israel and American imperialism.

The Soviets and the Americans are making the law in the Middle East. The Egyptian leadership has fallen completely under the influence of the Soviets. Hussein of Jordan is a dyed-in-the-wool traitor, the Syrians are posing as somewhat «concerned», while the Lebanese trim their sails to the wind.

Nasser agreed in general to discuss the «Rogers Plan», which means to enter into negotiations and compromises and, in the end, «to make the peace» so greatly desired by Israel, in favour of that country and its American patron and in disfavour of the Arab peoples, especially the Palestinian people, against whom the savage attacks of the gendarmes of the ruling cliques sold out to foreigners, will commence later. With the signing of the «peace» the Soviets will turn this into a «colossal victory» for themselves. They will try to remain in Egypt and to dominate it. There is the danger that the Egyptian ports may become the ports of the Soviet Mediterranean fleet which emerged from the Black Sea. From the Mediterranean the Soviet revisionists intend to extend their colonies in Africa «in peaceful ways», in order to cross the seas and reach India. This is how they dream of achieving the empire of Alexander the Great, by conquering the peoples through the threat of arms from land and sea, through rubles and through their demagogy of a falsified socialism.

The «Soviet-American peace» in the Middle East will be a defeat for all the Arab peoples and an especially great obstacle for the Palestinian people. This kind of «peace» is a victory for the Soviet-American imperialists in general and for Israel in particular.

What will happen with the Palestinian people will be what happened with the Albanian people before the First World War. As is known, at that time large parts of Albania were divided by the imperialists of Europe among Serbia, Montenegro and Greece. And after they had thoroughly dismembered our Homeland at the Conference of London and through secret treaties, the Tzar’s Minister, Sazonov, in order to satisfy the appetite of Prince Nikola of Montenegro demanded that the city of Shkodra be handed over to the latter. On this occasion, one of the other wolves, the representative of French imperialism, said something which went down in history: «Sazonov wants to set fire to Europe to fry an omelette for Montenegro».

The enemies of the Arab peoples, the American imperialists and Soviet revisionists, will act and speak in a similar way when it comes to the question of the territorial rights of the heroic Palestinian people.

Only the armed struggle through to victory settles accounts with the wolves who attack peoples.

From “Reflections on the Middle East”

VI Congress of Emek Partisi

From En Marcha
# 1562 January 5 to 13, 2012

Resolution

We support the peoples who have rebelled for their rights and their freedom; we condemn the imperialist conspiracies against Syria and Iran.

Throughout 2011, the Arab peoples of North Africa and the Near East have risen one after another. They do not want to be victims of the consequences of the hegemony of monopoly capitalism nor to be subjected to poverty and unemployment, and they rejected the repression of the autocratic dictatorships that safeguarded such hegemony. The despotic regimes that have lasted for 30 to 40 years have been the main reason for the disorganization of the oppressed masses and have served as an obstacle to their attaining consciousness. The peoples who have risen up have achieved some victories but they have not been able to reap important fruits of this struggle, such as for example to achieve their own political power. Therefore, these reactionary bourgeois forces supported by Western imperialism have maintained or have tried to maintain their hegemony through the strengthening of their pillars with new collaborators, seeing that their hegemony was in difficulty.

The Arab peoples, who have risen up, have realized their potential and have tasted certain victories, which is why their struggles have still not been repressed in any country except for Libya. Despite their low level of consciousness and organization, the peoples are carrying forward their uprisings with an effort to try to overcome their weakness, and they insist on opposing the attacks by reactionary forces that have been organized especially by elements of political Islam, which has become more moderate and pro-American in almost all those countries.

We understand that the communist parties and organizations that are signing this document, gathered at the Sixth Congress of the Party of Labor of Turkey, express our pride and solidarity with the struggles of the masses of the people, not only in the Arab countries of North Africa and the Near East, but also in Europe, from Spain to Greece, and in Latin America, from Venezuela to Ecuador, for their social and popular rights and freedoms; as well we proclaim our support for the just struggle of the Palestinian people against the Zionist imperialism of Israel.

However, we are aware of the fact that our main weakness is the inadequate level of consciousness and organization of the peoples of the world, with a view to any process of struggle. The imperialists and their collaborators take advantage of this weakness in their efforts to renovate the weakened bases of their hegemony and to repress those struggles through ideological penetration and infiltration in those struggles of the peoples that imperialism claims to support, manipulating these struggles towards their own interests and eliminating the popular features of these struggles.

Western imperialism, which maintains hegemony in its hands and tries to strengthen its position in relation to the ascending imperialist powers, not only aims to reinforce its hegemony in the countries under its influence through the repression of the popular struggles, but also tries to establish its hegemony by extending its influence on the peoples and their struggles and using them as a tool in countries such as Syria and Iran, which have not yet been subjugated.

We do not support the regimes of either Assad or Khamenei. However, we stress the fact that the imperialist powers are intervening with the support of the reactionary forces in the region such as Turkey and the Saudis, in the name of support for the so-called “opposition” in Syria and Iran under the pretext of the struggle for “democracy” and “repression of the dictators”; these policies have nothing to do with the right of self-determination of the peoples or the democratic and social aspirations of peoples. We are opposed to imperialist interventions – economic as well as political and military – for whatever reason, whether they are called by their obliging collaborators or not, and we condemn such policies that only lead to war, bloodshed and suffering.

We call on the peoples of the world, especially the peoples of Syria and Iran, to be alert to the interventions and imperialist tricks such as those that have taken place in Libya, to show solidarity with the struggles of the peoples of the region and to support the fight against imperialism and its reactionary forces.

Ankara, December 2011

Communist Party of Albania
Communist Party of Benin
Party of Labor of Belgium
New Party of Cyprus
Marxist Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador
Communist Party of Spain (ML)
Organization for the Reconstruction of the Communist Party of Greece
Communist Party of the Workers of Tunisia
Emek Partisi of Turkey

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Southern CA Muslims Say FBI Agent Provocateur Dealt Drugs & Engaged in Sexual Blackmail

“…Agents Armstrong and Allen on several occasions talked about different individuals that they believed might be susceptible to rumors about their sexual orientation, so that they could be persuaded to become informants through the threat of such rumors being started. …”

Muslims Say FBI Informant Dealt Drugs While Snooping on Believers’ Sex Lives

By BRIDGET FREELAND

Courthouse News | February 24, 2011

LOS ANGELES (CN) – In a federal class action, Muslims claim the FBI hired an “agent provocateur” to infiltrate mosques and “indiscriminately collect personal information on hundreds and perhaps thousands of innocent Muslim Americans in Southern California.”

The class claims the agents had their snitch provide illegal drugs to Muslims and snoop on their sex lives, and that the fruitless “dragnet investigation” did not end until “members of the Muslim communities of Southern California reported the informant to the police because of his violent rhetoric, and ultimately obtained a restraining order against him.”

Represented by the ACLU and Council on American-Islam Relations, the three named plaintiffs say the FBI’s agent provocateur’s “violent rhetoric” about “jihad and armed conflict” disrupted their religious practice.

The class claims the FBI has been profiling Muslim communities since Sept. 11, 2001, and requested interviews with hundreds of Muslims, “often by sending FBI agents to appear unannounced” to their homes or workplaces, to question them about religious practices.

This despite the fact that in 2006, the FBI’s Assistant Director for the Los Angeles area, Stephen Tidwell, assured a Muslim group that the FBI would never send an undercover informant to spy on believers.

But in July 2006, FBI agents Kevin Armstrong and Paul Allen directed undercover informant Craig Monteilh to infiltrate the mosques in Southern California and paid him $6,000 to $11,000 per month to create video and audio recordings of Muslim activities, the plaintiffs claim. They add that Monteilh was provided with “sophisticated audio and video recording devices.”

Monteilh then publicly declared his Muslim faith during a prayer in front of hundreds of members of the Islamic Center of Irvine (ICOI), and immersed himself in the religion, the class says.

Monteilh went to 10 mosques in the area to interact with followers, and attended up to four mosques in one day. Armstrong and Allen ordered him to “gather as much information on as many people in the Muslim community as possible,” the class claims.

Armstrong and Allen told Monteilh “that they could get in a lot of trouble if people found out what surveillance they had in the mosques, which Monteilh understood to mean that they did not have warrants,” the complaint states. It continues: “Nonetheless, Agent Armstrong told Monteilh that the FBI had every mosque in the area under surveillance – including both the ones he went to and the ones he didn’t.”

Halfway through the 75-page complaint, the class claims: “Agents Armstrong and Allen were well aware that many of the surveillance tools that they had given Monteilh were being used illegally. Agent Armstrong once told Monteilh that while warrants were needed to conduct most surveillance for criminal investigations, ‘National security is different. Kevin is God.’ Agent Armstrong also told Monteilh more than once that they did not always need warrants, and that even if they could not use the information in court because they did not have a warrant, it was still useful to have the information. He said that they could attribute the information to a confidential source if they needed to.”

The class claims:

“Apart from the electronic surveillance program, Agents Armstrong and Allen also directed their surveillance at people on the basis of their religion by instructing Monteilh to look for and identify to them people with certain religious backgrounds or traits, such as anyone who studied fiqh (a strand of Islamic law concerning morals and etiquette), who was an imam or sheikh; who went on Hajj; who played a leadership role at a mosque or in the Muslim community; who expressed sympathies to mujahideen; who was a ‘white’ Muslim; or who went to an Islamic school overseas.”

They also told Monteilh to look particularly for people attracted younger Muslims, and to discuss extreme Islamic attitudes and leaders to observe people’s reactions, the class claims.

Monteilh was ordered to work under cover as a “fitness consultant,” and, following orders, he “worked out with Muslims in various gyms around the Orange County area and elicited a wide variety of information, including travel plans, political and religious views,” the class claims.

He collected names, phone numbers, email addresses and license plate numbers of mosque members and turned them over to his handlers, the class says.

The agents sought to collect incriminating information about certain Muslims – “such as immigration issues, sexual activity, business problems, or crimes like drug use. Agents Armstrong and Allen instructed Monteilh to pay attention to people’s problems, to talk about and record them, including marital problems, business problems, and petty criminal issues. Agents Armstrong and Allen on several occasions talked about different individuals that they believed might be susceptible to rumors about their sexual orientation, so that they could be persuaded to become informants through the threat of such rumors being started,” the complaint states.

The agents told Monteilh that “everybody knows somebody,” and then “explained” what that meant: “They explained that if someone is from Afghanistan, that meant that they would likely have some distant member of their family or acquaintance who has some connection with the Taliban. If they are from Lebanon, it might be Hezbollah; if they are from Palestine, it might be Hamas. By finding out what connections they might have to these terrorist groups, no matter how distant, they could threaten the individuals and pressure them to provide information, or could justify additional surveillance.

“Agents Armstrong and Allen also instructed Monteilh to engage in acts that would build his reputation as a devout Muslim who had access to black market items. On one occasion, Agents Armstrong and Allen instructed Monteilh to provide Vicodin to a person whose father was sick in a foreign country. On another occasion, Agent Allen instructed Monteilh to provide prescription anabolic steroids to another two individuals to similarly further his credibility, which he did.”

In early 2007, the agents told Monteilh “to start asking more pointedly about jihad and armed conflict, then to more openly suggest his own willingness to engage in violence,” according to the complaint. “Pursuant to these instructions, in one-on-one conversations, Monteilh began asking people about violent jihad, expressing frustration over the oppression of Muslims around the world, pressing them for their views, and implying that he might be willing or able to take action.

“In about May 2007, on instructions from his handlers, Monteilh told a number of individuals that he believed it was his duty as a Muslim to take violence actions, and that he had access to weapons. Many members of the Muslim community at ICOI then reported these statements to community leaders, including Hussam Ayloush. Ayloush both called the FBI to report the statements and instructed the individuals who had heard the statements to report them to the Irvine Police Department, which they did.

“As a community, ICOI also brought an action for a restraining order against Monteilh to bar him from the mosque. A California Superior Court granted the restraining order in June 2007.”

Monteilh’s identity was eventually revealed, “first in court documents where the FBI and local law enforcement revealed his role, and then through his own statements which were reported widely in the press,” the class claims.

Monteilh sued the FBI for $10 million in January 2010. As Courthouse News reported at the time, Monteilh claims he “was arrested in December 2007 and ‘forced under the color of authority by the FBI and its agents, to plead guilty to grand theft, suffer a felony conviction, and endure sixteen months in prison for work performed at the direction of the FBI.’” He also claimed that he was endangered by being placed in the general population in prison after it was revealed that he was an FBI snitch.

In the new class action, named plaintiff Sheikh Yassir Fazaga, an imam with the Orange County Islamic Foundation, says that he can no longer counsel congregants at the mosque because they fear surveillance.

Fazaga claims that since having contact with Monteilh, he “has also been subjected to secondary screening and searches upon return to the U.S. from various international trips, being held up between 45 minutes and three hours most times he travels.”

The complaint states: “By targeting Muslims in the Orange County and Los Angeles areas for surveillance because of their religion and religious practice, the FBI’s operation not only undermined the trust between law enforcement and the Southern California Muslim communities, it also violated the Constitution’s fundamental guarantee of government neutrality towards all religions.”

It adds that the 14-month “dragnet investigation did not result in even a single conviction related to counterterrorism.”

“Approximately 500,000 Muslims live in Southern California, more than 120,000 of them in Orange County, making the area home to the second-largest population of Muslims in the United States,” the complaint states.

The class demands damages from the FBI, its Director Robert Mueller, Assistant Director Steven Martinez, Agents Armstrong and Allen and three other agents, for violations the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments, the Privacy Act, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

The class also wants destruction of the information the FBI obtained illegally.

Its lead counsel is Peter Bibring with the ACLU of Southern California.

Source

Freedom Rider: Christopher Hitchens, White Man

by Black Agenda Report editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

There was nothing witty, cute, or endearing about the late Christopher Hitchens, a racist to the core whose association with the Left served only to discredit it. “Beneath his mutterings against ‘Islamofascism’ he was nothing more than an angry white guy who wanted brown people to be conquered or dead.” A man of many prejudices but no real loyalties or principles, he flowed with the money. “Why toil away as a left winger known only within that smaller group, when more money and media attention awaited a cheer leader for pax Americana and white supremacy?”

“In the end all his words amounted to nothing more than fighting for the rights of white people to control everyone else in the world.”

The British born writer Christopher Hitchens died of cancer last week. The outpouring of grief and praise for a man who can only be called a propagandist for barbaric ideologies may seem curious at first glance, but there is an ugly and logical explanation for the reaction.

Mr. Hitchens was for many years known as a leftist, a self-described Trotskyite. He wrote a column in The Nation magazine during that time, and was known for excoriating the likes of Henry Kissinger for the carnage he carried out in Vietnam and Southeast Asia that killed millions of people.

In more recent years Hitchens took a sharp turn in his writings and public statements and in the process became far more famous, and no doubt a lot richer. After the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, Hitchens came out of the closet and presented himself to the world as a full blown neo-con, an unconditional supporter of the Bush administration’s aggressions. So great was his love for the Bushites that he took the citizenship oath in a naturalization ceremony presided over by Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff.

Hitchens became a favorite of pundits, and with a body of prolific work and glib statements in the media, he was rarely out of the spotlight. Yet in the end all his words amounted to nothing more than fighting for the rights of white people to control everyone else in the world.

“Hitchens came out of the closet and presented himself to the world as a full blown neo-con, an unconditional supporter of the Bush administration’s aggressions.”

Hitchens’ descent into support for western imperialism was, as George Galloway put it, a metamorphosis “from butterfly back into slug,” but it wasn’t as sudden as it seemed. Like most criminals, Hitchens showed his true side earlier on. In 1992 he was invited to attend a protest opposing the quincentenary celebration of Columbus’ arrival in the western hemisphere. Hitchens made it clear that he was not at all put off by the genocide of Indians and enslavement of Africans. As he put it, “1492 was a very good year and deserves to be celebrated with great vim and gusto.” According to him, the coming of the European and the barbarity which ensued is just the way things happen, and in fact all for the betterment of humankind.

“But those who view the history of North America as a narrative of genocide and slavery are, it seems to me, hopelessly stuck on this reactionary position. They can think of the Western expansion of the United States only in terms of plague blankets, bootleg booze and dead buffalo, never in terms of the medicine chest, the wheel and the railway . . . But it does happen to be the way that history is made, and to complain about it is as empty as complaint about climatic, geological or tectonic shift.”

In other words, it is part of the natural order of the universe for the world and its people to be under the rule of whites, with people of color preferably under their control whenever possible.

The political ascension of George W. Bush and the beginning of the war on terror was all the opening that Hitchens, a leftist poseur, needed. Why toil away as a left winger known only within that smaller group, when more money and media attention awaited a cheer leader for pax Americana and white supremacy?

“Once again we see that the endless aggression is not really opposed by most Americans, and they prove it by lionizing the likes of the late Hitchens.”

His fans may argue with the assessment, calling his unqualified support of the Iraq occupation a “mistake,” when it was no such thing. Hitchens decided to make a living, a very good one, as a professional white man. Beneath his mutterings against “Islamofascism” he was nothing more than an angry white guy who wanted brown people to be conquered or dead.

The liberals who swooned over his British accent and his media savvy may not want to admit it, but they also admired his openly imperialist and indeed racist point of view. He claimed to be sickened by Saddam Hussein’s tyranny, but what he really wanted was for the Arabs to be subservient, in no position to question or to oppose the powerful white-run nations of the west. As for tyranny, if people who looked like him were carrying it out, it wasn’t so bad after all.

The bizarre levels of admiration on display for this man are symptomatic of a much larger problem. Once again we see that the endless aggression is not really opposed by most Americans, and they prove it by lionizing the likes of the late Hitchens. They too think that powerful white people have the right to lay waste to entire regions of the world and to the human beings within them. In fact, they don’t think that non-white people are really human beings with the rights they assume for themselves.

Hitchens may have been in the minority in publicly proclaiming the rightness of mass murder but that doesn’t mean he was alone. Now that he has passed away, it is clear that his ideas were loved by many people, who also hearken back to a time when white was openly declared right, and with ample doses of “vim and gusto” too.

Source

‘This is like apartheid’: ANC veterans visit West Bank

Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, a member of the South African delegation, in the West Bank city of Hebron

By Donald Macintyre in Hebron

Friday, 11 July 2008

Veterans of the anti-apartheid struggle said last night that the restrictions endured by Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories was in some respects worse than that imposed on the black majority under white rule in South Africa.

Members of a 23-strong human-rights team of prominent South Africans cited the impact of the Israeli military’s separation barrier, checkpoints, the permit system for Palestinian travel, and the extent to which Palestinians are barred from using roads in the West Bank.

After a five-day visit to Israel and the Occupied Territories, some delegates expressed shock and dismay at conditions in the Israeli-controlled heart of Hebron. Uniquely among West Bank cities, 800 settlers now live there and segregation has seen the closure of nearly 3,000 Palestinian businesses and housing units. Palestinian cars (and in some sections pedestrians) are prohibited from using the once busy streets.

“Even with the system of permits, even with the limits of movement to South Africa, we never had as much restriction on movement as I see for the people here,” said an ANC parliamentarian, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge of the West Bank. “There are areas in which people would live their whole lifetime without visiting because it’s impossible.”

Mrs Madlala-Routledge, a former deputy health minister in President Thabo Mbeki’s government, added: “While I want to be careful not to characterise everything that I see here as apartheid, I just do find comparisons in a number of places. I also find differences.”

Comparisons with apartheid have long been anathema to majority Israeli opinion, though they have been somewhat less taboo since the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, last year warned that without an early two-state agreement Israel could face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights.

Fatima Hassan, a leading South African human rights lawyer, said: “The issue of separate roads, [different registration] of cars driven by different nationalities, the indignity of producing a permit any time a soldier asks for it, and of waiting in long queues in the boiling sun at checkpoints just to enter your own city, I think is worse than what we experienced during apartheid.” She was speaking after the tour, which included a visit to the Holocaust Museum at Yad Vashem and a meeting with Israel’s Chief Justice, Dorit Beinisch.

One prominent member of the delegation, who declined to be named, said South Africa had been “much poorer” both during and after apartheid than the Palestinian territories. But he added: “The daily indignity to which the Palestinian population is subjected far outstrips the apartheid regime. And the effectiveness with which the bureaucracy implements the repressive measures far exceed that of the apartheid regime.”

Members of the delegation – the first of its kind – visited Nablus as well as towns and villages bordering the separation barrier, including Na’alin where a temporary curfew was imposed after joint Israeli-Palestinian demonstrations against the barrier.

The visit was organised by Israeli human rights groups which co-operate with Palestinians committed to non-violent campaigns against Israeli occupation.

In Hebron’s main Shuhada Street, the South African delegation was plunged into a confrontation after one of the local settlers’ leaders disrupted the tour by unleashing a barrage of abuse through a megaphone at one of the Israeli guides. Amid angry arguments, police arrested three of the Israeli guides.

Mrs Madlala Routledge exclaimed: “This is ridiculous. Why are they arresting our guides and leaving the man with the megaphone?”

Dennis Davis, a high court judge and one of the South African delegation’s several Jewish members, told the extreme right-wing Hebron settlers’ leader Baruch Marzel: “These provocations didn’t come from us. I’m Jewish and I look at this and I say to myself, how can I feel fear from other Jews?”

Andrew Feinstein, a former ANC parliament member, said that the visit to Yad Vashem had been “extremely moving” because his mother had been a Holocaust survivor who lost many members of her family. “As you walk into Yad Vashem you see a quote that says in effect you should know a country not only by what it does but what it tolerates,” he said. “So I found it very shocking to then come and here and see footage of teenagers heaping abuse on Palestinian children as they come out of school, and throwing stones at them. And that this should be done in the name of Judaism I find totally reprehensible.

“What the Holocaust teaches us more than anything else is that we must never turn our heads away in the face of injustice.”

The delegation’s final formal statement made no mention of comparisons with apartheid and Judge Davis said he thought the use of the term in the Middle East context was “very unhelpful”.

He added: “The level of social control I’ve seen here, separate roads, different number plates [between Palestinian and Israeli cars] may well be more cynically pernicious than what we have ever had. But this is a country that is really about how there is going to be divorce and we were always a marriage.” Ms Hassan herself said she thought the apartheid comparison was a potential “red herring”.

Israelis point out there are no South-African-style laws segregating Israeli and East Jerusalem Arabs from Israeli Jews in public spaces.

The delegation yesterday urged international support for the “new and small movement of Palestinian-Israeli joint non-violent struggle”. And its members stressed their understanding of Israeli security needs. Mr Feinstein said: “I completely understand the fears of Israelis … but at the same time we have seen for ourselves and been told about all sorts of measures that don’t seem to be in terms of security and in some instances could if anything undermine security of state.”

The delegation also visited the Parents’ Circle – a joint organisation of Israeli and Palestinian families bereaved by the conflict. Ms Hassan said this had been at once the most “depressing and inspiring” visit of the trip.

Source

EMEP: Provincial congresses completed

ISTANBUL

Who died in the struggle for working-class revolutionaries special honor for the opening speech of the President of the EMEP Istanbul Provincial Trust In fact, the language of the discourses of democracy, the AKP government’s reduction in its policies and vice versa, he said. Who want democracy, for freedom, everyone who is opposed tutuklandığına remarkable fact, noted that 5 thousand prisoners BDP’linin.

The AKP’s own country to bring democracy to neighboring countries which claim to democracy, freedom bombs on the Kurdish people who want real yağdırdığını that the AKP government adopted it as its task to protect the interests of the imperialist powers in the region said.

Vandal’s organize

And workers to increase with each passing day that the attacks against the real, asked to be removed from severance pay, flexible working and asked to apply to the regional minimum wage, he added. In fact, urban renewal and public housing also said that the problem will grow.

All these attacks against the workers, the public-laborers, women, young people and stressed that they have to organize the public the real, the People’s Democratic Congress (NGO) also noted that it is a tool.

Attacks against the Kurdish people but also for workers pointed out that fact, “Anyone who says this is why labor must go with the Kurdish problem,” he said.

SHOULD unite

“In our country, a battle which lasted for 30 years, workers, working people, a bomb on them sending their children to the mountains, who lead the AKP government are faced with,” said Leather-Binali Thai Business Tuzla branch president, said the arrest of freedom, those who want to special prosecutors.

Workers, public workers and Thai people who note that the merger of the squares, Bell and leather workers in trade unions because they are SAVRANOGLU telling their troubles, “I just lived in them for using their constitutional rights. So need to unite, “he said.

Branch Manager Training You No. 2 in the Hasan Soil public sector workers and workers must unite, the contribution of EMEP’in it said it would be great.

Councillor Ibrahim Dogan Kartal Municipality of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality and also warned the people of urban transformation.

POLICY OF WORKERS

Sabri Topcu, Deputy Chairman of the EMEP, 12 September, the slaughter of thousands of people recalling the name of democracy, “the problem of the system, the layout problem. Article 82, but Sept. 12 changed the Constitution, the laws have not changed. This is why the problem system problem, “he said.

Imperialism would have left their children in case of continuation of such attacks is a beautiful language in the world will not bring artillery, for the people, brought together in a common struggle of the workers should be organized, he said. Artillery, “the class has to make policy for the power of workers. There is only one correct. EMEP is right also. Wherever we were, let’s policy, the party, let us explain to the public, “he said.

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ORGANIZED

Following the speeches of the delegates took the floor guest.

“I started to work as child labor in textile, taken from school at age 12. I was a young woman, I became the mother of textile workshops. Managers bosses have lost my child because of the pressure, the hospital’s been left alone in front of the time, I realized I should have thought about and organized. I joined the Labour Party of such “idea Akgul said textile workers, 5 women murdered each day goes, every year 80 thousand workers spent in work accidents, recorded live in a country where thousands of workers. Akgul, “a working shipyard worker falls jetty, divers searching for it finds the body of another worker. Disorganization such a thing. Even when you have no idea of ​​the happens. EMEP’te organized for it to be meaningful, “he said. 10 trade union formed by the Union Platform Emphasizing the importance of trade union power Union Akgul, “the districts of the trade unions of workers, kıraathanelerine, tea is not going olacaklarına, the opposition can not be birleşmiyorsa with the NGO,” he said. Akgul, EMEP’in said that the first duty should be to organize the women.

We can not talk WITHOUT UNIVERSAL

EMEP’te is organized for many years, the party who said that school is a dock worker Ali Dogan, “If you are going to be graduating and working as Memet Kılınçaslan olabilmeliyim party,” he said.

The bosses at Tuzla shipyards in reducing the number of workers, Yalova not stop moving the deaths that Dogan, arise where the trade unions with workers ‘struggle, workers’ caucuses and the road next to the workers when there is a problem, he said.

Dogan, Universal newspaper without reading the discussion be done daily, every worker should be taught in the Universal said.

Universal Culture Magazine Editorial Director Nuray Sancar, said the work carried out within EMEP’in intellectuals.

Hunter Revolution lawyer criticized the AKP Government policies regarding women.

Onur Aydin, speaking on behalf of Labour Youth, young people under the umbrella organization of the party struggles to büyüteceklerini said.

UNIONS MUST BE A PARTY TO Kurdish Question

Sayyed, who spoke on behalf of the EMEP Istanbul Provincial Organisation Leo gave his speech made the following statements: “The Prime Minister apologized to the people of Dersim. The Prime Minister today that region is cut off people’s suffering knows and them knowing that the apostle of democracy. This is really no excuse for the war policies of the last gonna wish it, to stop the fighter jets, 5 thousand BDP’li politicians free to leave. CHP also have to confront its own history, in the eyes of the AKP fails to do what you do not go one step further in the eyes of the Dersimis. Discharged in the struggle for survival as thousands of workers coming from the village give metropolises. Today, the PKK announced that the workers are being resisted union recognition. It divides the workers at the factory boss. This is why the unions to resolve the Kurdish problem peacefully and on the basis of equality must be a party.”

Those in attendance

Leather-Business Tuzla branch president of the Congress Binali Thai, Harb-business Anatolian Side Branch President Hussein over, Cooperative Thesis No. 5 Branch President-Business Rabia Özkaraca, Road No. 1 Branch-Business President Michael Arcan, the Haber-1 No. ‘lu Branch President Ahmet Karatay, Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality and the City of Eagle Councillor Ibrahim Dogan, President of Branch No. 1 of all Bel-Sen Kadri Sword, No. 2 Branch Manager Training You Hasan soil, EMO, Haber-Sen, the SES Sisli Branch managers also attended.

—————

IZMIR

Organization of the Labour Party in Izmir Province, 6 Congress made the day before the local Victims of Ataturk Stadium Referees. EMEP and EMEP, Deputy Chairman of the General President of the Selma Gurkan Varlı’nın Abdullah also attended the congress, in resisting the demands of the workers took part in SAVRANOGLU and Hugo Boss.

Who participated in the resistance and the concentration of establishments sendikalaşan new congress hall, hung, “Imperialism and the War Against Business, Peace, Freedom” and “not be American Shield” drew attention to the signs.

In his opening speech the President of Congress in Izmir Province Jabbar blacksmith, who teach the AKP’s mercy even in periods of the junta, told everyone to pay obeisance to inhibit. Smith, chauvinism, as the winds of democratic forces in Izmir estirilmeye attempted, to do propaganda for peace and brotherhood, he added.

‘POLİTİKLEŞMELİ WORKERS’

President of the rostrum chanting slogans from the EMEP Selma Gurkan, acquired rights of the working class all over the world to speak with the crisis began by telling how they received. In Turkey, the dismissals, showing the effect of overtime and slavery working conditions of workers to organize activities to the crisis, stating that in the Gurkan, the working class should be organized as a political or vested rights of the working class at the first time gasbedeceğini stressed the rise of the bourgeoisie. The only way to starting your own power, the working class, union with the Kurdish people’s struggle for freedom and unity of faith to other parts of society, he said. Every segment of society trying to put pressure on the AKP government said Gurkan, “trying to give the Kurds and Alevis setting. Trade unionists trying to parse. Arresting intellectuals. Izmir municipality and trade unionists in the operation, the Prime Minister’s apology in Dersim, the AKP’s ‘I want to Izmir and Dersim’ must düşünmememiz serzenişinden independent, “he said. Democratic Peoples’ Congress (NGO) formed by touching on the importance of unity Gurkan, the words “If you fail to be together, baby Ryan, Ugur Kaymaz and Ceylan Önkol’a conscience that can not pay our debts,” he concluded.

‘Combine the power of the AKP stop’

BDP Council Member Hayri Fever Party, evaluated the developments in the international arena, the AKP government in Turkey through the struggle for democracy and freedom of expression has been asked to being closed. Prime Minister’s apology evaluating Dersim Fire, “the AKP government, has to face in the 80-year history of the republic. Because Dersim, the Kurdish question, and that denial is a product of politics can not be assessed independently. Lighted in the dark on this, “he said.

‘Trade union struggles SİYASALLAŞMALI’

Single Food-Business Advisor to the Governor General Gursel, Kose, adopt the Kurdish problem in these situations, capital, language, religion and attacked anyone regardless of race, he said. “That’s Hugo Boss and SAVRANOGLU resisting. But this fight siyasallaşmalıdır. The trade unions, labor organizations, may be peace without entering into the work? “Said Kose, combative trade union power of trade unions came together and formed a union that fights for the Union, not only economic demands, but also women’s, youth, the environment will fight against the invasion is noted in many fields, such as . Leather-Business Branch Chairman of Maku Alagoz, workers, women, Kurds, Alevis, is the problem of students and unite themselves to the problem by asking what other workers stressed the need for unification. Ramis, Scott BES Izmir Branch President, highlighted the importance of combining political struggle with the trade union struggle.

The speech in resisting WORKERS

Resistance and the Hugo Boss factory in front of the sacked workers Gülten Genghis, the constitutional rights for the use of trade union rights are not unionized jobs have been booted, and now the interior in the direction of his friends said applied pressure.

Aydin Gençaslan SAVRANOGLU workers, the new boss wants to go to get compensation from them, saying, “We passed the size of the work material, we want to work decently. Each one of us with asthma, bronchitis, diseases such as I have. Women have children but treatment can be friends. We live in what era? “He said.

Schneider succeeded in unionization in the working Cihan workers, the next tasks in the industrial region of Cigli organize unorganized workplaces, he said.

DEU AUDIO Workplace Representative Gunseli Ugur, only the right to health care workers gasbedilmediğinden, speaking of the decree law of privatization in health, he said the last strokes.

UNION emphasis came to the fore

NGO Delegate Semra Uzunok Izmir, this congress is a way of salvation, and all the oppressed against the AKP-CHP said they are not without options, it is everyone’s duty to strengthen the unity, he said.

Spokesman of the period in Barka EGEÇEP Ertugrul, he is an American magazine, read an article about Arab baharıyla began by telling. Determinations by Labor Party there, said he wrote much earlier, “So this party, to interpret the world and Turkey. Environment is also the right of the struggle of this party is still here. Capital, energy resources, and the waters are attacking. However, this can not continue like this, “he said.

The Executive Board Member Ozer is EGEÇEP Akdemir, local environmental resistance trapped in the platform must be bridged and HDK’nin revealed a very important opportunity in this regard, he said. Poet and Author, Asim Gonen, buluşturulması art should be pointed out that the class struggle. (Izmir / UNIVERSAL)

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ANKARA

CALL FOR JOINT FIGHT AGAINST WAR POLICIES

Labour Party (EMEP), “Imperialism and the War Against Business, Peace, Freedom” launched şiarıyla and conference process was completed in Ankara.

EMEP Ankara Provincial Organization 6 Congress of South Stage Yilmaz was the day before. The AKP government’s policies and the war continued, both inside and outside workers announced that they would fight for the all-out attack against the laws.
“No to war, long live the brotherhood of peoples”, “Business, peace, freedom” slogans from a large number of trade union congress, was the guest of the democratic mass organizations and political party leaders.

In his opening speech, Deputy Chairman of the EMEP Haydar Kaya, drew attention to the hypocritical attitude of the AKP carried out over the Dersim. Kumar, “Erdogan said Dersimis apologized, today the people of Dersim, continues to rain bombs on the Kurds,” he said.

‘WAR bill paying Workers’

Ankara Provincial Chairman of the EMEP Sağdıç Principle of Light, the AKP government has expressed okuttuğunu grace period of September 12. Government and domestic politics, and foreign policy that uses the language of war Sağdıç, called on to fight together against the politics of war.

Referring to discussions of paid military Sağdıç, 30 thousand dollar bill for the war policies of non-poor people’s children would have to pay with their lives, he added.

Referring to the light on women’s murders, murders of women struggle against the work, bread, drew attention to the importance of presenting the freedom struggle.

Countries in the world and the bankruptcy of capitalism that says Ankara Provincial Co-Chair of the BDP Vuranok Meral, in search of new market capitalism is targeting the Kurds, he said. Now, “I wonder whether today was nobody,” but, “How many people were taken,” he came to a state that asks Vuranok, believed in freedom, peace and called on all forces to fight together.

AKP KHK’lerle function of the Assembly expressed the CAP Provincial Board Member Arif finished Basa, said there were an open lawlessness. Organized attack against the forces of law stated that the Basa, the answer could only be said that the organized forces.

CALL unions

Organized Industrial Zone in Xinjiang working metal worker Unaldı War, touched on the rights gaspları and layoffs. Unaldı, trade unions, “the boss of organized industrial zones, everything between the two lips. Come here to start work, we also let you, “he made the call.

Universal Newspaper, Sultan Özer Ankara representative, the workers and working people taking power through which the growing Evrensel’in difficult process in the country was becoming more and more important, he said. Under the pressure of the organs of power in almost all the newspapers and the press spokesman of the government stating that they are becoming Ozer, Evrensel’in more laborers to be taught to read and made the call. Sağdıç re-elected president of the provincial elections held in the light of Policy. (London / Universal)

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ESKISEHIR

YOUTH CONGRESS ATTENDS walk

Eskisehir Province before the Labor Youth Organization convention, congress delegates and conducted a walk Pandora Wedding Hall, accompanied by slogans.

Speaking on behalf of the management board of the Congress President Abraham Akgun Eskisehir Province, workers and laborers taken mangle, oppression and exploitation increased with each passing day, the shadow of imperialism created the climate of war and the growing chauvinism, work, peace and freedom in the provincial congress in şiarıyla gerçekleştirdiklerini said.

Organising Secretary of the United Fuat Fabric, Metal-strike from the Labor Party and Universal periods in Eskisehir and the other provinces, the newspaper constantly reminding them that they, too, would be with them always stressed that the Labour Party and the Universal newspaper.

6 Organisation of Aydin Province Congress, EMEP, Deputy Chairman Abdullah Varli were present. Many political parties and democratic mass organization representatives attended the congress. Newly elected president of the provincial Attorney Advisor Hicran.

Chairman of the Provincial Congress, a new provincial organization Kirsehir Hasan Altınşık, şiarını all the people in the party congress called on to fight to accomplish more.

MERSIN

MERSIN WORKER PARTICIPATION WAS GREAT

Organisation, the speeches delivered in Mersin Province has come forward calls to unity and struggle.

130 days left behind the direnişleriyle Mersin port workers attended the congress. Nedim Koroglu participating in the congress, Deputy Chairman of EMEP, the AKP government period, unemployment, poverty, hunger, said they were facing more attacks such as a raise. Education and health, which expressed to customize the Koroglu, the government now says the severance indemnity diktiğini eye. Referring to Prime Minister Erdogan’s Dersim özrüne Koroglu, “Kurdish problem is the problem of Dersim. No one örtmemeli the top. Apology or something it would not work. The identity of the Kurdish people, culture, mother tongue, is the value of everything he recognizes an apology, “he said.

Van after the earthquake in the urban transformation of government, providing lesson where it stated that proponents of rent Koroglu, “it is used for urban regeneration. Now, with the Decree çıkarıyorlar laws without asking anyone. The result of this, “he said.

CALL FOR TURKISH-business

Speaking at the congress in Port Worker November Kilic, said not enough support for the ongoing resistance of the port has called for unity. Previous resistance, unions, political parties that had seen them more Sword, Port-Business, criticized the attitude. Addressing the Turkish-Business management, Sword, “There are a lot of Kurdish workers. Whether a day is a pattern of unfair to the Kurds. Peace in the fraternity, as well. Damn you, such as the head of the confederation, “he said.

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GAZIANTEP

POWER SHOULD BE FIGHTING FOR

Member of the EMEP GYK İlbay Ilhan, Gaziantep Provincial Congress in his speech pointed out that the global economic crisis.

Greece, Italy, to rescue the situation after the crises of the imperial states, and until yesterday they received a common attitude of democracy, elections, such as the words were uttered, but the order for the protection of the public will forget everything in two days left unchecked governments, the governments were left technocrat.

Fenugreek Fenugreek strike lasted 74 days old worker, Mehmet Celik recalled, “He knew that after the strike, reach a point, only the working class by fighting within the law. This is why working class of Turkey will never sacrifice the power struggle, “he said.

Speaking on behalf of the youth labor Sezin Ugur, youth riots took place in the world and in Turkey, but Turkey, noting that this situation occurs very unorganized manner, all segments of the youth around their own demands of organized labor in his youth called for a fight.

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ADANA

CALL FOR FIGHTING ADANA’DA

6 organization EMEP Adana Province Altıhan music hall was the usual convention. Speaking at the congress, President of the Seville City Tool, the AKP trying to intimidate the opposition and said that war against each segment. Adana, anti-democratic practices are widespread in the tool that transfers, in every action, the sound is cut and the penalties that everyone said that these groups are asked to be kept under pressure and called for struggle against oppression.

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KAYSERI

I communists AKP MÜSLÜMANSA

The Labour Party Kayseri 6 Hall of the Provincial Congress, Provincial Directorate of Culture was the usual. Approximately 150 people attended the Provincial Congress, delegate of the NGO Tacer Isaac, Egitim-Sen Branch Chairman Unsal Sadat, Haci Bektas-i Veli Association President Kenan Akpinar, Kayseri Province Alevi Cultural Centre and SDP President Sadat Arrow Representative Armanç Lightning also made a speech.

Text metal worker who spoke at the congress Stars, “I make prayer, worship as a Muslim I am a worker makes. AKP supposedly defending Islam, but ‘give workers the right to sweat dries.’ Called even if it does not fit. Theirs Müslümanlıksa, I communists,” he said.

Labor Party Member of GYK Aslandogan Jacob, the Wall Street invasions, Europe, strikes and riots in the Arab world should be read correctly, in the light of developments in all of Turkey’s oppressed segments of the parties to act together HDK’yı care about the request, he said.

After speeches of the delegates, the annual report and financial report, unanimously acquitted, the elections were made available. Provincial elections held re-elected as President Ismet Gümüşoluk. EMEP’in Kayseri Provincial Administration occurred the following names: Ismet Gümüşoluk, Adile Flower, Action Sarioglu Aslandogan, Metin Yıldız, Murat Arpaci, Hope Eagle, Veli Sahin.

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U.S. Ally Saudi Arabia executed a citizen accused of “witchcraft”

December 17, 2011

The dictatorial and corrupt feudal regime of Saudi Arabia has executed 73 people since January. The last execution is by beheading in public and has suffered a saber citizen Amina Nasser Ben Abdelhalim Jawf province accused of practicing “witchcraft”. The “apostasy” is also subject to capital punishment.

This regime criminal assaults today Syria, Libya destroyed, participated in the invasion of Iraq and controlling the reactionary movement of the Muslim Brotherhood seeks to impose on the Arab masses their tyranny under the boot of Israel and NATO.

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The lynching of Gaddafi: Image of human sacrifice and return to barbarism

December 11, 2011

The war for “democracy” is the postmodern version of “holy war”, naturally sacred democratic character of its U.S. sponsor

By: Jean-Claude Paye (pink-blindada.info)

At the time of the dissemination of images of the lynching of Muammar Gaddafi, our leaders showed signs of a strange pleasure. “Strange Fruit” [1], such images immediately bring to mind the memory of others, the hanging of Saddam Hussein, executed on the very day of Eid al-Adha, the Muslim feast of sacrifice. Both cases we are immersed in a religious structure, replacing the sacrifice of the ram [2] for human sacrifice, restores the original image of the Goddess-Mother. Invest in addition to the Old Testament and nullifies the act of speaking. This reduces religion without the fetish book [3].

Another has no law and is a simple invitation to the enjoyment of death as a spectacle.

Thanks to the image, the will to power is unlimited. The transgression ceases to have limits, as in the rite of sacrifice, in space and time and becomes constant. It echoes the ongoing violation of the right order from the founding act of the attacks of September 11, 2011.

Locked away in the tragedy

The way he was treated the body of Muammar el-Qaddafi reveals the tragedy experienced by the Libyan people. His body was subject of two special treatment, a double violation of the symbolic order that was inserted in that society. Instead of being buried on the day of his death, as required by Muslim rites, his body remained exposed to the gaze of the curious for 4 days in a refrigerator. This exhibition was followed by burial in a secret place, despite the request that his wife had sent to the UN that will be handed over the body.

This double decision of the new “power” Libyan people put in a situation that already known in Greek tragedy. By preventing the family buried the body, the new political power takes over the space of the symbolic order. By the removal of any link between the “law of men” and the “law of the gods”, the National Transitional Council mergers and claims the monopoly of the sacred, thereby putting politics above.

The decision of the NTC family to prevent the realization of the funeral and the corpse exhibit aims to suppress the significance of the body to keep in view only the meaning of death. The order to enjoy the image of murder should not find any limit. The fetish perpetuates repetition compulsion. The drive then becomes independent and goes, regardless of one image to another image of the dead in the image of the execution of death. Its function is to increase the will to power.

Owning what should be

The desecration of the body is therefore one element of your fetish. The essential thing is the pictures of the lynching of Gaddafi. Captured through a cell phone, these images occupy the media space and are constantly reproduced. Real-time break in our daily lives. We capture in spite of ourselves. We then we ourselves become part of the stage and that in film drive, lynching only becomes an act of sacrifice by the gaze-object. The images show people that take pictures and enjoy the show filmed. These people exhibit the instant of the gaze. What is presented as an offering is not the object but the sense that it offers to the eye, to own what should be seen.

The lynching as an image is a Western tradition. When shooting his victims, members of the Ku Klux Klan and human sacrifice exhibited as a spectacle. The treatment given to Gaddafi is part of that ‘culture’. It differs, however, one aspect of it. The erection of the actions of the KKK had a strong ritual, transmitted the image of an underground social order.

In the case of the lynching of Gaddafi, the captured images via cell phones are free of any significant, become more real than reality, they colonize reality that actually exists, then only annihilation. These images show the fragmentation of society and thus, the omnipotence of imperial action. They show a world that is invested permanently. We face the horror and we inject the psychosis. Destroy any relationship with the other and only appeal to Interior, monads whose consent to seek.

Unlike a language that we join a “we”, the image goes to each individual separately. Prevents any social bond, all forms of symbolization. Is the paradigm of a society governed by the monads. These images reveal so much about the conflict itself not only on the state of our societies, as well as future plans for Libya: a permanent war.

The sacrifice of a scapegoat

These images show the execution of a scapegoat. Update the notion of mimetic violence that Girard developed in his interpretation of the New Testament [4]. Through repetition of the sacrifice, the images we impose a purposeless violence. This becomes compulsive. While the scapegoat serves as a catalyst to violence, the truth is that, contrary to what Girard says, can not stop it. Peace will only be temporary and not more than the preparation of a new war. Every sacrifice is a call to the completion of another. After the destruction of Libya must come that of Syria, then Iran … Violence becomes infinite and founder.

As Christians in the statements, comments on media images of the lynching of Gaddafi become the scapegoat scapegoat. If Gaddafi is the victim of a lynching because “they wanted.” Not a victim of external aggression but supposedly resulted from a domestic law. His execution is not the result of his will to resist but the fulfillment of personal destiny. René Girard also enunciated this procedure to refer to Christ. The figure of Christ leads to a shift in the notion of scapegoat to the sacrificial victim offered to “purge” the original sin.

That way, free of any debt symbolic of all the social body, these images and comments on them participating in systematic investment of symbolic Law, and the permanent state of exception, which was established after the attacks of 11 in September 2001. Sacralized political power supplants the symbolic order.

Regression: the language of unification image of the goddess-Mother

These images make us return to a stage where human sacrifice was central in the social organization. Constitute a return to the main obsession of unification with the mother [5]. Ethnological work, and psychoanalysis, we have shown that human sacrifice is a return to a maternal structure. Love and sacrifice are the attributes of a social organization that does not distinguish between order and political and symbolic order. Paradigms are a matriarchal society that operates here the fusion of the individual with maternal power.

These images are part of a long Christian tradition of investment that serves as the foundation of the Old Testament. The story of Abraham is the moment that establishes the prohibition of human sacrifice. The death of Christ, however, is the investment of the sacrifice of Isaac. Instead of replacing the animal child-Messiah is the son who becomes a ram [6].

In the Old Testament, the sacrificial animal’s death is the death of primitive god. It symbolizes the sacrifice and a real shift toward language: “If there is a god, this is in the words of alliance (language)” [7]. This movement opens the existence of a producer of metaphor, transformation of reality. The Shift and metaphor, which are at the core of this story, are the procedures for establishing the law of language [8]. The law’s language is no registration of the identity of the word and object. In the conflict of Libya, we are situated, from the beginning, outside of language. Gaddafi is a tyrant, because they qualify. The massacres of his regime need not be verified, simply affirming that happen. The image of the dictator is sufficient. It integrates faces no contradiction or anything real. It’s more real than reality.

The aim of any symbolic order

The law of language is the recognition that language is above all the other. It is the acknowledgment by man of his own incompleteness. Once the concrete is symbolization, instilling individual’s dependence upon the other, they start a process of mutual recognition and, in this way, the formation of a humane society [9]. This introduces a symbolic debt [10], a system of relationships in which the individual finds his place and where it’s not your own father. This debt, as opposed to original sin, has a unifying character as it places man in relation to the other from becoming.

Gaddafi was imperfectly inserted into the global capitalist system. Still worked in accordance with values ​​from the traditional society, especially the gift as a creator of social ties. He was badly affected by the abandonment of his “friends” Sarkozy, Berlusconi and Tony Blair … [11]. Probably thought that the gifts had made them had established a mutual recognition system that guaranteed some protection. This shows that he had not understood the nature of capitalism. In this system, every social relationship is abolished. While in ancient societies the exchange of objects serves as foundation to the relationship between men, in capitalism the commodity and money are subjects. Those who received the gifts of Gaddafi could only see them as advances for something that by right. The dark gods of this society can not be other than the markets.

Images of enjoyment

By the law of language, man is distinguished from the nature of the goddess-mother who has no inside or outside. The murder, instead of being founder, is abolished and give access to the word. Is then established human order which differs from the divine order. The individual ceases to be an all-powerful son. It is separated from the maternal power.

The images of the lynching of Gaddafi us back, by contrast, the original and omnipotence. We enrolled in a religious structure before the achievement was the ban on slaughter. These clichés again plunge into violence incestuous, in the enjoyment of the drive haptic consuming [12]. The imperative of enjoyment overrides policy here. The most significant example is provided by the Hillary Clinton interview, those who accept these images as an offering. Full of joy, proclaim his own omnipotence and expressed his joy at the lynching: “We came, we saw and he [Gaddafi] died!” Before the cameras and microphones of the CBS [13].

The violence done to the “Roadmap” Libya is also for other Western leaders, a propitious moment to express the satisfaction that they invade and enjoy the success of your initiative. “We will not shed tears for Gaddafi,” said Alain Juppe, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs [14].

The tortured body as an icon of violence

The positions made by our leaders after the release of these images confirm that the real target of this war was not the protection of the population but the elimination of Gaddafi. The platform of Barack Obama, Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron, jointly published April 15 in The Times, The International Herald Tribune and Le Figaro, we had announced however that “It is not Gaddafi expelled by force. But it is impossible to imagine that Libya may have a future with Gaddafi “[15]. Their violence [Gaddafi] would then be essentially the failure to relinquish power, though inconceivable to remain in it. His image supposedly symbolizes the tyranny because he could not get Western leaders love the Libyan population. “He (Gaddafi) behaved very aggressively. He was offered good conditions for surrender, and rejected, “Juppé said.

The media tell us that “dictators always end well.” The marks of violence make it appear invisible. The lynching becomes proof that the victim was indeed a dictator. These stigmas show us what we never saw: the evidence of the massacres that Gaddafi was going to commit. Are an indication of their intentions to do what NATO used as an argument to justify its intervention.

This would link the massacres perpetrated by the Colonel with the image of his bloodied body. The marks of violence on the living body, and later on the corpse, then would not the result of the violence of the ‘liberators’ but the fruit of the blood shed by Gaddafi.

The violence of the crime shows that it is indeed a vengeance. It also shows us that the perpetrators of this violence are in fact victims and that this murder has a sacred character.

The display of unlimited power

The images of slaughter display allow our leaders limitless power. The French Defense Minister Gerard Longuet, French aviation revealed that, at the request of Staff of NATO, was “arrested” or be bombed, the caravan in which the fugitive was Gaddafi [16]. The French minister claims and a flagrant violation of Security Council resolution of the UN. For his part, Alain Juppe had the luxury of recognizing that the objective of the invasion was none other than put in power by CNT: “The operation must end now since our objective, that is to accompany the forces of CNT in the liberation of its territory, has already been reached “[17].

The success of the NATO offensive was accompanied, by the victors, increasingly numerous statements in which recognized systematic rape, although justified, the decision of the Security Council of the UN. The philosopher, writer, director, strategist and diplomat Bernard-Henri Levy even acknowledged, in his book La guerre sans l’aimer [In Spanish: "War without desiring." Translator's Note.] “France directly or indirectly provided significant amounts of weapons to the Libyan rebels fighting to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi” [18]. These statements illustrate the child’s psychic structure almighty State phallic maternal figure, a power without limits is beyond the word and, therefore, does not feel compelled to even respect their own commitments.

These positions recall the statements of Tony Blair when he acknowledged that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq but the war was justified because Saddam Hussein ended the reign of a dictator.

The victim and the sacrifice: the values ​​of a return to barbarism

The murder committed against Gaddafi, as an act of “revenge of the victims”, results will not be judged Gaddafi. This result coincides with the interests of oil companies and Western governments, whose close ties to the regime of Colonel will not therefore to light before the public. The main result of the substitution of the organization of a trial against [Qaddafi] International Criminal Court by the images of lynching is that instead of being arrested by the word, violence becomes infinite. Libya, like Iraq and Afghanistan, will become a scene of perpetual war. With regard to our own political systems, they are immersed in a state of emergency. This is accompanied by the appearance of absolute power, whose political action beyond any order related to the right.

A military intervention undertaken in the name of the love of Western leaders by the people victims of a “tyrant” [19] and display magnified by the slaughter of the latter is a symptom of our society regressing into barbarism.

Treatment of the sacrifice of Gaddafi as iconic image confirms the Christian character of a war waged in the name of love for the victims. The destruction of Libya by NATO forces is inserted into the long tradition of the Crusades, the wars against the symbolic law undertaken in the name of the God-man [20]. These have already resulted from a reorganization of Europe under papal authority [21]. Today, this conflict, even more than the Iraq war, it implies total submission of the European countries to the American Empire.

The war for democracy is the postmodern version of the “holy war” sacred not because the enemy were the “infidels” but because the Pope ordered, as infallible representative of God-man. Today, the sacred character of the aggression comes naturally democratic character of its U.S. sponsor, whose president received the Nobel Peace Prize before he made the slightest political act. This award establishes the President of the United States as a Christian icon, as the very embodiment of peace and democracy. It is not in this version of the sacredness of man created in the image and likeness of God, but the image of himself and his peaceful and democratic nature.

Notes:

[1] Title of a song composed in 1946 Abel Meeropol Abel Meeropol couple in denouncing the Necktie Party (hanging) that were organized in the southern United States and attended the white dress to a party. Performed by Billie Holiday, the spread of this song was a huge success.

[2] By brandishing a knife to slay his son, Abraham found a ram in place of the child. He who must die is the goat, the animal-father, the primal father, that is a ghostly line of ancestors, while an archaic divinity, a ferocious form of God who constantly demands sacrifice. in Jean-Daniel Causse, “Le christianisme et la violence des dieux obscurs, liens et écarts” AIEMPR, XVIIe violences et congrès international Religions, Strasbourg, 10-14 July 2006.

[3] Paul Laurent Assoun, Le fétichisme, Que sais-je?, PUF, 1994. “I ou l’objet Fétiche au pied de la lettre” in Éclat du fetish, Revue du Littoral 42.

[4] Rene Girard, Violence et le sacre The, Le Seuil, 1972.

[5] The primary significance of the desire of the mother is usually rejected by the replacement of the meaning of the name of the Father who enroll in language. Sacrifice is a return to that natural state of unification with the mother. In Alcouloumbré Catherine, “The metaphore paternelle” Espaces Lacan, Seminar 1998-1999.

[6] Bible Chrétienne, II, Commentaires, Anne Sigi Editions, 1990, p. 318, in Nicolas Buttet, L’école à l’Eucharistie des saints, Éditions de l’Emmanuel, Paris 2000, p. 38.

[7] Jean-Daniel Causse, “Le christianisme et la violence des dieux obscurs, liens et écarts” AIEMPR, XVIIe Religions et Congrès International Violence, Strasbourg 2006, p. 4.

[8] They reflect two fundamental operations of language replacement and combination-which are the paradigmatic axis and the syntagmatic axis. See: Vincent Calais, La theorie du langage dans l’enseignement of Jacques Lacan, L’Harmattan, Paris 2008, p. 59.

[9] Linard of Guertechin Hervé, “From d’une lecture du sacrifice d’Isaac (Genèse 22)” 38 51 987 Lumen Vito), p. 302-322.

[10] Contrary to original sin, that debt has a unifying character as it places man in relation to the other, from an evolution, not a native. The original sin, by contrast, contains an image of a superego.

[11] “Gaddafi préférait” juge qu’être mourir in Libya “even the ICC” [In Spanish, "Kadafhi preferred to" die in Libya to be tried "by the ICC." NDT.], La Libre Belgique and AFP, November 31, 2011.

[12] “We sacrifice sur le noyau focus sacrificiel Originel: l’endocannibalisme” Soli in Pierre, Le sacrifice et d’civilization fondateur of individuation, abstract.

[13] “Hillary Clinton welcomed Muammar Gaddafi of la mort”, Voltaire Network, October 22, 2011.

[14] “The Death of Gaddafi to check the l’engagement de l’NATO Libye” LeMonde.fr with AFP, 21/10/2011.

[15] “Tribune of Barack Obama, David Cameron et Nicolas Sarkozy sur la Libye” Réseau Voltaire, April 15, 2011.

[16] “L’aviation française convoy him to Stopped Gaddafi affirmer Longuet”, TF1, October 20, 2011.

[17] “The Death of Gaddafi to check the l’engagement de l’NATO Libye” LeMonde.fr, op ..

[18] “Les coulisses of BHL selon la guerre,” La Libre Belgique, November 7, 2011.

[19] Jean-Claude Paye, Tülay Umay, “Faire la guerre au nom des victimes” Réseau Voltaire, May 9, 2011.

[20] Maurice Bellet, Le Dieu pervers, Desclée de Brouwer, Paris 1979, pp. 16-17.

[21] Paul Rousset, Les origins et les Croisade characters in the premiere, the Baconnière, Neuchâte11945

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