Sunday, 30 April 2017

FUCK YES

On the 25th Anniversary of the Los Angeles Rebellion:

Carl Dix is a representative of the Revolutionary Communist Party and a follower of and advocate for Bob Avakian, his leadership and his visionary new synthesis of communism. He is a courageous freedom fighter from the1960s who went on to become a revolutionary fighter and a communist. Dix spent two years in military prison for refusing to fight in the unjust Vietnam War. He emerged unrepentant and went on to become a founding member of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), USA, dedicating his life to the emancipation of all humanity. Carl is a co-initiator of Refuse Fascism. He co-founded, with Cornel West, the Stop Mass Incarceration Network (SMIN), and initiated Rise Up October that brought thousands into the streets in New York City in 2015 demanding a stop to police terror. More recently, Carl was dragged out of the Senate hearing on Jeff Sessions' nomination to be U.S. Attorney General, chanting “No Trump, No KKK, No Fascist USA.”

It Is Right, and Necessary, To Rebel & To Go from Rebellion to Revolution!

by Carl Dix

Twenty-five years ago, Los Angeles exploded in rebellion after a jury exonerated the Los Angeles cops who were caught on video viciously beating Rodney King. This verdict was the system saying that it didn’t matter even though the world had watched their pigs brutalizing a Black man on TV. They let these pigs walk anyway. And that Black people deserved nothing and would get nothing but a pig’s boot on their necks, a prison cell to be caged in, or an early grave to be thrown into.
But the masses of people in LA said Hell, No, not this time. Black people rose in rebellion, and people of all nationalities joined in. As Bob Avakian (BA) said right after the rebellion, “This rebellion was the most beautiful, the most heroic, and the most powerful action by the masses of people in the U.S. for years and years. It sent shockwaves throughout the U.S. and around the world, striking fear and panic into the oppressors and causing the hearts of oppressed people everywhere to beat faster with joy and hope.”
The U.S. rulers were puffed up off of having rained death and destruction on Iraq in their 1991 war against that country, feeling that they had delivered a message to the world that they were the top dog and couldn’t be challenged. But the LA Rebellion showed the world there were people on the bottom of this society who were in no mood to join the celebration of U.S. world domination. By rising up in rebellion, the masses in LA declared to the world that they refused to accept the brutality and indignity this system enforced on them. And people in cities across the U.S. heard this call and took to the streets in solidarity—rebellions erupted in cities like Las Vegas, Oakland, and Seattle, and there were protests against police brutality in many other cities.
In the midst of rising up in outrage against the outrageous verdict in the Rodney King case, Black youth forged a truce that ended decades of fighting and killing among the street gangs of LA. On the first night of the rebellion, graffiti went up on the walls that said: “Bloods, Crips and Mexicans together tonight.” During and after the rebellion there were many scenes of members of rival gang members, people who had been sworn enemies, hanging out together and embracing each other.
The system had enforced conditions in the inner cities that left these youth facing futures of no hope. It had flooded their neighborhoods with drugs and unleashed its pigs to bust them under the War on Drugs, which was really a war on the people. These young people were left with no way to have meaning in their lives except to form street gangs whose codes of revenge had them fighting and killing other oppressed youth who were just like them.
As BA says in BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS!, forging this truce was hard. The youth had to reach over years of killings, and the calls for revenge these killings generated, to embrace each other. And they had to try very hard to maintain the truce in the face of attacks by the pigs who would attack them when they gathered to hold picnics to celebrate the truce.
The youth worked heroically to keep the truce in effect, but ultimately they didn’t succeed. On top of the attacks by the system, they were confronted with the reality that this capitalist-imperialist system has no future for millions of youth penned up in the ghettos and barrios across the U.S.
On this 25th anniversary, we should remember the heroic efforts of the youth of LA, and we need to learn three lessons: 1) that people rising in rebellion against injustice was, and is, righteous, necessary, and beautiful. This makes it possible for oppressed people to raise their heads, to begin to see further than the grind of their day-to-day existence and to begin to get organized for revolution, while also opening up space to transform the thinking of all society; 2) that breaking the youth out of the street life and overcoming all the divisions among the masses, not just for a brief period of time after which they slide back into it, can only be done as part of building a movement FOR revolution. This is more urgent than ever, and it’s something our Party has set itself to right now, especially in Chicago in the face of Donald Trump’s threats to send in the feds to “fix” the violence here; and 3) that we need more than just rebellions—we need a revolution, and to make that revolution, people have to be struggled with to transform themselves as they are mobilized to join the struggle to fight the powers. And that there is leadership for this revolution in BA, a leader who has developed the strategy to make such a revolution and brought forward a vision of the world that revolution could bring into being. The most pressing thing facing this new generation of youth caught up in the gang scene, and their revolutionary vanguard, is to actually get them OUT of that, and get into the revolution.

"TOO MUCH JUSTICE "?! WHAT THE FUCK ?

Mumia hearing: ’Too much justice’?

By Betsey Piette posted on April 29, 2017

Philadelphia, April 24.

Philadelphia – A petition filed on behalf of political prisoner and journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal, seeking a new appeal in his decades-long case, was heard in the Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas on April 24. Abu-Jamal was represented by Christina Swarns and Judith Ritter from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
Philadelphia Deputy District Attorney Ronald Eisenberg represented the Commonwealth. Common Pleas Judge Leon Tucker heard the case.
While dozens of Abu-Jamal supporters packed the courtroom, more demonstrated outside the Criminal Justice Center in downtown Philadelphia.
The basis for the new hearing was a 2016 U.S. Supreme Court precedent-setting decision, Williams v. Pennsylvania. The decision held that Terry Williams had been denied his due process right to a hearing free of bias. This was because Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Ronald Castille, who ruled on his appeals, also played a significant role in the case while Philadelphia District Attorney.
Attorney Christina Swarns argued that Castille’s name appears on every one of the state’s briefs filed against Abu-Jamal’s appeals. Castille was Assistant DA at the time of Abu-Jamal’s trial. Then in 1988 he was the Philadelphia District Attorney during Abu-Jamal’s direct appeal. The defense had twice challenged Castille to recuse himself when Abu-Jamal’s appeals to the state’s Supreme Court came before Castille’s bench from 1995 to 2012.
Appeal based on role of Justice Castille
Swarns challenged the Commonwealth’s claim that Castille had “played no personal role” in Abu-Jamal’s case. He noted that the state had made the same arguments in the Williams’ case before a discovery motion filed on his behalf exposed that the DA’s office was lying. Abu-Jamal’s attorney asked Judge Tucker to rule on a discovery motion to review the DA’s records of the case.
DA Eisenberg, a protégé of Castille, focused most of his arguments on trying to challenge the timeliness of the appeal and seeking to deny or minimize the extent of Castille’s involvement in Abu-Jamal’s case. Tucker eventually responded, asking Eisenberg to explain just how the case could have moved forward without Castille’s approval.
The DA ended his presentation by arguing about just how much access to due process Abu-Jamal should receive. He stated that granting Abu-Jamal’s case would “be a huge impact” on the higher courts. “At some point you just have to draw the line.”
Swarns responded by pointing out that the Commonwealth’s concern cannot be about how long Abu-Jamal’s appeals process might take or that he would receive “too much justice.” She stated that at minimum Abu-Jamal was entitled to a review of the DA records on his case to determine the extent of Castille’s involvement. “If the review shows that Castille wasn’t involved, then we won’t need to be concerned about how much justice Mumia Abu-Jamal receives,” Swarns concluded.
Tucker concluded the hearing stating that a decision would be made shortly.
A lively press conference outside the court building followed the hearing. Abu-Jamal’s attorneys reported on what had happened. Other speakers, including Pam Africa and Suzanne Ross, addressed the need to widen support for Abu-Jamal.
Young people lead march
Monica Moorehead of Workers World Party called on the young people who have been in the streets fighting police brutality to get involved in the struggle to free Mumia and to raise his case at upcoming May Day actions.
“We need more young revolutionaries out here taking up the cause of Mumia Abu-Jamal…. We need your energy and your revolutionary spirit…. Your involvement could be the decisive issue to free Mumia.”
Live streaming of the rally can be seen at youtube.com/watch?v=QKomagCTIiE.
The large number of youth helping lead the march that followed showed that they heard Moorehead’s call. Marchers circled City Hall and rallied in the cold and damp weather for hours. They held an indoor event, “Resistance Matters,” that evening at the Arch Street United Methodist Church.
Speakers there addressed the legal issues, the victorious two-year struggle to get hepatitis C medications for Abu-Jamal and the ongoing fight over toxic water in Pennsylvania prisons and Philadelphia public schools. They also wished a “happy birthday” to Abu-Jamal, who turned 63 on April 24.
Abu-Jamal was scheduled for execution in 1995 and 1999 but was saved by mass international protests. In 2012, after years of mass pressure, the courts removed him from death row and re-sentenced Abu-Jamal to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
Just weeks ago, supporters forced the prison system to provide Abu-Jamal with life-saving medicine for hepatitis C, after a two-year-long campaign in court and on the streets. This latest court proceeding was another battle in the 35-year effort to win justice and freedom for one of the world’s best-known political prisoners.

(WW photo: Joseph Piette)

EVERYTHING

Question EVERYTHING the fucking amerikkkans have to say about anyone else being a fucking terrorist. They are in fact the # 1 terrorists in the world, and will remain so.

Claims of Syrian Chemical Weapons Attacks are Total B.S.

By Washington's Blog

Global Research, April 29, 2017

Washington's Blog 28 April 2017

Region: Middle East & North Africa

Theme: Media Disinformation, Terrorism, US NATO War Agenda

In-depth Report: SYRIA

A Little Background: The U.S. Has Tried to Carry Out Regime Change Since Syria Became An Independent County …

The U.S. government has been trying to replace the Syrian government with folks who will be subservient to America since 1949 … 3 years after Syria became an independent nation.

The CIA succeeded in carrying out a coup in Syria 1949.

In 1957, the American president and British prime minister agreed to launch regime change again in Syria using a false flag. (False flags are not only historically documented, but presidents, prime ministers, congressmen, generals, spooks, soldiers and police have ADMITTED to planning and carrying out false flat attacks).

In 1983, 1986, 1991, 2001, 2009 and 2012, American officials again schemed about regime change in Syria.

The 2013 Syrian Weapons Attack Was Carried Out By …

The 2013 sarin attack in Ghouta, Syria, was blamed by the U.S. on the Syrian government.

However, the United Nations’ report on the attack did NOT blame the government, and the U.N.’s human rights investigator accused the rebels – rather than the Syrian government – of carrying out the attack.

Moreover, high-level American and Turkish officials say that Turkey supplied Sarin gas to Syrian rebels in 2013 in order to frame the Syrian government … to provide an excuse for regime change.

Pulitzer-prize winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh – who uncovered the Iraq prison torture scandal and the Mai Lai massacre in Vietnam – previously reported that high-level American sources tell him that the Turkish government carried out the chemical weapons attacks blamed on the Syrian government.

As Hersh noted:

‘We knew there were some in the Turkish government,’ a former senior US intelligence official, who has access to current intelligence, told me, ‘who believed they could get Assad’s nuts in a vice by dabbling with a sarin attack inside Syria – and forcing Obama to make good on his red line threat.’

Indeed, it’s long been known that sarin was coming through Turkey.

And a tape recording of top Turkish officials planning a false flag attack to be blamed on Syria as a justification for war was leaked … and confirmed by Turkey as being authentic.

The 2017 Chemical Incident … Which “Justified” Trump’s Bombing Syria with 57 Cruise Missiles

The recent chemical incident was immediately blamed on the Syrian government. And the Trump administration immediately launched 59 cruise missiles at a Syrian air base based on the accusation.

But many of the American intelligence officials who warned that the claims about Iraq (which led to a disastrous war) were fake say that these claims are fake as well.

Indeed, former CIA officer Philip Giraldi says that American intelligence community insiders are furious that the Trump administration has twisted the intelligence so as to claim that the Syrian government carried out a chemical weapons attack. And see this.

Indeed, the lead UN investigator into Syrian chemical weapons attacks has debunked one of the main allegations attempting to pin the recent chemical incident on the Syrian government.

And a top U.S. rocket scientist has made Swiss cheese out of the government’s claims that the Syrian government was responsible. And see this.

But when the military-industrial folks want a war, do facts even matter?

The original source of this article is Washington's Blog

Saturday, 29 April 2017

FREE SPEECH MY ASS

Have you ever noticed how the fascist right wing motherfuckers never talk about "free speech " unless it's about them being allowed to spread their hate and misinformation ? Stupid weasely lying assholes.

Points of Orientation on Berkeley and Ann Coulter:
The Issue Is NOT "Free Speech"—The Issue Is FASCISM

April 26, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

On April 26, Ann Coulter announced the cancellation of the speech she was planning to make the next day in Berkeley at the University of California campus. The controversy over her speech has created all sorts of confusion, and these points of orientation remain valid. We will be covering this controversy as time goes on.

1) Ann Coulter is an outright fascist and advocate of horrific violence against oppressed people, as well as suppression of those she deems to be her opponents in the power structure. She has written 12 books, is constantly on major imperialist TV stations, and is an intellectual arm of the fascist regime in the White House. The poison she spews is not only profoundly not true, but is an extreme expression of the views that the fascist section of the ruling class which has taken power are trying to impose on all society. They are doing this by means of state power, through the use of the media it controls, and by unleashing and allowing their fascist mobs to terrorize oppressed people, through outright encouragement and tacit approval. Ann Coulter has had ample opportunity to spread her dangerous poison, while those who thoroughly oppose her are denied a platform.

2) Ann Coulter is in no way being suppressed by the government, so the entire issue of the First Amendment is a canard here—it has nothing to do with the question and is serving to confuse and disorient people. But Ann Coulter’s leader, Donald Trump, not only advocates the violent suppression of speech with which he disagrees, but has called for the imprisonment and denial of citizenship to those who burn the flag—a form of expression that the Supreme Court has ruled is indeed protected by the First Amendment. “First Amendment” and “free speech” have absolutely nothing to do with Coulter’s attempt to spew her poison and can in no way be made the terms of this battle.

3) Fascists have fixed their sights on Berkeley as a way to intimidate those who oppose Trump and make them bow down. They have unleashed forces who are obviously trained in violence and who intend to become the street militia of the regime if and as the regime encounters further demonstrations and other forms of resistance in the streets. The formation and forging of fascist fighting squads and their targeting of Berkeley is an extremely ominous development.

4) It is absolutely wrong for anyone claiming to recognize the threat posed by the Trump/Pence regime and the real damage that they are doing to equate organized violent fascist forces backed up by the regime in power and the state, and those who are determined to resist them. To be “even-handed” in this period is to profess one’s moral bankruptcy. We must not aid those in power by dividing the movement against Trump into “good protestors” and “bad protestors.”

5) There is a fascist regime in power which is moving quickly to radically remake this society on a fascist foundation: gutting the separation of powers, the separation of church and state, threatening nuclear war on the world, and demonizing and criminalizing whole peoples while changing the laws and norms in this country in a fascist direction. It can already be said that “First they came for the Muslims and immigrants...” Fascist leaders like Ann Coulter, Milo Yiannopoulos, David Horowitz, etc. are giving a thin intellectual veneer to this fascist program. And we—in our millions—must stand up clearly and firmly and say NO! In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Live in a Fascist America.

It is imperative that all people who oppose the Trump/Pence fascist regime come out to demonstrate against Ann Coulter and the fascists who are backing her up. The lines must be drawn. What happens in Berkeley in these next few days matters.

Wednesday, 26 April 2017

BLIND PARROTS

This is for all of those shit talkers who like to repeat media bullshit endlessly, but who have no knowledge on what they are babbling about, and like to pass on stupid headlines as their own worthless opinions........stupid fuckers.

As The Trump/Pence Regime Threatens War With North Korea—

Should Oppressed People Fight for the System That Holds Them Down—Or Should We Fight to Overthrow That System?

CARL DIX CHALLENGES ANYONE TO A DEBATE OVER THE US THREATS OF WAR AGAINST NORTH KOREA!

April 24, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

I was drafted into the U.S. army in the 1960s and given orders to go to Vietnam. I refused to go fight in Vietnam and served two years in prison because of that. I wasn’t going to go thousands of miles to be part of a war against people fighting to free their country while Black people were catching hell in this country.

That same question is up today. The US has ships armed with nuclear weapons and tens of thousands of troops around the borders of North Korea. A US war with that small country would be an unjust, imperialist war. If nuclear weapons are used, millions of people would die, millions more would suffer starvation and the climate of the whole planet would be devastated.

It is not in the interests of humanity to fight in or to support this system’s wars. Instead of fighting for this system, oppressed people need to get with the revolution to overthrow the system that threatens the world with nuclear war! And they need to get with the leadership we have for this revolution in Bob Avakian, a leader who has figured out how we could succeed in getting rid of this system thru revolution and developed a vision of the kind of world that this revolution could bring into being. You can find out about this leader and this revolution at Revcom.us.

And to the youth: Don’t go running to join their capitalist-imperialist army. It’s their army, not ours. And this isn’t our country either. The only time they tell us it’s our country is when they want us to fight, kill people and maybe die for them. Otherwise, they have their pigs beating us down, locking us up and even killing us off. Oppressed people have no business fighting in this system’s wars. And we shouldn’t ever get sucked into rooting for our oppressors to ever win a war. A system that has put a lunatic like Trump in the White House and a Christian fascist like Pence right beside him, and is threatening the world with nuclear war is no damned good. It needs to be gotten rid of thru revolution. We shouldn’t be fighting for them, and we shouldn’t be fighting each other either. We need to be seizing on their troubles to get busy preparing to do away with their system by making revolution at the soonest possible time.

So I will debate anyone who wants to tell the youth to join that imperialist army around this question:

Resolved: Oppressed people should not support the war moves of their oppressors or fight in their wars—We should fight to overthrow that system!

Contact the Revolution Club in Chicago
Phone: 312-804-9121, email: revclub.chi@gmail.com
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/revclubchi.
1857 E. 71st St., Hours 3-7 pm every day but Monday

Tuesday, 25 April 2017

GREEN PARTY IMPERIALISTS

Many people think that the green party are some sort of friendly enviro-liberals. The reality is, they are asshole pro-imperialists, who do not shy away from defending israel's human rights violations, and support kkkanada's imperialist ambitions in the Middle East and throughout the world.
Read this excellent article.

Exposing Canadian Imperialism

by Yves Engler / August 11th, 2016

As hard as it is to admit for a former junior hockey player who spends many hours writing at the neighbourhood Tim Hortons, some things are better in the USA.

For example, comparing Green Party leader Elizabeth May to her American counterpart Jill Stein on foreign-policy issues puts Canada to shame. While Stein has articulated forthright criticism on various international issues, May spouts nationalist platitudes as often as she challenges unjust policies.

Recently, Stein endorsed the Palestinian boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against Israel, called for Washington and Moscow to work together and said, “US pursuit of regime change in Libya, Iraq, and Syria created the chaos that promotes power grabs by extremist militias. Many of the weapons we are sending into Syria to arm anti-government militias are winding up in the hands of ISIS. This isn’t a clever foreign policy — it’s disastrous militarism.”

For her part, May spent last weekend undermining her party’s internal democracy to protect the explicitly racist Jewish National Fund and Israel from censure. At their convention in Ottawa May and most of the Green leadership succeeded in eliminating any mention of the JNF in a resolution, which was rewritten from targeting that institution to call on the Canada Revenue Agency to revoke the status of all charities engaged in international human rights violations. Fortunately, the party leadership failed to block a resolution endorsing BDS in what is probably the single most significant pro-Palestinian victory in Canadian history.

While the Green members who bucked the party leadership to support the JNF and BDS resolutions deserve to be congratulated, the anti-Palestinian, right-wing Israeli nationalist groups who terrorized May in the lead-up to the convention raised an important, if disingenuous, point: Why were there only two resolutions dealing with foreign-policy at the convention? Why didn’t the Greens debate Canadian mining companies’ abuses abroad, special forces in Iraq/Syria, international tar sands promotion, troops on the Russian border, among numerous other important international issues?

The Green’s 2015 federal election foreign-policy platform paper was peppered with nationalist platitudes. It said “Canada is fundamentally a peaceful country” and “defender of human rights.” In laying out the party’s 2015 election position in Esprit de Corps magazine May wrote, “the world needs more Canada” and argued, “we should also support the United Nations’ ‘responsibility to protect’ (R2P) doctrine”, which was used to justify bombing Libya in 2011 and ousting Haiti’s elected government in 2004.

May backed the Conservative government’s National Shipbuilding Procurement Strategy, a $30-$40 billion effort to expand the combat fleet over three decades. But the naval upgrade will strengthen Canadian officials’ capacity to bully weaker countries. The 2000 book Canadian Gunboat Diplomacy details the navy’s extensive history of flexing its muscles, including dozens of interventions in the Caribbean and pressuring Costa Rica to repay money the Royal Bank loaned to an unpopular dictator. And it’s not just history; over the past 25 years the Canadian Navy has played an increasing pro-imperial role in the Middle East and off parts of Africa.

May and Green Party policy statements have also mythologized Canadian foreign policy, citing Lester Pearson as some sort of hero. May claimed “a Green Party approach to international issues will return Canada to the values of Lester B. Pearson.” But, as I detail in Lester Pearson’s Peacekeeping: The Truth May Hurt, the former external minister and prime minister was an ardent cold warrior, who played a part in dispossessing Palestinians, creating NATO and helping the US wage war in Vietnam and Korea.

Of course, the problem runs deeper than May or the Green Party. Much of the Canadian ‘left’ is highly nationalistic, wedded to both the idea this country is a US “dependency” and international “peacekeeper”.

While far from what’s needed, internationalist minded Americans have helped expose US imperialism. Progressive people in this country have largely failed to do the same with Canadian imperialism. In fact, left-wing Canadian academics have probably written more books and articles criticizing US foreign policy than Canada’s.

Certainly the US left has built more of an infrastructure/culture willing to genuinely challenge US foreign policy. A number of prominent academics are highly critical of US foreign policy and left-wing US media outlets such as Counterpunch, Z, Dissident Voice, Common Dreams, etc. shun foreign-policy apologetics.

In Canada the most prominent ‘left-wing’ foreign-policy think tank is led by Peggy Mason who was a key adviser to Conservative foreign minister Joe Clark in the late 1980s and has held numerous diplomatic postings and UN positions since. During a 2012 National Defence Committee parliamentary meeting on NATO the head of the Rideau Institute noted, “I’m talking as someone who has spent the better part of the last 10 years working with NATO.” Mason trained NATO commanders for peace and crisis stabilization operations and boasted she trained the general Charles Bouchard, who led the 2011 NATO bombing of Libya, which the Rideau Institute head described as a “very important mission.”

The Rideau Institute’s lead collaborator/advisor is an employee of the Canadian Forces who aggressively supported Canada’s worst foreign-policy crime of the first decade of the 21st century (the coup in Haiti). Walter Dorn’s Rideau Institute reports are usually co-published by Canada’s leading left think tank, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. While the CCPA Monitor publishes some articles critical of Canadian foreign policy, its international affairs reports, which receive the bulk of resources, do not offer serious criticism. A number of recent reports have called for adjustments to military priorities while accepting the broad outlines of Canadian militarism. In February they co-published Unprepared for Peace?: The decline of Canadian peacekeeping training (and what to do about it). On the cover of the report a white Canadian soldier, with a massive M-16 strapped around his shoulder, is bent over to hold the hand of a young black boy. In the background are Canadian and UN colours. A call for the Canadian Forces to offer its members more peacekeeping training, Unprepared for peace? is premised on the erroneous notion that UN missions are by definition socially useful and it repeatedly implies that Canada’s most significant recent contribution to a UN mission — the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) — was an operation we should be proud of.

Last year the CCPA and Rideau Institute co-published Smart Defence: A Plan for Rebuilding Canada’s Military, which introduces the issue this way: “When the Harper government came to power in 2006, it pledged to rebuild Canada’s military. But for nine long years, it has failed to deliver on most of its promises, from new armoured trucks and supply ships to fighter jets and search-and-rescue planes.” Author Michael Byers peppers the report with various militarist claims. Canada “faces challenges at home and abroad that require a well-equipped and capable military,” he writes. At another point he says “the Canadian Army cannot deploy large numbers of troops overseas because of a shortage of armoured trucks.” In other words, let’s improve Canada’s military capacity.

While mostly providing a counterpoint to the dominant media, Rabble also publishes some blatantly establishment foreign-policy pieces. It regularly runs Gerald Caplan’s apologetics for the US-Britain-Canada backed Paul Kagame, Africa’s most bloodstained dictator. In late 2015 Rabble ran interviews by CCPA research affiliate Christopher Majka of Libyan, Syrian and Russian invitees to the Halifax International Security Forum, which is sponsored by NATO, the Department of National Defence and various arms firms.

Last week Rabble published a blog by Penney Kome, former editor of the now defunct left website Straight Goods,claiming Donald Trump is soft on Russia. She wrote: “Three of Trump’s top aids have extensive Russian connections, (Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, and Carter Page) and Trump’s policies — such as they are — are strongly pro-Russian. It’s only fair to wonder what his Russophillia means for NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and for former Soviet Union countries that Vladimir Putin may still want to annex, such as Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.” Kome’s piece comes a few weeks after Ottawa announced it would send 450 troops and armoured vehicles to Latvia to be permanently stationed on Russia’s border.

During his campaign to win the Democratic Party nomination Bernie Sanders, who largely avoided foreign-policy before endorsing a hawk for president, at least criticized Washington’s role in overthrowing Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran, Salvador Allende in Chile as well as the US war in Indochina. It made me wonder if a leading Canadian politician had ever criticized a past foreign policy.

It’s hard to imagine an NDP leader saying, “we shouldn’t blindly follow Washington’s war aims since that led Lester Pearson’s government to deliver US bombing threats to North Vietnam in violation of international law.” Or, “as we evaluate our support for this UN mission let’s not forget the blow Canadian peacekeepers delivered to central Africa when they helped undermine Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba.”

It’s as if there’s a sign hanging in Parliament that says: “foreign policy mythologizers only.” A maxim Elizabeth May seems to have embraced, to the shame of all Canadians who really do want this country to be a force for good in the world.

Yves Engler is the author of A Propaganda System: How Canada’s Government, Corporations, Media and Academia Sell War and Canada in Africa: 300 years of aid and exploitation. Read other articles by Yves.

This article was posted on Thursday, August 11th, 2016 at 4:58pm and is filed under "Third" Party, BDS (Boycott Divestment and Sanctions Movement), Canada, Imperialism, Israel/Palestine.

Monday, 24 April 2017

THE PUPPET SPEAKS

If hamid karzai, former u.s. installed puppet president of Afghanistan speaks out against the amerikkkans recent bombing of isis in that country, you know something's wrong. For one thing, it is unusual for him to speak against the u.s., and also, I DO NOT BELIEVE that no civilians were killed. The fucking yanks can't sneeze without killing innocent people. The truth will eventually come out.

Hamid Karzai: MOAB 'brutal act against innocent people'

Ex-Afghan President Hamid Karzai tells Al Jazeera US bomb reportedly targeting ISIL is a threat to Afghan sovereignty.

Kabul, Afghanistan - An attack that saw the United States drop the largest non-nuclear bomb on Afghanistan was a "brutal act" against Afghan people, the environment and the country's sovereignty, Hamid Karzai, former president, has told Al Jazeera.

The 9,797kg GBU-43 Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) was unleashed in combat for the first time on Thursday, targeting a complex of caves and tunnels used by ISIL fighters in Nangarhar province, according to the US army.

Dubbed the "Mother of All Bombs", the device can devastate the area around its landing of a radius of more than 1.6km.

"This was an inhuman act, a brutal act against an innocent country, against innocent people, against our land, against our sovereignty, against our soil and against our future," Karzai said in Kabul.

"A bomb of that magnitude has consequences for the environment, for our lives, for our plants, for our water, for our soil - this is poison."

WATCH: What impact will MOAB have in the fight against ISIL?

At least 90 ISIL fighters were killed in the attack, according to the US and Afghan armies.

For the most part, Afghan officials welcomed the bombing, saying it was a step towards security. They have also said that there were no civilian casualties.

But Karzai, who was president from 2004 until 2014, said the US should stop using Afghanistan as a "testing ground" and re-engage with Afghans towards a peaceful solution.

If these conditions are met, he said, "they [US] can stay on - if the Afghan people agree to it. If they continue this militant approach, this heavy-handed military approach in Afghanistan, then, of course, I want them out of the country."

The massive bomb was dropped after fighting intensified over the past week and US-backed ground forces struggled to advance in the area.

A US soldier was killed on April 8 in Nangarhar while conducting operations against ISIL, which stands for Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and is also known as ISIS.

Karzai said he was speaking up because many Afghan officials - some of whom were part of his own cabinet - had endorsed the bombing.

"I considered it a treason and I stood up against them, and I will continue," he said.

"This poison will be there for years and years to come. How can we allow our country to be used this way And why? How many [ISIL fighters] have they killed, 100, 200, 300?

"Why should Afghanistan suffer in such a massive way with a bomb so big, so dangerous that they themselves call it the 'mother of all bombs'.

Karzai's time in office was at times plagued by accusations from the US of corruptionand incompetence.

Fahim Dashty, a journalist, politician and political analyst, said that Karzai's comments were unlikely to be welcomed by the majority of Afghans, dismissing the former president's rhetoric as an attempt at "heroism".

"There were lots of problems while he was president of Afghanistan," Dashty told Al Jazeera from Kabul.

OPINION: Bombs away! Wag that dog!

"At least for a decade, he was using US bodyguards to protect himself. Now he is talking about pushing the US to leave Afghanistan. This is something people will not believe."

On the bombing, Dashty said Afghans had little reason not to welcome the attack on ISIL targets.

"There weren't any reports of civilian casualties in the last attack," he said.

"It was said that it was targeting ISIL leaders. As much as it targets terrorist groups, I think people will welcome it."