Anti-Americana: Common Interests

Dating from the 1960s, when the Democratic Republic of Korea (North Korea) was a little more self-identified with the socialist camp, this poster shows an armed Korean and and a very Che-looking armed Cuban bayoneting a cowering American figure in the corner who seems to look a lot like U.S. President Lyndon Baynes Johnson (LBJ). The flags are those of North Korea and Cuba, and sadly, once again my ignorance of Korean means I have no idea what the caption says. It's a classic distillation of the North Korean anti-American propaganda style.

North Korea and Cuba have of course both defied the presence of the strongest anti-Communist military power camped out right on their borders for decades. The threat to the Cuban and North Korean governments is evident every day still in 2013. Solidarity apparently actually helps!

In 1960, Che Guevara actually visited the DPRK on behalf of revolutionary Cuba, and here is a brief clip of him sitting down with DPRK leader Kim Il Sung. 

Save the Palestinian Hunger Strikers!

Palestinian protesters (Che T-shirt sighting!) outside Israeli Supreme Court in Jerusalem last week. Photo from Alakhbar English.

Decades ago in the midst of another desperate struggle, imprisoned revolutionaries in Northern Ireland used the final weapon available, and went on a series of hunger strikes to bring attention to British repression. Several Irish Republican Army militants starved to death, including most famously Bobby Sands.

Today the desperate resistance tactic of the hunger strike is being deployed by some two thousand Palestinians in Israeli jails. Two of these protesters, in administrative detention without charges or recourse, are now said to be near death. Thaer Halahla, 34, and Bilal Thiab, 27, shown in the posters above, have been denied visits from their families and independent medical authorities.

Today the Israeli Supreme Court rejected their appeals to end their "administrative detention." At their hearing, one of the men fainted from weakness. The other, Mr. Halahla, is quoted saying, “I am a man who loves life, and I want to live in dignity. No human can accept being in jail for one hour without any charge or reason.” 

These two men are not accused of any crime, merely of being "potential terrorists" by virtue of their membership in the Palestinian Islamic Jihad faction. Sound familiar? This is what the NDAA law passed by Congress and signed by President Obama authorizes here in the United States.


Save Thaer Halahla and Bilal Thiab!

#OWS Occupies Times Square

Many thousands of people turned out Saturday night to bring the #Occupy Wall Street movement uptown to Times Square. While confused tourists milled about and police laid down a heavy hand with horses, motorcycles, and blocks and blocks of metal pens and barricades, thousands of people came out just before sunset to express their support to the rights of the 99% for economic (and social) justice.

The police response seemed to atomize the protest a bit, isolating a louder, angrier crowd around the military recruiting station from a more playful, music-playing "Occupation Party" crowd up near the TKTS booth. The police prevented feeder marches from joining the protests, and generally amped up an aura of explosive tension. After some abusive arrests earlier in the day at a protest inside a Citibank branch, the cops staged a confrontation with some protesters at the end of the Times Square event, arresting dozens. The protesters were engaged in nonviolent expression, and it's clear that the Mayor has ordered the police to limit that expression as much as they can get away with.

I love the sign above: "Decolonize Wall Street - Wall St. Is On Occupied Algonquin Land - Decolonize the 99%"


The Occupy Times Square Action was part of a global day of actions, with protests held in hundreds of cities in dozens of countries. Here's a sign expressing common sentiment at Occupy Wall Street Protests, and I gather, at protests world wide: "If Voting Could Change Anything, It Would Be Illegal - Join Us. We Are the 99%." If the fruit of all that excitement prior to Obama's election means anything, this is certainly a point up for debate.


And Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara made a welcome return visit to New York City courtesy of this red flag with the iconic Korda silhouette of the martyred hero. Of course my eye gravitates to red flags, but there was plenty of more middle-of-the-road sentiment present also. Considering this is a movement of the 99%, that road is pretty broad; and more power to it.

(Photographs by me; click on them to see them larger)

Anti-American Art: Napalm Psychedelia

Here's a Cuban stamp from 1972, part of a series issued to mark the "Third Symposium Against Yankee Genocide in Vietnam and its Extension into Laos and Cambodia." Its hip, Peter-Max-like kaleidoscopic eye-candy illustration becomes completely less sweet when you see that it's a burned out Vietnamese house surrounded by cancerous bomb craters and defoliated trees: it's brilliantly subversive Cuban graphic design.

Cuba rightly saw a natural affinity with Vietnam's struggle to defend itself against the U.S. attack. From Che Guevara's famous speech: "How close we could look into a bright future should two, three or many Vietnams flourish throughout the world with their share of deaths and their immense tragedies, their everyday heroism and their repeated blows against imperialism, impelled to disperse its forces under the sudden attack and the increasing hatred of all peoples of the world! And if we were all capable of uniting to make our blows stronger and infallible and so increase the effectiveness of all kinds of support given to the struggling people — how great and close would that future be!"

The U.S. sprayed millions and millions of gallons of defoliants like Agent Orange over Vietnam during the war to destroy the natural landscape and deprive the Vietnamese of "food and cover." The result was hundreds of thousands of deaths and ongoing health problems including serious birth defects for the Vietnamese themselves and even health problems among the American GIs exposed to these chemical defoliants. Generations of innocents paid a dear price for the American determination to "win" at any cost. Fortunately, the U.S. was defeated in Vietnam.

Che concluded: "Our every action is a battle cry against imperialism, and a battle hymn for the people's unity against the great enemy of mankind: the United States of America. Wherever death may surprise us, let it be welcome, provided that this, our battle cry, may have reached some receptive ear and another hand may be extended to wield our weapons and other men be ready to intone the funeral dirge with the staccato singing of the machine-guns and new battle cries of war and victory."