LESSER OF TWO

There will always be those who think they're the " voice of reason ", telling you to vote for the " lesser of two evils " , or to vote strategically. This is utter nonsense . Know your history and act accordingly. Imperialists are warmongers, although some try to hide it behind softer rhetoric.

A Challenge to Those Who Say, “But of Course You Have to Vote for the Democrats...”

December 31, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

How many murders must a single organization carry out before you are ready to call it an institution of mass murder?

How many invasions must it launch, how many millions of people in foreign lands must it slaughter, how many times must it threaten the world with nuclear war (and even use nuclear weapons), before you call that organization a bane to humanity and a dire threat to its very existence?

How towering must be its crimes before you raise the question as to whether there is something criminal in its very essence, and honestly seek to find the answer? And if you do find out, are you willing to go where your research leads and draw the appropriate conclusions?

As the accompanying chart shows, the Democratic Party is clearly second to none in the category of imperialist invasions and crimes against humanity and, if you total it all up, holds the world record for slaughtering and displacing people whose only “crimes” were to get in the way of U.S. imperialist interests. Yes, the Republicans certainly give them a run for their money, but any notion that somehow the Democrats are more peace loving or at least less interventionist is belied by the accompanying chart, which goes from the waning days of World War 2 on up to today.

So again, how much must the blood of those who are not Americans flow before you actually engage the CAUSE of the problem and what is REALLY necessary for its solution?

The source of these wars, the cause of these wars, lies in a system: capitalism-imperialism. This is a system in which a handful of powerful countries compete with each other to dominate and exploit the entire world. This is a system that promises a “good life” (for some) in the USA, Europe, and elsewhere—a life of privilege that rests on the bitter and grinding exploitation of the billions of people in the Bangladeshes, Cambodias, Mexicos, and South Africas of the world.

The wars waged in the accompanying chart were waged to secure and maintain American domination over the peoples of those countries and, even more so in the past period, against rival imperialists. The refugees now knocking at the doors of the imperialist countries are refugees from those wars, as well as from the ecological catastrophe and economic distortions and destruction wrought by capitalism-imperialism. And now the very imperialists responsible for the refugees’ flight callously refuses them entrance and, on top of that, uses them as scapegoats for the benumbed and moronized sections of the U.S. populace.

There is absolutely no reason for the production of the world’s necessities to be organized on the basis of a system that can only function through exploitation. This system of capitalism-imperialism is totally unnecessary.Schemes to modify it cannot defy its most basic law: expand or die. This heartless and unforgiving logic plays itself out on every level and in every sphere of society, taking especially concentrated form in the wars on this chart. This system CANNOT be reformed; it MUST be overthrown, through revolution. (For why this is so and how such a revolution could be made, go here.)

And there is in fact a model and blueprint for a whole different way. Bob Avakian (BA) has critically summed up the experience of the Soviet Union and China when those countries were traveling on the revolutionary road, deeply analyzing their achievements as well as their errors in both policy and basic approach, and coming up with a new synthesis of communism. The Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, written by BA, concretizes and applies this new synthesis to the situation stretching from Day One after the revolution to the transition to a world without oppression and the destructive divisions and antagonisms between people.

Look deeply at what this party you vote for has done; and then lift your sights to what is urgently needed, and could be done, through revolution.

And No, Trump’s Promised Withdrawals Do NOT Signify a Better Course

For those of you who have exposed these crimes over decades but have now fallen into the wishful thinking that Trump, by virtue of his abrupt promises to withdraw from Syria and to draw down U.S. forces in Afghanistan, somehow represents a different course: Trump’s “disruption” of traditional alliances and commitments is almost certainly mere prelude to an even more aggressive stance, focused in different ways and proceeding from a different strategy, in order to make “America First.”

And also, have a look at this chart .

THE SUBTLE IMPERIALIST

It would appear that the smarmy little fuck trudeau would rather do his imperialist work in a far more subtle manner than his ally, trump. Subtle or not, the whole fucking thing has to go , for the good of humanity.

DECEMBER 28, 2018 · 12:07

Canada tries to use international law to support imperialism

Like the shopkeeper in the Monty Python dead parrot sketch who insists a deceased bird is actually alive, imperialist aggression against Venezuela is turned into promotion of the “international rules-based order”.

At the opening of the UN assembly in September Justin Trudeau said the International Criminal Court is a “useful and important way of promoting an international rules-based order.” Simultaneously, Canada announced it (with five South American nations) would ask the ICC to investigate the Venezuelan government, which is the first time a government has been formally brought before the tribunal by another member.

Liberal officials and the sycophantic media portrayed Canada’s move to bring Caracas before the ICC as a challenge to the US. Evan Dyer reported, “Government sources told CBC that Canada’s decision to refer Venezuela is also meant as a show of support for the ICC, an institution this country believes in that is under attack” from the Trump administration. In other words, Ottawa will challenge Washington by showing Trump how the “international rules-based” ICC can undermine a government the US and Canada are seeking to overthrow through unilateral sanctions, support for the opposition and threatening an invasion, which all contravene the UN Charter.

Unfortunately, some people are willing to buy a dead bird for a pet, the proof of which is that the “international rules-based” ICC Trudeau is promoting has previously been employed to enable violations of international law. In 2011 ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo helped set the stage for NATO’s war on Libya, which contravened UN resolutions 1970 and 1973. (Ottawa defied the UN Security Council resolutions authorizing a no-fly zone to protect Libyan civilians by dispatching ground forces, delivering weaponry to the opposition and bombing in service of regime change.) Moreno-Ocampo’s immediate condemnation of Gaddafi helped justify NATO violence. Amidst NATO’s violation of UN Security Council resolution 1973, Ocampo issued arrest warrants  for Gaddafi, his son Saif al-Islam and Libyan intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi. These charges for crimes against humanity were used to justify  regime change efforts. At the time Moreno-Ocampo echoed the outlandish claim that Gaddafi distributed Viagra to his troops “to enhance  the possibility to rape”. Three months into the bombing campaign, Moreno-Ocampo told a press conference: “we have information that there was a policy to rape in Libya those who were against the government. Apparently he [Gaddafi] used it to punish people.”(Amnesty International’s senior crisis response adviser Donatella Rovera, who was in Libya for three months after the start of the uprising and Liesel Gerntholtz, head of women’s rights at Human Rights Watch, were unable to find any basis for the mass rape claims.)

A 2017 Der Spiegel English investigation titled “The Ocampo Affair A Former ICC Chief’s Dubious Links” notes, “Ocampo’s correspondence shows that he made agreements with the French and the British, and behaved as part of the anti-Gadhafi coalition.”

A forerunner to the ICC, the Canadian-backed International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) helped justify NATO’s illegal 78-day bombing of Serbia. While the worst atrocities of the Yugoslav wars took place in the early 1990s, ICTY Chief Prosecutor Louise Arbour hastily prepared to prosecute Serb President Slobodan Milosevic for rights violations at the start of 1999. Just prior to the NATO bombing Arbour brought along the international media for a stunt where she claimed Milosevic was blocking her from investigating a massacre in the Kosovar village of Racak. Subsequent investigations into what happened at Racak were inconclusive despite widespread reporting of a Serbian massacre, which was used to justify NATO’s illegal bombing.

Amidst NATO’s military intervention without UN approval — the “supreme international crime”— the future Canadian Supreme Court Justice indicted Milosevic and four associates for war crimes. In a 2000 article titled “Louise Arbour: Unindicted War Criminal” Christopher Black and Edward Herman write, “Arbour and the Tribunal thus present us with the amazing spectacle of an institution supposedly organized to contain, prevent, and prosecute for war crimes actually knowingly facilitating them.”

The idea that bringing Venezuela to the ICC will strengthen the “international rules-based order” would be funny if it wasn’t an escalation in a dangerous campaign to oust an elected government.

This article was first published in Canadian Dimension.

DOES THE LABEL FIT ?

Can I really be called an anti-Semite for opposing the bombing of civilians in refugee camps , people who have been driven off of their ancestral homelands that are now occupied by the most ruthless allies of amerikkkan imperialism that there ever have been ?

Case #30: Israel’s U.S.-Armed and -Backed Massacre in Gaza (2008-2009)

December 17, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Bob Avakian has written that one of three things that has "to happen in order for there to be real and lasting change for the better: People have to fully confront the actual history of this country and its role in the world up to today, and the terrible consequences of this." (See "3 Things that have to happen in order for there to be real and lasting change for the better.")

In that light, and in that spirit, "American Crime" is a regular feature of revcom.us. Each installment will focus on one of the 100 worst crimes committed by the U.S. rulers—out of countless bloody crimes they have carried out against people around the world, from the founding of the U.S. to the present day.

See all the articles in this series.

THE CRIME

From December 27, 2008 to January 19, 2009, Israel, backed by the U.S., brutally and viciously attacked the Palestinian people in Gaza—a Palestinian territory on a small strip of land 25 miles long and five miles wide on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, bordered by Egypt on the south and Israel on the east and north. Overwhelmingly, the Palestinian people in Gaza were driven from their homes in what is now Israel. The violent expulsion of the Palestinians from their homeland was most ferocious during the Nakba (Arabic for catastrophe) in 1948.¹ Israel has kept more than 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza with no way out. (See the Revolution/revcom.us special issue, Bastion of Enlightenment…or Enforcer for Imperialism: The Case of Israel.)

The number of Palestinians killed during the 24-day assault, which Israel called “Operation Cast Lead,” has been estimated to be between 1,166 and 1,417,² including 844 civilians, 281 of them children.³ More than 3,000 were injured during the invasion.⁴

The attack that initiated the slaughter was launched on a Saturday, shortly before noon, when most people would be in the streets. The Israelis used U.S.-supplied F-16 warplanes and Apache helicopters to attack all of Gaza’s main towns, including Gaza City, Khan Younis, and Rafah, striking more than 210 targets in the first 24 hours.⁵ On that day, at least 225 to 230 Palestinians were killed and more than 700 injured. It was the deadliest one-day death toll in 60 years of conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians. The Palestinian people call that day “The Massacre of Black Saturday.”^6,7

During the first seven days, Israel pounded Gaza with bombs, artillery, and mortar shells, as Israelis sat on the hills of Sderot watching the mass carnage in Gaza below.⁸

Then on January 3, Israel launched a land invasion, sending thousands of troops into Gaza with tanks, armored personnel carriers, and artillery divisions.

Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert said this was “all-out war against the civilian population of Gaza,” and he said he hardly saw a military casualty among the hundreds of Palestinian bodies.⁹ The International Committee of the Red Cross discovered small children next to their mothers’ corpses and called the situation a “full blown humanitarian crisis.”¹⁰

Forty-two Palestinians were killed and another 55 wounded in a single attack on a United Nations school that was sheltering Palestinians who had been forced to flee their homes. Doctors said all of the victims were civilians, including many children. The Guardian reported that this “appears to be the biggest single loss of life of the campaign when Israeli bombs hit al-Fakhora school, in Jabaliya refugee camp, while it was packed with hundreds of people who had fled the fighting.” According to the Guardian, “Most of those killed were in the school playground and in the street, and the dead and injured lay in pools of blood. Pictures on Palestinian TV showed walls heavily marked by shrapnel and bloodstains, and shoes and shredded clothes scattered on the ground. Windows were blown out.”¹¹

On January 19, when Israel knew a ceasefire was only hours away, they continued their assault, killing 54, including 43 unarmed civilians, 17 of them children in the last hours of the invasion.¹²

A Human Rights Watch (HRW) report said that the Israeli military “repeatedly exploded white phosphorus munitions in the air over populated areas, killing and injuring civilians, and damaging civilian structures, including a school, a market, a humanitarian aid warehouse and a hospital.” This violated international laws of war. The HRW report pointed out, “The dangers posed by white phosphorus¹³ to civilians were well-known to Israeli commanders, who have used the munition for many years. According to a medical report prepared during the hostilities by the ministry of health, ‘[w]hite phosphorus can cause serious injury and death when it comes into contact with the skin, is inhaled or is swallowed.’ The report states that burns on less than 10 percent of the body can be fatal because of damage to the liver, kidneys and heart.” The white phosphorus shells were made in America.

It was estimated that the Israeli assault destroyed up to 60 percent of the agriculture industry in Gaza, and that “13,000 families who depend directly on herding, farming … have suffered significant damage.”¹⁴ Ahmad Sourani, director of the Agricultural Development Association of Gaza, said,” What we have seen in large areas of farmland is the destruction of all means of life.” Peter Beaumont of the Observer reported that most of Gaza’s agriculture infrastructure was destroyed. The Ministry of Agriculture was targeted, the agriculture faculty at al-Azhar University in Beit Hanoun was largely destroyed, and the offices of the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees in Zaitoun, which provides cheap food for the poor, was ransacked and vandalized by soldiers who left abusive graffiti.”¹⁵

The Israelis attacked and destroyed science and educational institutions. They destroyed al-Da’wa College for Humanities in Rafah and the Gaza College for Security Sciences. Six university buildings in Gaza were totally destroyed and another 16 damaged. Two buildings that housed the science and engineering laboratories of the Islamic University in Gaza were demolished. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency in Gaza City that contained tons of emergency food and medicine was destroyed. Two floors of the al-Quds hospital were destroyed and the hospital set on fire. The fishing industry in Gaza was targeted where “Gaza’s 40,000 fishermen have been deprived of their livelihood.”¹⁶

The death and destruction in Gaza was overwhelming:

• 14,000 homes, 600 to 700 factories, 24 mosques, and 31 security compounds were destroyed
• 48 percent of the 122 health facilities were damaged or destroyed
• 15 of Gaza’s 27 hospitals and 41 primary health care centers were damaged.

In total, more than 20,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed. Nothing was left untouched by the Israelis—schools, shelters, businesses, roads, and bridges.^17,18

The Aftermath

Following the war, there was an increase of children born with birth defects. The number of blood cancer cases doubled, and Norwegian medics found traces of depleted uranium, a radioactive and genotoxic material used in some types of munitions, in some Gaza residents who were wounded. Soil samples showed that there were areas that contained up to 75 tons of depleted uranium.¹⁹

One year after the war ended, 20,000 Palestinians in Gaza remained displaced.²⁰

In September 2009, a UN special mission, headed by South African Justice Richard Goldstone, produced a report that accused Israel of “serious violations of international humanitarian law,” war crimes and crimes against humanity, and recommended bringing those responsible to justice.²¹

After the war, Israel, with the collaboration of Egypt and support of the Obama administration, imposed a draconian blockade that kept essential medical, construction, and food supplies from reaching Gaza. Israel even attacked civilian relief boats in international waters—murdering five people on one of them, the Mavi Marmara—in 2010, an act the Obama administration refused to condemn.²²

THE CRIMINALS

President George W. Bush and his administration (2001-2009): On May 15, 2008, President George W. Bush, in a speech to the Israeli Knesset on the 60th anniversary of the founding of Israel, said, “The alliance between our governments is unbreakable.” In referring to Israel’s struggle with the Palestinians, he said, “…we applaud the courageous choices Israeli’s leaders have made. We also believe that nations have a right to defend themselves and that no nation should ever be forced to negotiate with killers pledged to its destruction.”²³ Less than a month later and six months prior to the attack on Gaza, Israel began planning the war.

The main weapons (F-16 fighter jets, Apache helicopters, tactical missiles, and a wide array of munitions) used in the Gaza Massacre were supplied to Israel by the Bush administration.²⁴

The Bush administration blocked a UN vote for an immediate ceasefire the day the invasion started. Further, the U.S. voted against a UN treaty in December 2008 to regulate arms trade, and a resolution on “the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.”²⁵

The Democratic Party-controlled 2008 Congress: Since the mid-1960s, Israel has served as a base, and an enforcer, for U.S. imperialism in the Middle East and beyond. By 2008, when the position of the U.S. atop a world of exploitation and oppression was being challenged and under stress from many directions, the “special relationship” between the U.S. and Israel was seen as all the more critical by the U.S. rulers—both Republicans and Democrats.

The Democratic Party-controlled U.S. Senate and House passed near unanimous resolutions giving full support to Israel and upholding its “inalienable right to defend against attacks from Gaza.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “We support the state of Israel, very strongly as a national policy, because it is in our national interest to do so.”²⁶ Jerrold Nadler, a leading Democratic House member, said, “Israel has commendably made strenuous efforts to minimize harm to civilians, while Hamas has needlessly imperiled innocent Palestinians in Gaza.”²⁷ A year later, top Democratic senator Chuck Schumer said, “[Y]ou have to force them [the Palestinians] to say Israel is here to stay” and “...to strangle them economically until they see that’s not the way to go, makes sense.”²⁸

U.S. government and U.S. military: In their 2008-2009 assault on Gaza, the Israeli Defense Forces made use of M-92 and M-84 “dumb bombs,” Paveway II and JDAM guided “smart bombs,” AH-64 Apache attack helicopters equipped with AGM-114 Hellfire guided missiles, M141 “bunker defeat” munitions, and special weapons like M825A1 155mm white phosphorous munitions—all supplied as American foreign aid. Israel is also allowed to spend 25 percent of military funding from the U.S. on weapons made by its own weapons industry.²⁹

From 1949-2018, the U.S. has provided Israel with $135 billion in aid, with $95 billion being military aid. The George W. Bush administration supported Israel with $21 billion during its eight years, $19 billion of that going for military aid.³⁰

Candidate and then President Barack Obama: When Barack Obama was running for president, he repeatedly made his support for Israel crystal clear. On July 23, 2008, standing in front of a local police station in Sderot, Israel, just a few miles from Gaza, Obama said, “If someone was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that, and I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.”³¹

In October 2009, the Obama administration blocked the Goldstone Report from reaching the International Criminal Court in order to stop any legal proceedings against Israel for the war crimes it committed against the people of Gaza that are documented in the report.³² And, as noted earlier, Obama backed the vicious blockade Israel and Egypt imposed on Gaza after the war.

The Israeli government: Ehud Barak, the Israeli defense minister and former prime minister, said the military operation in Gaza would expand and deepen as necessary. He said, “There is a time for calm and a time for fighting, and this is the time for fighting.... Right now, we have to hit Hamas hard.... I don’t see any other way for Hamas to change its behavior. Hamas is not just a terrorist organization. It actually rules Gaza.”³³ Barak said that this was going to be a “war to the bitter end.”³⁴

THE ALIBI

Israel claimed that they launched the all-out assault on Gaza because rockets had been fired from Gaza into Israel. Those rockets were in response to Israel’s earlier attack on Gaza that killed seven Palestinians. That attack by Israel broke a six-month ceasefire. Israel excused that attack by saying they found a tunnel between Gaza and Israel.^35,36

The officially stated Israeli goal of Operation Cast Lead was “to diminish the security threat to residents of southern Israel by steeply reducing rocket fire from the Gaza Strip, weakening Hamas, and restoring Israel’s deterrence.”³⁷

THE REAL MOTIVE

The Goldstone Report stated, “the (Israeli) operations were in furtherance of an overall policy aimed at punishing the Gaza population for its resilience and for its apparent support for Hamas, and possibly with the intent of forcing a change in such support ... that what occurred in just over three weeks at the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 was a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability.”³⁸

“Wars” between Israel and Gaza are actually one-sided slaughters. Israel and its apologists defend the massacres by invoking rocket attacks from Gaza on Israel. This is an obscene pretext that denies the extreme one-sidedness of the death and devastation, and masks the real and fundamental factors involved, starting with the violent dispossession of the Palestinian people from their land.

The Palestinian people in the West Bank, in Gaza, within the borders of Israel, and in diaspora around the world have never stopped resisting being driven from their homeland, being dehumanized, and being subjected to genocide. And from its inception, Israel has dealt with that resistance through death, torture, and terror. That ongoing genocidal violence frames the specific situation in Gaza today.

In 2007, the Islamic fundamentalist organization Hamas gained political control in Gaza. Hamas and the trend it is part of are reactionary, based on a draconian interpretation of Islam. Nevertheless, the rise of Hamas posed a serious threat to Israel, including creating openings for the Islamic Republic of Iran—which the U.S. and Israel see as the top threat to their interests in the Middle East—to expand its influence in the region.

For the rulers of the U.S. in 2008 (and this is, if anything, even more true now), there was no ally like Israel in a region of the world critical to maintaining its position atop a planet of exploitation and oppression. The U.S. does pursue alliances with other countries in this region—Saudi Arabia and Egypt, for example. But the situation in those countries is much more unstable, and public opinion is much more inclined to identify with the Palestinian people. In contrast, that is not the case (at this point, at least) in Israel. Israel fills a role for the interests of the U.S. empire that no other ally in the region can. And this is, essentially, why the U.S. backed the massacre of the people of Gaza in 2008, and the ongoing crimes Israel commits against the Palestinian people.

---

1. Israeli historian Ilan Pappé carefully documented this in his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, citing first-hand sources written by Zionists who established Israel and carried out the ethnic cleansing on which it is based.  [back]

2. “Gaza War (2008-2009),” Wikipedia.  [back]

3. Gaza In Crisis, Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappé, edited by Frank Barat, Haymarket Books, 2010, p. 94.  [back]

4. Chomsky and Pappé, p. 95.  [back]

5. “Israel Unleashes a Massacre in Gaza,” revcom.us, December 29, 2008.  [back]

6. “Gaza War (2008-2009),” Wikipedia.  [back]

7. To read more about that first day, see “Israel Unleashes a Massacre in Gaza,” at revcom.us.  [back]

8. “Israelis Watch the Fighting in Gaza From a Hilly Vantage Point,” Charles Levinson, Wall Street Journal, January 8, 2009.  [back]

9. Chomsky and Pappé, p. 93.  [back]

10. “Gaza Children Found With Mothers’ Corpses,” Alan Cowell, New York Times, January 9, 2009.  [back]

11. “Gaza’s day of carnage-40 dead as Israelis bomb two UN schools,” Chris McGreal and Hazem Balousha, Guardian, January 9, 2009.  [back]

12. Chomsky and Pappé, p. 94.  [back]

13. White phosphorus ignites and burns on contact with oxygen, and continues burning at up to 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit (816 degrees Celsius) until nothing is left or the oxygen supply is cut. When white phosphorus comes into contact with skin it creates intense and persistent burns. (See “Israel,” Human Rights Watch News, March 25, 2009.)  [back]

14. “Gaza desperately short of food after Israel destroys farmland,” the Guardian, January 31, 2009.  [back]

15. “Gaza desperately short of food after Israel destroys farmland”  [back]

16. Chomsky and Pappé, pp. 105, 108.  [back]

17. “What was the 2008 Gaza war?” ProCon.org.  [back]

18. “Effects of the Gaza War,” Wikipedia.  [back]

19. “Gaza War (2008-2009),” Wikipedia.  [back]

20. “What was the 2008 Gaza War?” ProCon.org.  [back]

21. “Human Rights in Palestine and Other Occupied Arab Territories,” September 25, 2009, UN General Assembly, aka Goldstone Report. (The report also cites some violations by the Palestinians. If true, they are miniscule compared to the egregious violations committed by the Israelis.)  [back]

22. “From A World to Win News Service: U.S. to Israel after the Gaza ship massacre: keep up the killing,” revcom.us, October 10, 2010.  [back]

23. Address of US President George Bush to the Knesset, May 15, 2008  [back]

24. “U.S. Arms Transfer and Security Assistance to Israel,” William D. Hartung and Frida Berrigan, World Policy Institute Report, May 6, 2002. (Several sources, including Wikipedia and the Guardian, report that the F-16 fighter jets made by General Dynamics and the AH-64 Apache helicopters made by Boeing, were the main weapons used during this war. The above report chronicles all the weapons—fighter planes, helicopters, missiles, rifles, grenade launchers, 50-caliber machine guns, and ammunition—supplied to Israel by the U.S.)  [back]

25. Chomsky and Pappé, pp. 92, 94.  [back]

26. “US Senate supports Israel’s Gaza incursion,” Reuters, January 8, 2009.  [back]

27. “The Democrats on Israel,” Adriana Kojeve, January 22, 2009, Counterpunch.  [back]

28. “Schumer Says It ‘Makes Sense’ To ‘Strangle [Gaza] Economically’ Until It Votes The Way Israel Wants,” Zaid Jilani, ThinkProgress.com, June 11, 2010.  [back]

29. “Washington’s Military Aid to Israel,” Chase Madar, Huffington Post, February 10, 2104.  [back]

30. “U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel: Total Aid,” Jewish Virtual Library.  [back]

31. Times of Israel blog.  [back]

32. “U.S. to block Goldstone Gaza referral to ICC,” Laura Rozen, Politico, September 23, 2009.  [back]

33. “Israelis Say Strikes Against Hamas Will Continue,” Taghreed El-Khodary and Ethan Bronnerdec, New York Times, December 27, 2008.  [back]

34. “War Over Gaza,” New York Times editorial, December 29, 2008.  [back]

35. “US to block Goldstone Gaza referral to ICC.”  [back]

36. “US to block Goldstone Gaza referral to ICC.”  [back]

37. “Israel and Hamas: Conflict in Gaza (2008-2009),” US Congressional Research Service Report, February 19, 2009.  [back]

38. “Human Rights in Palestine and Other Occupied Arab Territories,” September 25, 2009, UN General Assembly, aka Goldstone Report, pp. 406, 408.

NOTHING BUT WAR

The rulers of north amerikkka have nothing to offer the world but war, more war, and exploitation. Without war, they have nothing. Without slavery , they never would have existed, nor would they exist today. So why take sides when it's one murderer against another ?

When the American Hitler and His War Criminal Defense Chief Battle It Out...
Do We Have a (Mad) Dog in Their Fight?

December 24, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

A war criminal and a fascist walk into an oval office... this could be the beginning of a joke, but the consequences for humanity are anything but.

Trump and his regime’s raison d’être—the reason that they are in power—is to upend what have been the prevailing norms of how the most powerful country in history is ruled and how it enforces and extends its imperialist domination of the world. Over the last few months Trump has been plowing ahead with his fascist program in many ways, including clearing out opposition from within his regime.

General James “Mad Dog” Mattis’ resignation as Trump’s secretary of defense was unprecedented in that while still serving in the regime, he wrote a stinging rebuke that directly repudiated the Trump/Pence regime’s foreign policy. Mattis warned that what Trump is doing is dangerous to core U.S. (imperialist) interests. He is straight-up advocating that what has been U.S. policy of world domination since World War 2 is the best if not only way to extend and enforce that domination. Mattis, who represents a significant section of the U.S. “national security establishment,” wrote of being “clear-eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors ... We must do everything possible to advance an international order that is most conducive to our security, prosperity and values, and we are strengthened in this effort by the solidarity of our alliances.”

Mattis tendered his resignation as of the end of February. Trump abruptly said, you’re gone by January 1. Such a serious split at the top of the ruling class, particularly when it concerns the essential element of government—the deployment of the armed forces—reveals extremely high stakes.

If you aspire to justice for the masses of people here and around the world, guess what? YOU, and your values, are not the WE of which Mattis speaks. At the same time, if and as this conflict sharpens, it could provide possible openings for important mass struggle from below to drive out the whole regime.

But NOT on terms in which huge sections of the so-called “progressive” movements and their pundits such as The Nation magazine, along with the Democratic Party and its mouthpieces such as the New York Times, MSNBC, CNN, etc., are dealing with this. They have fallen head over heels indoctrinating masses of people in the most craven American chauvinism, and this is extremely dangerous. It’s not as if Mattis earned the “affectionate” nickname of “Mad Dog” centuries ago. He directed war crimes in the Iraq War deploying the horrific chemical weapon white phosphorus to burn the flesh of Iraqi citizens in Fallujah in 2004. Joan Walsh wrote a lead piece in The Nationmagazine that was nothing other than an appeal to scurry to Mattis’ defense—a disgusting call to what she sees as the “safer” foreign policy for those Americans who have been insulated up to now from the deadly impact of U.S. wars and foreign policy. She positively referred to the literal war criminal Mattis as a “lifelong military leader and public servant.” What we starkly see here is the complicity of a progressive strata with a war criminal who collaborated with and legitimatized a fascist (Trump) for two years, with the impact of numbing people and lining them up to support what has been the bloody mainstream of the U.S. ruling class.

What Mattis represents, and what he argues for in his resignation as Trump slams forward with his program, has been the dominant mode of bludgeoning the world to submit to U.S. dictates. This has been a program that combines brutal military slaughter with the threat of massive military capacity including nuclear devastation, covered over and facilitated by “multilateral” honeyed words of democracy and cooperation, with the forceful imposition of bourgeois democratic norms on the people of the world.

Trump is cutting the knot on that package. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” and “America First” are not just nostalgic slogans to satisfy a rabid base fearful of a world where their privilege is eroding... but concentrate a fascist program that is a response to the reality that the imperialist program that has held since WW2 is failing—with the longest war in U.S. history in Afghanistan an acknowledged disaster. The old world order has been increasingly racked with deepening problems, and the top dog, the U.S., has been losing its edge in a world system of imperialism.

The Trump/Pence regime’s foreign policy is at one and the same time radically reactionary and rooted in the uninterrupted world view and history of “Manifest Destiny,” a quasi-religious belief that America is divinely entitled to enslave, to destroy—including through genocide—to conquer and expand anywhere it deems its “interests” to be, without a shred of concern for other peoples or lands. Manifest Destiny, from its inception, has white supremacy as the thread running through it. This mission of world domination is not just historic, but runs right down to today, through both Democrats and Republicans, including the Afghanistan/Iraq wars of Bush and Obama, and Obama’s horrific wars in Libya and Yemen now carried forward by Trump—wars with genocidal impact that continue to crush in the most torturous ways millions of people, including millions of children.

Wake up! If you have an ounce of concern for the people of the world, face up to the reality that when Mattis speaks of “we,” the reality is that: WE are not THEY. We—in the interests of humanity—need a revolution to sweep aside this system. The time is now—when those on top of this system are deeply divided—to recognize the stakes for humanity, and to go to work and prepare and organize people for an actual revolution

KEEP IT IN MIND

Of course I wish everyone the best this time of year, but I also want you to be aware of the king sized hypocrisy coming out of the mouths of the lying ass politicians and their murderous henchmen. This system is killing children, NOT saving them. Read.

THIS WEEK AMERICA CELEBRATES THE BIRTH OF A MAKE-BELIEVE BABY MESSIAH AND CLAIMS IT CARES ABOUT “THE CHILDREN”...

BUT HERE’S HOW ITS SYSTEM NEEDLESSLY KILLSMILLIONS OF REAL CHILDREN A YEAR... AND WHAT MUST BE DONE ABOUT IT

December 24, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

This week America tells us that it cares about children, by giving (some of) them a lot of stuff—while others go hungry and cold. Some people rebel against the consumerism and hypocrisy. They may donate to an organization trying to do something about the great disparities and inequities, or volunteer at a shelter.

But take the time this holiday to confront the true scope and scale of the horror—the needless horror—rained down on children every day by the U.S., here and around the world. Read what follows and then ask yourself: Why does this happen? And what is truly needed to address it?

This system kills children in war. The U.S. armed forces and U.S. arms go all over the world to murder children. For three years the U.S. has supported its “strategic ally” Saudi Arabia in a genocidal war against Yemen, backed first by Obama and then by Trump. The war has led to a famine that has already taken the lives of 85,000 children and threatens more. In August, Saudi forces bombed a school bus full of Yemeni children, massacring 40 and wounding another 56. This was an American-made bomb, sold to Saudi Arabia through the U.S. State Department in a war backed by the U.S. Fourteen days later, Saudi warplanes—made in the U.S.—attacked a refugee camp and killed at least 31 civilians, 22 of them children.¹ But this is not an “isolated incident.” Go here, for instance, to learn about the My Lai massacre carried out in Vietnam by U.S. soldiers, in which over 500 women, children, and non-combatant elderly men were murdered, or to the whole American Crime series, which documents case after similar case of this. And these are not “accidental” at all—listen here to former U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright justify the U.S. sanctions against Iraq that ended up causing the deaths of half a million children! 

These wars and depredations go on because of a system that needs such wars, a system of great powers and empires in which each is driven by the imperatives of expand—or go under.

THIS MUST STOP!

Within the U.S., this system pens in, locks up, and kills off Black, Latino, and Native American children and teenagers. On any given day, the U.S. has 60,000 children locked up in prisons or other “correctional facilities.” The rate of detention for Black youth is six times that of whites—and that rate is rising. On any given day, between 5,000 and 6,000 of these children and young teenagers are locked up in adult prisons or jails, where they are often victims of violence and sexual predation by guards and other prisoners. The violence and repression perpetrated by this system against these youths ranges from the racist “school-to-prison pipeline”² to the abuse routinely carried out by police and on up to the outrageous murder of 12-year-old Tamir Rice by Cleveland police.

This system built itself up on the dehumanization of the Native American and African peoples to amass its original wealth, carrying out genocide against one and the enslavement of the other, and this original oppression has never gone away but has morphed its form as a built-in pillar of this system.

THIS MUST STOP!

This system abuses, imprisons, and traumatizes children when they dare to flee the living hells that the U.S. has created in their home countries. This spring the world witnessed the ripping of children away from parents on the U.S.-Mexico border by the Border Patrol and ICE. These families were desperately fleeing the murderous conditions created by United States imperialism in their countries. Go to American Crime installments #79and #75 on Honduras, which details what the U.S. has done there.

Today, as you read this, these imperialists have got nearly 15,000 innocent immigrant children locked down in detention centers, presumed guilty for the “crime” of fleeing for their lives, or seeking a better one. A CNN investigation revealed dozens of accounts from young detainees “describing overloaded and secretive shelters, treatment centers and secure detention facilities for undocumented minors, which at their worst have allegedly been home to neglect, assault and other horrific abuse. The allegations in these documents, as well as recent facility inspection reports and other lawsuits, range from unsanitary conditions and invasive monitoring of mail and phone calls to unair-conditioned rooms in hot Texas summers and dosing children with cocktails of psychotropic drugs disguised as vitamins. At one facility, children recounted being held down for forcible injections, which medical records show are powerful antipsychotics and sedatives.”

This system cannot live without dominating and plundering smaller nations, and then that same system demonizes, persecutes, and at the same time viciously exploits the desperate ones it drives here from those hells.

THIS MUST STOP!

This system sells children for sex. At least 100,000 children and young teenagers a year are pimped out and even sold like cattle, just in the U.S. alone! The average age at which children are prostituted is between 11 and 14 years old. Many of these girls and boys are fleeing abusive homes, in many cases homes run or sanctioned by child welfare or “protective” services. Worldwide, the International Labor Organization estimates that 1,000,000 children a year are sold into sexual slavery. Leaving aside pimps and trafficking rings that work with the connivance of the police, these children are the victims of a system whose sexual relations reflect the patriarchal domination of men by women, whose dominant values and morality reflect the idea that other human beings are objects to be exploited. Put yourself in the place of an 11- or 12-year-old child cast into this hell.

This system came into being in a world in which women and children were dominated and oppressed and it integrates that age-old oppression into the very core of its workings.

THIS MUST STOP!

This system lets millions of children worldwide each year die of preventable disease. The World Health Organization estimates that 5.4 million children under five years old died in 2017. More than half of these were due to conditions that could be prevented or treated with access to very simple and inexpensive interventions. Children in sub-Saharan Africa were 15 times more likely to die than children in high-income countries—not because children there are genetically weaker, but because of the way that the systems of U.S. and European imperialism have plundered Africa for over 500 years, and continue to plunder and dominate today.

THIS MUST STOP!

None of this horror is necessary! All these horrors are required, maintained, and driven forward by a system, the system of capitalism-imperialism.

In the face of all that, heartfelt sentiments or prayers, money to charity, and even time volunteering to make things better become at best band-aids that don’t get to the root of the disease, despite your best intentions, your sacrifice, and even the real good you may do for what is after all a relative handful of people. Band-aids may be OK when you have a minor cut; but when you have something deeply wrong, band-aids not only substitute for but can stand in the way of what’s needed. So you may have lifted a few and you may have dealt with your anger, disgust. and anguish at what this system does, at least for a while; but the system itself goes on, untouched, grinding up millions, crushing lives, and mutilating spirits.

If there is a way to end needless suffering, then the point cannot be to just alleviate it. If there is a way to end needless suffering, anything short of that way will ultimately turn into an off-ramp and wind up prolonging it, whatever your intentions.

And there actually IS, in the real world, such a way: socialism on the road to a communist society and the emancipation of humanity, based on the new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian, BA—a whole deeper, higher, and more scientific vision of human emancipation. There actually IS a way to get there—revolution, the overthrow of this system through the defeat of its massive forces of violence and repression, when millions have been mobilized and the system itself is in deep crisis. There is a strategy for that revolution, there is the blueprint for the new society it will bring into being in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, and there is the leadership for it in BA, the architect of a whole new communism and the leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party.

This road is hard, but it is real. If you really care—and if you’ve read this far, you do—then to turn away from finding out about that road and deeply engaging the person who brought it forward would be unconscionable. If you do nothing else during this holiday period, see the new filmed speech by Bob Avakian, Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can Really Make Revolution.

THIS is a system that cannot be reformed—It MUST be overthrown! And there is a place for you in that process.

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1. The recent Senate resolution opposing this war, passed when news of the war had finally been dragged into the light of day worldwide and when sections of the ruling class felt the necessity to curb and better control the behavior of Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman, will actually have no direct effect on the U.S. military role in Saudi Arabia and, even were the House to back it up, there are loopholes, delaying tactics, and legal areas of dispute that make it highly unlikely such a resolution would go into actual effect.  [back]

2. Black and white youths are roughly as likely to get into fights, carry weapons, steal property, use and sell illicit substances, and skip school. But nationwide, Black youths were more than five times as likely to be detained or incarcerated as white youths were. In six states, Black youths were 10 times as likely to be detained or incarcerated as white youths. Even the minimal Obama-era attempts to curb this disparity, a concession made in the face of public outcry and a mass upsurge of resistance, are now being reversed by the Trump/Pence fascist regime.  [back]

SOURCES

For more on how this system kills children in its wars:

• “85,000 Children in Yemen May Have Died of Starvation,” New York Times, November 21, 2018
• “Conflict in Yemen: Children caught in world’s largest humanitarian crisis,” UNICEF, October 30, 2018
• “40 Children Killed in American-Backed Massacre by Saudi Arabia in Yemen Saudis Call Bus Full of Kids ‘Legitimate Target’—U.S. Lies That It’s Not Responsible,” revcom.us, updated August 11, 2018
• “Do You Know How Many Innocents the U.S. Is Killing—Right Now—in Yemen? Do You Know WHY... and WHAT That Tells Us?” revcom.us, September 3, 2018.

For more on how this system pens in, locks up and kills off Black, Latino and Native American children and teenagers:

• “America’s Addiction to Juvenile Incarceration: State by State,” ACLU, December 14, 2014
• “Statistical Briefing Book: Racial and Ethnic Fairness,” Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), U.S. Department of Justice, Released on August 07, 2017
• Molly Knefel, “Youth Incarceration in the United States, by the Numbers,” Teen Vogue, October 4, 2017
• Jessica Lahey, “The Steep Costs of Keeping Juveniles in Adult Prisons,” The Atlantic, January 8, 2016
• “Black Disparities in Youth Incarceration,” Sentencing Project Report, September 2017
• “The Cold-Blooded Police Murder of 12-Year-Old Tamir Rice,” revcom.us, December 8, 2014

For more on how this system abuses, imprisons and traumatizes immigrant children:

• “With the number of migrant children in US custody nearing 15K, Trump administration to loosen requirements for sponsors,” ABC News, December 18, 2018
• “Handcuffs, assaults, and drugs called ‘vitamins’: Children allege grave abuse at migrant detention facilities,” CNN.com, June 21, 2018

For more on trafficking of children under this system:

• Kimberly Kortla, “Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking in the United States,” Social Work, v55, n2, April 2010, p 182
• “Child Trafficking Statistics,” Ark of Hope for Children, July 31, 2017
• “Forced labour, modern slavery and human trafficking,” International Labor Organization, 2017

For more on how millions of children worldwide die each year of preventable disease under this system:

• “Children: reducing mortality,” World Health Organization, September 19, 2018