NINE FUCKING YEARS?!

Last night was the 9th annual Jay Brown Memorial Show, hosted by none other than Hoon Trash himself. The man has put up with no end of abuse and whining over the years, and all so this thing can keep going. I have nothing but respect for the man. I don't know too many others who would put up with the shit that he has, in the name of putting on a benefit show year after year. And it was awesome, as always. Seven bands played, and we even finished early!

Reds from Vancouver were tight poppy Fat Wreckchords style of music. Not my thing, good at what they did, but the singer should NOT have smashed himself in the face with a fucking beer glass. To his credit, he did apologize. There was blood all over the stage, but Logan's staff and other volunteers were quick to clean it all up.

The Mags were kick ass rock and roll with an edge. I always enjoy seeing these guys play.
  
Old Derelicts, also from Vancouver, were old school hardcore/punk, and they were fucking amazing. Jay Flett, (singer), yells it from the heart. He is a survivor.

The Gnar Gnars were tight, funny and rude. Definitely not the type of lyrics you'd hear from me, but I couldn't help but laugh during their set. And musically, they were great.

The Frostbacks did their Forgotten Rebels/Ramones inspired Canadian pop punk, and wore their coats during their entire set! I would have melted up there. Again, lots of fun.

The Keg Killers featured three members of the Frostbacks in the band, and again, they were fucking fun. With Dustin on vocals, how could they not be?

And then, we played. Great times, especially finishing off with the AWT anthem. Mayhem and chaos.

Another great night was had. It was wonderful seeing everybody. Let's do it again, okay? Okay.

HOW ABOUT THE FUCKING TRUTH?

Maybe instead of glorifying redneck racist crusading murderous assholes like chris kyle in amerikkkan sniper, the media should try their hand at showing what's going on in their "correctional" facilities. But I guess the press during nazi germany's time wouldn't have done such a thing, so why the fuck should imperialist amerikkka's do something like that? That would actually be an objective press type of thing to do, instead of actually being cheerleaders for fascist u.s.a. The "free press" is a sick fucking joke, just like their empire.

American Death Camps

BY RICHARD B. MUHAMMAD AND SAEED SHABAZZ -FINAL CALL STAFFERS- | LAST UPDATED: JAN 27, 2015 - 4:54:13 PM

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Inmates are dying inside U.S. prisons and virtually no one is held accountable

In this June 20, 2014, file photo, the sprawling Rikers Island jail complex. A report released Jan. 14 by New York City’s Department of Investigation points out problems with the recruiting, hiring and screening of guards who work in the city’s jails. The probe found systemic problems with the Department of Correction hiring system, including no recruiting strategy for the past six years. Photo: AP/Wide World photos

(FinalCall.com) - Darryl Rainey, 50, had one month remaining on his two-year sentence for cocaine possession without the intent to sell. He was also battling mental illness and served his time in a Florida prison’s psychiatric ward. One night Mr. Rainey allegedly defecated on himself while in his cell. Prison guards allegedly handcuffed him and placed him in a shower for two hours where the water temperature was reported to have reached 180 degrees.

This 1990 photo provided by Curtis Griffin shows his stepson, Bradley Ballard, in Houston when he was 16. In September 2013, 39-year-old Ballard, a mentally ill and diabetic inmate at the Rikers Island jail in New York, died after being locked alone in his cell for seven days. On Sept 10, 2014, his mother, Beverly Ann Griffin, filed a wrongful death civil rights lawsuit against New York City. The Houston woman says that “stunning and unconscionable” misconduct led to her son’s September 2013 death on Rikers Island. Photos: AP/ Wide World photos

The steady stream of scalding water melted Mr. Rainey’s skin from his body, according to the Miami Herald. Nothing was left but chunks of his skin in the shower.

His death was listed as a heart attack.

Last February, mentally ill inmate Jerome Murdough died in his Rikers Island cell after being left unattended for hours in a cell that reached 101 degree temperatures. He had been arrested on a  misdemeanor trespassing charge for sleeping in an enclosed stairwell of a Harlem public housing building and couldn’t make the $2,500 bail set for him, according to court records.

In 2013, Bradley Ballard, 39, was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and diabetes. He stayed locked in his Rikers Island cell in New York for six days without care or medication.

According to the Associated Press, Mr. Ballard died shortly after receiving medical attention from a doctor who finally entered his cell. He was found naked, covered in feces, badly infected from a piece of cloth he had tied tightly around his genitals.

Jonathan Chasan, one of the lawyers representing his family in a civil wrongful death lawsuit, called the state’s review of his death “profoundly devastating.” It has recommended that federal civil rights violations be investigated.

Mr. Ballard had a long history of mental illness and an earlier assault conviction in New York. He was brought to Rikers Island from Texas in 2013 for changing his address without notifying his parole officer.

State investigators called Mr. Ballard’s treatment at Rikers “incompetent” even before his fateful final lockup, noting that his psychotropic medication had been mistakenly switched, which made him more irritable, and he didn’t receive regular insulin for his Type 2 diabetes.

An undated photo provided by family showing Jerome Anthony Murdough is seen March 12, 2014, in the Queens borough of New York. Murdough, a mentally ill, homeless former Marine arrested for sleeping in the roof landing of a New York City public housing project during one of the coldest recorded winters in city history, died in a Rikers Island jail cell that multiple city officials say was at least 100 degrees when his body was discovered. Murdough, 56, was found dead in his cell in a mental observation unit in the early hours of Feb. 15, 2013 after excessive heat, believed to be caused by an equipment malfunction, redirected its fl ow to his upper-level cell, the officials said.

After making a lewd gesture at a jail guard, investigators found that Mr. Ballard was locked up alone in his mental observation cell for six days and eight hours, a more detailed accounting than in earlier reports. Water was turned off after he flooded his cell and he was visited only twice in brief, minute-long episodes by health workers making rounds. At one point a jail guard sprayed deodorizer outside his cell, but did not get him help.

The review found that at least three top jail officials passed by Mr. Ballard’s cell during the six-day stretch though none ever summoned medical staff. One official, then-deputy warden Turhan Gumusdere, is seen on video outside Mr. Ballard’s cell in that time, according to two city officials familiar with the footage who spoke on condition of anonymity because of an ongoing criminal probe.

Bernadette Rabuy, policy and communications associate at the Prison Policy Initiative, called these abuses the injustice of the criminal justice system. Treating people horrifically is not helping in their rehabilitation, she told The Final Call.

Just over 4,300 inmates died while in local jails and state prisons in 2012, an increase of two percent from 2011, according to the most recent report from the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics. The report, issued last October, noted that the number of deaths in local jails increased from 889 in 2011 to 958 in 2012.

Jerome Murdough, a mentally ill, homeless former Marine died in a Rikers Island jail cell that multiple city officials say was at least 100 degrees when his body was discovered.

“We don’t rank states because mortality occurs randomly and rates are very dependent on demographic distribution (i.e. age, sex, race, etc.) and we only calculate crude mortality rates, i.e. we do not take these factors into account. Counts are dependent on the prison population size, i.e. California and Texas have the greatest number of inmate deaths because they are the largest state prison populations in the U.S.,” said Kara McCarthy, a Bureau of Justice Statistics spokesperson.

“Deaths due to correctional officers likely contribute to both the homicide and accident numbers and rates, depending on how the coroner or medical examiner rules the death. However, we have not been able to produce usable numbers of subcategories of deaths due to accidents (i.e. restraint death, accidental all, transport accident) or homicides (by inmate, by other) because the numbers are so small, the results would be statistically unstable, and therefore, unusable for our purposes,” she said.

In September of 2014, Bradley Ballard, 39, who was mentally ill and an inmate at the Rikers Island jail in New York, died a gruesome death there after being locked alone in his cell for seven days. Photos: AP/Wide World photos

“Neglect is typically a legal, rather than medical determination, so no, we would not measure that number,” Ms. McCarthy said.

While the Bureau of Justice Statistics blames suicide and health problems, such as cancer and heart attacks for most deaths, others say the reporting is deeply flawed, numbers are skewed and no one goes to prison to die because of direct abuses or staff failures to care for inmates.

Who is watching the watchers?

“I’d say that the problem with prisoners being killed by staff either directly or indirectly has always been a problem in our nation’s prison system. The question really is what is the scope and whether the scope is getting better or worse; that’s a little hard to tell,” said Alex Friedmann, managing editor of Prison Legal News, a publication dedicated to exposing and correcting criminal justice system failures.

Dade Correctional Institution inmate Darren Rainey, who was mentally ill, died after being allegedly locked up for hours in a scalding hot shower.

“You need independent agencies that investigate the departments of corrections for allegations of abuse and wrongful death or excessive use of force and so on. You can’t expect an agency to investigate itself adequately, that’s never worked. You have too many vested interests, you have too much good ole boy network, particularly in the South. So you got to have completely separate agencies, independent of the department of corrections that will investigate abuses in that department of corrections. And that can be an ombudsman, that can be a separate law enforcement agency, that can be a legislative agency or a separate executive agency,” he said.

But the prison reform advocate stressed most corrections departments are generally not beholden to anyone—except the governor who appoints the corrections commissioner. Most departments are subject to internal investigations, guards are rarely charged with crimes, virtually never seriously punished and there is almost no accountability, whether the prisons are public or privately-owned, he added.

“There needs to be prosecution of prison officials who commit these kinds of abuses,” Mr. Friedmann continued. “Now we put thousands and thousands of people in prisons and jails for very minor drug offenses in the United States but we don’t tend to prosecute abuse in prisons of jail guards who in some cases beat prisoners to death.”

“Prosecutors need to step up and need to aggressively prosecute prison and jail staff who are abusive towards prisoners, who exceed their authority, who commit incidents of excessive force, who neglect prisoners or allow them to die due to medical neglect and so on,” he said.

Aggressive prosecutions will go a very long way in improving and correcting problems, Mr. Friedmann argued.

In this photograph taken Oct. 18, 2014, in Paterson, N.J., June Broer displays a funeral program and a prayer card featuring images of her only son, Mark Johnson, while posing for The Associated Press. For days Johnson demanded medical care from jail guards at Rikers Island as he continued to have bloody stools before he died of a bacterial infection in his stomach and small bowel. It wasn’t until inmates in the housing area staged a protest—refusing to go for meal until Johnson was attended to—that doctors came. But it was too late. Johnson died soon after being rushed out of the unit following emergency ssurgery. Photo: AP/Wide World photos

The Miami Herald and the Prison Policy Initiative are jointly saying that with 346 deaths in 2014 inside Florida prisons, the Sunshine State is ground zero for inmate deaths, surpassing Mississippi’s prison mortality rate which topped 454 deaths for every 100,000 inmates in 2007.

The Miami Herald, through requests filed under the Freedom of Information Act, discovered 77 percent of 543 inmate deaths in Florida from 2005 to 2013 had “unknown causes” or simply a blank space in the section where cause of death normally is listed.

However, according to an  AP FOIA request, New York is closing in on Florida with 4,074 incidents of excessive force by correction officers, resulting in 406 fatalities. Activists in Florida are now demanding a U.S. Department of Justice investigation because of the role law enforcement officers may have played in inmate deaths.

In July 2014, the Southern Center for Human Rights requested that the Justice Dept. launch a thorough investigation into a “crisis” of violence in Georgia prisons. The prison advocacy organization reported from 2010 to date, 33 prisoners and one corrections officer were killed by other prisoners. In 2012, three times as many prisoners were killed in Georgia state prisons than in the past 10 years, according to the center.

Prison activists in Texas are reporting horrific stories of wrongful deaths, denial of medical care and violations of prisoner rights to due process.

An effort to combat problems in prisons

Though corrections officers may not be guilty of causing the death of an inmate directly, the officers often incite other inmates to do their dirty work, said Carl Dix of the Stop Mass Incarceration Network.

In December 2014, the American Civil Liberties Union of California and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors entered into an agreement over a federal decree in the ACLU lawsuit Rosa v. Baca, which was filed in 2012. The decree will implement and force changes to the jails policies and practices. The ACLU charged that for years there has existed a culture of “savage deputy-on-inmate violence in Los Angeles County jails, the nation’s largest with 18,000 inmates.” Inmates were badly beaten, and injuries like shattered bones and eye sockets and broken teeth were common place, the group said. One gang of deputies called themselves “The 3000 Boys” and beat up inmates suffering serious mental health issues, the ACLU charged.

The New York Correctional Association has decided to bring the community into a fight to improve and change conditions at New York state prisons such as Attica, Clinton and Greene C.F. On Feb. 9, the prison watchdog organization will hold an organizing meeting as part of their efforts to close Attica prison. This infamous facility is known for a 1971 riot that claimed the lives of officers and inmates and exposed the torture and inhumane conditions endured by inmates.

“Unfortunately the racism and terrible conditions that inmates had to endure in 1971 haven’t changed,” said Scott Paltrowitz, associate director of the Prison Visiting Project of the Correctional Association of New York. The association is an independent non-profit organization that advocates for a more humane and effective criminal justice system and a more just and equitable society. It was granted authority by New York State Legislature to inspect prisons and to report its findings and recommendations to the public. It is the only private organization in New York with unrestricted access to prisons. Its legislative mandate is to expose abusive practices, educate the public and policymakers about what goes on behind prison walls, and advocate for systemic, lasting and progressive change.

We want to start a campaign in the state that focuses on violence and abuse experienced by prisoners in our state and local jails and eventually expand to the entire nation, Mr. Paltrowitz said. “A big part of the problem in New York State is a lack of transparency. We never really have the necessary information and data needed to fight back against the system,” he said. That is why we need the community to come and join on in our campaign, Mr. Paltrowitz added.

Bobby Muhammad, 42, spent 19-and-a-half-years in New York state prisons, including Attica, Clinton and Elmira. “No question about the abuse heaped on Blacks and Latinos by the CO’s (corrections officers). We are physically and verbally abused as part of their system of keeping us in check. We would see a CO pull a brother out of the chow line, and very often we would never see him again. You would see them cleaning out an inmate’s cell and no questions would be asked, but we knew something had happened to him.”

(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

THEY ARE LIARS

Here's an excellent article about western leaders and their bullshit hypocritical tears over the fucking hebdo killings. They lie over and over again. Fuck 'em.

The Shameful Hypocrisy of “World Leaders” Parading Around as Champions of Free Expression

January 20, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

On January 11, more than three million people took to the streets of France in sorrow and outrage to protest the massacre of journalists at the French magazine Charlie Hebdo by people identifying themselves as Islamic fundamentalists. This was a massive manifestation of a broadly felt and very justified sentiment: Nobody should be killed for journalistic or artistic expressions, even outrageous ones.

But when the leaders and representatives of France, the U.S., and their allies placed themselves at the head of the march of hundreds thousands in Paris, they had a very different agenda. Behind their rhetoric about “dissent” and “democracy,” was, and is, an outlook and agenda in service of capitalism-imperialism, a global system of exploitation and oppression. (See “Outrage in Paris, a World of Oppression, a Crying Need for Another Way.”)

That is why—ironic as it might seem—their immediate reaction to the attacks in France was to ban dissenting literature, lock people up for thought crimes, unleash the most ugly racism against immigrants, and institute police-state terror in the immigrant communities in France.

These “world leaders” represent governments responsible for censoring, blacklisting, driving into exile, jailing, and killing all kinds of dissident journalists and suppressing artistic and political expressions in their own countries and beyond. The imperialist rulers in the U.S. and other allied countries are seizing the moment to try to channel people’s legitimate outrage into support for the idea that their system—capitalism-imperialism and its “democracy”—is supposedly the best of all possible systems, in particular because it allows for dissent and free expression of ideas, even very unpopular ideas, in contrast to Islamic fundamentalism and other “totalitarian” forces and regimes.

British Prime Minister Cameron, for example, declared in his statement on the events in Paris, “We stand squarely for free speech and democracy. These people will never be able to take us off those values.” But it’s blatant hypocrisy for those like Cameron to parade around as champions of free expression. Cameron himself is the head of the government that forced the Guardian newspaper to destroy computer hard drives that stored the files from Edward Snowden, who had exposed the massive spying conducted worldwide by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), with close cooperation from Britain’s security agency.¹

In France, in the name of “security,” the government has launched a sweeping crackdown on unpopular viewpoints—including the arrest of a well-known comedian for a Facebook post along with dozens of others for statements deemed “hate speech” or supporting terrorism.²

Another official at the head of the Paris march was Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, the main enforcer for U.S. imperialist interests in the Middle East. The Israeli state has systematically murdered journalists who expose or simply report on Israel’s genocidal attacks on Palestinians. In summer 2014, for example, Israeli troops killed at least seven journalists and media workers who were covering Israel’s massacre in Gaza that killed over 2,000 people.³

Two other key allies of the U.S. and European imperialists, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, rank near the bottom of the World Press Freedom Index published by the group Reporters Without Borders.⁴

Investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill (in his book and film Dirty Wars) has exposed how U.S. President Barack Obama himself issued direct orders to the U.S.-backed government in Yemen that led to the four-year imprisonment of Yemeni journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye for having reported on secret U.S. drone strikes that killed scores of civilians.

Silencing of Dissent and Oppositional Expressions Within the U.S.

And there is a long history of vicious repression to silence dissent and suppress oppositional political and cultural expressions within the U.S. Just to cite a very few examples among many, many outrages:

• During the 1950s, writers and artists became targets of the government’s anti-communist witch hunts—including the great African-American singer and actor Paul Robeson, who was driven from the stage.
• The government’s targeting of oppositional forces in the 1960s included not only the Black Panther Party and other radicals and revolutionaries, but ranged far and wide, including people in the arts like Leonard Bernstein. World-famous pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock was put on trial two times for charges involving his public opposition to the draft. Jean Seberg, an actor who supported the Black Panthers, was the target of an FBI campaign so vicious that she was driven to suicide.
• In the 1990s, San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Webb published a hard-hitting series exposing the links between the CIA-run Contra army in Central America and the crack cocaine epidemic that devastated many inner cities in the U.S. during the 1980s. As the series got wide readership Webb came under heavy attack from the CIA and the mainstream media who worked furiously to try to discredit him.
• In 2011 people in over 1,000 cities occupied public spaces, forcing open debate on inequalities and injustices under this society. Those in power regarded the Occupy movement and the big questions it raised as dangerous, and carried out totally illegal and illegitimate repression against the protesters, culminating in a coordinated violent police attack on major occupations in various cities.
• Obama has prosecuted more whistleblowers—people coming forward to shed light on crimes and misdeeds by the government and military—than all previous administration combined. Army Private Chelsea Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison for releasing to WikiLeaks computer files that provided damning evidence of U.S. war crimes. Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden was forced into exile for exposing the vast, illegal U.S. surveillance operations that spy on billions of people around the world as well as inside the U.S.
• After a cop murdered unarmed Black youth Michael Brown, the people of Ferguson, Missouri., rose up in anger—and after grand juries exonerated the cops who murdered Brown and Eric Garner in New York City, killed by police chokehold, the upsurge spread coast to coast. The police in Ferguson responded with military-style clampdown, beatings and mass arrests of people peacefully exercising their right to protest—and protesters in many other cities have also had to face intense police brutality and harassment.
• Critics of Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians, particularly those who question—on any level—the legitimacy of a Zionist state built on terrorist ethnic cleansing, are driven out of academia and the mainstream media. After Israel attacked the humanitarian ship Mavi Marmara in international waters in May 2010 and killed five unarmed activists to prevent the ship from breaking the Israeli blockade of Gaza, Helen Thomas, long considered the “dean” of White House correspondents, questioned U.S.’s “iron-clad, sacrosanct relationship” with “a country that deliberately kills people.” The next day a fanatical pro-Israeli rabbi posted a video of Thomas saying Israel should “get the hell out of Palestine.” Immediately, Thomas was forced by vicious attacks in the media, by pro-Israeli organizations, and by the Obama administration into “retirement.”

Books can be filled with example after example of such suppression of speech and activity supposedly guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. And the same thing is true in all the other imperialist democracies.

Looking Deeper at the Workings and Foundations of This System

So it is incredibly hypocritical for the U.S. and its allies to proclaim to be upholders and guarantors of freedom of the press and expression. But this is not just a matter of hypocrisy or the result of “rogue” government officials or police/FBI/CIA “running amok”—there is something deeper at work.

The reality is that the system that exists in the U.S. (and in France, Britain, etc.) is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie—the class of exploiters and oppressors who control the economy and the state (the military, police, courts, and laws) and who sit atop a whole global empire. As Bob Avakian analyzed in his work Democracy: Can’t We Do Better Than That? (cited in a more recent work,Communism and Jeffersonian Democracy):

the much-vaunted freedom of expression in the “democratic countries” is not in opposition to but is encompassed by and confined within the actual exercise of dictatorship by the bourgeoisie. This is for two basic reasons—because the ruling class has a monopoly on the means of molding public opinion and because its monopoly of armed forces puts it in a position to suppress, as violently as necessary, any expression of ideas, as well as any action, that poses a serious challenge to the established order. What Marx and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto is more true than ever in today’s conditions: “The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.”

As shown by the police crackdowns against the Occupy movement and the current nationwide protests against murders, and by the other examples cited earlier—the powers-that-be bring down the repressive hammer whenever they face opposition that pose a challenge to their rule and legitimacy. Aside from police attacks on protests, it is very heavy and serious that especially after 9/11, the rulers have been openly trampling on what are supposed to be basic Constitutional rights—such as the ban on “unreasonable searches”—to fortify their repressive machinery. And for those at the bottom of society, especially Black and Latino people, “normal” life—let alone when they speak out or step out in any way against the way things are—means constantly facing the threat of incarceration and being under the gun of the police, La Migra, and racist vigilantes.

The U.S. and its imperialist allies have had relative social stability within their “home countries,” and in connection with this there has been allowance for certain forms of dissent, oppositional viewpoints, and political protest. The imperialists point to this, and the separation of church and state that generally exist in their countries, as proof of how qualitatively “freer” their system is in contrast to societies based on the doctrines and tenets of Islam.

But first of all, this separation of church and state is relative—fascistic Christian fundamentalists are a powerful force at the top levels of the U.S. ruling class, within the structures of the military, and in society generally. And this relative separation of church and state is tied in with the historical development of the U.S. and a handful of other countries into imperialist powers that dominate, exploit and oppress the majority of the world’s countries and people. The allowance for expressions of opposition is also within very definite limits—as we pointed out earlier.

And the relative stability of the imperialist “home countries,” in particular for the U.S. rulers, rests on their position as the top-dog power in the world capitalist-imperialist order—on the most ruthless exploitation and political repression of people worldwide. It rests on the imperialist globalization that has caused massive dislocation and social upheaval, like the expulsion of millions of people from their land in Mexico as the U.S. more thoroughly dominates that country—resulting in many of those millions being forced to make the dangerous border crossing into the U.S. where they are ruthlessly exploited in the factories, fields, and restaurants... It rests on enormous profit-making enterprises like the mining of coltan, a mineral essential to manufacture of cell phones, in the Democratic Republic of Congo in Africa, where miners work under deadly slave-like conditions... It rests on totally unnecessary outrages like the deaths of 10 million children a year from hunger and preventable diseases... It rests on the degrading subjugation of and intensifying violence against half of humanity, including the international “trade” in women and child sex slaves... It rests on U.S. assassinations by drones (and murder of children and others counted as “collateral damage”), invasions, and occupation around the world, as well as backing for murderous regimes that carry out torture and other crimes on behalf of the imperialist godfather...

These and countless other horrors—causing immense suffering for billions of people in the oppressed countries as well as within the imperialist citadels—are what lie at the foundation of the capitalist-imperialist system. This is the reality behind the shameless posturing of the U.S. and its fellow imperialist godfathers as “champions of free expression.”

It would be deadly for people to allow their sorrow and outrage at the attacks in Paris to be steered into support for these imperialist monsters. The world today is marked by highly lopsided relations, dominated by these imperialist countries (with the U.S. as the most powerful among them), while the great majority of the countries and people in the world are caught in a web of extreme poverty as well as dislocation and upheaval.

Bob Avakian (BA) has analyzed that one key expression of this situation is the mutually reinforcing opposition between imperialism and its globalizing effects on one hand, and Islamic fundamentalism on the other. (See, for example, Away With All Gods!, in particular the section titled “Religious Fundamentalism, Imperialism, and the ‘War on Terror’”). And as BA points out:

What we see in contention here with Jihad on the one hand and McWorld/McCrusade on the other hand, are historically outmoded strata among colonized and oppressed humanity up against historically outmoded ruling strata of the imperialist system. These two reactionary poles reinforce each other, even while opposing each other. If you side with either of these “outmodeds,” you end up strengthening both.

While this is a very important formulation and is crucial to understanding much of the dynamics driving things in the world in this period, at the same time we do have to be clear about which of these “historically outmodeds” has done the greater damage and poses the greater threat to humanity: It is the historically outmoded ruling strata of the imperialist system, and in particular the U.S. imperialists.

BAsics 1:28

---

1. “Smashing of Guardian hard drives over Snowden story ‘sinister’, says Amnesty,” The Guardian, August 21, 2013 [back]

2. “France Arrests a Comedian for His Facebook Comments, Showing the Sham of the West’s ‘Free Speech’ Celebration,“” Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept, January 14, 2014 [back]

3. “Palestinian journalists under Israeli fire,” Al Jazeera, July 11, 2014, www.aljazeera.com [back]

4. World Press Freedom Index 2014 [back]

THEIR REAL FACE

Here's the real face of the people behind the new wave of hate fuelled "anti-Islamisation" campaigns in europe, particularly germany......

Germany Pegida: Protest leader quits in 'Hitler' row

Continue reading the main story

Related Stories

• German leaders join Muslim rally
• Who's in Germany's Pegida?
• Has xenophobia risen in Germany?

The head of German "anti-Islamisation" movement Pegida, Lutz Bachmann, has resigned after a photo of him apparently posing as Hitler emerged.

Mr Bachmann stepped down just as tens of thousands of people were expected to rally in the eastern city of Leipzig for the latest Pegida rally.

Prosecutors are investigating insulting comments about refugees attributed to him by German newspapers.

A Pegida spokeswoman sought to play down the Facebook photo as a "joke".

But the German government condemned the photo. Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel told Bild: "Anyone in politics who poses as Hitler is either a total idiot or a Nazi. Reasonable people do not follow idiots, and decent people don't follow Nazis."

Pegida focused on Leipzig after police banned a protest by the movement in Dresden on Monday over reports of an assassination plot against the movement's leaders.

Pegida supporters have been gathering in Leipzig

What is Pegida?

• Founded in Dresden by Lutz Bachmann in October 2014
• Acronym for Patriotische Europaer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West)
• Umbrella group for German right wing, attracting support from mainstream conservatives to neo-Nazi factions and football hooligans
• Holds street protests against what it sees as a dangerous rise in the influence of Islam over European countries
• Claims not to be racist or xenophobic
• 19-point manifesto says the movement opposes extremism and calls for protection of Germany's Judeo-Christian culture

What is Pegida?

A spokesman for state prosecutors in Dresden, the east German city which has been the focus of Pegida rallies this winter, told Reuters news agency that preliminary proceedings had been opened over comments attributed to Mr Bachmann.

"The suspicion is of incitement to popular hatred," the spokesman said.

Bild and another newspaper said Mr Bachmann had called asylum seekers "animals" and "scumbags".

Mr Bachmann has denied he is a racist,

Kathrin Oertel, a fellow founder of the Pegida movement, confirmed the resignation of Mr Bachmann, saying it related to online comments and not the photo.

"Pegida will go on," she added.

The movement has forced its way on to the political agenda in Germany with rallies that have attracted tens of thousands of people.

Deadly attacks by Islamist militants in Paris this month have fuelled anti-Muslim feeling.

In Leipzig, Pegida supporters gathered under German flags as riot police stood by.

AMERIKKKAN LOWLIFE

"american sniper" is a film about a dead  piece of shit redneck racist amerikkkan filth named chris kyle , who apparently saved many of his comrades in the u.s. imperialist army by sniping Iraqi "terrorists", who were trying to repel the invaders ( amerikkkans) from their land. Idiot filmmaker clint eastwood directed the film, and it's already up for all kinds of stupid awards and shit. The few liberal actors who have dared to criticize this fascist propaganda piece have quickly backtracked, showing themselves to be the spineless clowns that they are.
   In the book that kyle wrote about his life, he referred to Iraqis as "savages", and said that he "doesn't give a fuck about them". He also said that he enjoyed killing, including pregnant women. This your fucking hero, amerikkka. Is this how someone defends your "freedom"? Yes, the asshole was doing his job, but when does the time come for you to question the morality of what you're doing? "It's my job" doesn't fucking cut it, when you've travelled 10,000 miles to go to someone else's country to kill people in the name of fucking "freedom". 
  This redneck's life ended the way it should have, with him and a friend taking another veteran to the shooting range to deal with his post traumatic stress disorder. The sick vet then shot kyle and his friend, and took off. He is now in jail.
   chris kyle was a fucking idiotic racist turd, and hollywood and eastwood's attempt to glorify him are not surprising. Assholes will eat this shit up. Let them, The truth is the truth, no matter how you want to twist things, and glorify imperialist hatred. Fuck american sniper, and eastwood.             

MANLIFTINGBANNER

I got this in the mail yesterday, and it is fucking excellent. Driving hardcore with well thought out lyrics in beautiful packaging, and on red vinyl, too. I can't say enough about this Dutch band. I'm not totally into the party they support, but Manliftingbanner reach beyond the confines of that grouping to inspire whoever hears them. Listen to this. Look it up yourselves.

COLD TRUTH

There are many groups and organizations trying to be "politically correct", or trying to see both sides of the story, etc. This is not the case with Revolution newspaper. The oppressors have the mainstream big money media, and the oppressed have Revolution. It's got a far smaller circulation, it's true, but the truth it speaks is worth 1 billion more times than CNN, Fox, etc. Fuck 'em all.

The Cold but Liberating Truth About the Police, the Struggle for Justice, and Revolution

January 14, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

                                                                 

To our readers:

Download the PDF of "The Cold but Liberating Truth About the Police, the Struggle for Justice, and Revolution," print it up, and get it out on a very broad scale at the different events, marches and gatherings this weekend and Monday commemorating MLK Day, as well as to showings of the film Selma—and also get out palm cards for the Dialogue Between Cornel West and Bob Avakian and the latest issue ofRevolution newspaper.

Right-click link to download PDF. This is designed to be printed two-sided on 11x17" paper, folded brochure style.

The TRUTH is this:

The 1000s who took the streets against the police murdering people and walking free were RIGHT...

The police are NOT heroes...

They are NOT “serving and protecting” the people...

They function like an occupying army against Black and Latino people in this country: harassing, brutalizing and murdering people...

And if we want this to stop, we have to build up our movement to re-take the streets, even more massively than before, and even as we learn more deeply how to get at the root of this madness and end it once and for all. WE HAVE TO ACT.

New York City, December 13, 2014. Posters of the eyes of Eric Garner by French artist JR are carried in a march of thousands. Photo: Special to revcom.us/Revolution

The Reality of Black Lives

For four short months, beginning in August with the rebellion in Ferguson, MO, and especially in the five weeks after the grand juries in Ferguson and then New York freed the cops who murdered Mike Brown and Eric Garner, Black lives actually did matter in this country.

No, not to those who run and enforce this system; Black lives never have and never will matter to them, except to be exploited or as a source of potential threat to their system. But to the millions who generally just go along with things and don’t allow themselves to think about the horror right beneath the surface—yes, suddenly they were forced to confront the reality of what happens to Black and other oppressed peoples in this society day in and day out, and what has been going on in one form or another since Day One of this country.

And what IS that reality?

Michael Brown's stepfather, shortly after Michael Brown was murdered by police. "Ferguson police just executed my unarmed son!!!" Photo: AP

In case we forget, we can go on YouTube and look at the latest video to come out of Cleveland, Ohio where not only did police murder a 12-year-old Black boy, Tamir Rice, for allegedly playing with a toy gun at a playground, but it has come out and can be seen that they shot him less than 2 seconds after they came on the scene and then not only tackled and detained his sister who ran to help him, but stood there while he bled out and died, refusing to come to his aid! Where is the humanity?

In case we forget, we can just look in the newspapers and find out that, far from being an “isolated” incident, the chokehold that the New York police used to murder Eric Garner—another case where these cops stood around and did nothing to aid a man who was dying in front of them, due to their vicious and monstrous actions—is actually the first thing that many cops resort to when arresting someone. Not only is this supposedly forbidden by their rule books, but it has also come out that when they are caught and the so-called Civilian Review Board recommends punishment, nothing is ever done! Where is the justice?

In case we forget, we can read the author Isabel Wilkerson who, like many others, has recently compared the numbers of police murders of Black people to the numbers of lynchings of Black people during the height of Ku Klux Klan terror—and found that the police murders are even more frequent. These murders and this all-around harassment, abuse, intimidation and violence by police serve the same social function as the Klan lynchings: to terrorize an oppressed people, to “keep them in their place.” Where, really, is the so-called progress?

What the Demonstrations Accomplished

But—again—these last few months were different. People did NOT forget and they did NOT block this out from their minds and they began to actually confront this and think about it. Why? Fundamentally because in August, when the police murdered Michael Brown, people in Ferguson rose up—and in large part, those at the backbone were the people on the bottom of society, who are so often demonized and hounded. This rallied others and made it impossible for the powers-that-be to put things back in a box. All eyes were kept on Ferguson and New York. Would there be justice?

Then, when the grand juries allowed the cops who murdered Michael Brown and Eric Garner to walk, tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of people blocked traffic and in many other ways disrupted “business as usual.” People in Ferguson again rose up and in dozens of other cities people of ALL nationalities and skin colors came into the streets, night after night. Millions were inspired, and tens of millions were forced to take notice, here and all over the world. Millions said or chanted or whispered “I can’t breathe” and in doing so broke a suffocation that had been locked down on people for decades. The thinking of millions was changed, and this was a huge accomplishment of the struggle.

It took massive disruptive action to do this. These actions were part of reaching into the deepest suppressed feelings of millions, opening people up to new ideas, and beginning to change the thinking both of those who acted and those who watched. This has been a great beginning, even as it is just that—a beginning.

They Are Trying to Kill This Movement With Lies—What Is the REALTruth? And What Do We Need to Do?

But in the past few weeks, even as people have in many places bravely continued to fight and even as writers have continued to expose the reality, this new movement faces a big challenge. After trying—and failing—to suppress the movement with arrests, with demonization, and through many other means, the powers-that-be seized on the killings of two police in New York to take the offensive. Overnight, any criticism of police was ruled out of bounds. All kinds of distortions and lies were put out, all kinds of threats were made, and the police and their defenders—none of whom ever once came forward to say that what they and their fellow cops had done and do every day to Black and Latino people was in any way wrong—dominated the airwaves.

Because there have been so many lies put out there, it’s important to clear the air with some truth.

• If there are just a few bad apples, then how come the “good apples” never come forward to call out the bad ones? How come they always cover up and lie for their “brother cops,” and how come when one of them is finally caught doing their dirty stuff, they all come out in support?
• If this kind of murder of unarmed men, women and children is NOT at the heart of what the police do, then how come it goes on over and over again, day in and day out, and almost never are they punished?
• If these cops are so heroic, how come none of them ever step forward to stop one of their “brothers” from harassing or killing an unarmed person? How come they don’t risk anything for that?
• And if the commentators and politicians—yes, including the “liberal” politicians—didn’t like it when demonstrators chanted “NYPD, KKK, How many kids did you kill today?” then why didn’t they prove it was false? In fact, they couldn’t, because the marchers were saying what was true and what needed to be said and heard and has been kept quiet for far too long.

These lies are thin and paltry, but if they go unchallenged then the thinking of millions of people will again be shut down. And these murderers and their masters will again get away with these horrors—unless and until people once again rise up and take the streets. THAT—new waves of struggle, even more massive and defiant than before (including struggle over how people are understanding things)—is a necessary part of shining a light through the fog of lies to get the truth out and more deeply changing the thinking of the millions who have been programmed to go along with all this madness.

So that is definitely one huge challenge before the people right now: to go back on the offensive and bring forward even more massive waves of struggle to STOP these outrages. Not mitigate them, not tone them down—but STOP them.

Right now the Stop Mass Incarceration Network (SMIN) is joining with others to host a national meeting in early February to develop plans that will re-take initiative on this front.Everyone who has been fighting this, all the different groups who want to see this stop, should be part of this, sorting out differences and uniting more strongly.

At the same time, our Party and the Revolution Clubs are organizing people FOR revolution in the communities and campuses all over. We are mobilizing people to fight the power, in very active and determined ways, and at the same time working to transform people’s thinking… FOR revolution. This is critical… and you can and should be part of this, going up against the powers while learning more about the revolution.

Why Does This Happen?

This gets to another big challenge that has to be met: getting to WHY this goes on, and what must be done to STOP it once and for all.

Why do the police do this? Bob Avakian, the leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party, has put it this way:

The role of the police is not to serve and protect the people. It is to serve and protect the system that rules over the people. To enforce the relations of exploitation and oppression, the conditions of poverty, misery and degradation into which the system has cast people and is determined to keep people in. The law and order the police are about, with all of their brutality and murder, is the law and order that enforces all this oppression and madness.

Think about it. THIS is at the heart of what goes on in the ghettos and barrios all over the country. “Relations of exploitation and oppression” are being “enforced.” And these relations go far beyond the ghetto. Think about what goes into just the daily functioning of this system, in addition to the killing discrimination and slow genocide now coming down on African-Americans, and Latinos, and other oppressed peoples within the U.S.:

• The oppression of hundreds of millions of people, all over the world, either enslaved to produce the great wealth these capitalist-imperialists brag about, or cast off from enslavement, or just kept “in reserve” in subhuman conditions, from Gaza to Guinea, from Pakistan to Mexico...and all of this enforced by armies and drones and terror of different kinds at the behest of the capitalist-imperialist powers like the U.S.;
• The oppression of women in every corner of the planet through rape, battery and the denial of basic rights of all kinds, as well as the oppression of people who are gay, or just “different”;
• The massive dislocation and exile of hundreds of millions, forced from their countries to desperately seek work, hunted down at borders or killed on the high seas, and once in the “promised land” treated like criminals and demons;
• The plunder and destruction of the environment itself, all for the enrichment of the capitalist-imperialists.

We Need a Revolution—A REAL Revolution!

These horrors are a big part of what we’re talking about when we say “relations of exploitation and oppression.” This is what is enforced by their cops, their armies, their prisons, their courts and all the rest. This is what is defended and covered over by their media and their politicians. A system that not only produces these horrors, but feeds on them and requires them to keep going, is a system that must be done away with. And the only way it can be done away with is through revolution.

Revolution is not just a catchword. It means something, something real. As we have said:

An actual revolution is a lot more than a protest. An actual revolution requires that millions of people get involved, in an organized way, in a determined fight to dismantle this state apparatus and system and replace it with a completely different state apparatus and system, a whole different way of organizing society, with completely different objectives and ways of life for the people. Fighting the power today has to help build and develop and organize the fight for the whole thing, for an actual revolution. Otherwise we’ll be protesting the same abuses generations from now!

We, our Party, has taken responsibility not only to take up this fight today but to build this as part of getting organized for an actual revolution. And listen—this is not something that has to be way far off—a lot depends on what all of us do, right now and in the immediate future. Our Party has developed a strategy to make revolution. Our Party has developed a vision of what is to replace this system. Our Party is developing the theoretical fighting doctrine through which people could actually meet and defeat these imperialists, even with all their power, once conditions change and the all-out struggle for power comes on the agenda.

AND: we have in Bob Avakian (BA) a leader who has given his heart and soul to the masses of people and who has developed a visionary new synthesis of communism, a deeper understanding of human emancipation. A leader like BA is something rare, and this is a great strength for our movement. “If you are serious about an actual revolution, you have to get seriously into BA.” Our Party is made up of revolutionary fighters dedicated to leading masses of people to get free of this madness, applying science to the problems we face, and organized into the structure of our Party to do that. And we have a way for you to get with this, to learn about this as you are fighting back, to get organized to actually make a revolution.

The time is now. The challenge is there... the leadership is there... what is needed, very urgently right now, is YOU.

Fight the Power, and Transform the People, for Revolution!
Get Organized for an Actual Revolution!

To learn more, explore this website, www.revcom.us. And check out the dialogue between Bob Avakian and Cornel West, “Revolution and Religion: The Fight for Emancipation and the Role of Religion.”