NON-POLITICAL ? HOW ?

How the fuck could the fascist power structure possibly say that this trial and persecution is fucking "non-political"? I guess because they're the fascist power structure. Stupid lying motherfuckers .

Government Puts Two On Trial For Protesting Trump-Pence Fascist Regime

June 24, 2019 | revcom.us

When your government is carrying out crimes against humanity, should you do nothing or should you SOUND THE ALARM?

For two members of Refuse Fascism and the Revolution Club in Los Angeles on trial this week, the answer was the latter. For this, they are being illegitimately prosecuted. Everyone concerned about the danger of a fascist America needs to stand with them.

A year and a half ago, on September 26 and November 21, 2017, a total of eight people stood on the 101 Freeway in Los Angeles at rush hour with the message “November 4: It Begins” and “Trump/Pence Must Go!” to call on others to act to stop the extreme danger to humanity and the planet posed by this regime. If found guilty, they could face up to three years in jail and fines up to $2,000.

These actions were taking up the Call from Refuse Fascism for “massive, sustained nonviolent protests in the streets of cities and towns across the country—protests that continue day after day and don’t stop, creating the kind of political situation in which the demand that the Trump/Pence regime be removed from power is met.”

Ask Yourself: Why Would These Defendants Nonviolently Risk Life and Limb to Make a Political Statement?

Chantelle, one of the two defendants now on trial, spoke to why she was compelled to act: “I decided to be part of the freeway action because I was confronted with doing nothing or doing something.... [Trump is] demonizing immigrants, calling them criminals, drug dealers, and rapists. Vilifying them in order to justify the ripping apart of families, and deportation back to the dangerous conditions in which they fled, jailing them and now detaining them in concentration camps in the most horrific conditions. People don’t understand that this is all extremely vital to consolidating a fascist regime. You need to cast off group after group and incite fear among the masses. He has given more power to the police ‘taking off the gloves’ and intensifying and legitimizing their torment of Black and Brown people. Even attacking our constitutional rights suppressing dissent and resistance....”

Alex, her co-defendant, said: “In 2017, a year and a half ago, think of what the Trump/Pence fascist regime was doing at that time... threatening North Korea with nuclear war, banning Muslims, restricting trans people from the military.... There was some outrage against this but people were just protesting as usual. Taking to the streets and then going home. What was needed, the only thing commensurate to what was going on, was people taking to the streets and not leaving. This was the call from Refuse Fascism for November 4: to bring millions into the streets in sustained, nonviolent political protest to stay in the streets until the regime is driven out.

“Also, we did this to sound the alarm against fascism. Those were not normal times. And now, fast forward to a year and a half later, look at all the children in concentration camps. And lawyers for the Justice Department are justifying all these things. Saying that migrant children don’t need toothbrushes, beds, anything sanitary.... All these things have consequence. This is the logic that leads to genocide... this is fascism!”

People like Chantelle and Alex understood the importance of stopping business as usual. Chantelle said, “Something bigger than a protest as usual needed to happen, and Refuse Fascism recognized all this immediately. People were getting in the streets... but then they were going home... then the next day less would be in the streets then again going home, then no one was in the streets. If we aren’t just as outraged now and driven into the streets to demand this regime be removed then what are we doing? We are accepting it, we are adjusting to nightmare after nightmare, horror after horror…. When we drive to work while this regime is stripping away rights of LGBTQ people we are normalizing fascism. While we drink our coffee and watch TV while ICE is ripping families apart we are collaborating with fascism. I couldn’t sit by and watch these things happening. I understood the danger and the importance of stopping Trump from gaining any more momentum. I proudly got in the freeway with the message of NOV 4: IT BEGINS. I stepped onto the freeway to show other people what is needed in order to drive out this regime. We, the people, need to stand up against the horrors of the Trump/Pence regime. In the name of HUMANITY, we need to break out of the safety of our routines and refuse to accept a fascist America. I got on the freeway for seven billion people of the world.”

It is very unfortunate that masses of people did not answer this call. This was the right thing to do—then and now, and had people taken the streets we might be living in a very different situation right now. The point is not to rue what might have been, but to act NOW to defend these fighters—as part of going forward now to what does need to be done.

A Very Political “Nonpolitical” Prosecution

The prosecutors for the city government have insisted there is nothing political about this trial, that it’s a simple case of allegedly violating traffic laws and disobeying police orders. But everything about this screams political prosecution.

First of all, the charges against these defendants were not brought by the California Highway Patrol, they were brought by the Major Crimes/Anti-Terrorist Division (ATD). This is part of the LAPD’s “Counter Terrorism and Special Operations Bureau”—the POLITICAL police. This division has a sordid history of spying, harassment, and deadly repression against a broad spectrum of political groups and individuals. If there is “nothing political” about this trial, then why is the Anti-Terrorist Division pressing charges for supposedly blocking traffic?!

Second, the ATD sent a spy into Refuse Fascism meetings to secretly record meetings and conversations with people, including one of the defendants now on trial. The prosecution has gone out of its way repeatedly to prevent this fact from coming up in the courtroom as it makes clear the political nature of these charges. As Alex himself said, “These trials and these charges are there to intimidate people. What does it mean that they sent a spy into meetings? This has a chilling effect where people don’t want to be part of what's needed....” If there is “nothing political” about this trial, then why did the ATD send a spy into meetings—and why does the prosecution want to keep this fact from the jury?

Third, part of this freeway case included a set of conspiracy charges filed against two of the people accused of leading this protest who were well-known spokespeople for Refuse Fascism. After a judge ordered the city to turn over more information about its spying operation, including the identity of the spy, the city decided instead to drop these charges. Historically, conspiracy charges have been used to go after political leaders and amount to making it illegal to be part of organizing—or sometimes even discussing—a political protest beforehand. If there is “nothing political” about this trial, why did the city set up such charges—only to drop them when the highly political and highly repressive character of their actions were about to be exposed?

This is not about a traffic violation, this is about the suppression of dissent—trying to force any and all protest against this regime back into the safe confines of protest and politics as usual—while this regime continues to tear up what have been the ruling norms of society.

***

The only just verdict for the people who put themselves on the line to stop the business as usual of this fascist regime is NOT GUILTY.

In this moment—with Trump threatening to unleash war on the people of Iran, continuing to separate families and cage children in hellish conditions at the border—it is politically and morally imperative that people defy this regime: acting commensurate with the danger to the planet and standing with those who have.

"UNPROVOKED"?!

The amerikkkans are once again trying to tell the world that the aggressor ( the united states ) is the victim here, while the country they've been threatening for years now ( Iran ) is the aggressor. Wrong. Absolute lies and fabrications. The u.s. threatens and carries out these threats whenever a country doesn't fall in line behind the orders of the amerikkkan government , and Iran happen to fit that profile. Read this for the truth as to what the fuck is going on.

Iran Downs U.S. Drone…U.S. Attack Reportedly Called Off:
Trump’s “Restraint” Masks Heightened Danger of Devastating U.S. War against Iran…

June 24, 2019 | revcom.us

Early Thursday morning, June 20, Iran shot down a U.S. military surveillance drone with a surface-to-air missile. According to Iran, it had entered Iranian airspace and thus posed a potential threat. The U.S. immediately claimed the drone was in international waters and that Iran had committed an “unprovoked” act of aggression.

While Iran has published the GPS coordinates that it says show where the drone was shot down, the U.S. claims on the flight-path of the drone and whether it violated Iranian airspace are not yet backed up with similar evidence.

Early Friday, according to media reports, the U.S. was preparing to launch a military strike against several Iranian targets in retaliation. However, Trump claims that he then called off the attack at the last minute because he learned that 150 Iranians could be killed. Friday morning, he tweeted that number killed was “not proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone.”¹ This was widely hailed in the U.S. media (“very welcome” according to the New York Times) and by the political establishment including the Democrats. Nancy Pelosi said, “I’m glad the president did not take that” action.

It’s important, in sorting through all the claims and counter-claims, to keep some basic facts in mind:

First, notions of “unprovoked” aggression by Iran fly in the face of reality—and are a joke—when you consider U.S. actions, in the recent months and historically. The U.S. is—far and away—the real aggressor and danger here, even while the Islamic Republic is a reactionary theocracy engaged in its own maneuvers for power.

Second, there are divisions in the U.S. ruling class, including within the Trump/Pence regime and with the Democrats, on approach and policy to Iran, driven by how best to “advance” their imperialist interests, but there is fundamental unity among all of them on America’s need (and “right”) to dominate a strategically vital part of the world.

Third, far from receding, the threat of war remains real, and has escalated. And the current sanctions, economic warfare, are punishing the population of Iran.

Unprovoked Aggression, Yes… but by Whom?!

Let’s review a few things. It is the U.S., under Trump, NOT Iran, that in 2018 busted out of the nuclear deal² that Obama and the U.S., along with other world powers, had engineered in 2015,³ a move which immediately escalated tensions. It’s the U.S., under Trump, that viciously re-imposed sanctions. These sanctions have already savaged Iran’s oil-dependent economy, slashing its exports from 3.2 million barrels/day to 0.5 million, stoking inflation over 50 percent and unemployment over 25 percent, and causing massive suffering including death from lack of medicines. So who, really, is the ruthless, bloodthirsty aggressor?

In recent months, it’s the U.S. that has deployed nuclear-capable B-52 bombers, an aircraft carrier strike group, and thousands more troops to the region, and has threatened “the official end of Iran” if they don’t bow down. Just imagine if Iran had done anything approaching that in the Gulf of Mexico!

Amidst this tense situation, Mike Pompeo, Secretary of State, has claimed that Iran is supposedly linked with Al Qaeda, that it’s threatening U.S. forces in the region, and more recently that it’s been responsible for attacking oil tankers in the Gulf. Evidence for Pompeo’s allegations ranges from scanty to none. The U.S. media has mainly echoed and propagated a lot of this (even while occasional doubts and concerns are expressed)—taking it as fact that Iran is behind the attacks on tankers in vital shipping lanes, and that Iranian-backed forces in Yemen are responsible for missile attacks in Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. ally in the region.

Tom Cotton, a fascist Republican senator, has said obstruction of commerce such as shipping has historically been cause for war, with an underlying assumption that the U.S. is the righteous self-appointed police of such. What is incredibly dangerous and alarming, in accusations of provocative attacks, is that this steady drumbeat is part of building up a “casus belli”—Latin for “justification for war.”

Following all this and in this context, the U.S. sent a military drone on June 20 either into Iranian airspace (according to Iran and the GPS coordinates it published) or dangerously close. Then, when the Iranians shot down with a missile an unknown aircraft, which they claim refused to respond to their calls for identification, they’re accused of being aggressors! Meanwhile, U.S. officials cannot even guarantee the drone didn’t violate Iranian airspace,⁴ and have yet to provide any CONCLUSIVE proof or evidence to the contrary.

Two further points in this regard:

First: America’s mass murdering rulers are repeat offenders—at lying their way into war, with trumped-up accusations. In fact, America inaugurated its imperialist ambitions with a false allegation involving an attack on a U.S. warship, the USS Maine in Havana Harbor in Cuba,⁵ which was used as the provocation for the Spanish-American War and the U.S. domination in various ways of Puerto Rico, Cuba, Philippines and other Spanish territories. In 1964, the Gulf of Tonkin “attack”⁶ was used to justify the steep escalation in the war in Vietnam, and in Indochina more broadly, where the U.S. killed 3 million—yes, million!—Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians. Recently, there was the big lie that Saddam Hussein had “weapons of mass destruction,” used to rationalize the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq that has led to one million dead and five million plus driven from their homes. 

Second: As we wrote last week, the U.S. history of aggression against Iran goes back much further, and is driven by more vital imperialist interests, and is now acutely posed with challenges to the U.S. empire.

Deep Divisions… Within a Fundamental Unity on Need to Maintain Empire

There are serious differences in the U.S. ruling class—including apparently within the Trump/Pence regime itself. Some forces basically want to start launching military attacks to back Iran down, even if that leads to war. Others oppose going to “outright” war, especially with a country with a relatively strong and developed military. They fear what in the words of the New York Times could be a “cataclysm” that would ultimately hurt U.S. imperialist interests instead of furthering them.

Rather, they argue, it’s better to wage economic warfare, taking advantage of the U.S.’s dominant position in the imperialist world economy to strangulate Iran, with the threat of military decimation ever-present. They argue for continuing to tighten the noose of sanctions which have already slashed Iran’s oil exports and crippled its economy, vastly increasing the suffering of the Iranian people. At the same time, some of these forces remain “open” to war, and even see the sanctions as part of further weakening Iran in the event of outright U.S. military attack.

Embodying an unpredictable “good-cop/bad-cop” routine and their perverse synthesis of economic warfare and military threats, immediately after Trump told NBC’s Chuck Todd about his concern for “proportionality” of response, he threatened “it would be obliteration like you’ve never seen before” if it came to war with Iran.

And where are the Democrats in the face of this? Are they questioning the fundamental premise and basic right of the U.S. to dominate the Middle East, or decrying the sanctions as immoral and unjust?

Let’s look at Nancy Pelosi’s comments in this regard. Pelosi, the leading Democrat and speaker of the House, said, “We are in an extremely dangerous and sensitive situation with Iran”—NOT that the U.S. is the one creating an extremely dangerous situation. She continued, clarifying, “We must calibrate a response that de-escalates and advances American interests, and we must be clear as to what those interests are. We have no illusions about the dangerous conduct of the Iranian regime. This is a dangerous, high-tension situation that requires a strong, smart and strategic approach.”

The Democrats are part of the ruling class, a party that has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity when it deemed these necessary to “advance” those “American interests.” Right now, they largely see outright war as being harmful to those interests. Reflecting these sentiments and the thinking, two figures associated with the liberal section of the Democrats and their think tanks, wrote on NPR.org, “Iran is too big and strong to be toppled, and there is no strong united opposition capable of fomenting the kind of unrest that could overthrow the regime in the wake of U.S. military strikes. If the regime did collapse, it would likely be followed either by a period of instability or a government that is even more militantly anti-American.”  

At the same time, this is typical Democratic Party double-talk. Pelosi blurs who is fundamentally at fault, talks about de-escalation to satisfy the antiwar masses who the Democrats attempt to corral and domesticate, and then goes to the real deal: advancing American interests, which she never defines and which will apparently mean whatever she says that means. If the U.S. launches war, this would open the door for the Democrats to claim that they had wanted peace but now “American interests are under attack, so there is no choice but to fall in line.”

Danger and Threat of War Ever Present…

While “opting” for economic warfare is potentially part of what could have factored in Trump’s backing away from immediate military retaliation, the threat of war has NOT receded by any means.

First, it is far from clear how the difference in the Trump regime is going to resolve on the best way to deal with Iran and dominate the Middle East. It is very possible that those historically advocating for war, such as John Bolton, the National Security Advisor, will win out.⁷ Second, the whole situation is EXTREMELY tense with military build-up in the Persian Gulf. The situation is full of potential “trip-wires,” possibilities of accident and misunderstanding, that can ratchet up “ladders of escalation” to outright war. This would be so in any case but even more with Trump’s “America-First” logic and not wanting to be seen as weak, and what the Iranian theocracy faces, including with its own internal divisions and a population it brutally rules over.  

In the face of this escalating threat of war against Iran, it is even more critical that: All moves and actions the U.S. is undertaking in the Middle East be resolutely opposed by people in this country. The challenge posed in an accompanying article from RefuseFascism states it simply: THE QUESTION IS SHARPLY POSED TO EVERYONE WHO KNOWS RIGHT FROM WRONG: AT WHAT POINT DO YOU SAY “ENOUGH!”? This is a question—of morality, of humanity—to be asked of all. The author asks what it will take for people to do what is needed, to stop relying on the Democrats, to act, to step outside the “normal channels.”

Communists must go further and instill in people a sense that not only are the interests of the U.S. rulers NOT our interests, but the best possible outcome would be a defeat for the U.S. in whatever unjust military action it undertook.⁸ At the same time, people need to question… why does this system wage war over and over and over...what will it take to end America’s unending wars...and what is their responsibility in the face of this—including to repudiate American patriotism and to do all they can to end this scourge on humanity?⁹

---

1. There has been no widespread, scathing ridicule of the notion that Trump (or the U.S. ruling class) gives a damn about “proportionality.” Have these people looked on the border, where tens of thousands of migrants are being terrorized and locked up in filthy, inhuman concentration camps? Or in Yemen, where he’s armed and unleashed Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to continue their war in Yemen—a war that’s killed over 85,000 children and pushed 14 million—yes, million—people to the brink of famine? [back]

2. See “Trump Shreds Iran Nuclear Deal, Threatening Millions and Another War in the Middle East,” revcom.us, 5/14/18 [back]

3. See “U.S.-Iran Nuclear Deal: 6 Points of Orientation,” revcom.us, 7/20/15 [back]

4. At this writing, the U.S. has not released GPS coordinates of the location where they claim their drone was shot down. Meanwhile, the New York Times reports: “But a senior Trump administration official said there was concern inside the United States government about whether the drone, or another American surveillance aircraft, or even the P-8A manned aircraft flown by a military aircrew, actually did violate Iranian airspace at some point." “Trump Says He Was ‘Cocked and Loaded’ to Strike Iran, but Pulled Back,” New York Times, 6/22/19

On Saturday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “pushed back vociferously, accusing Iranian leaders of ‘selling’ false information. Pompeo called the map tweeted by Iran’s foreign minister, which purported to show the drone’s path into Iranian airspace, ‘childlike’ and said U.S. intelligence services ‘should leave no doubt in anyone’s mind about where that unarmed vehicle was.’” “Pompeo accuses Iran of spreading ‘blatant disinformation’ on downing of drone,” Washington Post, June 23. And the New York Times is reporting that the U.S. is planning to present evidence on the drone shoot down at a UN meeting on Monday, June 25. [back]

5. The U.S. battleship Maine blew up on February 15, 1898 in Havana harbor—when Cuba was still one of Spain’s colonies. There was never any evidence that Spanish forces were involved in this explosion, but this did not stop the pro-war forces in the U.S. ruling class from publishing front-page drawings “showing” how the Spanish forces had attached mines to the bottom of the ship. Shouting “Remember the Maine!” the U.S. government rushed into a war to snatch an empire from Spain, seizing Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. [back]

6. On August 4, 1964, the U.S. claimed—falsely and without any real evidence—that North Vietnam had launched two unprovoked attacks on the U.S. fleet in the Gulf of Tonkin. In fact, the CIA was attacking North Vietnamese coastal installations, so any confrontation that happened would have been provoked by the U.S., and the second “incident” never took place. In fact, no attack of any kind took place. Nobody in the mainstream media seriously challenged the story at the time, much less asked what a fleet of U.S. warships was doing half-way around the world. But in “response” to these invented “incidents,” the U.S. Congress passed the “Gulf of Tonkin Resolution” which authorized the massive deployment of U.S. troops into southern Vietnam. It was the start of extreme escalation of warfare that led to the deaths of millions of people in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. [back]

7. In September 2018, Bolton threatened Iran that there would be “hell to pay” and “serious consequences” if it defies the U.S. In May 2019, Bolton announced the U.S. “is deploying the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group and a bomber task force to the U.S. Central Command region to send a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime that any attack on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force.” On June 23, 2019, in Israel, Bolton said, “Neither Iran nor any other hostile actor should mistake U.S. prudence and discretion for weakness. No one has granted them a hunting license in the Middle East.” [back]

8. This is the principle of revolutionary defeatism. “Revolutionary defeatism means that, for people in an imperialist country—or in any country where the government is carrying out an unjust war, a war of domination and plunder, a reactionary war that serves only to fortify oppression, or to replace one oppressive power with another—you must put special emphasis on opposing your own government in that war, even if the enemy of your government in that war is equally reactionary. It means that you must refuse to support your government in such a war and, beyond that, you must have a basic orientation of welcoming the setbacks and defeats of your government and making use of them to build opposition to your government and its reactionary war, in accordance with and guided by the objective of making revolution right within your own country and contributing all you can to the international revolutionary struggle. But revolutionary defeatism does not mean that you should actually support the enemy of your government if that enemy and the war it is waging is equally reactionary. Obviously, this can be complicated, and in order to correctly apply this orientation it is necessary to make a concrete analysis of the concrete situation while remaining firmly grounded in basic principle." Bob Avakian, from "The New Situation and Great Challenges." [back]

9. See the clip “Wars of Empire, Armies of Occupation & Crimes Against Humanity” from the film of BA’s speech WHY WE NEED AN ACTUAL REVOLUTION AND HOW WE CAN REALLY MAKE REVOLUTION.

OH KKKANADIAN HYPOCRISY

The shit that kkkanada backs in Haiti is fucking disgusting. Ignoring the intense oppression ( actually supporting this oppression ) , upholding the killing of protesters and other crimes committed by the pigs , and outright lying about the situation there, while the fucking media remains silent. Read this. It's important to know what the fuck your government is really doing:

JUNE 23, 2019 · 13:51

Canada enables corrupt Haitian president to remain in power

At the front of a protest against Haiti’s president last week a demonstrator carried a large wooden cross bearing the flags of Canada, France and the US. The Haiti Information Project tweeted that protesters “see these three nations as propping up the regime of President Jovenel Moïse. It is also recognition of their role in the 2004 coup.”

Almost entirely ignored by the Canadian media, Haitian protesters regularly criticize Canada. On dozens of occasions since Jean Bertrand Aristide’s government was overthrown in 2004 marchers have held signs criticizing Canadian policy or rallied in front of the Canadian Embassy in Port-au-Prince. For their part, Haiti Progrès and Haiti Liberté newspapers have described Canada as an “occupying force”, “coup supporter” or “imperialist” at least a hundred times.

In the face of months of popular protest, Canada remains hostile to the protesters who represent the impoverished majority. A recent corruption investigation by Haiti’s Superior Court of Auditors and Administrative Disputes has rekindled the movement to oust the Canadian-backed president. The report into the Petrocaribe Fund accuses Moïse’s companies of swindling $2 million of public money. Two billion dollars from a discounted oil program set up by Venezuela was pilfered under the presidency of Moïse’s mentor Michel Martelly.

Since last summer there have been numerous protests, including a weeklong general strike in February, demanding accountability for public funds. Port-au-Prince was again paralyzed during much of last week. In fact, the only reason Moïse — whose electoral legitimacy is paper thin — is hanging on is because of support from the so-called “Core Group” of “Friends of Haiti”.

Comprising the ambassadors of Canada, France, Brazil, Germany and the US, as well as representatives of Spain, EU and OAS, the “Core Group” released another statement effectively backing Moise. The brief declaration called for “a broadnational debate, without preconditions”, which is a position Canadian officials have expressed repeatedly in recent weeks. (The contrast with Canada’s position regarding Venezuela’s president reveals a stunning hypocrisy.) But, the opposition has explicitly rejected negotiating with Moïse since it effectively amounts to abandoning protest and bargaining with a corrupt and illegitimate president few in Haiti back.

In another indication of the “Core Group’s” political orientation, their May 30 statement “condemned the acts of degradation committed against the Senate.” Early that day a handful of opposition senators dragged out some furniture and placed it on the lawn of Parliament in a bid to block the ratification of the interim prime minister. Canada’s Ambassador André Frenette also tweeted that “Canada condemns the acts of vandalism in the Senate this morning. This deplorable event goes against democratic principles.” But, Frenette and the “Core Group” didn’t tweet or release a statement about the recent murder of journalist Pétion Rospide, who’d been reporting on corruption and police violence. Nor did they mention the commission that found Moïse responsible for stealing public funds or the recent UN report confirming governmentinvolvement in a terrible massacre in the Port-au-Prince neighborhood of La Saline in mid-November. Recent Canadian and “Core Group” statements completely ignore Moise’s electoral illegitimacy and downplay the enormity of the corruption and violence against protesters.

Worse still, Canadian officials regularly promote and applaud a police force that has been responsible for many abuses. As I detailed in a November story headlined “Canada backs Haitian government, even as police force kills demonstrators”, Frenette attended a half dozen Haitian police events in his first year as ambassador. Canadian officials continue to attend police ceremonies, including one in March, and offer financial and technical support to the police. Much to the delight of the country’s über class-conscious elite, Ottawa has taken the lead in strengthening the repressive arm of the Haitian state since Aristide’s ouster.

On Wednesday Frenette tweeted, “one of the best parts of my job is attending medal ceremonies for Canadian police officers who are known for their excellent work with the UN police contingent in Haiti.” RCMP officer Serge Therriault leads the 1,200-person police component of the Mission des Nations unies pour l’appui à la Justice en Haïti (MINUJUSTH).

At the end of May Canada’s ambassador to the UN Marc-André Blanchard led a United Nations Economic and Social Council delegation to Haiti. Upon his return to New York he proposed creating a “robust” mission to continue MINUJUSTH’s work after its planned conclusion in mid-October. Canadian officials are leading the push to extend the 15-year old UN occupation that took over from the US, French and Canadian troops that overthrew Aristide’s government and was responsible for introducing cholera to the country, which has killed over 10,000.

While Haitians regularly challenge Canadian policy, few in this country raise objections. In response to US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s recent expression of solidarity with Haitian protesters, Jean Saint-Vil put out a call titled “OH CANADA, TIME TO BE WOKE LIKE ILHAN OMAR & MAXINE WATERS!” The Haitian Canadian activist wrote: “While, in Canada, the black population is taken for granted by major political parties who make no effort to adjust Canadian Foreign policies towards African nations, Haiti and other African-populated nations of the Caribbean, where the Euro-Americans topple democratically-elected leaders, help set up corrupt narco regimes that are friendly to corrupt Canadian mining companies that go wild, exploiting the most impoverished and blackest among us, destroying our environments in full impunity… In the US, some powerful voices have arisen to counter the mainstream covert and/or overt white supremacist agenda. Time for REAL CHANGE in Canada! The Wine & Cheese sessions must end! We eagerly await the statements of Canadian party leaders about the much needed change in Canadian Policy towards Haiti. You will have to deserve our votes, this time around folks!”

Unfortunately, Canadian foreign policymakers — the Liberal party in particular — have co-opted/pacified most prominent black voices on Haiti and other international issues. On Monday famed Haitian-Canadian novelist Dany Laferrière attended a reception at the ambassador’s residence in Port-au-Prince while the head of Montréal’s Maison d’Haïti, Marjorie Villefranche, says nary a word about Canadian imperialism in Haiti. A little discussed reason Paul Martin’s government appointed Michaëlle Jean Governor General in September 2005 was to dampen growing opposition to Canada’s coup policy among working class Haitian-Montrealers.

Outside the Haitian community Liberal-aligned groups have also offered little solidarity. A look at the Federation of Black Canadians website and statements uncovers nothing about Canada undermining a country that dealt a massive blow to slavery and white supremacy. (Members of the group’s steering committee recently found time, however, to meet with and then attend a gala put on by the anti-Palestinian Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs.)

A few months ago, Saint-Vil proposed creating a Canadian equivalent to the venerable Washington, D.C. based TransAfrica, which confronts US policy in Africa and the Caribbean. A look at Canadian policy from the Congo to Venezuela, Burkina Faso to Tanzania, suggests the need is great. Anyone seeking to amplify the voices from the streets of Port-au-Prince should support such an initiative

JIMMY

In August of 2018 I had my Santa Cruz reissue of the Jason Jessee Guadalupe skateboard stolen from in front of my house , and have had an ad up on Used Victoria ever since offering a reward for it's return, no questions no cops. There has been nothing , and I haven't seen it around town . 
  Then last week, Jimmy Miller (local skateboarding legend and all around great guy ) e-mailed me with an ad he'd seen on UsedVic asking if the skateboard in the ad was mine. Sadly it was not, as the deck in the ad is a different colour . That being said, the price was right, the hardware was good, so I went and picked it up and am forever grateful to Jimmy, and am so happy to have this particular board back again. Still, if I see the original one around town, I will retrieve it. Yes I will.
  So what's the point of this rant ? Nothing really, except to say that shit can sometimes work out, even if it's in a different way than anticipated . And also, you should all love Jimmy Miller. Good day.

NOT ENOUGH

It's not enough for the hateful fascist racist u.s. government to deny refugees from conditions that they have created the right to survive, now they are prosecuting and persecuting those who are attempting to help those very people. Who the fuck are the real criminals here ?

Prosecuted for the Crime of Assisting Refugees in Distress
America’s Rulers Will Not Tolerate Interference With Their War on Immigrants

June 14, 2019 | revcom.us

Dr. Scott Daniel Warren

The felony trial of Dr. Scott Daniel Warren in federal court in Tucson ended in a hung jury Tuesday, June 11: 8-4 for acquittal. Scott Warren, a lecturer at Arizona State University and volunteer with the humanitarian aid group No More Deaths/No Mas Muertes (NMD), was facing three felony charges: two counts of “harboring” and one count of “conspiracy to transport and harbor” immigrants. If convicted, he could have received a maximum 20-year prison sentence. The government has not yet disclosed whether it intends to retry Warren.

The criminal complaint alleged that Warren had provided two undocumented immigrants "food, water, beds and clean clothes" for three days at "the Barn” outside Ajo, Arizona, 43 miles from the Mexican border. These border crossers, Jose and Kristian, had just survived a 2-day trek across Arizona's Sonora Desert, and had come to the Barn, a rundown house which serves as a base camp for No More Deaths volunteers setting out to search the desert for migrants, or their remains. The Barn also provides a place for migrants to get medical help, food, and water after what can be a horrific journey—one which has claimed the lives of over 3,000 migrants since 2001 in this region of Southern Arizona alone. The number of deaths skyrocketed after the Border Patrol began implementing its “Prevention Through Deterrence” strategy under President Clinton, which has deliberately funneled potential border crossers into the most treacherous portions of the U.S.-Mexico border. Death, after all, is the ultimate “deterrence.”

Border Patrol agents had been stalking Scott Warren for at least 6 months, and had the Barn under surveillance. They arrested Warren and the two migrants when they were spotted there together. A nurse testifying for the defense described the medical care that she provided to Jose and Kristian. And another member of NMD’s medical team backed her up, saying she had advised that they needed continued medical observation and treatment before going back into the desert.

What kind of system implements policies that have, intentionally, turned Arizona's Sonoran Desert into a killing field littered with the remains of thousands of human lives that have been found, and unknown thousands more which have forever been "disappeared" by Border Patrol practices that drive migrants into the most remote terrain to die of thirst—and let vultures, coyotes, and insects do the rest. The lives of men, women, and children are being taken, for the "crime" of searching for a safe haven and a future far from the "remains" of whole countries the system of U.S. capitalism-imperialism has dominated and plundered for a century and more.

And what kind of system responds to the exposure of its crimes by making criminals out of people determined to provide humanitarian aid to those same human beings in the face of mounting repression? NMD reports that the remains of at least 89 more migrants have been found since the day Scott Warren was arrested.

In the middle of the trial the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights issued a statement: “Providing humanitarian aid is not a crime. We urge the US authorities to immediately drop all charges against Scott Warren.” Of course this statement was ignored.  

Intimidation, Retaliation, and Repression

Scott Warren was arrested on January 17, 2018. Only hours before his arrest, No More Deaths had released a devastating report—“Disappeared,” Part 2, “Interference With Humanitarian Aid: Death and Disappearance at the U.S.-Mexico Border”—that exposed policies and practices of the U.S. Border Patrol to interfere with and stop the efforts of volunteers from searching migrant pathways for desperate migrants who might still be alive, and for the remains of those who succumbed. For years No More Deaths volunteers have been leaving water jugs and canned food so that border crossers would not die of thirst. For this they have been arrested and convicted by a judge - for "disposal of waste" in a national wildlife refuge.

The NMD Report stated: “Border Patrol agents are destroying gallons of water intended for border crossers.... In data collected by No More Deaths from 2012 to 2015, we find that at least 3,586 gallon jugs of water were destroyed” in one desert corridor. As part of their report, they posted videos – that went viral in no time - showing Border Patrol agents stabbing, stomping, kicking and draining the bottles of water, smiling as they poured water into the sand, knowing full well that they were taking the lives of human beings in the process. 

Throughout this case the defense has exposed evidence of the sweeping extent of government surveillance of No More Deaths going on long before Warren was arrested. They filed a Motion to Dismiss due to Selective Enforcement, which showed that communications by the U.S. Border Patrol about the movement and activities of No More Deaths volunteers in Ajo, and specifically Scott Warren, had been going on at least 6 months before his arrest. And in the weeks before the arrest, two agents were exchanging the address of Warren's home, the make and model of his car, and were closely monitoring his whereabouts. Throughout this whole period, no crime was even alleged.

No More Deaths has called for groups and communities around the country to join them in a “Day of Action” on Friday, June 21st, “the longest day of the year, and often one of the deadliest in the Arizona desert,” for actions at Department of Homeland Security offices around the country to demand an end to Prevention Through Deterrence.

The prosecution of Scott Warren represents a blatant, and extremely serious act of political intimidation, retaliation and repression aimed at threatening not only No More Deaths and other humanitarian aid groups, but anyone who the U.S. Department of INjustice views as daring to “interfere” with America's objectives, however monstrous, criminal, and immoral.

Screenshot from video posted by No More Deaths showing border agent grinning while pouring out water left for migrants. No More Deaths reported “Border Patrol agents are destroying gallons of water intended for border crossers.... In data collected by No More Deaths from 2012 to 2015, we find that at least 3,586 gallon jugs of water were destroyed” in one desert corridor

In this Feb. 8, 2019 photo published the first week of March, a 13-year-old immigrant from El Salvador peers over the U.S. border fence from Tijuana, Mexico, as a 17-year-old Honduran migrant, and his sister, 25, look on while looking for a way to help the sister and her son cross undetected. (AP Photo/Emilio Espejel)

ILLEGITIMATE POWER

It seems the kkkanadian imperialists will stop at nothing to oust the current Venezuelan government, going so far as to call it "illegitimate ". The only illegitimate power here is the kkkanadian government for trying to fuck around with someone else's country. Fuck imperialism.

Ottawa hires hitman to overthrow Venezuelan government

Allan Culham

Meet the hired gun Ottawa is using to overthrow the Venezuelan government.

The brazenness of Ottawa’s intervention in the South American country’s affairs is remarkable. Recently Global Affairs Canada tendered a contract for an individual to coordinate its bid to oust President Nicolás Maduro. According to buyandsell.gc.ca, the Special Advisor on Venezuela needs to be able to:

“Use your network of contacts to advocate for expanded support to pressure the illegitimate government to return constitutional order.

“Use your network of civil society contacts on the ground in Venezuela to advance priority issues (as identified by civil society/Government of Canada).

Must have valid Government of Canada personnel TOP SECRET security clearance.”

The “Proposed Contractor” is Allan Culham who has been Special Advisor on Venezuela since the fall of 2017. But, the government is required to post the $200,000 contract to coordinate Canada’s effort to overthrow the Maduro government.

Culham is a former Canadian ambassador to Venezuela, El Salvador, Guatemala and the Organization of American States. During his time as ambassador to Venezuela from 2002 to 2005 Culham was hostile to Hugo Chavez’s government. According to a WikiLeaks publication of US diplomatic messages, “Canadian Ambassador Culham expressed surprise at the tone of Chavez’s statements during his weekly television and radio show ‘Hello President’ on February 15 [2004]. Culham observed that Chavez’s rhetoric was as tough as he had ever heard him. ‘He sounded like a bully,’ said Culham, more intransigent and more aggressive.”

The US cable quotes Culham criticizing the national electoral council and speaking positively about the group overseeing a presidential recall referendum targeting Chavez. “Culham added that Sumate is impressive, transparent, and run entirely by volunteers”, it noted. The name of then head of Súmate, Maria Corina Machado, was on a list of people who endorsed the April 2002 military coup against Chavez, for which she faced charges of treason. She denied signing the now-infamous Carmona Decree that dissolved the National Assembly and Supreme Court and suspended the elected government, attorney general, comptroller general, and governors as well as mayors elected during Chavez’s administration. It also annulled land reforms and reversed increases in royalties paid by oil companies.

After retiring from the civil service in 2015 Culham described his affinity for another leading hard-line opposition leader. Canada’s current Special Advisor on Venezuela wrote, “I met [Leopoldo] López when he was the mayor of the Caracas municipality of Chacao where the Canadian Embassy is located. He too became a good friend and a useful contact in trying to understand the many political realities of Venezuela.” But, López also endorsed the failed 2002 coup against Chavez and was convicted of inciting violence during the 2014 “guarimbas” protests that sought to oust Maduro. Forty-three Venezuelans died, hundreds were hurt and a great deal of property was damaged during the “guarimbas” protests. Lopez was also a key organizer of the recent plan to anoint the marginal opposition legislator Juan Guaidó interim president.

In his role as Canada’s ambassador to the OAS Culham repeatedly took positions viewed as hostile by the Chavez/Maduro governments. When Chavez fell gravely ill in 2013, he proposed the OAS send a mission to study the situation, which then Vice-president Maduro described as a “miserable” intervention in the country’s affairs. Culham’s comments on the 2014 “guarimbas” protests and support for Machado speaking at the OAS were also unpopular with Caracas.

At the OAS Culham criticized other left-of-centre governments. Culham blamed elected President Rafael Correa for supposedly closing “democratic space” in Ecuador, not long after a failed coup attempt in 2010. When describing the Honduran military’s overthrow of social democratic president Manuel Zelaya in 2009 Culham refused to employ the term coup and instead described it as a “political crisis”.

In June 2012, the left-leaning president of Paraguay, Fernando Lugo, was ousted in what some called an “institutional coup”. Upset with Lugo for disrupting 61-years of one-party rule, Paraguay’s ruling class claimed he was responsible for a murky incident that left 17 peasants and police dead and the senate voted to impeach the president. The vast majority of countries in the hemisphere refused to recognize the new government. The Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) suspended Paraguay’s membership after Lugo’s ouster, as did the MERCOSUR trading bloc. A week after the coup Culham participated in an OAS mission that many member countries opposed. Largely designed to undermine those countries calling for Paraguay’s suspension from the OAS, delegates from the US, Canada, Haiti, Honduras and Mexico traveled to Paraguay to investigate Lugo’s removal from office. The delegation concluded that the OAS should not suspend Paraguay, which displeased many South American countries.

Four years later Culham still blamed Lugo for his ouster. He wrote: “President Lugo was removed from office for ‘dereliction and abandonment of duty’ in the face of rising violence and street protests (that his government was itself instigating through his inflammatory rhetoric) over the issue of land rights. Violence in both the countryside and the streets of Asuncion threatened to engulf Paraguay’s already fragile democratic institutions. Lugo’s impeachment and removal from office by the Paraguayan Congress, later ratified by the Supreme Court, launched a firestorm of protest and outrage amongst the presidents of Paraguay’s neighbours. Presidents Rousseff of Brazil, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Cristina Kirchner of Argentina, were the chief defenders of Lugo’s right to remain in office.”

After retiring from the civil service Culham became more candid about his hostility to those trying to overcome extreme power imbalances in the hemisphere, decrying “the nationalist, bombastic and populist rhetoric that many leaders of Latin America have used to great effect over the last 15 years.” For Culham, “the Bolivarian Alliance … specialized in sowing its own divisive ideology and its hopes for a revolutionary ‘class struggle’ across the hemisphere.”

Culham praised the defeat of Cristina Kirchner in Argentina and Dilma Rousseff Brazil.

In a 2015 piece titled “So long, Kirchners” he wrote, “the Kirchner era in Argentine politics and economics is thankfully coming to an end.” (Kirchner is the front runner in the upcoming election.) The next year Culham criticizedBrazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s bid to have UNASUR challenge her impeachment, which he celebrated as “a sign of change in Latin America”.

Culham denounced regional integration efforts. In a long February 2016 Senate foreign affairs committee discussion of Argentina, he denounced diplomatic forums set up by Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, Venezuela and others to break from US domination of the region. “Since I’m no longer a civil servant”, Culham stated, “I will say that CELAC [The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States] is not a positive organization within the Americas. Mainly because it’s built on the principle of exclusion. It purposefully excludes Canada and United States. It was the product of President Chavez and the Chavista Bolivarian revolution.” Every single country in the hemisphere except for Canada and the US were members of CELAC.

Culham criticized left-wing governments position at the US dominated OAS. Culham bemoaned the “negative influence ALBA [Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America] countries have brought to the OAS” and said Argentina “often sided with Bolivarian revolution members” in their “negative agenda” at the OAS, which he called “very close to my heart”.

In his comments to the Senate committee Culham criticized Kirchner for failing to pay the full price to US “vulture funds”, which bought up the country’s debt at a steep discount after it defaulted in 2001. He described Kirchner’s refusal to bow down to highly predatory hedge funds as a threat to the “Toronto Stock Exchange” and labeled a Scotia Bank claim from the 2001 financial crisis a “bilateral irritant” for Canada.

Canadian taxpayers are paying a hardline pro-corporate, pro-Washington, former diplomat hundreds of thousands of dollars to coordinate the Liberal government’s bid to oust Venezuela’s government. Surely, there is someone in the House of Commons willing to inquire about Canada’s Elliot Abrams?

A RIGHTEOUS VICTORY

No matter what the law says or doesn't say, this was the right thing to do. In this case, the good guys finally one. Fuck amerikkkan imperialism.

Cleveland to pay $225K to 2016 RNC protester Gregory Johnson

Press Statement by Gregory “Joey” Johnson

June 14, 2019 | revcom.us

Joey Johnson read this statement at a press conference on June 11, 2019 at the Chandra Law Firm in Cleveland, where the settlement was announced. See video on this page of the entire press conference.

I was the named defendant in the 1989 U.S. Supreme Court case, Texas v. Johnson where I fought to establish that burning the American flag in protest was constitutionally protected speech.  

We are here to announce a settlement of my lawsuit against the City of Cleveland and the Cleveland Police Division, holding them accountable for what happened here during the Republican National Convention in 2016.

As Trump was delivering his fascist message of white supremacy, “law and order,” scapegoating of immigrants, disgusting misogyny, and naked “America First” chauvinism to the Republican National Convention—outside, up against all this, the Revolution Club linked arms and I stood in the middle of the circle and lit the red, white and blue rag of imperialism on fire.  Our message to the world—“America was NEVER great!  We Need to Overthrow this System.”

Cleveland police along with other state and federal agencies launched an unjust, vicious police assault to break up our protest.  I was put in a chokehold and dragged to the ground.  Others were knocked down.  Altogether 16 Revolution Club members and other protesters were brutally arrested, dragged off to jail, and held for more than 24 hours until the RNC was over. The police repeatedly lied to the media—changing their story about why we were arrested—in spite of videos that show clearly it was the police that assaulted and endangered the protesters.

Besides the arrest of myself, two of the arrested faced serious felony charges and years in prison and more than a dozen others faced multiple misdemeanors.  After more than a year of fighting these prosecutions—all the charges against us were either dropped or dismissed.  In fact most were dismissed after a judge held an evidentiary hearing and found that we were engaged in a lawful protest—and he specifically cited Texas v. Johnson as the authority for his ruling.

Now the city of Cleveland has been forced to settle the lawsuit I brought in the wake of winning our criminal cases.  While the city has tried to minimize and deny its liability, this settlement of almost 1/4 million dollars speaks much louder than their denials.  The city settled this case because they knew our arrests and prosecution was an assault on a Supreme Court precedent that I won 30 years ago—burning the American flag in protest is constitutionally protected symbolic speech—in my case expressing unmistakable contempt and revulsion for what this country and government stand for.  The City was afraid to have all this come out in a trial, so they have settled.

What we did in burning the flag outside the Republican National Convention in 2016 was not only our right—it was the righteous thing to do.  I burned the flag at the RNC because it is wrong to close our eyes to the history of genocide and slavery; the wars of empire, invasions and occupations, the coups and torture—all the atrocities the U.S. has committed here and around the world.  I really believe as Bob Avakian, the leader of the revolution says, “American lives are NOT more important than other people’s lives.”

I and others in the Revolution Club—and we urge others to join with us—are urgently working for the day when this empire can no longer terrorize and oppress the people of the world.  I plan to donate generously to ways that will further bring that closer.

I want to thank all the attorneys involved in this case, who from their own perspectives saw this case as an important fight to take up.  The National Lawyers Guild, (their coordinators Jacqueline Green and Sarah Gelsomino), who together with the NAACP organized 40 volunteer attorneys that represented the RNC16 defendants, my criminal defense attorney, Andrea Whitaker, and of course the attorneys who brought this suit from The Chandra Law Firm, Subodh Chandra and Patrick Kabat.  And I am also encouraging others arrested with me at the RNC to also file suit against the City of Cleveland and the Cleveland Police Division.