MORE AMERIKKKAN CRIMES

There is no country on earth that more people are willing to unquestioningly accept whatever the media says about it, than North Korea. If you actually read these slanderous ( and mostly stupid ) articles, it usually says that sources were unverified, or from unnamed south korean people, which, of course, are hostile by their very nature. And when someone does do some actual research, and shows the "facts" to be bunk, people will comment on " how could you defend such a horrible regime?". Fucking morons. Question. Act. Or shut the fuck up.

Case #93: U.S. Invasion of Korea—1950

June 13, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

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: Mass murder of millions; carpet bombing an entire country into rubble; use of chemical weapons against civilians; repeatedly threatening use of nuclear weapons; wholesale rape of women.

From a series of U.S. Army photos depicting the summary execution of 1,800 South Korean political prisoners over three days in July 1950 carried out by the U.S.-installed puppet Syngman Rhee.

In June 1950 the U.S. orchestrated a United Nations invasion of Korea. Of the 342,000 invading troops, 90 percent were American, and the entire force was under U.S. command. The U.S. and its allied war criminals killed millions of Koreans in three years of open warfare—estimates range from three to five million. The dead were overwhelmingly civilians.

Mass murder of civilians was systematic, and it was explicit U.S. policy. In the opening days of the war, U.S. bombers and troops carried out a massacre near the village of No Gun Ri in southern Korea. More than 250 people were murdered, most of them women, children, and the elderly. The U.S. Army commander told his troops that all civilians “are to be considered as enemy and action taken accordingly.” One witness said that an American captain said to his soldiers in No Gun Ri, “the hell with all those people. Let’s get rid of all of them.”

A representative of the No Gun Ri Victims’ Organization described what happened: “We were ordered by U.S. army, ‘Everybody, come together! We will escort you to the safe place.’ Following the order, we, local villagers, walked the road in the dark night, leading ox-carts, with children on our backs. About noon of next day, July 26, when our refugees’ march arrived at Nogun-ri area, 5-6 GIs blocked our way. They brought all the people and ox-carts onto parallel railroad tracks. After fully investigating all of us, they spoke to someone by radio. We Korean refugees didn’t know why. There we took a rest for a while.

In the Criminals’ Own Words:

U.S. Air Force General Curtis LeMay was an unapologetic mass murderer who directed the carpet bombing of Korea that, in his own words, “eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, and some in South Korea too.... Over a period of three years or so, we killed off—what—twenty percent of the population of Korea as direct casualties of war, or from starvation and exposure...” LeMay also said, in defense of the genocide unleashed by U.S. forces in Korea, “... it doesn’t bother me so much to be killing the so-called innocent bystanders.”

“About that time, two U.S. airplanes flew over us. At that moment the GIs disappeared, something black fell down on us and exploded among the refugees. It was like a storm, with clouds of dust and pieces of rock bursting into the sky. The bloody pieces of bodies and oxen were all around. The rest of people alive ran into the tunnel under the railroad trestle.”

U.S. forces set up machine guns on both sides of the tunnel, and mowed people down when smoke bombs forced them to try to escape into the open. Literally hundreds of massacres like this were perpetrated by U.S. forces, and possibly thousands more by its South Korean allies, under U.S. direction. The U.S. did not even acknowledge the murders at No Gun Ri until 2001!Even then it refused to apologize for the atrocities its troops committed, and tried to cover up official documents that showed its commanders were ordered to “shoot” and “fire on” civilians.

All Korea was in utter devastation by the end of the war. In the North, every building over one story was destroyed. In mile after mile of charred landscape, only chimneys and rubble remained. Bruce Cumings, a history professor at the University of Chicago, reported in his book The Korean War that the U.S. dropped over half a million tons of bombs and thousands of tons of napalm—jellied gasoline that sticks to the skin and burns at about 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit—on Korea. This was more than the bombs dropped in the entire Pacific theater in World War 2.

About 30 percent of North Korea’s population died in this bombing. If an equivalent percentage of the U.S. population at that time had died, the population would have been reduced by over 45 million people. Cumings also reported, “Rapes were extremely common. Koreans in the South will still say that that was one of the worst things of the war (was how) many American soldiers were raping Korean women.”

Korea was devastated by the end of the war. Millions were killed and in the North, every building over one story was destroyed. Here, in September 1950, early in the war, U.S. Marines take prisoners from one bombed village. (Photo: U.S. Department of Defense/U.S. Marine Corps/S. Sgt. John Babyak, Jr.)

The Criminals: U.S. president Harry Truman, who ordered the invasion of Korea and strong-armed the United Nations into approving what it called a “police action” and sending of troops from 16 countries and other forms of support from five countries. U.S. Army Generals Douglas MacArthur and Matthew Ridgway,and U.S. Air Force General Curtis LeMay—commanders of the U.S./UN forces who oversaw the genocidal land and air campaigns in Korea, and all of whom threatened to use nuclear weapons to attack neighboring China, which was then a revolutionary socialist country under the leadership of Mao Zedong.

Aiding and Abetting: Major U.S. media outlets, which systematically and repeatedly portrayed Koreans as subhumans who deserved death. Typical was Pulitzer Prize winner Hanson Baldwin, military correspondent for the New York Times, who Cumings said described “North Koreans as locusts, like Nazis, like vermin...”

The Criminal Past: The U.S. emerged from World War 2 as the victorious imperialist power. At the end of that war the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Japan, massacring hundreds of thousands of civilians. The Japanese imperialists had dominated Korea, but when Japanese authority in Korea collapsed, the country was divided between a zone occupied by the Soviet Union in the North and the U.S. in the South.

This was supposed to be a temporary division pending countrywide elections to establish a unified regime. But reunification elections never happened. Fearing that elections would put nationalist or communist resistance forces allied with the Soviet Union and China in power, the U.S. built up a separate regime in South Korea. This made the division of the country a “fact on the ground.” The U.S. installed Syngman Rhee, a brutal puppet of the U.S., in power. Rhee imposed intense repression, mass arrests, and massacres of nationalists, radicals, communists, and others. The U.S. imperialists regarded the southern half of Korea and its puppet regime there as a major element in their plans to contain and perhaps wage war against the Soviet Union, and also as a step toward surrounding and threatening the People’s Republic of China, founded in 1949 after nearly 30 years of revolutionary warfare.

The Alibi: The U.S. claimed North Korea instigated the war by invading South Korea. In fact, Korea had been one country for hundreds of years. A year-long series of incursions into the North and provocations by the flunky South Korean government preceded the war. As war appeared imminent, Rhee murdered 100,000 people, both those accused as having leftist sympathies as well as other civilians. The Rhee regime also forced 300,000 peasants whose loyalties it questioned to join a state-sponsored “National Guidance League. In summer 1950, North Korean troops quickly began advancing into the South.

Truman expressed “concern” with “communist aggression and expansion” in Korea. In a major statement on June 27, 1950, he claimed that “communism has passed beyond the use of subversion to conquer independent nations and will now use armed invasion and war.” In fact, the U.S.—which already had warships from its Sixth Fleet circling the region thousands of miles from North America, and tens of thousands of ground troops on bases throughout the East Asia region, including Korea and Japan—began its massive military buildup and within a few months launched an invasion.

The Actual Motive: The Korean War was a murderous move by the U.S. to consolidate its imperialist domination of South Korea, to seize control of the North, and to move against communist and nationalist forces in Asia. The U.S. wanted to keep the Soviet Union at bay and to surround and contain the Peoples Republic of China, as key elements of its overall strategic goal of dominating the Pacific and East Asia. The U.S. was not able to accomplish all those objectives in the Korean War.

These imperialists make the Godfather look like Mary Poppins.

Bob Avakian, BAsics 1:7

Repeat Offenders: After the war, the U.S. moved to build up South Korea as a political, economic, and military base from which it could face off against China and the Soviet Union, and impose its interests in the region. In 1975 it installed nuclear-tipped weapons in South Korea. It has maintained a large military presence in Korea for seven decades. It has repeatedly staged provocative acts aimed at North Korea, and literally ringed that country with its military forces. For decades, there were encampments of thousands of women forced into prostitution, built and maintained by the U.S. military and the South Korean government. The U.S. continues to threaten North Korea, including with nuclear weapons, while portraying North Korea as the “aggressor.”

THIS IS REASON ENOUGH

FUCK. THIS. SYSTEM.

The Stanford Rape Outrage

“Reason Enough to Make Revolution”

by Sunsara Taylor

June 13, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Bob Avakian, "A world of rape and sexual assault"
A clip from Revolution: Why It's Necessary, Why It's Possible, What It's All About, a film of a talk by Bob Avakian, given in 2003 in the United States.
Learn more about Bob Avakian here

Bob Avakian has said that the frequency of rape in this society would be reason enough for revolution, even if all its other towering crimes and injustices did not exist. A deep look at the recent rape case at Stanford underlines that—and why a revolution is needed to solve it.
On January 18, 2015 a young woman’s life was shattered. Her evening began with a lighthearted family dinner and a last-minute decision to accompany her sister to a party, but it ended with her strapped to a gurney, with bruises and debris covering her body and the inside of her vagina. She had been viciously raped on the ground, behind a dumpster, outside a Stanford frat party, while she was unconscious.
Brock Turner, 20-year-old Stanford student, was charged. Turner’s lawyer dragged in all kinds of slanders and irrelevant accusations against the victim. He put her through hell on the witness stand. Blaming her for drinking, for being sexually active, for how she was dressed, and more. As if somehow that would excuse Turner’s violent violation of her.
Despite all this, the evidence was overwhelming and the jury convicted him on three felonies.
Then the judge stepped in. He said jail time would “have a severe impact” on the rapist. So, instead of potentially 14 years in prison, he gave Turner a mere six months in jail.
The message sent by the court is that rape is “not that serious.” This is outrageous and wrong.
But that is not all. This case is an X-ray of the whole culture of promoting and excusing violence and degradation against women. It is a concentration of the urgent need for the most radical and thoroughgoing revolution in the history of humanity.

A Courageous and Harrowing Voice

Break ALL the Chains!
Bob Avakian on the Emancipation of Women and the Communist Revolution

Sampler Edition | Full Work

In a display of tremendous courage, the young woman read a letter aloud to the court that detailed her experience. She brought alive how the damage inflicted by rape does not end when the physical act is over. It unfurls over a woman’s lifetime, radiates out to those around her, and hangs in the air as a violation against all women everywhere.

She explained: “I stood there examining my body beneath the stream of water and decided, I don’t want my body anymore. I was terrified of it, I didn’t know what had been in it, if it had been contaminated, who had touched it. I wanted to take off my body like a jacket and leave it at the hospital with everything else.”
The trauma infiltrated every aspect of her life: “I tried to push it out of my mind, but it was so heavy I didn’t talk, I didn’t eat, I didn’t sleep, I didn’t interact with anyone. After work, I would drive to a secluded place to scream. I didn’t talk, I didn’t eat, I didn’t sleep, I didn’t interact with anyone, and I became isolated from the ones I loved most.”
With piercing clarity, and without a hint of revenge, she demolished the excuses of her rapist and his defenders. No, alcohol is not an excuse for rape. No, sexual promiscuity (where someone willingly has sex with many people) has nothing to do with rape (where someone is forced to have sex against their will). No, it is not OK that she was asked irrelevant and re-traumatizing questions on the witness stand. She posed, “If a first time offender from an underprivileged background was accused of three felonies and displayed no accountability for his actions other than drinking, what would his sentence be? The fact that Brock was an athlete at a private university should not be seen as an entitlement to leniency, but as an opportunity to send a message that sexual assault is against the law regardless of social class.”
Her letter is 13 pages long and everyone should read it. In its entirety. Out loud. In classrooms. In church groups. In families. On sports teams. On air.
Her pain must be seen. Her battle against despair must be supported. Her courage must be multiplied.

Look at all these beautiful children who are female in the world. And in addition to all the other outrages which I have referred to, in terms of children throughout the slums and shantytowns of the Third World, in addition to all the horrors that will be heaped on them—the actual living in garbage and human waste in the hundreds of millions as their fate, laid out before them, yes, even before they are born—there is, on top of this, for those children who are born female, the horror of everything that this will bring simply because they are female in a world of male domination. And this is true not only in the Third World. In “modern” countries like the U.S. as well, the statistics barely capture it: the millions who will be raped; the millions more who will be routinely demeaned, deceived, degraded, and all too often brutalized by those who are supposed to be their most intimate lovers; the way in which so many women will be shamed, hounded and harassed if they seek to exercise reproductive rights through abortion, or even birth control; the many who will be forced into prostitution and pornography; and all those who—if they do not have that particular fate, and even if they achieve some success in this “new world” where supposedly there are no barriers for women—will be surrounded on every side, and insulted at every moment, by a society and a culture which degrades women, on the streets, in the schools and workplaces, in the home, on a daily basis and in countless ways.

Bob Avakian, BAsics 1:10

Judge Rebukes Rape Victim and Humanizes the Rapist

Even after this harrowing letter, Judge Persky gave Brock a mere slap on the wrist. In effect, he signaled a green-light to rapists everywhere.
Outrageously, Persky is not an exception. Rather, he concentrates this society’s whole putrid rape culture. In the U.S., as in all “modern” capitalist states, rape is only “wink-wink illegal.” In other words, rape is formally against the law, but for all intents and purposes—especially for the powerful and their enforcers—rape is a protected activity.
Face it: Until outrage erupted over this case, Stanford had never expelled a single student for rape. Thousands and thousands of rape kits sit unprocessed for years in police precincts across the country. Less than two percent of rapes reported to police result in convictions and jail time. It was legal in all 50 states for a man to rape his wife until the 1970s. Only in 1993 did the last state make it illegal. In the U.S. military one in three women is raped or sexually assaulted, but if she reports her rape, she is 12 times more likely to be retaliated against than to ever see her rapist convicted.
Why? Because rape serves a major function under this system. It terrorizes all women, keeps them fearful and constantly reminded of “their place.” It is a violent means of enforcing the many twisted “perks” and privileges promised to men, to make them feel they have a stake at least in some part of this system. This is objectively true, even as some men themselves may not like—and even be sickened by—this particular form of oppression.
This violent terror and degradation of women is a cornerstone, a major glue, of every modern capitalist society—including the U.S. And right now, it is being rapidly and aggressively escalated. It’s fueled by men who are furious that women have entered campuses, corporate board rooms, and sports—arenas that used to be male-only bastions of unchallenged domination. It is also fueled by the simmering anger of other men who face growing economic insecurity and the breakdown of the traditional male-dominated family; men hungry to reassert their control and take out their rage against women.
It’s the mainstreaming of rape porn. It’s the music that derides women as “bitches” and “hos.” It’s the Bible scriptures that celebrate rape as a reward of war. It’s the “guy culture” promoted by coaches and gym teachers, in board rooms and military battalions. It is the way boys and men who don’t participate are bullied, called “fags,” and often sexually violated themselves. It is the culture of strip clubs and “escorts” that pervades Wall Street and Silicon Valley. It is the shaming and threats and virtual-mobs of men who hound women on social media. It’s the words of Brock’s father, dismissing his son’s act of rape as merely “20 minutes of action.”

Rape Must Be Ended—This Means Revolution!

Download the PDF of this pamphlet: A Declaration: For Women's Liberation and the Emancipation of All Humanity

Bob Avakian (BA), Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, once wrote, “Recently I heard a startling statistic: one out of every four women in the U.S. will be the victim of a sexual assault during her lifetime. One out of four!, and the number is expected to rise to one out of three. Right there, even if this ‘way of life’ did not produce any of the other seemingly endless outrages and genuinely monstrous crimes—all the way to world war—that it does produce, even if what stands behind the statistic were the only thing seriously wrong with this system, that alone would be enough to rise up against it and not stop until it had been overthrown and something better put in its place.”
It is essential that people fiercely resist this whole culture of rape and violence and degradation against women. What this young woman did in refusing to just take the howling injustice of the sentence, what two Swedish graduate students did by physically stopping this rape as it was underway—this is what many, many more people must do.
No more joking about, excusing, or belittling rape. No more shaming and blaming rape victims. No more asking, “What was she wearing?” or suggesting that “She asked for it.” No more getting off on porn that sexualizes women’s degradation and torture. No more treating women like punching bags, like sex objects, or like mere breeders of children.
The Revolution Clubs have it right: “We fight for a world where ALL the chains are broken. Women, men, and differently gendered people are equals and comrades. We do not tolerate physically or verbally abusing women or treating them as sexual objects, nor do we tolerate insults or ‘jokes’ about people’s gender or sexual orientation.”
It’s time to start living this way now. And this must be linked to bringing about the kind of total revolution that can uproot and abolish rape once and for all. The system must be overthrown. It must be replaced with a radically new, revolutionary state power.
With revolution, the courts and media will no longer re-victimize women through victim-blaming questions about what they were wearing or their sexual history. Schools will teach equality, mutual respect, and consent in sexual relations. Sports will be radically re-ordered. Under socialism, it will be the norm—not a rare and refreshing exception spurred by mass outrage—for the media to give backing to voices like this young woman’s who speak out against rape. People will be encouraged to break out of the patriarchal family. And more.

Read this everywhere:

The Stanford Rape Case
Statement from the Young Woman Who Was Raped

Her letter is 13 pages long and everyone should read it. In its entirety. Out loud. In classrooms. In church groups. In families. On sports teams. On air. Her pain must be seen. Her battle against despair must be supported. Her courage must be multiplied.

Read it here

All this will radically cut down the incidence of rape and the way in which this terror serves to damage and confine women. And the new society will foster in many more men the aspiration to be emancipators of ALL humanity, not petty tyrants over women.
But this is just the beginning. Bob Avakian has qualitatively advanced the understanding that unless and until all vestiges of male-domination and patriarchy have been completely wiped out, this oppression will become the basis for dragging all of society back to today’s ugly divisions into masters and slaves. So, the orientation of revolutionaries will be to continue to unleash the fury and impatience of women and others to put an end to all attitudes, family structures, notions of “manhood” and gender, and religious traditions that reinforce patriarchy and women’s oppression. To do this even—and in some ways, especially—when this is disruptive to society and its institutions.

Not a Minute to Waste

This is not a dream. It is possible. But you are needed right now.
Through decades of work and struggle, Bob Avakian has developed the thoroughly scientific approach, the strategy, and the concrete vision for the new society. He has developed the most radical and liberating approach to women in human history: Break ALL the Chains! Bob Avakian on the Emancipation of Women and the Communist Revolution. Plunge into this!
At the same time, BA is actively leading a movement for an actual revolution in the U.S., theoretically and practically. Spread this newspaper/website (revcom.us). Join with the Revolution Clubs. How many more women will be battered and violated, shattered and shamed before you throw in with everything you’ve got?

 

ACCUSTOMED TO VIOLENCE

As one headline ( sadly ) put it, the Orlando LGBTQ are accustomed to violence, although obviously never to this level. 
   Despite the fact that the attack was claimed by ISIS, this speaks volumes to the crimes committed by capitalism/imperialism, and the way people are treated in this "land of the free". 
  Read the article below. Please.

On the Horrific Massacre in Orlando and the Need for a Whole New World

June 12, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Download PDF of this statement

Early Sunday morning in Orlando, Florida, a gunman identified as Omar Mateen burst into the Pulse nightclub, known as a center for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. He opened fire on the crowd of several hundred, killing at least 50 people and wounding another 53. At this point, according to Reuters, the Islamic State (ISIS) has claimed responsibility.  

This outrage, at a site which many lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people see as a sanctuary, is extremely vicious—and horribly painful to contemplate. Ordinary people have been gunned down, murdered, apparently simply because of the way they live and love. 

Such a depraved act is utterly unacceptable, something that humanity should be—and could be—far beyond. Yet while humanity should be far beyond this, the hatred for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people is deeply rooted throughout this entire capitalist-imperialist society. And yes, deeply rooted in American society. Bullying, ostracism from families and communities, beatings, insults and all manner of hate crimes against LGBT people typify life in this society. As a result, suicide among LGBT youth is epidemic. This oppression is so deeply knit into the fabric of society that the so-called holy texts of Christianity, Islam and Judaism call for death to gay people, and most of the religious institutions today constantly line up against any measure calling for any kinds of rights or dignity for LGBT people. Indeed, the last two months have witnessed massive hysteria whipped up from right-wing Christian fundamentalist politicians against transgender people using bathrooms. In complex ways, this insane hatred forms part of the "social glue" and perverse morality that knits together whole sections of this capitalist-imperialist society. 

But this particular attack in Orlando has as of this posting reportedly been claimed by the Islamic fundamentalist group Islamic State. If this is true—and it would be consistent with what they profess and what they have actually done—this is yet one more reason why the vicious ideology of Islamic fundamentalist jihadism must be thoroughly and unequivocally opposed and resisted. As Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, has stated, there is in fact nothing "radical" and nothing at all even remotely progressive about this ideology. Its role in the world in attracting angry people to its banners to carry out vicious and misguided acts only reinforces the oppressive relations of the world, and actually strengthens U.S. (and western) imperialism, as people feel driven to choose between two oppressive alternatives. 

Both U.S. imperialism and jihadism must be opposed, with no quarter given to either by anyone who hungers for justice and human emancipation. This means standing with LGBT people against this attack AND it means opposing what will very likely be proposals to heighten the very repressive powers that defend this social system, or to demonize and repress Muslim people as a whole, or to step up U.S. military aggression in the Middle East.

Read Message

Download PDF 11x17"

Listen to audio of the Message, recorded by members of the Revolution Club

The whole deadly dynamic where Islamic fundamentalist jihadism and imperialism (which grinds up the lives and mutilates the spirits of millions in the name of its "freedoms") present themselves as the only poles in society must be ended. Revolutionary communism alone truly provides a viable and comprehensive alternative, capable of channeling both people's anger and their aspirations to something better, into the only project that actually CAN emancipate humanity. 

This pole must be strengthened now, throughout this society and throughout the world. The obstacle that stands in the way of human liberation and indeed reinforces and fosters every backward and oppressive social relation—the system of capitalism-imperialism—needs to be removed at the soonest possible time so we can go to work on actually transforming all this as part of a radically different and radically more free world, one in which—to paraphrase Bob Avakian—all exploitative and oppressive relations, and all destructive antagonistic relations between people have been overcome and transcended. This is what we are doing right now and urge you to be part of.

MORE THAN JUST SPORTS

Here's an article for those people who profess to respect  Muhammad Ali, and yet have little idea of what they are speaking. Ali was a man of principle, right up in the face of the howling bloodthirsty pack of wolves. Follow his example, or shut up.

Embracing the Legacy of Muhammad Ali Means Standing Up and Acting for Principle

by Carl Dix

June 10, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

People talk about their admiration for Muhammad Ali and profess to embrace his legacy. I have a serious question and challenge to put to them, and especially the prominent Black people among them: Are you ready to stand and act for principle as he did? Muhammad Ali put himself on the line to stand up against the oppression this system was bringing down on Black people. When the powers that be told him he had to join their army and be part of the military machine being unleashed to drown the liberation struggle of the Vietnamese people in blood, Ali responded in bold and clear terms:

“No, I am not going ten thousand miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would put my prestige in jeopardy and could cause me to lose millions of dollars which should accrue to me as the champion. But I have said it once and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is right here.”

This stand cost him the heavyweight boxing championship of the world and millions of dollars. And it put him at risk of being jailed for years, but he stood firm and refused to back down. This is what was most inspiring about Muhammad Ali: his willingness to put it all on the line to oppose terrible wrongs.

Today, the same system continues to inflict savage oppression: horrific numbers of particularly Black and Latino people, including many youth and even young children, brutalized and murdered by vicious police. How many videos must you see of people gunned down or beaten, tased or choked to death by the police, responding only with weak sympathy for the victims, and begging the system for justice someday? How long will you stand aside while the system backs up their killer cops again and again, seldom putting any of them on trial—and in the few cases where cops have been tried, virtually never convicting any of them, or at most giving them a slap on the wrist? “Justifiable homicide”? No. Ali said then, and we must say now: “This is the day when such evils must come to an end.”

Ali, in a short poem, said: "Me, Whee!" With props to his exuberance, I am going to take a liberty with his rhyme to say: Yes: You, me, WE know this horrific police brutality and murder is still going down. Are you/are we going to stand up and say unequivocally that these and other horrors perpetrated by this system must stop? ARE YOU/ARE WE GOING TO PUT IT ON THE LINE TO FIGHT TO STOP THESE CRIMES AGAINST THE PEOPLE? I’ve been doing this for a long time and will continue to so. Are you ready to join this fight? The time is now. THIS IS THE LEGACY THAT MUST NOT ONLY BE SPOKEN OF, BUT ACTED ON.

 

Carl Dix is a courageous freedom fighter from the 1960s who went on to become a revolutionary fighter and a communist. Dix spent two years in military prison for refusing to fight in the unjust Vietnam War. He emerged unrepentant and went on to become a founding member of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), USA, dedicating his life to the emancipation of all humanity. Today, Carl is a follower of and advocate for Bob Avakian, his leadership and his visionary new synthesis of communism. Carl Dix and Cornel West co-founded the Stop Mass Incarceration Network (SMIN), and Rise Up October that brought thousands into the streets in New York City demanding a stop to police terror.

REAL

Get over your cold war brainwashed bullshit and see what's real, not only what they want you to fucking believe......

FOODIES

Anyone who describes themselves as a "foodie" should be repeatedly punched in the stomach after a big meal until they fucking puke.
   That is all.

AMERIKKKAN CRIME

This is what the "leaders of the free world" do in order to maintain their rule, and is also the ruling class that kkkanadian politicians are hooked up with, no matter which party, or which smarmy motherfucker is prime minister.....

Case #94: November 2004—War Crime Fallujah

June 6, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

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 essence of what exists in the U.S. is not democracy but capitalism-imperialism and political structures to enforce that capitalism-imperialism. What the U.S. spreads around the world is not democracy, but imperialism and political structures to enforce that imperialism.

Bob Avakian, BAsics 1:3

THE CRIME: In the early morning hours of November 8, 2004, the U.S. launched “Operation Phantom Fury”—a massive air and ground assault on Fallujah.

Weeks before, the U.S. military had cut off entry and exit from Fallujah, which was home to 300,000 people. U.S. Marine and Army troops poured thousands of artillery rounds, hundreds of rockets, bombs, and missiles, and nearly 100,000 machine gun and cannon rounds into this densely populated city. A U.S. Marine sergeant warned, “We’ll unleash the dogs of hell, we’ll unleash ‘em... They don’t even know what’s coming—hell is coming! If there are civilians in there, they’re in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

On November 8, “The sky over Fallujah seems to explode,” one newspaper reported, as a massive bombing assault was unleashed. This bombing campaign included anti-personnel cluster bombs and white phosphorous—a chemical firebomb that can melt skin and burn right down to the bone. U.S. officials at first denied it, but were later forced to admit they’d been used. Using these weapons against people is illegal under international law, and their use constitutes a war crime.

Then came a ground assault by armored bulldozers that tore up all the main streets of the city, and troops that shot at anything that moved, going “house to house, room to room, raining death and destruction on the proud, ancient ‘City of Mosques,’” the Guardian reported. By November 16, the Marines were in control of most of the city.

Fallujah, Iraq, November 2004. Photo: AP

Reporters who entered Fallujah afterward described a “wasteland” of “utter ruin,” with desperate dogs and cats feeding on corpses in the streets. As many as 2,000 Iraqis—labeled “insurgents” by the U.S.—plus 800 or more civilians were killed. The once-crowded city lay empty and broken with 60 percent of its buildings damaged or destroyed: “36,000 homes, 9,000 shops, 65 mosques, 60 schools, both train stations, one of the two bridges, two power stations, three water treatment plants and the city’s entire sanitation and telephone systems,” according to the Fallujah Compensation Committee.

Two hundred thousand people had been forced from the city—first by the blockade, then the cutting off of water and food, then the threats of invasion, and finally by the assault itself—and then they were scattered across war-torn central Iraq, often in sprawling, unplanned tent cities where there were already outbreaks of diseases, including typhoid.

THE CRIMINALS: U.S. President George W. Bush, who told his generals: “Kick ass! If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! We must be tougher than hell! This Vietnam stuff, this is not even close....”

IN THEIR OWN WORDS:

“Kick ass! If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! We must be tougher than hell! This Vietnam stuff, this is not even close. It is a mind-set. We can’t send that message. It’s an excuse to prepare us for withdrawal.... There is a series of moments and this is one of them. Our will is being tested, but we are resolute. We have a better way. Stay strong! Stay the course! Kill them! Be confident! Prevail! We are going to wipe them out! We are not blinking!”

—President George W. Bush, to General Ricardo Sanchez and other military commanders

“Innocent civilians in that city have all the guidance they need as to how they can avoid getting into trouble.”

—Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld

Vice President Dick Cheney, who called the invasion and occupation of Iraq “one of the most extraordinary military campaigns ever conducted.” Donald Rumsfeld, Bush’s “Defense” Secretary, who said the destruction of Fallujah would not “stop without being completed.” Generals Richard F. Natonski, Keith Stalder, and James Mattis, who commanded U.S. forces.

The U.S.-appointed Iraqi Interim Government, which authorized the attack.

THE ALIBI: The U.S. claimed it was freeing the people of Fallujah from the grip of a small group of foreign terrorists and was taking great care to protect civilians.

THE ACTUAL MOTIVE: To crush Sunni-based forces aligned with the former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein who were resisting the U.S. occupation. To collectively punish the people of Fallujah and terrorize Iraq's six million Sunnis. And to serve as an "object lesson," as one ex-Army officer put it, about U.S. power and its willingness to use it for any and all in the region and beyond.

REPEAT OFFENDER: After Operation Phantom Fury, the U.S. military claimed it had “broken the back” of the anti-U.S. resistance. But they hadn’t, and have been working ever since with the reactionary Iraqi government to once again take over Fallujah, now under ISIS control. As of now, another bloody assault is imminent, backed by the U.S., Iranian, and Iraqi governments. Human rights groups report that the ongoing siege of the city has drastically cut food supplies and at least 50,000 people are facing starvation and death.