Washington Imprisons Cubans for Trying to Stop Terrorism
While One Anti-Castro Terrorist Who Blew Up Plane in 1976 Walks Free
And
the other is "detained" for illegally entering the US instead of being
extradited to Venezuela for his role in blowing up that Cuban plane
Iraq Study Group to Bush: You f***ed up, George. This is the only path left to stabilize Iraq and control its oil
Bush to Iraq Study Group: F**k you, and f**k talking to Syria and Iran. They're next on our list. We want
a regional war. And if we have to slaughter another 650,000 Iraqis to
conquer its oil, let history record that I had the resolve to do it.
Bush
to American workers: F** you, too, bozos. What are you going to do?
Impeach me? With what opposition party? The Democrats? They criticize
me for not sending more troops to Iraq! They're my accomplices!
US Militarism Terrorizing Workers from NYC to Iraq
The
student of Iranian descent objected to being subjected to racial
profiling. The assault was caught on tape and has been widely viewed on
YouTube.com
Lenin on Religion
As we watch George W. Bush, Bill O'Reilly,
and the Christian Right attempt to strip the US of its secular
progressive foundation and violate the 1st Amendment by imposing a
nonexistent Christian basis to the Constitution, it is illuminating to
reflect on what Russian revolutionary leader Lenin had to say on the
subject of the separation of church and state and its relevance to the
class struggle:
"As
regards religion, the policy of the R.C.P. [Russian Communist Party] is
not to be confined to decreeing the separation of the church from the
state and the school from the church, that is, to measures promised by
bourgeois democrats but never fully carried out anywhere in the world
because of the many and varied connections actually existing between
capital and religious propaganda.
"The
Party's object is to completely destroy the connection between the
exploiting classes and organized religious propaganda and really
liberate the working people from religious prejudices. For this purpose
it must organize the most widespread scientific education and
anti-religious propaganda. It is necessary, however, to take care to
avoid hurting the religious sentiments of believers, for this only
serves to increase religious fanaticism."
--From
the 1919 Draft Programme of the R.C.P. (B) [Russian Communist Party
(Bolsheviks)], "Section of the Programme Dealing with Religion," as
quoted in Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin's Collected Works, Vol. 29, p. 134.
Statue Trumps Man
Giant Ho Towers Over Pygmy Bush
Late
November, 2006--Even in death, Vietnamese revolutionary leader Ho Chi
Minh stands tall over imperialist thug George W. Bush, who, when asked
during his recent Hanoi visit how the lesson of America's intervention
in that country applies to Iraq, replied ignorantly that it means
"We'll succeed if we don't quit."
Hey
moron, America didn't "quit" after waging a criminal aggression for
almost 15 years that dropped more bombs on Vietnam than were dropped in
World War II. Washington was forced to withdraw all its forces from
Vietnam because it was defeated militarily and politically by the
Vietnamese people and an international antiwar movement.
As
in Vietnam, US imperialism is suffering a humiliating political and
military defeat in its predatory attempt to conquer Iraq with its
prized natural resource, oil. The difference is that the Vietnamese
toilers were defending their nation's sovereignty from the imperialist
invader while making a socialist revolution, despite its Stalinist
misleadership. Whether under Hanoi in the North or the National
Liberation Front and Viet Cong in the South, Vietnam's peasants battled
corrupt landlords and carried through a land reform. This mass base,
battle tested from fighting Japanese colonialism, fought for national
liberation under a conscious, organized leadership, however deformed.
Iraq's
workers and peasants, on the other hand, had already suffered a brutal
counterrevolutionary defeat at the hands of Saddam Hussein's Baathists
before US imperialism launched two brutal wars, a murderous occupation,
and harsh economic sanctions that have killed close to 2 million
Iraqis, half of them children, destroyed their infrastructure,
educational and health care systems, contaminated their land with
depleted uranium shells, looted their national archaelogical treasures,
crippled their oil industry, tortured and illegally detained thousands,
unleashed a sectarian bloodbath, among other accomplishments.
March 1, 2007 update:
Right
now, Iraq's toilers are saddled with a national liberation leadership
composed of Islamic fundamentalists, Baathists, and bourgeois
nationalists. This flawed leadership has played right into US
imperialism's strategy of divide and conquer. Only a program of
revolutionary Marxism and proletarian internationalism will unite
Iraq's Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish toilers and defeat the self
destructive communalism and sectarianism that is preventing a united
front against the US occupation.
There are signs that Iraq's working class is beginning to assert itself. Witness the militant opposition among Iraq's trade unions to the oil privatization law recently passed by the puppet parliament.
US
workers went to the polls November 7 to say no to the Iraq war and end
the US occupation of Iraq. The party that was the beneficiary of this
sentiment, the Democrats, the so-called opposition that allegedly poses
an antiwar alternative, criticizes Bush for not sending even more
troops and killing even more Iraqis. One of its leading Congressional
leaders, Congressman Charles Rangel of New York, calls for
reinstituting the draft as a way to stop the war. This is rubbish of
course; Rangel wants a draft because he supports US imperialist wars
and he knows the only way to wage these colonialist wars of aggression
is to forcibly recruit even more working class youth as cannon fodder
for Wall Street's profits.
The
2006 Congressional elections revealed two things about US politics: 1)
that US working people are to the left of the US capitalist political
establishment embodied in the twin parties of war and the corporate
media and 2) that US workers are politically disenfranchised with no
voice in the existing political framework. When you're against a war,
and the party you vote for supports that war, you're in trouble.
Many
workers are realizing that politics is more than traipsing to the polls
every two or four years to vote for Democrats or Republicans--parties
that represent Wall Street, not working people. A growing layer that
constitutes an emerging working class vanguard is learning that real
politics involves organizing and mobilizing independently of the
bipartisan capitalist political framework by fighting back and relying
on our own strength and the solidarity of our class allies.
Workers like the 5000 Houston janitors, whose militant, month-long strike just won a contract that provides huge wage increases and health care; 15,000 US and Canadian Goodyear Tire workers on strike since October 5 to defend their wages, pensions, retirees' benefits and jobs; and the 1,000 workers at the North Carolina hog slaughtering plant who walked out to protest Smithfield Food's firing of immigrant workers for allegedly providing false documents.
Over
time, the cumulative effects of these struggles and others will
convince the emerging working class vanguard of the need to generalize
the lessons of these fights--a conclusion that will point to the need
for a mass socialist party based in the working class that will fight
for a workers and farmers government, for revolutionary socialism, for
a working class program that will put human and social needs before
corporate profits and abolish the imperialist war machine once and for
all.
In
two of the above-mentioned struggles--Houston's janitors and North
Carolina's meatpackers--we see the how the infusion of Latino immigrant
workers into the US working class has strengthened our class by
increasing our combativity and internationalism. In the process we see
a glimpse of the multinational, multilingual working class that will
make the coming American socialist revolution.
Spanish-speaking
workers are already playing a leadership role in the emerging working
class vanguard. They will play a key role in getting American workers
to generalize the lessons of the unfolding struggles like those of the
Houston janitors, Goodyear rubber workers and North Carolina's
meatpackers. Latino immigrant workers will help us overcome what
Russian revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky pinpointed way back in 1940:
"The American worker is very combative—as
we have seen during the strikes. They have had the most rebellious
strikes in the world. What the American worker misses is a spirit of
generalization, or analysis, of his class position in society as a
whole. This lack of social thinking has its origin in the country's
whole history—the Far West with the perspective of unlimited
possibilities for everyone to become rich, etc. Now all that is gone,
but the mind remains in the past. Idealists think the human mentality
is progressive, but in reality it is the most conservative element of
society. Your technique is progressive but the mentality of the worker
lags far behind. Their backwardness consists of their inability to
generalize their problem; they consider everything on a personal
basis." [Writings of Leon Trotsky, 1939-1940, Copyright 1997 Pathfinder
Press.]
No matter which war party controls Congress, Tel Aviv continues its murderous rampage against the Palestinian people.
End All US Aid to Israel!
US Out of Iraq Now!
Earth to John Kerry: Don't Joke About Iraq
Particularly when your hands are drenched in American and Iraqi blood, too.
Kerry is in no
position to belittle George W. Bush for his mental capacities, as he
will go down as one of the dumbest politicians in US history.
The Democrats' party
line is that Bush's stupidity contributed to his incompetence in
prosecuting the war in Iraq. It's not that they object to the war's
goal--the subjugation of Iraq to control its oil and dominate the
Middle East. It's that Bush is too dumb, had no plan, lacked a
strategy, didn't anticipate the insurgency, didn't send enough troops,
and so on. Let us wage this war, Kerry and the Democrats assure Wall
Street, and we'll win this strategic prize for US imperialism.
One doesn't have to be
a rocket scientist to conclude that Bush is
semi-illiterate, provincial, ignorant, and possessed with limited
intellectual capacities. But when it comes to political infighting and
savvy within the sordid world of capitalist politics, Bush run rings
around Kerry. And while Bush's invasion of Iraq has generated a
political debacle and strategic failure for Washington, he hasn't done
a bad job advancing the interests of the capitalist class he
represents. US imperialism has 140,000 troops in oil-rich Iraq, giving
US capitalists a leg up on their European and Asian rivals. Bush
successfully exploited 9/11 to give him the political cover he needed
to win enough public support to wage long-planned wars on behalf of US
capitalists to control key resource-rich regions like Central Asia and
the Middle East. He also used 9/11 to begin erecting the kind of
presidential dictatorship and totalitarian government that the US
ruling class will need to crush working class resistance to imperialist
war and capitalist repression.
Kerry should have quit
while he was ahead in 1971, when he denounced the Vietnam war and
blamed the war crimes committed by US forces there on the political
leadership and military brass responsible for the atrocities. Instead,
he became just another two-bit, double-talking capitalist politician
who can't read from a script and is eager to condemn younger
generations fight and die in hellish colonial wars.
Now
Kerry can exit from the national stage confident that history will
judge him to be even dumber than George W. Bush. Now that Halloween is
over, we should never have to see that Herman Munster mask
again.--November 3, 2006
Speaking of jokes, did you hear the one Bush told two years ago at a dinner for radio and television correspondents?
You
remember, America, the one where Bush did his little show-and-tell
slide show for those bourgeois journalists in their black ties,
pointing to photographs of him looking under Oval Office furniture
while "joking":
"Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be here somewhere...No, no weapons over there...Maybe under here?"
And
what was the response of those big business media whores to Bush's
"joke"? Did they raise a national hue and cry and demand Bush apologize
to the troops, as they've done with Kerry's "botched joke"?
No, they joined Bush and laughed on the tombstones of the then 500 dead US soldiers. Now it's almost 3,000 and counting.
While
these capitalist politicians are joking, US soldiers, overwhelmingly
working class, whether they've graduated from college or high school,
are still dying.
And that's fucking serious.--November 5, 2006
Latest Orwellian Outrage: Bush, Rove Try to Frame Chavez for Looming GOP Defeat
US investigates partly owned Venezuelan software company's purchase of US electronic voting machine manufacturer
Yeah,
like Chavez, who's been elected and reelected in elections far more
democratic than those in the United States, is plotting right now to
steal the election for the Democrats. This popular mandate was
confirmed when the Venezuelan masses restored Chavez to power after a
US-backed capitalist coup failed miserably in its attempt to overthrow
the legally elected Chavez.
This latest Washington
absurdity is particularly ludicrous and insulting, given the fact that
Republican connected electronic voting machine firms like Diebold
played no small role in stealing the 2000 and 2004 elections for George
W. Bush, particularly after Diebold chief executive Walden O'Dell
promised Republicans fundraising letter before the 2004 election that
he "was committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the
president next year."--October 31, 2006
Hands Off North Korea!
Demand Unilateral Disarmament of Only Government to Use Nuclear Weapons--Washington!
Pyongyang Tests Nukes as Deterrent Against US Attack!
After Iraq and Afghanistan, North Korea Knows US Imperialist Bullies More Likely to Invade Defenseless Nations
North
Korea didn't forcibly partition the US six decades ago. North Korea
didn't send hundreds of thousands of troops half way around the world
to invade the US. North Korea didn't kill millions of Americans and
destroy hundreds of American cities and towns and villages with naplam
and bombs. North Korean generals didn't openly call for dropping 30 to
50 nuclear weapons on Americans. North Korea didn't station nuclear
warheads on American soil until the 1980s.
The only madmen are in
the only government that's actually incincerated human beings with the
mother of all weapons of mass destruction and threaten to do so again.
They are in possession of nearly 10,000 nuclear warheads with the most
sophisticated delivery systems in history at their disposal. Pyongyang
has 1 or 2 bombs with the most primitive delivery system, if any. They
are testing nukes as a deterrent and bargaining chip. The true madmen
in Washington have drawn up plans for the use of tactical nuclear
weapons. It is to these atom maniacs that demands for disarmament must
be directed.--October 12, 2006
Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez's emotional verbiage may be too much for the
sensitive ears of the American political establishment, but he was only
expressing what the majority of this planet believes. It's not Chavez
who illegally invaded two countries on the basis of lies in order to
control the oil and gas deposits in their soil. It's not Chavez who has
slaughtered hundreds of thousands of civilians. It's not Chavez who has
burned innocent people with depleted uranium and phosphorus shells.
It's not Chavez who has set up torture chambers in Iraq, Guantanamo and
throughout the world.
It is Chavez who is giving impoverished Americans cheap oil to help heat their homes and apartments this winter. It is Bush who has cut federal funding for subsidizing oil costs for the burgeoning ranks of America's poor.
I was
struck by a headline in one of New York's tabloids: "Nation Unites
Against Chavez." The evidence? A series of quotes by US capitalist
politicians--war criminals every one of them--led by the odious
Democratic Senator and bloodthirsty Zionist from New York, Charles
Schumer. The headline should have said, "Capitalist Nation Unites Against Chavez."
As usual, these bourgeois rags do not speak for working class America.--Oct. 1, 2006
And
just to really cover our asses, we'll just retroactively change the
1996 War Crimes Act so that we can't be busted for violating it.
An understandable move on their part--since the penalty for violating it is death!
You want to stop
terrorist attacks? Then release every classified intelligence file
related to the links between US, Israeli, Saudi, Pakistani and British
intelligence with Al Qaeda and other terrorist outfits. BUT STOP
TORTURING PEOPLE UNDER THE GUISE OF PREVENTING TERRORISM. Torture won't
stop terrorism, it is immoral, and it violates international and US
law. Period. No exceptions. And no amount of redefining torture or
retroactively amending the War Crimes Act to absolve Bush of his
culpability will protect this motley crew of torturers and assassins
currently holding state power in Washington will protect them in the
future. Ask Henry Kissinger, whom Vice President Cheney admitted
regularly meets with Bush and Cheney. Kissinger has to watch where he
travels these days at the risk of being arrested for his role in
heinous crimes against humanity in Vietnam and East Timor. Ask Chile's
ex-dictator Augusto Pinochet, who also has to carefully review his
travel destinations for his egregious, murderous crimes against Chile's
workers and peasants.
Bush,
Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and the rest of Torture Gang will be hounded for
the rest of their lives until they're draped in orange jumpsuits doing
life with hard labor.--Oct. 1, 2006
Clinton Slams FOX on 9/11
Bill
Clinton is a war criminal who paved the way for every attack on working
people George W. Bush is carrying out--from ending welfare to bombing
Serbia to establishing a Military Command aimed at crushing Americans'
resistance to war and dictatorship to bombing Iraq and killing a half
million Iraqis with sanctions. The "best" that can be said about
Clinton is that he's slicker than Bush in helping capital exploit wage
labor--that is, in helping the rich exploit working people.
When
Clinton reminded FOX's Chris Wallace that he had just missed killing
Osama bin Laden in 1998, he omitted mention of the innocent civilians
who died in the cruise missile attack, or that a similar attack on an
alleged Al Qaeda chemical weapons factory in Sudan ended up destroying
a much needed pharmaceutical facility. Not surprisingly, Wallace failed
to bring this up.
Wallace missed a chance to bolster his case by also failing to ask Clinton about Able Danger,
the military intelligence unit that had identified Mohammad Atta and
other 9/11 hijackers as participants in a US-based Al Qaeda cell.
But
not every US president has the same relationship with US intelligence
and its shadowy network of murder and assassinations. Clinton's father
wasn't head of the CIA. Clinton's family didn't profit from extensive
business deals with the bin Ladens, whose business agent, James Bath,
did not "serve" in the National Guard or skip a medical exam with
Clinton. Clinton didn't order the FBI to quit bothering bin Laden
before September 11. Clinton was not involved in the military standdown
that was in effect the morning of September 11, 2001--one month after
receiving a specific warning that Al Qaeda was about to crash hijacked
jets into US landmarks.
Maybe that's why Clinton was so pissed.--Oct. 1, 2006
Woodward's "State of Denial": Bush misled the US into Iraq war
Tell
us something we didn't know, Woodward. This is important only because
it's Woodward talking to the US political establishment. Woodward is
saying to his bourgeois media brethren, "Uh, the jig's up. We can't get
by with the fairy tale that Bush was misled. He really did lie. All
those alternative Web sites were right."
Woodward's
no doubt hoping that this sorry excuse for revelatory journalism will
absolve Woodward for his first Bush book "Bush at War," a pathetic
piece of puff journalism
that bestowed a veneer of legitimacy on Bush's illegal invasion of
Afghanistan. Woodward's status as a Washington insider up to his neck
in governmental duplicity and secrecy was confirmed when it was
revealed he played no small role in the White House outing of CIA agent
Valerie Plame-Wilson. In his November 2005 deposition to Special
Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, Woodward revealed that as early as June
2003 he learned from a senior White House official that Plame was Bush
war critic Joe Wilson's wife worked for the CIA. Woodward never
revealed the official's identity because he didn't think it was
important. He kept it to himself because he didn't want to be
subpoenaed by Fitzgerald.
Woodward
also revealed he'd talked to Cheney aide Scooter Libby, a discussion in
which he may have inquired more about Plame before it was publicly
known she worked for the CIA. Woodward never even told his Washington
Post editor about his June 2003 conversation about Plame, but he did go
out of his way to tell CNN's Larry King that Fitzgerald was a "junkyard
dog prosecutor," that there was "nothing to [the case" and that "when all of the facts come out in this case, it is going to be laughable because the consequences are not that great." [emphasis added]
What's
laughable is Woodward talking about all the facts coming out in the
case when he did everything in his power to suppress those facts.
Woodward
should have quit while he was ahead over 30 years ago when his
investigative journalism regarding Watergate helped bring down Nixon.
Then he was lean, hungry and uncorrupted. Now he's fat and part of the
problem.
Where's Carl Bernstein when we need him?--Oct. 1, 2006
Admits Authorizing Secret CIA Torture Prisons--brazenly defying international law, which mandates International Red Cross access
Then Flouts Supreme Court's June Military Tribunal Ruling
Asks
Congress to approve precisely what Court found illegal: using evidence
that is hearsay, secret, and obtained by means of coercion, that is,
torture.
Because the US
capitalist class needs a presidential dictatorship to crush working
class resistance to the wars, depressions, and social breakdowns that
are bred by the deepening crisis of the profit system.--September 10,
2006
The
more Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bill O'Reilly are allowed to lie about
fascism and World War II in order to justify imperialist wars today,
the more Americans, Iraqis, and many more will die tomorrow.
If
you thought the Talking Heads' 1979 hit, "Life During Wartime" struck a
chord when it was originally penned by lead singer David Byrne, check
out how this apocalyptic classic sounds in the post-9/11 era. Note the
eerily prophetic italicized lyrics below.
"Life During Wartime"
Heard of a van that is loaded with weapons,
Packed up and ready to go Heard of some gravesites, out by the highway,
A place where nobody knows The sound of gunfire, off in the distance,
I’m getting used to it now Lived in a brownstore, lived in the ghetto,
I’ve lived all over this town
This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco,
This ain’t no fooling around
No time for dancing, or lovey dovey,
I ain’t got time for that now
Transmit the message, to the receiver,
Hope for an answer some day
I got three passports, a couple of visas,
You don’t even know my real name
High on a hillside, the trucks are loading,
Everything’s ready to roll I sleep in the daytime, I work in the nighttime,
I might not ever get home
This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco,
This ain’t no fooling around
This ain’t no mudd club, or c. b. g. b.,
I ain’t got time for that now
Heard about houston? heard about detroit?
Heard about pittsburgh, p. a.?
You oughta know not to stand by the window
Somebody might see you up there
I got some groceries, some peanut butter,
To last a couple of days But I ain’t got no speakers, ain’t got no
Headphones, ain’t got no records to play
Why stay in college? why go to night school?
Gonna be different this time Can’t write a letter, can’t send a postcard,
I can’t write nothing at all This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco,
This ain’t no fooling around
I’d like to kiss you, I’d love you hold you
I ain’t got no time for that now
Trouble in transit, got through the roadblock,
We blended with the crowd
We got computer, we’re tapping phone lines,
I know that ain’t allowed
We dress like students, we dress like housewives,
Or in a suit and a tie I changed my hairstyle, so many times now,
I don’t know what I look like!
You make me shiver, I feel so tender,
We make a pretty good team
Don’t get exhausted, I’ll do some driving,
You ought to get some sleep Get you instructions, follow directions,
Then you should change your address Maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day,
Whatever you think is best Burned all my notebooks, what good are
Notebooks? they won’t help me survive My chest is aching, burns like a furnace,
The burning keeps me alive
Try to stay healthy, physical fitness,
Don’t want to catch no disease
Try to be careful, don’t take no chances, You better watch what you say
Check out You Tube for one of the greatest live performances of this or any other song ever recorded.
When an
earlier Tribune of the People article, "Songs for the Working Class:
The best antiwar and anticapitalist songs ever written" first appeared, You Tube.com did not exist. Since it does now, check out two of the songs honored in that article, "The Call-up"by The Clash and Joan Baez's legendary Woodstock rendition of "Joe Hill."
Speaking of
The Clash, here's another song from Sandinista that belongs in the
category of Songs for theWorking Class--"The Magnificent Seven":
Ring! ring! its 7:00 a.m.!
Move yourself to go again
Cold water in the face
Brings you back to this awful place
Knuckle merchants and you bankers, too
Must get up an learn those rules
Weather man and the crazy chief
One says sun and one says sleet
A.m., the f.m. the p.m. too
Churning out that boogaloo
Gets you up and gets you out
But how long can you keep it up?
Gimme honda, gimme sony
So cheap and real phony
Hong kong dollars and indian cents
English pounds and eskimo pence
You lot! what?
Dont stop! give it all you got!
You lot! what?
Dont stop! yeah!
Working for a rise, better my station
Take my baby to sophistication
Shes seen the ads, she thinks its nice
Better work hard - I seen the price
Never mind that its time for the bus
We got to work - an youre one of us
Clocks go slow in a place of work
Minutes drag and the hours jerk
When can I tell em wot I do?
In a second, maaan...oright chuck!
Wave bub-bub-bub-bye to the boss
Its our profit, its his loss
But anyway lunch bells ring
Take one hour and do your thanng!
Cheeesboiger!
What do we have for entertainment?
Cops kickin gypsies on the pavement
Now the news - snap to attention!
The lunar landing of the dentist convention
Italian mobster shoots a lobster
Seafood restaurant gets out of hand
A car in the fridge
Or a fridge in the car?
Like cowboys do - in t.v. land
You lot! what? dont stop. huh?
So get back to work an sweat some more
The sun will sink an well get out the door
Its no good for man to work in cages
Hits the town, he drinks his wages
Youre frettin, youre sweatin
But did you notice you aint gettin?
Dont you ever stop long enough to start?
To take your car outta that gear
Dont you ever stop long enough to start?
To get your car outta that gear
Karlo marx and fredrich engels
Came to the checkout at the 7-11
Marx was skint - but he had sense
Engels lent him the necessary pence
What have we got? yeh-o, magnificence!!
Luther king and mahatma gandhi
Went to the park to check on the game
But they was murdered by the other team
Who went on to win 50-nil
You can be true, you can be false
You be given the same reward
Socrates and milhous nixon
Both went the same way - through the kitchen
Plato the greek or rin tin tin
Whos more famous to the billion millions?
News flash: vacuum cleaner sucks up budgie
Oooohh...bub-bye
Magnificence!!
Fucking long, innit?
Check out this performance of "The Magnificent Seven" from Tom Snyder's 1981 program.
Any
American who believes a single utterance from Bush, O'Reilly, CIA, FBI,
or CNN is a fool who's holding back the rest of us. You want security?
You want protection from terrorism? Then get to the root of the
problem. Change this government. Break politically from the two
capitalist parties. Get on the road to socialism. Abolish this
wretched, murdering, thieving, lying capitalist state and replace it
with a workers and farmers government. Disarm the warmakers and
profiteers. Abolish the Pentagon, the Defense Department, the CIA, NSA,
and FBI. And while we're at it, let's take a peek at all those
"classified files" that were kept from the people under the smokescreen
of "national security" and find out just how closely linked US
intelligence has been to "Al Qaeda" and other terrorist outfits. Just
like the Bolsheviks, during their 1917 socialist revolution, uncovered
all the secret treaties and deals made behind the backs of the Russian
people by conniving Tsarists profiting handsomely from war.
And
while all this is going on, the crescendo of cheers emanating from the
rest of the world will be heard on the moon. And back on earth,
terrorism, politically defeated because its root cause was eliminated,
will be reduced to an historical anachronism studied by more
enlightened generations who admire the true "greatest
generation" that overthrew capitalism internationally and wiped it from
the face of the planet. So that we could become human for the first time.--August 19, 2006
Workers of the World Rejoice!
Hezbollah is Kicking Israel's Ass
Not
from F-16's, the weapon of cowards. But on the ground, defending their
country's sovereignty, their women and children, by humiliating the
supposedly invincible Israeli army. Hezbollah fighters killed 24
Israeli soldiers on Saturday, including 5 shot down in a helicopter.
This historic defeat was all over the face of George W. Bush during today's press conference
regarding the just brokered UN-authorized cease-fire--which was not
supposed to occur until Israel had destroyed Hezbollah. Bush was at his
best--confused, disoriented, bitter, whiny and defensive, desperately
trying to recall the cliches and talking points drilled into his head
by advisers not much smarter than him.
But there is no time
for gloating. For this modern-day Caligula and his equally bloodthirsty
allies in Tel Aviv are already plotting the next round of carnage and
death to be inflicted on the Palestinian and Lebanese people.
The heroic warriors in
Hezbollah can hold out for so long, but ultimately, the US and Israeli
working people better realize that the predatory wars being waged in
their name by US and Israeli imperialism are for capitalist profits and
control of the oil-rich Middle East, not to fight terrorism or impose
democracy or any of the other lofty goals couched in lies. The entire
world is waiting for US and Israeli workers to embark on the path of
socialist revolution.
And then, to quote Pink Floyd, "we'll make the buggers' eyes water."--August 14, 2006
August 17, 2006:
The World Socialist Web Site's David North on Bush's pathetic performance:
"Bush simply made
assertions utterly unsupported by facts. These statements were
generally ludicrous and pitched to the level of the most reactionary,
backward, ignorant, and, to be blunt, stupid sections of the American
public."
Israeli workers, your path is not with Zionism and Israeli capitalists, your class enemy.
Your path lies instead with working people everywhere, including Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrian and Iranian.
The
state of Israel, far from realizing a panacea for Jews, has turned into
a bloody death trap, as Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky predicted
nearly 70 years ago. This is because the establishment of an
exclusively Jewish state in Palestine, based on the forced expulsion
of the people living there, namely, Palestinians, ensured an armed
resistance and pitted Israel's workers against their fellow and sister
Arab workers in the region. Ever since it stole Palestine in 1948 with
the sanction of the "international community," the capitalist class
lording over this colonial settler Zionist state has been compelled to
expand or die, to continually expand its borders by stealing land from
Arabs. This suits Washington fine, because the presence of a junior
imperialist partner facilitates US imperialism's domination of the
oil-rich region by suppressing the Arab masses.
All of
this is driven by the deepening crisis of world capitalism--Israeli
capitalism, US capitalism, European capitalism. World imperialism.
Workers of the World Unite!
And
know we are forever indebted to the brave, fierce Hezbollah warriors
standing up to Goliath in the true spirit of David.--August 8, 2006
And
to O'Reilly, Malkin, Coulter, Hannity, "Little Green Footballs"
bloggers, and all the other ultrarightist scum still defending Israel's
atrocities in Lebanon:
Who
gives a rat's ass that a freelance Reuters photojournalist added a few
darker puffs of smoke to the photograph showing the destruction Israel
is inflicting on Lebanon? Did the doctored picture falsely inflate the
number of Lebanese civilians killed by Israeli missiles and bombs? And
does the fact that more people managed to crawl under the rubble of
that Qana apartment building than originally reported lessen the
magnitude of that war crime? Particularly when the Israelis have
admitted that contrary to their initial statements, no Hezbollah
rockets were in that area.
Israel Out of Gaza and Lebanon!
Another "mistake"; another child left behind--Qana Massacre II
Lebanon Prime Minister Siniora Tells Rice Sayanara; You bring only war, my people want peace
Israel to Halt Air Strikes for 48 Hour/Flash--Big Shock: Israel resumes bombing within hours; votes to expand ground operation in Lebanon
Considering
that the source of the above report are lying, murderous gangsters, it
is no surprise the Zionist terrorists have resumed their air strikes
and decided to expand their ground offensive in Lebanon. That's right,
tough guys, leave the civilians alone for a change and fight
Hezbollah's brave warriors like the men they are. Try to take a break
from fighting like pussies and bombing women and children from the
safety of the F-16s provided by your senior partner in war crimes and
imperialist plunder--Washington.--July 31, 2006
They calling it Qana
Massacre II because 10 years ago Israel murdered 100 civilians in a
missile attack on a UN compound where they had sought refuge from
Zionist terror.
But the Lebanese
people are proud of their Hezbollah warriors, because four years later
they kicked the Zionist aggressors out of southern Lebanon, ending 18
years of illegal occupation. And today, in 2006, Hezbollah's fighters
are humiliating the apartheid Zionist forces again, despite being
overwhelmingly undermanned and outgunned. But Hezbollah's militants are
not afraid to die, while the Zionist boys are.
"What does that tell you?" Hyman Roth to Michael Corleone in Havana.
"It tells me they can win."
"Take weapons up and begin to kill/watch the long, long armies drifting home" (Rina Castelnuovo for the NY Times)
This
photo of Israeli soldiers "withdrawing from the Hezbollah stronghold of
Bint Jbail" brought to mind the haunting lyrics from "3-5-0-0," a song
from the 1968 Broadway musical hit, Hair:
"Prisoners in Niggertown/It's a dirty little war
"3-5-0-0
"Take weapons up and begin to kill/watch the long, long armies drifting homes" (Rado/Ragni)
"3500" was the Viet Cong body count that US generals peddled to convince themselves they were winning the war.
The
myth of Israeli invincibility has been shattered forever with the
deaths of nine Israeli soldiers at Bint Jbail, just as the myth of that
other apartheid regime in South Africa was forever shattered in 1988
when Cuban internationalist volunteers helped the Angolans inflict a
humiliating defeat on Pretoria's "white supremacist" army at Cuito
Carnavale, Angola that paved the way for apartheid's abolishment.--July
30, 2006
Which
makes the essay that follows meaningless. But whatever our political
differences with the bourgeois nationalist Hezbollah, revolutionary
Marxists continue to block with Hezbollah in its struggle against US
and Israeli imperialist aggression. We will not stop saluting the
courage and valor shown by Hezbollah and the Lebanese masses that
support it, and we will continue explaining how Hezbollah's defeat of
Israel's attempt to destroy it was objectively anti-imperialist and
altered the relationship of forces in the Middle East to the detriment
of world imperialism.--September 1, 2006
Nasrallah Eye to Eye With Cosmos Left
Last
month we wrote an essay entitled, "We Are All Hezbollah" [below] which
expressed internationalist solidarity with Hezbollah from a
revolutionary Marxist perspective. In an interview
with the Turkish Labor Party newspaper, Evrensel, Hezbollah leader
Hasan Nasrallah was asked about Hezbollah's relationship with
the "Socialist movement." Nasrallah replied in part:
"...What
we would have liked is for our socialist brothers in Lebanon to fight
against imperialism and Zionism shoulder to shoulder. This fight is not
only our fight. It is the common fight of all those oppressed across
the world. Don't forget that if the peoples of Palestine and Lebanon
lose this war, this will mean the defeat of all the oppressed people of
the world...."
Evrensel's reporter
asked Nasrallah to comment on the side by side posters of Che,
Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and Iranian president Ahmadinejad
currently adorning Beirut's streets:
"We
salute the leaders and the peoples of Latin America. They have resisted
the American bandits heroically and have been a source of moral
strength for us. They are guiding the way for the oppressed peoples. Go
and wonder around our streets..! You will witness how our people have
embraced Chavez and Ernesto Che Guevara. Nearly in every house, you
will come across posters of Che or Chavez.
"What we are saying to
our socialist friends who want to fight together with us for fraternity
and freedom is " Do not at all if you are going to say 'Religion is an
opiate'. [He's right. While Lebanon's under the gun of Zionist
aggression, that's an ultraleft position.] We do not agree with this
analysis. Here is the biggest proof of this in our streets with the
pictures of Chavez, Che, Sadr and Khamenei together. These leaders are
saluting our people in unison. So long as we respect your beliefs,
and you respect ours, there is no imperialist power we cannot defeat!"
Hope and Che on the Subway
Fidel on Cuba's Youth: "Let them be like Che"
I met
a kid from the Bronx today on the subway. Harold couldn’t have been
more than 16; he had an Afro, and he might have been Latino. I told him
I liked the Che Guevara shirt he was wearing, and he smiled knowingly.
We got
to talking a little about the Argentinian-born leader of the Cuban
Revolution; how he was a genuine fighter for the poor and oppressed;
how he gave his life for the Socialist Revolution and the liberation of
all workers from tyranny, and how we admired Che for that.
I told
Harold I had a Web site that talked about socialist ideas and
revolutionary politics, including essays about Cuba and Che. His eyes
brightened upon hearing that. Then he told me that he’d just got back
from Virginia.. It must have been his first time in a rural setting,
because he told me that he now realized how poor he really is, "living
on top of one another in buildings crawling with roaches.
"They give you all that bullshit about capitalism and democracy," Harold went on, "but communism’s the way to go."
He
said that he knows 9/11 was fucked up, but when it happened, it gave
him hope, because it showed him that someone had the balls to fight
back against the Empire. I told him that was the sentiment among many
of the world’s oppressed, but that he was right, 9/11 was fucked up,
not just because it killed innocent people, but also because it enabled
Washington to win public support for the wars and occupations its
waging in Afghanistan and Iraq to control those nations’ natural
resources.
I said
that 9/11 was fucked up too because the evidence is compelling that it
was either an inside job or the government allowed it to happen. I told
Harold about Operation Northwoods,
the plan hatched by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1962 to commit
widespread acts of domestic terrorism and then blame Cuba so the public
would back a military invasion to destroy the Revolution.
I
replied that it was he who was inspiring, because humanity’s future
depends on working class youth like him discovering, embracing and
understanding Marxism and communism; that many young folks like Harold
were socially aware and thinking politically about the world in crisis
around them; that while many don’t have all the answers and aren’t sure
what they’re for, they know what they’re against, and they’re against
this exploitative capitalist system its monstrous, predatory wars like
those unfolding in Iraq and Lebanon.--July 27, 2006
July 28 update:
Hopefully. Harold is
reading this, because I should have told him that a far better source
of inspiration than 9/11 is the heroic resistance by Hezbollah and the
Lebanese people to Israel's naked aggression that is unfolding before
our eyes. That's where Che would be right now--standing tall as an
internationalist fighter against Zionist terror. 9/11 was a monstrous
atrocity directed against civilians. It resembles what Israel is doing
right now to the civilian population of Lebanon. Hezbollah is a popular
resistance group rooted in Lebanon's masses. Al Qaeda, what is Al
Qaeda? A database of Islamic fundamentalists recruited, trained, and
organized by US intelligence. It is not a mass-based popular
organization that grew out of the efforts of an oppressed population to
defend their sovereignty, their dignity, their women and children.
"We Are All Hezbollah Now"
International Proletariat Should not Only Condemn Israeli/US Aggression--We Should Applaud Heroic Resistance of Lebanese Masses
July
22-27, 2006--So said a Lebanese Christian the other day as he stood
amidst the ruins of an Israeli attack on a Christian suburb of Beirut.
"Where are the Hezbollah fighters? There are no Hezbollah here. We are
all Hezbollah now."
That's exactly
right--because in standing up to Washington and Tel Aviv, in refusing
to surrender to US imperialism and Zionist Israel, in defending their
land, women, children, dignity and sovereignty, in taking up arms and
inflicting casualties on the Zionist aggressors, the Palestinian and
Lebanese masses, through Hamas and Hezbollah, are on the front lines of
the international class struggle, fighting for working people
everywhere. And whatever our political differences with these bourgeois
nationalist Islamic fundamentalist organizations, when the impoverished
Shiite working people they represent and fight for are under the
murderous guns of US imperialism and its junior partner Zionist Israel,
class conscious workers and progressive humanity everywhere should
unconditionally support their struggle for survival.
The entire US and
Israeli political and media establishment has the blood of
Palestinians, Lebanese and Israelis on their hands and is thus guilty
of war crimes. Washington gave Israel the green light to expand the war
from Gaza to Lebanon, and even now is rushing more buster-bunking bombs
to its junior parter in Middle East crime to slaughter more Lebanese.
The US capitalist media presents an Orwellian, Alice in Wonderland
inversion of reality to the public whereby Israel's slaughter of
civilians and destruction of infrastructure in Gaza and Lebanon with
the most advanced military weaponry in the world are exercises in self
defense, but Palestinians attacking IDF soldiers and Hezbollah
launching Katyusha rockets are terrorism.
Hezbollah's
tenacious defense of their people and homeland has had an obviously
deflating effect on America's television news pundits, personalities
and talking heads. Why, this can't be happening--Hezbollah and Hamas
fighting back against the mighty, invincible Israeli army. How dare
they launch Katyusha rockets in Haifa, disrupting the lives of Israeli
citizens there? No wonder Israeli is doing what they're doing. They
have no choice but to destroy Hezbollah. After all, Israel has a right
to defend itself.
These so-called
"journalists", from Chris Matthews to Norah O'Donnell to Miles O'Brien
to Bill O'Reilly, are not journalists at all but are faithful stooges
of US capitalism well paid to articulate the perspective of their
corporate, political and military masters from Wall Street, the White
House, the Pentagon, and Israel. Because this perspective is based on
lies, it comes across as almost cartoonish, or better, Mary Shelley's
Frankenstein--Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorists...bad; Israel is US
friend...good. Bad terrorists attacked and captured good Israeli
soldiers last month, first in Occupied Gaza by Hamas, then in Israel by
Hezbollah, except now it appears those Israel soldiers were on the
Lebanese side of the border.
Despite the fact these
were military operations by popular national liberation groups against
military targets, America's bourgeois journalists continue to describe
them as terrorist acts which Israel had to respond to because it has
this inalienable right to defend itself, though perhaps Tel Aviv should
restrain itself a wee bit to avoid accusations of disproportionality.
The fact that 91 percent of Lebanese casualties are civilian while 42
percent of Israeli casualties are civilian does not usually factor into
the analysis of these US bourgeois pundits, nor does the fact that
Israel is destroying Lebanon with F-16s and the world's most advanced
arsenal of weapons, while Hezbollah lashes back in desperation by
firing far more primitive Katyusha rockets into northern towns like
Haifa, which once upon a time was in a place called Palestine filled
with a people the hate-filled Zionists never recognized called
Palestinians.
According to these
geniuses in the US media, this whole mess began with the capture of
Israeli soldiers last month. If only the bad terrorists hadn't provoked
nice, tolerant Israel, which was just minding its own business and
never bothers anybody, none of this would ever have happened.
Historical context? What's that, Chris Matthews? The Zionist
colonization project that swelled Palestine's Jewish population from 11
percent to nearly half in 60 years and then violently expelled 750,000
Palestinians in 1948 and 400,000 more in the 1967 War, Norah
O'Donnell? What about the 3,000 violations of Lebanese territory by
Israel soldiers between 1968 and 1974 that killed almost 900
Palestinians and Lebanese? Or how about the March 1978 invasion of
Lebanon by Israel that killed over 2,000 and made a quarter million
homeless? The 1982 invasion of Lebanon that paved the way for Israel
allowing its fascist Christian Lebanese allies to massacre almost 2,000
Palestinian refugees in Sabra and Shatila? That make it on your radar,
Miles O'Brien?
Hamas and Hezbollah
are rooted in the resistance of the Palestinian and Lebanese masses to
Israeli aggression and expanionism. Hamas grew out of the first
Palestinian intifada in the 1980s, gaining legitimacy at the more
secular PLO's expense when the latter seemed more interested in selling
out to Israel than in fighting it. Hezbollah grew out of the resistance
by Lebanon's impoverished Shiite masses to Israel's 1982 invasion. In
addition to defending the people from Zionist aggression, these
organizations have provided extensive social welfare programs to Gaza
and Lebanon's toilers. When Israel and their US media stooges talk of
eliminating Hamas and Hezbollah, they're talking about the Palestinian
and Lebanese masses, not some terrorist outfits isolated from the
people, like America's Weather Underground in the 1960s.
For the very reason
that the oppressed everywhere are buoyed by Hamas and Hezbollah's
refusal to surrender and the blows they are inflicting on the Axis of
Evil in Washington and Tel Aviv, there is a palpable deflation and
confusion among America's bourgeois pundits. The source of their
depression is not the massive civilian casualties and suffering of the
Lebanese and Palestinian people--it's the fact that Hezbollah is not
only standing up to the overwhelming military superiority of Israel but
is also kicking the Zionists' asses as well. Matthews, O'Reilly,
O'Donnell and company are so blinded by their class bias and ignorance
they're simply not prepared for the news emanating from the southern
Lebanon front, like the following dispatches from an Associated Press
correspondents as reported by Patrick Martin in the July 25 World
Socialist Web Site:
"Air
power alone is proving insufficient to rout the guerrillas, who are
proving tough opponents on the ground as well. Small-scale pinpoint
operations to root out guerrilla positions along the border are proving
far more daunting than expected, according to soldiers returning from
battle. The troops complain of difficult terrain and being surprised by
Hezbollah guerrillas who pop out from behind bushes firing automatic
weapons or rocket-propelled grenades."
Another
AP correspondent wrote: "The heavy g uns thundered before dawn Monday,
sending deadly shells crashing down into the Lebanese border town and
paving the way for the advancing Israeli tanks and troops. By daybreak,
bloody and bruised soldiers, shock etched deep in their faces, were
streaming back over the border into Israel....Two Israeli soldiers were
killed and at least 20 were wounded Monday, the army said, as
guerrillas in the town, a Hezbollah stronghold, issued a withering
barrage of bullets, anti-tank missiles ansd mortar shells."
Martin
continued: "The determination of the resistance has clearly stunned
both Israeli commanders and the rank-and-file soldiers of the IDF. The
Associaated Press account described the use of an IDF tank as an
improvised ambulance: 'Having brought back his wounded comrades, a tank
drive sat on the turret clutching his head between his gloved hands and
crying while two crew members tried to console him.' "
He
should try crying on the shoulders of a leading Zionist stooge in the
US capitalist media--Bill O'Reilly. And when the soldier realizes that
O'Reilly has nothing to say because he's so demoralized by Hezbollah's
resistance and the antiwar sentiments in America and globally, then he
and his comrades should turn his guns on the Zionist military and
political command that ordered him to commit atrocities, just as US
soldiers in Iraq should do the same there.
July 26 update:
The
news got even better today when we learned that Hezbollah fighters
killed nine Israeli soldiers in fierce fighting in the Lebanese town
of Bint Jbail, which Israel's been trying to conquer for four days.
Some alternative. Victorious Democratic challenger Ned Lamont has managed to position himself to the right of Lieberman on Israel. And that ain't easy.
It also means Lamont is prowar.
Fidel Siempre
August
1, 2006--We're with you, Fidel. And you are forever with us. You are
the greatest revolutionary workers leader since Lenin and Trotsky. You
have made the mighty imperialists tremble at the mere mention of your
name, because they know you are incorruptible and stronger than they
are, and that behind and alongside you are 10 million Cuban workers and
campesinos who will give their lives for the Revolution and will never
surrender their country to the gusanos, parasites and gangsters allied
with US imperialism.
Let the Miami gusanos
dance in the streets lined with Yankee gold. It's the pathetic dance of
the losers. The Cuba they pine for is lost forever. Cuba won. Fidel
won. The true Cuban patriots, who are internationalists to the core,
they won.
The shouts of the
Miami gusanos will be drowned out by the adoration and wishes for a
speedy recovery from the workers of the world.
This
after they called Israeli forces 10 times pleading for their lives. And
each time Israel assured them they would not be hit. Israel's denial
that the attack was unintentional is a lie, and Kofi Annan is a fool
for accepting Tel Aviv's "apology." That order to fire was as cold
blooded and calculated as Israel's decision
to sink the USS Liberty in 1967. The motivation in both cases befits
the gangsters running Israel: physically eliminate any eyewitnesses to
their crimes.
Hezbollah's
action was justified even if Israeli soldiers had not crossed over into
Lebanon. Given the fact that all of Israel was stolen from the
Palestinians in 1948, Israel and their Zionist stooges have some
chutzpah talking about borders anyway.
"We are defending our sovereignty"
Statement by Hizbollah leadership as released to The Guardian (7/25/06):
For
nearly two weeks Israel has been waging a war of terror and aggression
against Lebanon. Its stated justification is the capture by the Islamic
Resistance (Hizbullah) of two Israeli soldiers with the aim of
exchanging them for Lebanese prisoners. The war has already resulted in
the killing of around 400 and wounding of more than 1,000 Lebanese.
Most are civilians (a third children), crushed in their homes or ripped
to pieces in their cars by Israeli bombs and missiles.
In
reality, the Israeli escalation is less about the two soldiers and more
about its determination to disarm the Lebanese resistance. According to
the US, Israel and some other western states, this would implement UN
security council resolution 1559, which led to the withdrawal of Syrian
troops from Lebanon last year.
Most
Lebanese, however, do not regard the resistance forces of Hizbullah as
militias, as referred to in the UN resolution, let alone any kind of
terrorist organisation. Our resistance accomplished a major national
mission by forcing Israeli troops to withdraw from most Lebanese
territory in 2000 after 22 years of occupation. Since then there has
been intense national debate about how Lebanon can defend itself in
future once the resistance has achieved the liberation of the remaining
occupied Lebanese land (the Shaba'a farms area) and the release of
Lebanese detainees.
The
Lebanese people's support for the resistance was demonstrated by the
fact that Hizbullah and its allies won more seats in the 2005
elections, following the Syrian withdrawal, than when Syrian troops
were still in the country. That is why Israel is now targeting
civilians.
In the
context of the continued occupation, detention of prisoners and
repeated Israeli attacks and incursions into Lebanese territory, the
capture of the Israeli soldiers was entirely legitimate. The operation
was fully in line with the Lebanese ministerial declaration, supported
in parliament, that stressed the right of the resistance to liberate
occupied Lebanese territory, free prisoners of war and defend Lebanon
against Israeli aggression. International law also allows peoples and
states to take action to protect their citizens and territory. The
Israeli onslaught is aimed not only at liquidating the resistance and
destroying the country's infrastructure but at intervening in Lebanese
politics and imposing conditions on what can be agreed.
There
is now a clear national consensus on the need to maintain the military
power necessary to prevent Lebanon from being subjugated by Israel's
war machine. Popular resistance is a way of redressing the huge
imbalance of power, defending Lebanon's sovereignty and preventing
Israel from intervening in Lebanese internal affairs, as has happened
repeatedly since 1948. It is also - as has been the case in the
prisoner-capture operation - dictated by an entirely local agenda,
rather than reflecting any Syrian or Iranian policy.
The
aggression against Lebanon, which has primarily targeted civilians and
failed to achieve any tangible military objectives, is part of a
continuing attempt to impose Israeli hegemony on the area and prevent
the emergence of a regional system that might guarantee stability,
self-determination, freedom and democracy.
Hizbullah
has tried from the start of this crisis to limit the escalation by
adopting a policy of limited response while avoiding civilian targets;
its aims were restricted to freeing the prisoners of war held in both
camps. However, Israel's systematic destruction of entire civilian
areas in Beirut and elsewhere and perpetration of scores of horrific
massacres prompted Hizbullah to shift to an all-out confrontation to
affirm Lebanon's right to deter aggression and defend its territorial
integrity and its citizens, just as any sovereign state would do.
Thus
far, Hizbullah has had surprising military successes, while maintaining
its position in the face of Israel's superior fire power, and preserved
its capacity to wage a long-term war. But Hizbullah is still ready to
accept a ceasefire and negotiate indirectly an exchange of prisoners to
bring the current crisis to an end.
This
is what Israel has so far rejected, with the support of the US. For
this is also a war of American hegemony over the Middle East, and the
US-supported by the British government - is fully complicit in the
Israeli war crimes carried out in the past two weeks. It would appear
that the peaceful option will not be given a chance until Hizbullah and
the forces of resistance have demonstrated their ability to confront
Israel's aggression and thwart its objectives, as happened in 1993 and
1996. That is why resistance is not only a pillar of our sovereignty
but also a prerequisite of stability.
"How
much longer will ordinary people prefer the World Cup and blissful
ignorance to the facts of Israel's crimes and their effects on an
entire people?"
Well
said, Ms. Heard. But the answer is not appealing to the "international
community," ie, the capitalist governments under the boot of US
imperialism and its junior partner, Zionist Israel. The road forward
lies in politically organizing and mobilizing workers, farmers, youth
and intellectuals around a revolutionary socialist and internationalist
program that will fight Zionism and US imperialism in the Middle East
by uniting with Israeli and Palestinian workers. The answer is to build
a revolutionary movement of working people to end imperialist
domination in the Middle East and around the world. The answer is to
build a new communist international that will abolish capitalism
forever--and every manifestation of its bankrupt rule from Gaza to
Haditha to Ramadi to Abu Ghraib.--July 14, 2006
Demand an Immediate End to Israel's US-Funded Terrorist Attack on Gaza!
Israeli Fighter Jets Bomb Power Station, Bridges, School, Leaving 1 Million Without Food, Water, Electricity
Israelis Arrest 87 Hamas Legislators and Officials, Bomb Prime Minister's Offices
World Silence Is an Outrage, Encouraging Further Israeli Aggression
End All US Aid to Israel!
July
6-10, 2006--While the "international community" condemns North Korea
for test-firing a long-range ballistic missile that fell into the Sea
of Japan, it falls mute as Israel deliberately targets Gaza's civilian
population with bombs and missiles--an act of collective punishment
that is a war crime and a violation of the Geneva Convention.
Israel
claims the raids are in retaliation for the recent capture of an
Israeli soldier by Palestinian fighters--an assertion undermined by 1)
a statement from Israel's security service, Shin Bet, that it had
warned Tel Aviv that Palestinians were planning to kidnap soldiers near
the Israel-Gaza border, and 2) an admission in the Israeli newspaper
Haaretz that "The detention of Hamas parliamentarians in the early
hours of Thursday morning had been planned several weeks ago and
received approval from [Attorney General] Mazus on Wednesday."
And as
the World Socialist Web Site's Chris Marsden pointed out, "Israel's
ability to marshal 3,000 troops and 100 tanks in a couple of days
indicates forward planning."
The
capture of Corporal Galid Shalit by Palestinian commandos was not a
terrorist act. Terrorism is directed against civilians. Shalit's
capture was a legitimate military move against a member of an
occupation force by national liberation combatants defending their land
against murderous occupiers who continue to kill their people with
impunity. The Israelis contend their brutal assault on Gaza--which has
already killed scored of Palestinians--is a justified retaliation for
the seizure of one Israeli soldier. Yet the bourgeois media rarely
mentions that the Israelis hold about 9800 Palestinian prisoners, many
of whom are children and some of whom have been tortured.
Little is also said
about the murderous Israeli offensive that preceded Shalit's capture,
an offensive that included the killing a Palestinian family while
sunbathing on the beach.
North Korea is not
threatening anybody. North Korea is not on a military warpath. North
Korea does not have hundreds of military bases around the world. North
Korea is not invading sovereign nations to steal their oil. North Korea
has not dropped atomic bombs on civilian populations. North Korea did
not invade the US 56 years ago to prevent its unification. North Korea
did not slaughter millions of Americans in the process. North Korea has
not imposed sanctions on the US. North Korea has not stationed 40,000
soldiers on US soil for almost 60 years. North Korea has not placed
nuclear-armed submarines up and down America's eastern seaboard.
North Korea test-fired
those missiles to deter the warmaniacs in Washington from attacking it
again. It was sending a message to Bush that North Korea is not Iraq--a
defenseless nation incapable of shooting down invading aircraft. Kim
Jung Il is not a deranged lunatic. Those imperialist ideologues who say
he is should examine the psychological condition of their own Great
Leader--a sadistic sociopath who's killed a lot more people than Kim
since 2001.
When the capitalist
press refers to the "international community," they're usually talking
about the bourgeois regimes that unfortunately comprise most of the
planet, since the international socialist revolution has yet to be
realized. It's no historical accident that two nations not under the
boot of world capitalism--Revolutionary Cuba and increasingly
Venezeula--have not stood silent in the face of Israel's aggression in
Gaza but have courageously articulated the rage felt by working people everywhere.--July 8, 2006
This
is why separation of church and state is so important for the working
class. It's a matter of life and death. If you want to believe the
religious fairy tale that a human soul resides in a clump of
undifferentiated stem cells smaller than .15 to .20 mm, that's your
prerogative--but keep it within the confines of your church. Don't
bring it into the White House and let it influence a policy that
determines whether millions of people live or die.--July 20, 2006
Murdered trying to flee Zionist terror
Bush vetoed the stem cell research bill because it crosses a "moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect..."
Another child left behind
Further, we can never offend our "fundamental morals," and we must honor "the fundamental ethical line..."
Therefore, we cannot "allow our nation to cross this moral line" by passing a bill that fails "this ethical test."
July
17-19, 2006--After MSNBC's O'Donnell called Venezuelan president Hugo
Chavez a "dictator" [actually a "socialist dictator"] while introducing
Sheehan, the antiwar activist called the overpaid Barbie doll talking
head to task: "You know, President Chavez has been democratically
elected to his office 8 times."
On-camera,
O'Donnell responded defensively: "Saddam Hussein was democratically
elected." [In elections that were about as fair as the two that Bush
stole. Hussein was a CIA thug imposed on Iraqis by Washington, who had
no problems with his dictatorial methods until he tried to take too
much of Washington's booty, like a capo cutting in on the Don's
profits. But O'Donnell is accurately reflecting US imperialism's
contempt for the will of the people, evidenced by its overthrow of
democratically elected governments in Iran (1954), Guatemala (1954),
Chile (1970), and its backing of Israel's bloody attempt to overthrow
the democratically elected Hamas government in Palestine.]
Sheehan:
"Yeah, hold on a second. He [Chavez] is not anti-American. He has
helped the poor people of America. He has sent aid to New Orleans. He
has sold heating oil to disadvantaged people in America ... at low
cost...The people of Venezuela have elected him overwhelmingly eight
times, and it's his country, and it's their country and they should
have the leader that they deserve, that they want."
O'Donnell said nothing as the interview ended. But off-camera, Sheehan reveals, O'Donnell told her:
"We had a big discussion about that and we decided that he ruled like a dictator." [emphasis added]
Did you
hear that? O'Donnell and her multimillionaire colleagues at MSNBC
decided that Chavez ruled like a dictator. From their class
perspective, he's a dictator because he's taking money from the
coffers of Venezuela's elite and giving it back to the Venezuela
toilers whose labor creates the wealth in the first place; he's a
dictator because more of Venezuela's oil money is funding health care,
education, schools and affordable food. O'Donnell's also showing her
ignorance: Chavez has spearheaded the rewriting of the country's
constitution to transform the political structure in a more democratic
way, so that the Venezuelan masses have more access to the political
process and are becoming increasingly involved in transforming the
country into a more egalitarian society. That doesn't square with
O'Donnell and her colleagues' vision of democracy--getting as rich as
possible while working people vote in meaningless and rigged elections.
The truth
is Cindy Sheehan and millions of Americans have been having an even
bigger discussion and we've decided that it's George Bush who rules as
a dictator. As Cindy put it:
"George
Bush attained his office by two heavily tainted elections that should
more rightly be called coups. From stealing two elections and saying
and acting like you have a mandate to destroy the world; to
circumventing Congress at every turn with 'signing statements' and just
not telling them things; to wiretapping Americans without proper
warrants; to reading our emails and looking at bank records without
warrants; to illegally detaining people and torturing them; to
insisting on staying a course in Iraq that is killing nearly more
innocent people per month than were killed in our country on 9/11; to
authorizing the leak of covert agents' names; to selling our democracy
to the highest bidders, such as the likes of Jack Abramoff; to
appointing avowed UN hater John Bolton to the UN in a recess
appointment because he knew that a normal confirmation process would
fail; to allowing the neo-cons to take over our foreign policy to the
detriment of our nation; to etc., etc. - I ask Norah O'Donnell and
MSNBC, who is the dictator here? George or Hugo?"
Touche,
Cindy. Norah, perhaps you should seriously consider another
career.You're not a journalist. You're a mouthpiece for US imperialism
who can't hold a candle to Cindy Sheehan's skills as a political
analyst.
Lock This Lunatic Up Now!
He's off his rocker
The most powerful individual in the world is a deranged, sadistic sociopath.
As we said the night of November 4, 2004, a diseased political system
produces diseased results. Unfortunately, a lot more blood will flow
before this demented thug is put away where he belongs.
Just
look at Bush fondling German Chancellor Angela Merkel. This on the
heels of Bush distinguishing himself before the world with this
response to a reporter's question about the Middle East crisis: "I
thought you were going to ask about the pig."
This was the fourth
consecutive reference to the roasted pig highlighting the dinner menu
that evening ("I'm looking forward to the feast you're going to have
tonight"; "Thank you for having me. Looking forward to that pig
tonight"; "I haven't seen that pig yet"). As the death toll mounts in
Lebanon, Gaza, Iraq and Israel, this asshole is obsessing about a pig.
Gee, I wonder why.
Without
for a second giving into lesser evilism, those Americans who voted for
this scoundrel should be ashamed of themselves, and those still
defending him should crawl back into the holes they came from.--July
19, 2006
Americans take heed: THIS is how to spread democracy: Mexico City, 7/16/06
While the
tempo of the class struggle in the US is nowhere near what it's reached
in Mexico, the US working class--an increasingly internationalized working
class--can learn much from our brothers and sisters south of the
border, who in their recent election confronted a political framework
North American workers are quite familiar with:
"None of
the major candidates in the presidential election genuinely addresses
the needs of the masses for decent-paying jobs, improved living
standards and social programs" (World Socialist Web Site, July 1, 2006, Rafael Azul on Mexican election)
However,
whatever illusions many Mexican workers and peasants may have in the
Party of the Democratic Revolution candidate Andres Manuel Lopez
Obrador, they are not letting the elections stand in the way of
mobilizing in mass struggles against capitalism and in defense of
working class interests.--July 8, 2006
Rachel Corrie takes her place alongside Joe Hill in the annals of heroic working class resistance.
Thanks to this play, Rachel, you never died.
But
thanks to the fighting capacities embodied in Rachel, the Palestinians
and the international proletariat, including the Israeli working class,
Zionism will.--July 12, 2006
The
Democrats are real bad asses when it comes to keeping socialists off
the ballot, but they groveled before Bush when he stole two
presidential elections.
No to All Personality Cults--Especially for Corrupt Cops!
July
11, 2006--It's considered unappropriately immodest for one's name to be
memorialized in public while one is still alive. Yet until the myriad
of corruption scandals engulfed Rudy Giuliani's one time corrections
commissioner, New York's notorious jail, The Tombs, was actually called
the Bernard B. Kerik Complex. And why not? Kerik oversaw a kickback
deal between cigarette companies and the Department of Corrections just
so that inmates could enjoy their smokes. Plus the sporting equipment
the companies once donated to the jails was replaced by a fast paced
foundation that saw money flying in and out without any govermental or
IRS oversight.
Kerik
also apparently saw to it that the Tombs' scrap metal was sold off to
private dealers instead of to the city, another venture that must have
lined somebody's pockets because investigators' interest was aroused.
Facing
jail time for felony bribery charges involving Kerik serving as
an agent for an allegedly mob-connected New Jersey construction company
in return for the company hiring Kerik's brother and his best man at
his wedding, Kerik only had to plead guilty to accepting $165,000 worth
of free construction work on two apartment and accepting a small loan
from a real estate builder.
Kerik's lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, expressed his client's arrogance after the removal of Kerik's name was announced:
"Having his name on a building or not does not change his legacy as a correction commissioner."
That's
right. Plenty of bucks were made on the sweetheart deal with the
tobacco companies and the reorganization of the Tombs' scrap metal.
Tacopina also defended one of the cops who shoved a broomstick up Haitian immigrant Abner Louima's rectum in 1997.
This time US soldiers allegedly stalked, raped, and murdered a 15-year-old girl.
Apparently
she had rejected the sexual advances of these pigs, who, after
completing their mission with the girl, then murdered her parents and
younger sister, and burned their bodies, too.
The US
military initially said their deaths were due to insurgent attacks. But
as we learn every day, the US military is packed with pathological
liars, not because it is a collection of individual liars, but because
as an institution of an imperialist regime that must hoodwink young
workers into dying for corporate profits, by necessity it is one rooted
in lies and deception.
Last
month, in the essay below entitled "From Belfast to Gitmo:
Remember Bobby Sands," we reported how a Guantanamo prisoner and hunger
striker compared the courage of his compatriots with IRA hunger striker
Bobby Sands, predicting, "we will definitely die. Bobby Sands
petitioned the British government to stop the illegitimate treatment of
Irishmen without trial. He had the courage of his convictions and he
starved himself to death. Nobody should believe for one moment that my
brothers here have less courage."
US
military officials are saying the suicides was "an act of asymmetric
warfare" against them. On the one hand, this is taking Malcolm X's
point that imperialism turns the victims into the criminals to new
depths of depravity. The
Guantanamo suicides were an act of rebellion and defiance against the
inhuman and illegal conditions they have confined to for more than 4
years.
On the
other hand, the Guantanamo detainees were acting in the spirit of Bobby
Sands. They knew full well that in sacrificing their lives they were
delivering a blow against the Empire.--June 12, 2006
June
8-23, 2006--The world's biggest terrorist is still alive and on the
loose. He resides in the White House. This violent man will murder
again. The bloodbath will continue for Iraqis and Americans.
"The
evidence suggests ... that Zarqawi was part of a Pentagon
disinformation campaign launched in 2003, which was initially intended
to justify the US led invasion of Iraq. This central role of Zarqawi as
an instrument of war propaganda was recently confirmed by leaked
military documents revealed by the Washington Post.
"The Pentagon had set up a 'Zarqawi program'. Military documents
confirm that the role of Zarqawi had been deliberately 'magnified' with
a view to galvanizing public support for the US-UK led 'war on
terrorism':
"
'The Zarqawi campaign is discussed in several of the internal military
documents. 'Villainize Zarqawi/leverage xenophobia response,' one U.S.
military briefing from 2004 stated. It listed three methods: 'Media
operations,' 'Special Ops (626)' (a reference to Task Force 626, an
elite U.S. military unit assigned primarily to hunt in Iraq for senior
officials in Hussein's government) and 'PSYOP,' the U.S. military term
for propaganda work...' (WP. 10 April 2006)"
"An
internal document produced by U.S. military headquarters in Iraq,
states that 'the Zarqawi PSYOP program is the most successful
information campaign to date.' (WP, op cit)."
Indeed.
June
9, 2006--Whether this shadowy figure was killed two years ago in
northern Iraq or this week north of Baghdad, his demise helps the Iraqi
Resistance more than George W. Bush. Zarqawi started out on
Washington's side when he joined the anti-Soviet mujahidin in
Afghanistan, and for US imperialism he was the gift who kept on giving.
Whenever Washington needed him in Iraq, he was there--sometimes as if
by magic, as in US PSYOP magic.
When
Hussein captured in 2003--an event that required a new bogeyman to
justify the US occupation--US military officials couldn't stop talking
about Zarqawi. "If the weather is bad they'll blame it on Zarqawi," an
Iraqi journalist remarked to Counterpunch's Patrick Cockburn. In
February 2004, just as Shiites were about to unite with Sunnis against
the occupation, along comes a letter supposedly penned by Zarqawi
urging Sunnis to start a civil war with Shiites. Within weeks, Shiite
mosques were hit by suicide bombers allegedly working for Zarqawi. Then
in May, just after the Abu Graib torture photographs were released,
Nick Berg was beheaded in a gruesome execution by Zarqawi, according to
US authorities.
Zarqawi
was like an Islamic Scarlet Pimpernel. He was here, he was there, he
was everywhere; first we heard his leg was amputated, but when the
beheader in the Berg video had both legs, the story was reversed. He
hadn't lost his leg after all. The beheader was left-handed; Zarqawi's
former cell mates said he was right-handed. Four years ago, Bush had a
chance to kill him but pulled back. Timing is everything in politics as
well as life. Bush needed Zarqawi around a while longer to ignite a
sectarian civil war that serves US imperialism's interests by keeping
the country weak and divided.
Right
to the end, Iraq's Scarlet Pimpernel almost got away again to live
another day. Zarqawi is said to have initially survived the blasts
from two 500-pound bombs that demolished his safe house and killed
several civilians in the process. Captured by American soldiers as he
tried to escape, Zarqawi supposedly tried to escape from the stretcher
before succumbing to his injuries. In all likelihood, he died at the
hands of the US soldiers who seized him.
June
23, 2006--As usual, Washington's official story is highly suspicious
and has been called into question by multiple reports suggesting
Zarqawi was killed by US forces. First he was dead when US soldiers
arrived on the scene; then we learned he survived for 52 minutes after
two 500-pound bombs flattened the safehouse. An Iraqi eyewitness
claimed he saw American soldiers beating Zarqawi; US authorities say he
was put in an ambulance by Iraqi police, who then took him off and gave
him first aid before he died. Then they said he "died while American
soldiers were attempting to save his life." He was found by Iraqis;
Americans weren't around for the air strike.
But
then senior Pentagon officials told the NY Times anonymously there were
Special Operations troops near the home before the attack. Iraqi
eyewitnesses spoke of American commandos climbing down ropes from
choppers. Time magazine wrote about a Delta Force presence nearby.
It
was reported a while back that Bush had Zarqawi in his sights several
years ago but called off the assassination--perhaps because he hadn't
yet outlived his usefulness as a US asset; there was too much
propaganda value to extract from his "legend." Now we learn that US
forces had been monitoring Zarqawi for weeks before deciding to kill
him at a most opportune time for Bad News Bush. For someone with a
reputation for elusiveness would make the Scarlet Pimpernel blush, the
US sure had no trouble keeping track of his whereabouts.
Zarqawi's
role in the Iraqi insurgency was intentionally inflated by Washington
as it sou ght to demonize Zarqawi to win public support for the
occupation. The insurgency didn't need Zarqawi. It began without him
and it will continue without him--as Washington is learning the hard
way.
"They
bragged, they were practically drunk with happiness." [Sean Hannity
even had "goosebumps" just thinking of those 500-lb. bombs hitting
their target.]
If
Cuba used imperialism's logic, Fidel explained, it could bomb the
United States to kill its No. 1 enemy, Luis Posada Carriles, the
US-backed terrorist accused of the 1976 bombing of a Cuban plane that
killed 73 people.
June 9-21, 2006--The rejoicing will occur when Coulter is six feet under.
Kristen
Breitweiser and the Jersey Girls should feel good about themselves. The
fact that an ultrarightist viper like Ann Coulter is foaming at the
mouth over their 9/11 activism proves they're striking a chord with
broad layers of Americans while making the US rulers very
uncomfortable. Coulter is well aware of a poll showing 72% of Americans
think that Bush either covered up or lied about the September 11
attacks, and the one that revealed 49% of New Yorkers suspect the
government allowed the attacks to occur, 66% think the 9/11 commission
was flawed and want a new investigation--facts that no doubt
contribute to Coulter's hatred for the people of New York.
It
is precisely the credibility possessed by 9/11 widows and a slain vet's
mother that is driving Coulter's hate-mongering vitriol and
desperation.--June 9, 2006
Coulter's
angry that Breitweiser and the Jersey Girls didn't fall in line like
good Germans behind Washington's criminal aggression in Afghanistan and
Iraq. Coulter's seething with jealousy at these intelligent,
articulate, tough, independent-minded women who discovered upon closer
investigation that their husbands and relatives died in the World Trade
Center after Bush had ignored multiple, specific warnings about
September 11 and presided as commander in chief over a military
standdown that allowed it to happen.
Bush
partisan and bloodthirsty militarist that she is, Coulter doesn't
appreciate how the Jersey Girls have told Americans that the Bush
family has enjoyed long-time business dealings with the bin Ladens;
that Bush called off his FBI dogs from bin Laden's tail in the months
before September 11; that Bush and then National Security Advisor
Condoleeza Rice lied when they claimed they had no idea a September 11
plot was looming; that the Pentagon had been tailing Atta and several
other hijackers for years; that Bush had opposed any investigation of
September 11 and had to be shamed into backing the "bipartisan"
commission headed by Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton.
Coulter's
only half right when characterizing that commission as a "Clinton
whitewash"--she leaves out the fact it's an even bigger "Bush
whitewash" given the attacks occurred nine months into his "watch." But
the stench of governmental complicity in 9/11 is so overwhelming that
even Kean and Hamilton's coverup could not help but illuminate it.
Coulter neglects to m ention that the Jersey Girls--like much of the
country--are not satisfied with the failings of the 9/11 whitewash
commission and--again like much of the country--demands a truly
impartial, independent investigation that would get to the bottom of
what really happened and hold those responsible for the criminal
negligence and/or governmental complicity that resulted in September 11.
Coulter's
vitriol is driven by her outrage that the Jersey Girls have played such
an instrumental role in exposing this Emperor has no clothes regarding
the events of September 11. As a Bush partisan and avid backer of
imperialist wars, Coulter places the political fortunes of this
president above the well being of Americans, let alone the world. Her
charge that the 9/11 widows have exploited and profited from their
husbands' deaths is laughable coming from a representative of a ruling
class that has shamelessly exploited the tragedy of 9/11 to wage
long-planned wars in the resource rich Middle East and Central Asia
while profiting handsomely off the backs of US workers. Not to mention
the obscene profits Coulter is making off the deaths of 9/11 victims
and the grief of their surviving families by levying the kind of
vicious personal attacks against the Jersey Girls contained in this
oft-quoted excerpt from "Godless: The Church of Liberalism":
"These
broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them,
reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by griefarazzis.
I've never seen people enjoying their husband's deaths so much."
This
slimy remark only shows Coulter's desperation. Unable to debate the
political points and accusations raised by the Jersey Girls regarding
the Bush administration's dereliction of duty, Coulter can only resort
to her noxious brand of cruel name calling and inflammatory tabloid
speech that catapulted her to the top of the garbage heap that
constitutes the pornographication of American politics.
Anyone
with a human bone in their body who has watched Breitweiser and the
other 9/11 widows knows the devastation and grief these women have
endured since 9/11--which eliminates the vampirish harlot known as Ann
Coulter. But missing from her cruel rant is any attempt to factually
refute the specific criticisms levied against Bush by the Jersey Girls.
Instead, Coulter tired to divert attention away from the fact that she
is guilty of what she's accusing the widows of. Coulter says the 9/11
widows are hiding behind this liberal infallibility whereby they're
immune from criticism because of their grief. She demands that they
keep their grief to themselves and quit injecting their political
opinions into the public debate--ie, shut up about how Bush ignored
specific warnings, lied about what he knew, covered up what he knew,
resisted all attempts to investigate 9/11, and then did all he could to
hinder the investigation and ensure it was a whitewash.
Coulter
should keep revealing her low-life, classless, mean-spirited, vicious
chararacter, so that US workers get a good look at the type of bile and
scum rising to the surface to defend capitalism and the methods this
decaying system needs to survive--imperialist war, torture, death
squads.
We've
heard samples of her Christian soul before: "We hate them. Americans
don't want to make fanatics love us. We want to make them die. There's
nothing like horrendous physical pian to quell anger. Japnese Kamikazes
pilots hated us once, too. A couple of well-aimed nuclear weapons got
their attention. Now they are gentle little lambs."
"We
should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to
Christianity. We were'n't puntilious about locating and punishing only
Hitler and his top offricers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed
civilians. That's war. And this is war."
"We
need to execute people like JohnWalker in order to phyiscally intimdate
loiberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too.
Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors."
And
for anyone who doubts that Coulter despises working people, "The only
beef Enron employees have with top management is that management did
not inform employees of the collapse in time to allow them to get in on
the swindle."
And,
"Then
there are the 22 million Americans on food stamps. And of course there
are the 39 million greedy geezers collecting Social Security. The
greatest generation rewarded itself with a pretty big meal."
Coulter shamelessly showed her contempt for US war veterans in these comments about Max Cleland, who lost his legs in Vietnam:
“It
is simply a fact that Max Cleland was not injured by enemy fire in
Vietnam. He was not in combat, he was not...on a reconnaissance
mission, and he was not in the battle of Khe Sanh, as many others have
implied. He picked up an American grenade on a routine noncombat
mission and the grenade exploded.” (Thanks to Mick Youther of
Intervention Magazine)
Then
there was, "I think the government should be spying on all Arabs,
engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy
cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East and sending liberals to
Guantanamo."
The
response to Coulter's inflammatory, fascist rhetoric among liberals
only shows how the impotent, bankrupt perspective of their reformist
politics will only disarm workers in the face of a growing fascist
threat. Coulter is not a joke; she's not a cartoon; she's not a
satirist to be ignored and marginalized; she's not an entertainer.
Coulter, like O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, Michelle Malkin,
Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity, represent a faction of the US
capitalist class already making their plans to suspend the Constitution
and throw political dissenters into internment camps. As the class
polarization intensifies in the United States, the voices of this
rightist scum grows more shrill and their tone more desperate.
Coulter
and her ilk should not be ignored. They should be taken on politically
and exposed as the frauds and working class enemies they are. Behind
O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter and to a lesser extent Beck,
Savage and Malkin are millions of racist, backward, and reactionary
elements ready to go to the barricades to smash any working class
radicalization that may emerge from the rumblings of discontent
brewing. History teaches us that the stronger and more organized a
revolutionary workers party is during a revolutionary upsurge, the less
violence and social cost accompanies that revolution.
Judging
from the hysterial ravings of Coulter, Malkin, Beck, and Savage, we'd
better start organizing that revolutionary workers party soon, or the
American socialist revolution will make the Civil War look like a tea
party.--June 26, 2006
This
is the case where they pulled an Iraqi man from his home, shot him
dead, then planted a shovel and gun on him in a pathetic attempt to
frame him as an insurgent.
This is a demoralized fighting force on its way to losing another colonial war.
Hadithas All Over Iraq
Ishaqi: US Soldiers Round Up and Execute 11 Civilians Gangland Style
Blindfolded and Bound Victims Include 4 Women, 5 Children, Aged 6 Months to 5 Years
Then
Bush and O'Reilly's warriors blew up the house, burned three vehicles,
and killed all the animals in a barbaric fury that would make Attila
the Hun blush.
A
US military investigation exonerated the soldiers, finding "no
wrongdoing" occurred. This ensures similar atrocities will occur in the
future, no matter how many "core values training" seminars
are given. The US claims the murders were justified because they'd
received an informant's tip that an alleged Al Qaeda in Iraq member was
in the house. So what? A member of the Iraqi Resistance, an Islamic
fundamentalist fighting a foreign occupier was visiting the home of a
schoolteacher. That gives US forces the right to cold-bloodedly execute
infants and old women?
Samarra: US Soldiers Gun Down Two Iraqi Women, One Pregnant, at Roadblock
That's an American-run roadblock in their country. In Iraq. More murders by trigger-happy foreign occupiers shooting Iraqis for not slowing down fast enough in their country.
Today American soldiers say no to this barbarism by individually deserting to Canada. Tomorrow they will revolt en masse.
Falluja: US Destroys Falluja, Killing Four to Six Thousand Civilians
Targeting
civilian centers with C130 fighters, tanks, armored vehicles, and F-16
fighter jets, US forces launch an overwhelming assault on the town of
Falluja in November 2004, a hotbed of Sunni resistance to the
occupation. Four to six thousand Iraqi civilians are estimated to have
died in the rubble of their razed town.
These
horrific occurrences are not aberrations. US forces didn't "crack under
the stress." They were doing the job they are trained to do. These
crimes inevitably flow from the criminal character of colonial wars of
conquest. This is nothing new for US forces, which have been committing
atrocities against civilians since Washington became an imperialist
power in the 1898 Spanish-American War. They slaughtered 200,000
civilians during the conquest of the Philippines. US soldiers murdered
hundreds of civilians under a brige at No Gun Ri, Korea in July 1950.
For years the myth held that the official military "investigation"
concluded there was no intentional killing of civilians at No Gun Ri.
But ANSWER recently reported that a South Korean ambassador released a
1950 letter to American State Department official Dean Rusk revealing a
military decision had been made to kill all Korean refugees approaching
US lines.
They lied about No Gun Ri and My Lai, just like they lied about Haditha and are still lying about Ishaqi.
When
imperialists send their soldiers into hostile colonial countries, they
will be viewed as hated occupiers and there will be resistance. The
ultimate responsibility for the resulting atrocities lies with the
White House, the Congress, and the Pentagon brass. Marines, Special
Forces, and US Army grunts are trained to be psychotic killers. So
don't give me this phony shock when the crimes they were trained to do
are committed. Their job is to terrorize the indigenous population into
submission. Their job is to break the will of the occupied people to
resist. But that's easier said than done, whether you're trying to
subjugate a people equipped with a revolutionary national liberation
movement, as in Vietnam, or whether they don't, as in Iraq.
As Richard Crenna said to Brian Dennehy in "First Blood": "Rambo and I had our orders. When in doubt, kill."
"Violent
attacks on US-led occupation forces as well as aid workers have also
been reported in the north and east as well as in the western province
of Heart, which borders on Iran. All are dominated by groups opposed to the Taliban. What is emerging is a nationwide movement of resistance to the US occupation." [emphasis added]
Despite
the lack of a revolutionary, anti-imperialist leadership, Afghanistan's
toilers are joining their Iraqi brothers and sisters in inflicting a
humiliating defeat on US imperialism.
You
know Washington's in trouble when its Kabul puppets are demanding the
arrest of those US soldiers who plowed their truck into a crowd of
Afghanis and then shot and killed at least four more civilians.--May
31, 2006
The Deepening Political Crisis of US Imperialism
From Kentucky to West Virginia to Iraq to Afghanistan, Humanity Pays the Price Each Day This Wretched System Survives
May
27-28, 2006--But even as the US capitalist rulers defend their system
of private profit with increasing brutality, reflected in the mounting
death toll of workers that includes US miners,Haditha civilians,Kandahar villagers,
the political and economic crisis of that profit system is also taking
a toll on the rulers and their corrupt political representatives. For
all the political problems and challenges that beset the US working
class, we should take comfort in the escalating factionalism,
contradictions, antagonisms and tensions that is enveloping \
bipartisan capitalist rule in the nation's capital.
Bush Unleashes FBI Dogs on Democratic Congressman's Office
Using
the pretext of fighting corruption, the FBI's raid of
Louisiana Representative William Jefferson's office was in truth "a
politically motivated breach of constitutional boundaries aimed at
asserting the power of the executive branch over the legislative. It is
yet an other political marker in the goverment's moves towards
dictatorial forms of rule." [World Socialist Web Site, "FBI stages
unprecedented raid on congressman's office" May 24, 2006]
This
politically motivated raid flowed from the need of the "clique around
Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to intimidate and silence critics,
forestall any investigation into the administration's own illegal
actions, and move toward the establishment of a form of presidential
dictatorship."
The
unprecedented raid on Jefferson's office was such an egregious
intrusion on separation of powers it brought these reactions from Bush
supporters in his own party:
Former
House Speaker New Gingrich: "What happened Saturday night...is them ost
blatant violation of the Constitutional Separation of Powers inmy
lifetime...I am shaen by this abuse of power."
Republican stalwart and Congressman David Dreier: "I think this is really outrageous."
Even Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist was "very concerned" about the raid.
But
the most striking reaction came from Republican House Speaker Dennis
Hastert, who objected to the overreaching and abuse of power by the
executive branch. "I am very concerned about the necessity of
a Saturday night raid on Congressman Jefferson's Capitol Hill Office in
pursuit of information that was already under subpoena at a time when
those subpoenas are still pending and all the documents that have been
subpoenaed were being preserved.
"The
Founding Fathers were very careful to establish in the Constitution a
Separation of Powers to protect Americans against the tyranny of any
one branch of government. They were particularly concerned about
limiting the power of the Executive Branch.
“Insofar as I am aware,
since the founding of our Republic 219 years ago, the Justice
Department has never found it necessary to do what it did Saturday
night, crossing this Separation of Powers line, in order to
successfully prosecute corruption by Members of Congress... Nothing I
have learned in the last 48 hours leads me to believe there was any
necessity to change the precedent established over those 219 years.”
Hastert's
strong words apparently landed him in trouble and subjected him to the
usual gangster methods of intimidation, retaliation, and blackmail
routinely employed by the criminals in the Bush White House. Within
hours of Hastert's statement, ABC News reported a leak from unnamed law
enforcement officials that Hastert was part of their investigation into
the Jack Abramoff bribery scandal.
Hastert
threatened to sue ABC for defamation. ABC refused to retract its story.
When Bush appeared to be wavering in the face of the congressional
outcry, Attorney General Gonzalez supposedly vowed to quit if Bush
ordered him to turn over the seized files. Bush then ordered the
documents sealed for 45 days while the Justice Department and
the House Counsel representing Jefferson work out a deal.
Meanwhile,
the Randy Cunningham and Jack Abramoff bribery scandals hang
over Washington like the sword of Damocles. Just as the Watergate
scandal was fueled by the US defeat in Vietnam, today's scandals are
being driven by the unfolding humiliating defeat in Iraq.
That
defeat was reflected in the faces, voices, and body language
of the Tweedledum and Tweedledee of Anglo-American imperialism--Blair
and Bush--at their joint press conference in Washington this week.
"Army
Colonel Michael Bumgarner said that the detainees, who had made the
floor slippery with faeces, urine and soapy water, attacked 10 members
of Guantanamo's quick-reaction force with fan blades, pieces of metal
and broken light fixtures when the team went to investigate."
In
recent months, the dehumanized detainees have been attempting suicides
and conducting hunger strikes to express their resistance to the
inhuman abuse they've been subjected to by US authorities at Guantanamo
Bay, itself an ongoing violation of Cuba's national sovereignty. Now
they're taking a more proactive approach.
Navy
Rear Admiral Harry Harris, commanding officer at "Camp Gitmo," reacted
this way: "This illustrates to me the dangerous nature of the men we
have detained here."
No,
it illustrates to me the inhumane, barbaric nature of the torturers who
have continued to detain these men in defiance of international
law.--May 20, 2006
Fresh from his prowar commencement address
at Liberty University, the Reverend Jerry Falwell's citadel of
reaction, bigotry and intolerance, Senator John McCain received a far
more appropriate and representative responsefrom
the graduates of New York City's New School when he attempted to peddle
his reactionary garbage at the Madison Square Garden ceremony.
Undergraduate keynote speaker Jean Sara Rohle summed it up: "The
Senator does not reflect the ideals on which this school was founded.
This was a top-down decision in which the students played no part."
In
other words, McCain, take your militaristic bullshit back to that
cesspool of reaction called Liberty University where it belongs.--May 20, 2006
Following in the footsteps of those Georgetown law students who turned their backs on Attorney General for Torture, Alberto Gonzalez, when he tried to address them in January.
Apparently
the decision to hire Iraq war architect Douglas Feith was another
"top-down" selection that bypassed professors in Georgetown
University's School of Foreign Service.
Just
as the New School's commencement invitation to John McCain was a
"top-down decision in which the students played no part," the decision
to hire Feith by Georgetown School of Foreign Service was a "top-down
decision" in which the professors played no part. And like New School's
graduates, Georgetown's professors are fighting back.
A lot of people are fighting back. French workers and youth, Latino immigrants in the US, prisoners at Guantanamo.
is
directed against the entire US population--not isolated Al Qaeda cells.
The NSA call-tracking program accelerates the drive toward a
totalitarian police state by the government of the US capitalist ruling
class that is increasingly fearful of the growing working class
opposition to its policies of war, militarism, repression and reaction,
and austerity.
Meanwhile,
the militarization of the US-Mexican border announced in Bush's May 15
speech is another sign that the US rulers are rapidly moving toward a
police state and military dictatorship to preserve capitalist rule. US
workers should unite with immigrant labor against the common
enemy--capitalists and their private profit drive. It is suicidal to
fall for the divide and conquer strategy of the US capitalists and
their millionaire stooges in the media like Bill O'Reilly. Soldiers,
Minutemen, high tech walls, motion sensors, infrared cameras, unmanned
aerial vehicles, these are the methods of exploiters, of reaction, of
mean-spirited, vicious xenophobes that will only result in more deaths.
They are not the methods or values of working people.
The
capitalists are class conscious. They know what they have to do to
weaken the working class and pit one section of us against the other.
They are utilizing their political parties and their possession
of state power to attack our living standards and democratic rights. We
have to be equally class conscious and welcome immigrant workers from
Mexico and everywhere else.
Because
our struggles recognize no borders. In this age of globalization,
capital moves wherever it wants to go to make profit. Then working
people have the right to move wherever WE want to go to earn a living.
Mexican workers come here because the natural workings of world
capitalism devastate their country's economy and force them to emigrate
to live better lives. Supporting full equality and rights for immigrant
workers strengthens the entire US working class and puts us closer
toward uniting the international proletariat so we can do the job in
front of us--abolish capitalism and its historically obsolete
nation-state and realize a world without borders, a world
democratically run by workers, a free and equal association of
producers and consumers.--May 17, 2006
IRA Hunger Striker Sands: "Generations will continue to meet the same fight unless the perennial oppressor is removed"
And
Francis Hughes, Patsy O'Hara, Raymond McCreesh, Joe McDonnell, Martin
Hurson, Kevin Lynch, Kieran Doherty, Thomas McElwee, Michael Devine,
Michael Gaughan and Frank Stagg. Remember all of the Irish Republican
prisoners who died in Belfast's H-Block prisons in May 1981 rather than
admit that their struggle for an Ireland free from British and
Protestant rule was criminal.
Counterpunch contributor Kate McCabe reminds us in her excellent article today that, just like Joe Hill, Bobby Sands has not died.
Guantanamo prisoner and hunger striker Binyam Mohammed al-Habashi released the following statement through his lawyer:
"I do
not plan to stop until I either die or we are respected. [We] will
definitely die. Bobby Sands petitioned the British government to stop
the illegitimate treatment of Irishmen without trial. He had the
courage of his convictions and he starved himself to death. Nobody
should believe for one moment that my brothers here have less courage."
Or, as Haymarket Martyr August Spies told
his hangman at the gallows, "The time will come when our silence will
be more powerful than the voices you strangle today."--May 8, 2006
Workers of the World Unite!
Workers of the United States Unite and Reclaim May 1 as Our Labor Day!
Full and Unconditional Legalization! No Deportations!
No Border Walls
No Detentions! Free All Immigrant Detainees!
No Guest Worker Program!
Full Worker Rights and Protections for All Immigrant Workers!
Family Reunification Measures for Immigrant Workers!
May
5-6, 2006--Before US workers follow the Pied Piper of national
chauvinism and bigotry, Bill O'Reilly, down the road of xenophobic
immigrant bashing, we should remember that we owe the 8-hour day we
enjoy today to the titanic struggles by immigrant labor in the late
1880s and 1890s. Indeed, the origins of the international workers
holiday known as May Day stem from these struggles of earlier
generations of predominately European immigrant workers in the United States
to shorten 12, 14 and 16 hour workdays to the more humane 8-hour
day--which is under increasing attack by today's capitalists who
ruthlessly extend the workday to maximize the surplus value extracted
from wage labor.
Thus
the international proletariat, much of it communist and socialist, was
inspired by the vanguard role played by the US working class in the
heroic fight for the 8-hour day. It was the fight for this shorter work
day in Chicago that led to the May 1, 1886 general strike in which
nationwide 340,000 workers left 12,000 factories, including 80,000 in
Chicago alone. Two days later striking workers clashed with scabs on a
picket line at the McCormack reaper works, which gave the cops the
excuse to attack and kill two workers.
The
outraged workers responded to a call by anarchist leaders for a rally
in Haymarket Square to protest the murder of their fellow workers by
killer cops. One of the anarchist leaders, August Spies, published a
pamphlet, "Revenge! Workingmen to Arms!"
At the
rally, however, Spies did not incite anyone to violence. But the cops
ordered an end to the rally as they marched menacingly to the speakers
podium. Suddenly a bomb was thrown near the police, killing 8. The cops
then opened fire on the workers, injuring dozens and killing 11.
Eight
anarchist leaders, seven of them immigrants, were charged with murder.
The trial was a sham and a frame-up. The defendants were railroaded to
the gallows with no evidence linking any of them to the bombing. Only
two of them were even in Haymarket that day. The prosecution could only
argue that the defendants who had incited the bombthrower were just as
guilty. Seven defendants got the death penalty; one received 15 years.
Two defendants had their death sentence commuted to life, and one
committed suicide.
Seven
years later the Illinois governor pardoned the three surviving
Haymarket defendants after conceding that all 8 defendants were not
guilty after all. Instead, the police official who ordered the crowd to
disperse was convicted for corruption. The bomb thrower's identity was
never learned, which was no surprise, given the fact he was probably a
agent provocateur for the cops or a hired stooge of the steel bosses.
The
Haymarket Riot spurred workers on to fight for the 8-hour day. The
American Federation of Labor call for massive demonstrations was
supported by the Socialist International Congress held in Paris in
1889. A year later, May Day was born when a half million workers
marched in London. Communist leader Frederick Engels was there to greet
them.
Many
workers today don't realize that May Day is as American as apple pie,
or at least as American as it is international. The US bosses were able
to eliminate May Day during the fierce repression and witch hunts that
accompanied the aftermath of the 1919 Red Square and the McCarthy era
of the 1950s.
But
today, in 2006, US workers, with the help of our brothers and sisters
from Mexico and elsewhere, are helping us rediscover our history of
struggles and reclaim the legacy of our holiday--May Day. [Thanks to
Workers World, April 27, 2006, "Immigrants and the origins of May Day"
and to Wikipedia's "Haymarket Riot.]
(Photo: Reuters)
Legendary rocker Neil Young, whose "Ohio"is one of the greatest antiwar anthems ever penned, has done it again with "Living With War,"a
concept album with a vengeance and two simple messages--impeach Bush
and stop the war in Iraq. Songs like "After the Garden," the title
track, "Restless Consumer," "Shock and Awe," "Families," "Flags of
Freedom," are some of the best material Young has produced in years.
But it's "Let's Impeach the President"that's destined to be this century's "Ohio" for Neil Young.
April
15, 2006--The US ruling class and the demented Caesar leading them, not
content with the death and destruction their criminal invasion has
unleashed in Iraq and not quite through turning that tortured nation
into a mass graveyard, are apparently hell bent on committing
additional war crimes in Iran. Seymour Hersh, the credible bourgeois
investigative journalist who helped uncover Abu Ghraib, reports in the
current issue of the New Yorker that Washington is preparing to bomb
Iran's nuclear power plants with air strikes that will possibly include
tactical nuclear weapons.
Meanwhile
the capitalist media are dismissing their phony mea culpas regarding
Bush's Iraq lies and already helping him tell the same package of
recycled lies about WMD and terrorism to justify Washington's
aggression, w hich is aimed at seizing control of Iran's rich oil and
natural gas deposits.
Unlike
Washington, Tehran is not threatening anyone with nuclear weapons. Iran
is enriching uranium for use in nuclear power plants, totally legal
under international law and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which
Tehran has signed, unlike US allies Israel, India, and Pakistan. And
unlike the US, Iran is not threatening tactical nuclear strikes against
nonnuclear countries. Unlike the US, Iran has not illegally invaded
other nations and killed hundreds of thousands civilians. Iran has not
set up torture chambers and illegal prisons in other countries and fi
lled them with innocent people whose doors were broken down in the
middle of the night by armed thugs in uniform representing an imperial
power.
Iran did
not overthrow a legally elected American government in 1954 because
that government nationalized the oil on American soil. Iran did not
impose a brutal dictator on the American people. Iran did not
facilitate the building of his murderous secret police that killed
hundreds of thousands of Americans. Iran has not imposed sanctions on
the people of the United States.
Thus,
when Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice says the United Nations
Security Council must take "serious steps" against Iran to "maintain
the credibility of the international community," the international
working class, when we're through laughing in her face, should demand
the world take "serious steps" against the only regime that has
incinerated two cities' civilian populations with nuclear
bombs--Washington. When Rice claims "we can't let this continue," we
should reply, you're right, we can't let this continue, we can't allow
US imperialism to continue to run amok in the world, illegally invading
nations to seize their resources, killing hundreds of thousands in the
process, torturing thousands more.
The world
cannot let continue the fact that the only government to actually use
nuclear weapons threatens to use them against an unarmed nuclear nation
because it might develop several warheads in five years. When
Washington unilaterally disarms its n uclear arsenal and stops
terrorizing the world with its nuclear supremacy, then we can talk
about other the disarming of other nuclear powers as a step toward the
international prohibition of nuclear bombs forever. When Israel disarms
its nuclear arsenal and no longer terrorizes the Middle East with its
nuclear supremacy, then we can talk about preventing the spread of
nuclear weapons in the region and the world.
Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, under siege from the rising tide of
criticism from retired generals and others, recently characterized Iran
as "a country...that supports terrorists." Rumsfeld, like Bush and FOX
News' Bill O'Reilly, is a modern-day Orwellian nightmare, in that
everything he says is an Alice in Wonderland inversion or applies to
the actions of US imperialism itself, as in "a country that supports
terrorists," considering the support Washington has given the likes of
Orlando Bosch and Juan Posada Carrilles, who blew up a Cuban airliner
in 1976; and the support it gave to the Islamic fundamentalists who
became "Al Qaeda," first in Afghanistan, later in Bosnia and Kosova and
later apparently, on September 11, 2001.
The US is
threatening military aggression against Iran in order to seize control
of its huge oil and natural gas supplies. As in every US military
intervention since the 1898 Spanish-American War, Washington has
either used lied and deception or staged attacks against its forces to
win public support for its military aggression and expansionism.
The
largely muted reaction to Bush's nuclear threat against Iran within the
US political establishment, media, and the general populace is
deafening. It is another manifestation of the magnitude of the diseased
state of the American body politic. This is an outrage. There are no
more excuses. The US warmakers, having gotten away with their first war
crime in Iraq, are preparing another bloodbath in Iran, this time with
the help of bunker blasting tactical nukes. They are repeat multiple
offenders who show absolutely no remorse and, with no shame, are
repeating the same set of lies again to cover up their own naked
aggression and barbarism.
The
international proletariat should take this lack of remorse into account
when it comes time to sentence these war criminals for their atrocities
against humanity.
In the
meantime, we should take heart in the signs of revolutionary health,
vitality, and combativity increasing appearing in the working class
from Los Angeles to Dallas to Paris. Slowly, we are coming together.
The crisis of international capitalism is forcing us to. The ideas of
revolutionary Marxism will take root and spread from one end of the
globe to the other. And we will disarm the imperialist warmakers, the
torturers, the war criminals like Bush, Cheney, Rice, Blair, Chirac,
Berlosconi, and all of their ilk.
April
8-20, 2006--Oh yes, Ghouliani, tell us why Moussaoui should die. Tell
us all about September 11. Tell us again about your conduct that
day, Mr. "I Ran Around Like a Chicken with its head cut off/But they're
still calling me a hero." Tell us about the faulty, obsolete
"handie-talkie" radios that failed during the first World Trade Center
bombing in 1993. Tell us about the shady, ill-fated deal for digital
radios from Motorola that left firefighters with radios they couldn't
use, so they were stuck with the 1993 gizmos, which, predictably,
failed again.
Tell
us why the firefighters couldn't talk to each other and with the
police. Tell us how contributed to the needless deaths of hundreds who
were told to stay put and condemned to die. Remind us how you were
booed at the 9/11 commission hearing in 2004 by surviving family
members who called you a liar and incompetent who helped ensure their
kin didn't make it out of the rubble of the World Trade Center.
APRIL 15, 2006:
Giuliani's
appearance at Moussaoui's sentencing trial was only the beginning of a
morbid and manipulative travesty in which jurors were bombarded with
emotional testimony from family members of Sept. 11 victims, graphic
tapes of 911 rescue calls from those about to die in the WTC, and
Flight 93's black box recording of the alleged struggle in the cockpit
before that plane crashed in Pennsylvania, all of which was
transparently and shameless designed to prejudice and browbeat jurors
into sending Moussaoui to the gallows.
None of this had
anything to do with Moussaoui's alleged culpability for 9/11. None of
it. Nothing in this dog and pony show produced a shred of evidence
linking Moussaoui to September 11. All this charade accomplished was
providing a vehicle for the victims' families to vent their anger,
frustration and desire for revenge in a futile attempt to ease the pain
of their loss.
The strange case
of Zacarias Moussaoui took an even stranger twist when against the
advice of his lawyers, he took the stand and gave credence to the
prosecutors' claim that he was integrally involved in 9/11, thereby
contradicting his earlier statements and his 2005 confession. In that
confession, while Moussaoui admitted allegiance to Al Qaeda and Osama
Bin Laden, he denied having anything to do with 9/11. Instead, he
talked about a plot to free the blind Egyptian Sheikh Omar Abdel
Rahman, imprisoned for masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center
bombing, and flying him back to Afghanistan. Later he told US
authorities about a second wave if hijackings in the US in which he
aimed to crash a plane into the White House.
But when he
stepped into the witness stand on March 27th, Moussaoui sang a
different tune. Now he was echoing the prosecutors' line that he knew
all about 9/11, testimony that practically invited the jury to sentence
him to die. The fact that his latest testimony is completely at odds
with the prosecutors' evidence didn't seem to register in the reaction
of the political establishment and mass media.
APRIL 20, 2006:
Moussaoui's
suspicious reversal is totally at odds with statements by the two
alleged Sept. 11 masterminds who have been in holed up in CIA custody
for several years--Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi bin Al-Shibh.
Moussaoui's lawyers read lengthy statements by these individuals who
said Moussaoui was viewed as unstable and unreliable and had nothing to
do with the 9/11 plot.
Of course, by
this point, it's hard to believe anything Mohammed and Al-Shibh
supposedly say, because anything they've allegedly said is what the
government is telling us they said, the same government that has
apparently been torturing them. No prosecution, no evidence, no proof,
just indefinite torture. Yes, they're pretty important, this Dynamic
Duo of Sept. 11; so important that Washington almost let Moussaoui walk
during his first trial rather than allow his lawyers direct access to
Mohammed and Al-Shibh. Earlier, the US allowed the only person
convicted of a 9/11-related crime--Mounir el-Motassadeq--to walk free
from a German appeals court rather than allow his lawyers direct access
to Mohammed and Al-Shibh. The court overturned the conviction of
el-Motassadeq, who had allegedly given logistical help to Hamburg Al
Qaeda cell members Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah, when
Washington refused to even allow transcripts of Mohammed and Al-Shibh's
testimony.
The US
government claims that allowing direct access to Mohammed and Al-Shibh
would threaten America's national security. The truth is to do so would
uncover the extent of the connections between US intelligence and "Al
Qaeda." When the US rulers wave "national security" in the face of the
US public, it's usually to save their skins from the wrath of the
people when the latter realize how they've been lied to, ripped off,
and killed by those lording over them.
Moussaoui's
last-minute bombshell testimony is as credible as George W. Bush's
pre-war statements about Iraq's WMD. His claim that he and British shoe
bomber Richard Reid were plotting to crash a fifth jet into the White
House on September 11 was contradicted by the government itself in an
April 20 court document. Perhaps the prosecutors became alarmed when
Judge Brinkema wanted to hear from Reid himself on the matter. Maybe,
as Online Journal's Jerry Mazza speculates, Brinkema was "on to
something...Richard Reid's 'antics' not only parallel those of Mr.
Moussaoui, but tend to support another gem: that Reid, too, was
hypno-programmed to advanced the trumped-up Osamadunnit myth, whicn in
turn matches up with the fact that most of th ose beneath Mohammed Atta
were actually 'hypno-robots' programmed to perform sans conscious
knowledge of same."
Everything about
Moussaoui's testimony and his role in this entire sordid affair stinks
as much as the government's official story about the events of 9/11.
Judge Bars Witnesses Illegally Coached by Government Lawyer
"I
don't think in the annals of criminal law there has ever been a case
with this many significant problems"--U.S. District Judge Leonie M.
Brinkema
March
2006--Yes, it's tough when one part of the government stages terrorist
attacks while another tries to prosecute a deluded patsy.
Despite the fact
Zacharias Moussaoui was in FBI custody for nearly a month before
September 11, government prosecutors claim he deserves the death
penalty because his failure to tell authorities about the pending
attack allowed it to occur. Had he told the government what he knew
about the plot, the government contends, it could have stopped 9/11
from happening. The testimony of aviation security witnesses as to the
precautionary procedures that would have been in place is thus central
to the prosecutors' argument.
Transportation
Security Administration attorney Carla Martin, who earned her
reputation as a vigilant guardian of the Federal Aviation
Administration's interests in the Pan Am Lockerbie lawsuit, apparently
objected to the prosecutors' implication that her agency could have
stopped 9/11. She apparently decided to fight back. Despite Judge
Brinkema's explicit instruction not to communicate with any
witnesses, Martin flooded witnesses with emails and phone calls that
provided them with updates of the trial, transcripts of testimony, and
her own criticism of the prosecutor's opening statement, which she said
had "created a credibility gap that the defense can drive a truck
through."
Indeed.
It is tempting to
derive satisfaction from watching this turmoil within the ruling
circles and the spectacle of these rats turning on each other, until
one remembers the 3,000 poor souls who didn't know what hit them on
September 11, 2001. The FAA is not as innocent as Martin would have us
believe. The LA Times reported that one witness says Martin was
"briefing him on other subject that might come up in his
testimony--such as how the FAA responded to earlier plots to blow up
planes over the Pacific and to dive bomb an aircraft into CIA
headquarters."
Yes, Ms. Martin,
please tell us how the FAA responded to those "earlier plots," that is,
Project Bojinka, which was uncovered by Filipino police in 1995 and
allegedly masterminded by Khalid Sheik Mohammed, also the alleged
mastermind of 9/11. Obviously with the same rigor and diligence that it
displayed in its own memo of April 6, 2001,
in which it warned airlines that "Middle Eastern terrorists could try
to hijack or blow up a U.S. plane and that carriers should 'demonstrate
a high degree of alertness.' "
Explain to us too, Ms. Martin, why FAA managers destroyed tape recordings of communications
between six air traffic controllers and two of the hijacked planes. And
why the FAA decided to ban guns from the cockpit two months before
September 11.
But Martin was right
to expose FBI agent Michael Anticev's repetition of the lie told by
Bush and Condoleezza Rice that no one anticipated terrorists using
skyjacked planes as weapons. Anticev admitted under cross examination
that the FBI was aware of plots to crash hijacket jets into the Eiffel
Tower and CIA headquarters, which brings us back to Project Bojinka.
Martin got caught
coaching witnesses not to repeat Anticev's lie, which would only help
the government undermine its own case for the death penalty.
Governmental whining
that 9/11 could have been prevented if only Moussaoui had tipped off
the FBI rings hollow when one recalls that the FBI brass ignored
frantic warnings from their Phoenix and Minneapolis agents that Al
Qaeda was about to crash hijacked jets into the World Trade Center.
Accuses FBI of "criminal negligence" in ignoring pre-9/11 warnings
March 28, 2006--Judge
Brinkema ended up partially reversing her decision to bar all aviation
security witnesses after she learned a government attorney had
illegally coached six witnesses. She allowed the trial to proceed by
allowing prosecutors to question other witnesses.
FBI agent Harry
Samit's testimony under cross-examination by Moussaoui's lawyers
confirmed that the highest echelons of the FBI sabotaged the 9/11 plot
more than Moussaoui's refusal to sing to the authorities while in their
custody in August 2001. Samit testified that French intelligence had
told the FBI in mid August that Moussaoui had worked for a Chechnyan
Islamic fundamentalist outfit related to Al Qaeda; no doubt one of
those that the CIA utilized in Kosovo during the '90s. Samit stated he
warned his FBI bosses David Frasca and Mike Maltbie on 70
occasions that Moussaoui a terrorist bent on hijacking a jet airliner.
Frasca and Maltbie refused Samit's request to get a warrant to search
Moussaoui's computer because they didn't buy Samit's argument that he
was a dangerous terrorist, despite the intelligence from the French.
Frasca's the genius
who will go down in history as the FBI official who gave a pass to M
oussaoui while in possession of a memo from a Phoenix agent warning of
a looming plot by Islamic extremists to use hijacked jets as deadly
weapons. Frasca was rewarded for his efforts with a promotion. That's
how it is in America. A meritocracy in reverse.
The defense presented
in court the series of emails and correspondence Samit had sent to the
FBI, CIA, Secret Service, INS, and the FAA--that's your FAA, Ms.
Martin. Moussaoui lawyer Edward McMahon showed a letter written by
Samit dated August 31, 2001, "to advise the FAA of a potential threat
to security of commercial aircraft." While Maltbie didn't allow the FAA
to see the letter, Samit said he warned FAA authorities in
Minneapolis about Moussaoui.
That puts Moussaoui right up there with Bush, Cheney, Rice, Tenet, FBI, CIA, and the NSA, along with the intelligence agencies
of Britain, France, Israel, Jordan, Germany, Morocco, India, Russia,
and the Taliban in Afghanistan. That's right, in late July 2001, the
Taliban's Foreign Minister, Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, warned a US consul
of a "huge attack" on U.S. targets. The warning was dismissed due to
"warning fatigue." --March 28, 2006
April
8, 2006--From Bush to Cheney to Libby, and through media stooges like
Woodward and Miller, the campaign was underway to discredit former
ambassador Joseph Wilson for exposing Bush's bogus claims that Iraq
tried to buy uranium yellow cake from Niger.
More evidence that Bush lied and hundreds of thousands died. Impeach the bastard and throw him in jail.
But we still have to make a socialist revolution to end this madness once and for all.
The
issue is not whether this or that statute was violated by
Bush[authorizing Libby to give Judith Miller and Bob Woodward selected
excerpts of the National Intelligence Estimate that said Hussein was
building nuclear weapons from aluminum tubes. It's not about whether or
not Bush leaked the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame, wife of Bush
critic Joseph Wilson, the former ambassador who exposed Bush's lie that
Iraq tried to buy uranium yellowcake from Niger.
The
significance of this latest "bombshell" is that it's one more
confirmation that Bush cherry-picked Iraq WMD intelligence to deceive
the American public into war. Far from being this poor innocent lamb
misled by bumbling intelligence, Bush consciously misled Americans by
telling Libby to leak to the public only those portions of the NIE that
said Hussein was acquiring aluminum tubes to build nuclear
weapons--ignoring other parts of the NIE that said the tubes were meant
for conventional weapons.
Bush
lied. Hundreds of thousands died. And he's about to do it again in Iran
on behalf of the US capitalist class bent on dominating the energy rich
Middle East at the expense of its European and Asian rivals. This war
drive is not about Washington being hijacked by a "Jewish cabal" or the
Zionist regime of Israel, although Tel Aviv does exert enormous
influence on the US due to the convergence of their respective
imperialist interests in their subjugation of Arabs and Muslims from
Palestine to Baghdad to Kabul. This war drive is about the ruthless
pursuit of power and hegemony by the US capitalist class in its drive
exploit workers from one corner of the earth to the other. It's about
US imperialism's use of its military supremacy to compensate for its
relative economic decline. It's about Washington's attempt to use
brutal force to prop up the dollar and beat down the upstart euro, the
adoption of which by Iraq as its currency ensured America's 2003
invasion, just as Iran's intention to replace the dollar with the euro
has made Tehran Bush's next military target.
April
7, 2006--In a sign of how successful Washington and London have been in
spreading paranoid hysteria among broad layers of the public, Harraj
Mann, a 24-year-old mobile phone salesman was pulled off a plane at
London's Heathrow Airport and suspected of terrorism because he
listened to The Clash's "London Calling" and Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant
Song" during his cab ride to the airport. The rat fink cab driver
was so threatened by such incendiary lyrics as "London calling to the
faraway towns/Now war is declared/and battle come down" and "The ice
age is coming/the sun's zooming in/Meltdown expected/the wheat is
growing thin" that he was compelled to warn the police that a terrorist
was about to board a plane.
The paranoid cabbie also didn't like "Immigrant Song,"
which sounds more like a soundtrack to last week's massive US immigrant
demonstrations than an ode to Al Qaeda: "The hammer of the gods/Will
drive our ships to new lands/To fight the horde/ singing and
crying/Valhalla, I am coming!"
Or maybe it was the
1970 song's closing lines that upset this vigilante for imperialism:
"So now you'd better stop and rebuild all your ruins/For peace and
trust can win the day/Despite of all your losing." a thinly-veiled
rebuke to Washington's bloody colonial war in Vietnam.
While Zeppelin wasn't
known as a political band, "Immigrant Song" was a brilliant,
thinly-veiled rebuke to Washington's bloody colonial war in Vietnam.
Pro-terrorist it was not.
The Clash, on the
other hand, were all about politics. Revolutionary politics,
anti-imperialist politics, working class politics, communist politics. Anti-terrorist politics. Any band that titles their album, Sandinista
is down with the people. That's why The Clash are well represented
in an article below entitled, "Songs for the Working Class--The
greatest antiwar and anticapitalist tunes ever written." There you'll
find the lyrics to Sandinista's "The Call-up" and "The Equalizer" two of the most poignant antiwar and pro-communist songs ever written.
But as you ponder what
happened to Harraj Mann at Heathrow Airport, Jean Charles de Menezes in
a London subway, and Rigoberto Alpizar at Miami International Airport,
think of another Clash song,"Know Your Rights:"
You have the right not to be killed
Murder is a CRIME!
Unless it was done by a
Policeman or aristocrat
Know your rights!
Mass
protests by students and workers against new legislation that makes it
easy to fire young workers have rocked France over the last month. On
March 18, 1.5 million mobilized in the streets; 350,000 in Paris alone.
American workers should tellBill O'Reillyto take a hike. We shouldn't boycott the French. We should emulate them.
This
provocation by South Dakota's capitalist politicians escalates the
growing assault on the democratic rights of all working people. It
should be met by massive protests in that state, regionally, and
nationally by pro-choice forces, labor unions, and the antiwar
movement.--March 7, 2006
Zionists
and their imperialist allies in the US, that's who. Even from her grave
this brave martyr has the Zionists shaking in their boots. Kudos to
British actor Alan Rickman , who directed the London production of My Name Is Rachel Corrie. NY Theater Workshop artistic director James Nicola caved into Zionist pressure and cancelled the New York production.
"Rachel
Corrie was deliberately murdered in order to intimidate the activists
who were exposing Israeli terror in the occupied territories. This
murder took place days before the launching of the invasion of Iraq,
where the same methods were applied to the Iraqi people, including tens
of thousands of civilians killed, Iraqi prisoners brutalized and
tortured in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, and Iraqi and foreign journalists
brutally murdered by US forces in a conscious effort to silence those
who sought to simply tell the truth about the war and occupation.
"The
silencing of this play is an insult to the memory of Rachel Corrie, and
is bound up with a whole series of attacks on democratic rights,
including attacks on the right to demonstrate, attacks on Muslim and
other immigrants, government wiretapping and the imminent extension of
the repressive Patriot Act. The blatant censorship of My Name Is Rachel Corrie
should provoke denunciations by artists and theater professionals in
particular, as well as all defenders of democratic rights." (Peter
Daniels, World Socialist Web Site, March 6, 2006)
Rachel Corrie will be
revered throughout history by all the oppressed. Ariel Sharon and
bootlickers like James Nicola will be despised.--March 7, 2006
Feb.
10, 2006--Capitol Hill Blue's Doug Thompson reports that a long-time
CIA operative had this to say about the alleged plot to hijack a jet
and crash it into Los Angeles's Library Tower:
"The
President has cheapened the entire intelligence community by dragging
us into his fantasy world. He is basing this absurd claim on the same
discredited informant who told us Al Qaeda would attack selected
financial institutions in New York and Washington."
Would that be the same discredited informant arrested for trying to carry out Osama bin Laden's order to destroy "the bridge in the Godzilla movie"?
How
fitting that immediately after Bush's announcement, his Ministry of
Propaganda--FOX News--showed the same Library Tower being destroyed by
aliens in the 1996 film, Independence Day, as part of its dog and pony show
to hoodwink Americans into surrendering our civil liberties. Bush
displayed his usual command of the facts by referring to building as
the "Liberty Tower"--a mistake reflecting his delusion that he is truly
spreading liberty around the world.
It's not
hard to "foil" a terrorist plot when it's hatched in the bowels of US
intelligence. Bush didn't stop this attack; he didn't stop 9/11 despite
being specifically warned it was coming; and he's not going to stop the
next major terrorist attack, a dress rehearsal of which occurred last
week when a positive nerve agent test evacuated the Capitol. Because
this government isn't very good at protecting Americans. It's good at
taking away the democratic rights and civil liberties won by the
American Revolution, the Civil War, and mass movements for justice.
It's good at busting a Palestinian boy for doodling PLO slogans. It's
good at siccing the Secret Service on a seventh grader for writing that
his idea of a perfect day was hurting President Bush. It's good at
trying to deport a second grader for not having the proper visa. It's
good at handcuffing, strip-searching, and jailing an Irish literature
professor before deporting him for an irregularity in his travel
papers. It's good at detaining people indefinitely in illegal detention
centers with no evidence or charges presented against them and no right
to counsel. It's good at torturing innocent people in gulags.
But one thing this capitalist government will never be good at is protecting the American public.
And
the Muslim masses know it. They know the stench of a deliberate
provocation when they smell it. And they'll see through the
hypocritical, self-serving criticism of the offensive cartoon from a
regime that has "spearheaded the assault on Muslims around the world"
and whose "'respect' for the beliefs of Muslims was exposed before the
eyes of the world in the pictures of sadistic abuse of prisoners at Abu
Ghraib prison in Iraq, where military and intelligence officials
employed tactics designed to exploit Muslim beliefs and
sensibilities."--Feb. 4, 2006
Feb. 13 Update:
In a recent interview with the Public Broadcasting System,Vice President Richard Cheney commented on the cartoon controversy:
"We
believe very deeply in freedom of expression. [As evidenced by your
role in the NSA's secret surveillance of Americans and the Patriot
Act.] Obviously, we think, you know, that it's appropriate for people
to respect one another's religions [Another slam-dunk evidenced by how
your soldiers have treated Muslims from Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib], but
I don't believe that the printing of those cartoons justifies the
violence that we've seen."
Yeah,
well, the vast majority of humanity doesn't believe that the Iraqi
people did anything to justify the violence they have suffered on your
orders, Cheney. Get ready for a seat in the dock at your war crimes
tribunal. If you don't get busted for manslaughter for "accidentally"
killing a fellow hunter. Friendly fire's a bitch. Ask Pat Tillman's
family how they're feeling these days.
Speaking
of war criminals, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld gave new meaning to
the phrase, "the pot calling the kettle black" when responding to a
National Press Club question about the elections of leftists like Hugo
Chavez in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia.
"We've got Chavez in Venezuela with a lot of oil money." [Yeah, Chavez is in his own country
with a lot of oil money, and when he's not spending it on social
services for Venezuelan workers, he's providing cheap oil to the
poorest layers of US workers devastated by Bush and Cheney's policies.
Unlike Bush and Cheney, who are in Iraq with a lot of oil money, but
none of it is going to Iraqi workers, who are watching the theft and
plunder of their most valuable oil by corrupt Americans and Iraqis.]
"He's
a person who was elected legally, just as Adolph Hitler was elected
legally, and then consolidated power, and now is, of course, working
closely with Fidel Castro and Mr. Morales and others. It concerns me."
Yes,
Chavez's mandate, unlike Bush's, is genuine and legitimate, having been
elected twice in fair elections, survived a US-instigated and financed
referendum, and been restored to power by the direct actions of the
masses themselves after a US-backed coup tried to overthrow him.
Actually,
Hitler, like Bush, was not "legally elected." While the Nazis had
become the strongest party in the Reichstag, Hitler's ascension to
political and military power was less the result of a mandate from the
majority of Germans and more from inter-governmental
machinations coupled with the political bankruptcy of the German Social
Democratic and Communist Parties.
But like Bush, Hitler didmove to consolidate his power
into a "unitary executive" in order to construct a presidential and
military dictatorship that would facilitate German imperialism's
campaign of military conquest. Just as Bush used Sept. 11 to win public
support for launching illegal wars of aggression, so Hitler used the
burning of the Reichstag. Hitler had his "Enabling Act" to consolidate
power and crush all dissent; Bush has his "Patriot Act" to accomplish
the same objective.
Be
careful with those historical analogies, Rumsfeld. They're only land
you next to Cheney in the dock at your upcoming war crimes trial.--Feb.
13, 2006
Antiwar Mom's Protest Terrifies Bush and His Gang of War Criminals
Ejected for exercising a freedom her son supposedly died for
Wearing
a T-shirt that says "2245 Dead. How many more?" was apparently more
freedom than the US House of Representatives could handle. Cindy
Sheehan's courageous act gave voice to the TENS OF MILLIONS of
Americans whose opposition to the Iraq war cannot be expressed within
the political framework of the two-party system.
Brought
to the American people by the same Washington enablers who allowed
and/or organized the terrorist attacks in New York and DC on September
11, 2001.
Sacrificed
at the altar of private profit. One of the coal mining industry hacks
appointed by Bush to mine safety agencies is an executive from Massey
Energy, owner of the West Virginia mine where these latest victims of
free enterprise perished. In 1984, Massey's refusal to sign an
agreement between the United MineWorkers and the Bituminous Coal
Operators Association provoked a bitter strike that ended in a seminal
defeat for the mineworkers and the frameup and imprisonment of several
of their leaders. It also paved the way for the pervasive operation of
the type of nonunion mines that are killing mineworkers today.--Jan.
22, 2006
Washington backs down, allows Cuba to play in World Baseball Classic
The US Treasury Department, responding to intense international pressure, reversed its earlier decision
to ban Cuba from this spring's World Baseball Classic. After this
decision was announced, the International Baseball Federation said it
would not sanction the tournament; Puerto Rico threatened to withdraw
as a host; and US Olympic Committee chairman Peter Ueberroth warned
Bush that forbidding Cuba from playing might adversely affect future US
Olympic bids.
In
addition, Washington was probably shamed by Cuba's proposal to donate
any proceeds to Hurricane Katrina victims.--Jan. 20, 2006
The
attorney representing Ms. Mariani, Philip J. Berg, has posted an online
petition to counter Bush's attempts to have the case dismissed. Readers
should read and sign the petition here: www.911forthetruth.com
