The North Korea Crisis Is Made in USA

Pyongyang, North Korea, after firebombing by the United States in the early 1950s

Those memes equating Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un might make people feel better, but this crisis is strictly Made In USA.

Sure, I have misgivings about the nature of the regime in North Korea, but it must be said that most of what passes for news about the DPRK in the US is transparent and frankly racist nonsense. My general policy is, to quote somebody famous, no investigation no right to speak, which means when confronted by dubious propaganda about North Korea meant to desensitize Americans to the genocidal and aggressive foreign policy of our own government, I choose my words carefully. What most of us need to know about the DPRK is that it is a tiny and relatively poor country that has been deliberately isolated from the world economy for over sixty years. It spent forty years as a brutally enslaved colony of Japan, and half the country has been occupied by American troops ever since. The US and its allies murdered millions of people as they flattened it in a war, actually a thinly disguised war against China, that they couldn't actually win, which is testimony to the resilience of the Korean people. Whether the government in North Korea is something North Koreans like is frankly beside the point. The bottom line must be that Americans don't get to choose how other countries are governed. Now is not really the time to be debating the nature of a society under Washington's lethal sights: now is the time to understand where the real enemies of peace and humanity lie.

The truth is that the US government doesn't care about what kind of government exists in North Korea (and tbh, though Trump's rhetoric is raw and frightening, it's not substantively different than threats made by every single US president since Truman). They don't care about the people in North Korea. Certainly a government that constantly renews blank checks to Saudi Arabia and apartheid Israel, and was the last major international ally of racist white minority ruled South Africa, couldn't be too worried about the people of North Korea. A country that threatens to incinerate an entire population is actually concerned about that population? You BELIEVE that?

This is the thing we must all be clear on: there is no equation between Trump and Kim; there is no equation of "threat" between the tiny DPRK and the massively armed USA. I read a statistic that said DPRK's military budget was less than that of the NYPD. The only actual threat is the one made by the United States. What has actually happened is that the DPRK has "threatened" to defend itself from aggression. The DPRK's posture is entirely provoked by the existential threat that the US's military machine, right on its borders, poses to its right of self-determination. I don't like nukes, but I will not condemn a nation for choosing a desperate option to stop a global bully.

Remember what happened to "crazy" Saddam Hussein, or more importantly, his country after US invasion. To "crazy" Gaddafi or more importantly, his country after US bombing. When you call Kim Jong Un "crazy," you're participating in a racist charade. Tell me the name of another North Korean person why don't you?

There is a country where people are in prison camps, even slave labor camps. There is a country where people are forced to eat garbage, where unemployment is chronic. There is a country where people are killed with total impunity by law enforcement. There is a country where dissent is demonized by the political castes, where dissenters are blacklisted from employment. There is a country which threatens its neighbors, that attacks sovereign nations unprovoked, that sends its armies across the world in blood-orgies of murder. There is a country that steals from others. There is a country whose elections are farces. There is a country where family and financial connections ensure political and social influence. There is a country where warlike mobs can be pushed to bloodlust through chants and manipulation. There is a country whose residents routinely fantasize about how they should "take out" anybody they choose on the world stage. That country is not North Korea, it's the USA.

Let's recognize the real threat and deal with it. We're running out of time. No, Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump are not equal in any way, and your oh-so-funny Kim Jong Un memes are the equivalent of making ching-chong faces; to call them racist is to be making an understatement.
It is without contest. The main threat to humanity is the one in Washington.

---

(Crossposted from my personal Facebook. I have had plenty to say in the months since the election, none of which involves me changing my mind about my abstention, but for various reasons have decided to cut back on blogging here. But this seemed like a good milestone to add here for the record. I'm not abandoning this blog, I actually refer to it myself a lot, but especially until I finish my book project I can't commit here to return to a regular schedule. Comments always welcome. See you next time!)

35 Years

"Who goes to prison when the government catches you lying? You. Who goes to prison when you catch the government lying? Nope, still you."

Bradley Chelsea Manning was sentenced today. 35 years.

Not sentenced today: George W. Bush or any of his co-conspirators for war crimes. Not sentenced, Wall Street hucksters for the 2008 economic crisis. Not sentenced, Barack Obama for sending drones to kill innocent civilians including US citizens. Not sentenced, George Zimmerman for racist murder. Not sentenced: Michael Bloomberg or Ray Kelly, for ruining the lives of hundreds of thousands of young black and brown people.

Assata Shakur is still free, so hope springs eternal. FREE BRADLEY CHELSEA MANNING!

August 6, 1945, 8:15 A.M.

Free Bradley Manning!

Today Bradley Manning was found guilty of all but the single most serious charge against him, in a ruling by a lone federal judge. This after a nearly two-year ordeal of imprisonment including torture by the U.S. government. Manning is now facing sentencing of up to 130 years in prison.

Not being punished for their part in the Iraq war, in which a sovereign nation was invaded and destroyed, and thousands and thousands of innocent people killed:

Former President George Bush, and all of his cronies and advisors including Condoleeza Rice, DIck Cheney, Colin Powell, Paul Wolfowitz, and all the others. The blood is on your hands.

Former Senator Hillary Clinton and all of the other members of congress who voted to have all those innocent Iraqis killed. The blood is on your hands.

The murdering pigs inside the imperialist war machine, trained to kill people like they were playing video games. The blood is on your hands.

President Obama, whose relentless pursuit of whistleblowers like Manning and Snowden, whose steadfast protection of war criminals, and whose own expansion of the drone war against innocent civilians will not be forgotten. The blood is on your hands.

Below is the Wikileaks video containing footage, apparently leaked by Manning, from a so-called Apache helicopter showing an attack by the American military on a group of civilians and journalists on a Baghdad street. The video is very hard to watch, but clearly details how helicopter gunships targeted and assassinated these people, and then when a car, bearing children, comes by to carry off the wounded to a hospital, the gunships open up again. You'll hear the despicable pigs behind the microphone laugh and brag at their carnage. When they realize they have machine gunned children, one of them is heard to say sullenly "Well it's their fault for bringing their kids into a battle."

Weep, rage, fight. Free Bradley Manning! Hands off Edward Snowden!



#FreeBrad

#StandUpForTrayvon

Racism is not a "diversion" it is the central challenge facing revolutionaries in the United States. Capitalism = White Supremacy. #hoodiesup! #StandUpForTrayvon! #JusticeforTrayvon!

30,000 Prisoners On Strike in California!

According to new reports, some thirty thousand California inmates have refused meals this week; and a smaller number of refused to report for their prison work assignments. Even the New York Times is reporting the action: "Once the state tallies the official number of participants, the hunger strike could become the largest in state history. A similar hunger strike over several weeks in 2011 had about 6,000 participants at its official peak, corrections officials said, and a strike that fall had about 4,200"

The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. The United States also has the largest absolute number of imprisoned people, well above the repressive Russian Federation and even the most populous nation in the world, China.

There's a great series of profiles of some of the strike leaders at Solitary Watch. For updates on the strike, check out Striketheprisons.com or PrisonerHungerStrikeSolidarity.wordpress.com.

Just Do It.

US Imperialism Is A Paper Tiger
Excerpts from a speech by Mao Zedong, 1956

The United States is flaunting the anti-communist banner everywhere in order to perpetrate aggression against other countries.

The United States owes debts everywhere. It owes debts not only to the countries of Latin America, Asia and Africa, but also to the countries of Europe and Oceania. The whole world, Britain included dislikes the United States. The masses of the people dislike it. Japan dislikes the United States because it oppresses her. None of the countries in the East is free from U.S. aggression. The United States has invaded our Taiwan Province. Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam and Pakistan all suffer from U.S. aggression, although some of them are allies of the United States. The people are dissatisfied and in some countries so are the authorities.

All oppressed nations want independence.

Everything is subject to change. The big decadent forces will give way to the small new-born forces. The small forces will change into big forces because the majority of the people demand this change. The U.S. imperialist forces will change from big to small because the American people, too, are dissatisfied with their government.

In my own lifetime I myself have witnessed such changes. Some of us present were born in the Ching Dynasty and others after the 1911 Revolution...

Now U.S. imperialism is quite powerful, but in reality it isn't. It is very weak politically because it is divorced from the masses of the people and is disliked by everybody and by the American people too. In appearance it is very powerful but in reality it is nothing to be afraid of, it is a paper tiger. Outwardly a tiger, it is made of paper, unable to withstand the wind and the rain. I believe the United States is nothing but a paper tiger.

History as a whole, the history of class society for thousands of years, has proved this point: the strong must give way to the weak. This holds true for the Americas as well.

Only when imperialism is eliminated can peace prevail. The day will come when the paper tigers will be wiped out. But they won't become extinct of their own accord, they need to be battered by the wind and the rain.

When we say U.S. imperialism is a paper tiger, we are speaking in terms of strategy. Regarding it as a whole, we must despise it. But regarding each part, we must take it seriously. It has claws and fangs. We have to destroy it piecemeal. For instance, if it has ten fangs, knock off one the first time, and there will be nine left, knock off another, and there will be eight left. When all the fangs are gone, it will still have claws. If we deal with it step by step and in earnest, we will certainly succeed in the end.

Strategically, we must utterly despise U.S. imperialism. Tactically, we must take it seriously. In struggling against it, we must take each battle, each encounter, seriously. At present, the United States is powerful, but when looked at in a broader perspective, as a whole and from a long-term viewpoint, it has no popular support, its policies are disliked by the people, because it oppresses and exploits them. For this reason, the tiger is doomed. Therefore, it is nothing to be afraid of and can be despised. But today the United States still has strength, turning out more than 100 million tons of steel a year and hitting out everywhere. That is why we must continue to wage struggles against it, fight it with all our might and wrest one position after another from it. And that takes time.

It seems that the countries of the Americas, Asia and Africa will have to go on quarrelling with the United States till the very end, till the paper tiger is destroyed by the wind and the rain.

To oppose U.S. imperialism, people of European origin in the Latin-American countries should unite with the indigenous Indians. Perhaps the white immigrants from Europe can be divided into two groups, one composed of rulers and the other of ruled. This should make it easier for the group of oppressed white people to get close to the local people, for their position is the same....

What use is imperialism? The Chinese people will have none of it, nor will the people in the rest of the world. There is no reason for the existence of imperialism.  

___

Also, gotta love The Onion. "US Flag Recalled After Causing 143 Million Deaths."

Happy Fourth of July?

So many of the world's current spectacles remind us of the truth of the words spoken by the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass back in 1852.

"What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States at this very hour."

"The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn."

Watching the racist media follow the George Zimmerman proceedings, wherein the late Trayvon Martin is virtually on trial for being murdered, or the massive government hypocrisy over NSA spying, or President Obama's cluesslessly unselfaware visit to Robben Island in South Africa, or the US act of aggression in forcing down Bolivian President Evo Morales' plane over Europe, it's clear that so much in the world is just not right, so much of the myths about the United States are just so much red-white-and-blue bullshit. Some small amount of observation reveals that the Civil War that was fought to right some of the great wrongs Douglass condemned failed to rectify some of the major flaws in this nation's founding.

From 1845:

“I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.”

“Dark and terrible as is this picture, I hold it to be strictly true of the overwhelming mass of professed Christians in America. They strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. Could any thing be more true of our churches?”

“They attend with Pharisaical strictness to the outward forms of religion, and at the same time neglect the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith.”

So much work to be done. This fourth of July, time to recommit to a new, real revolution in America.

(You can watch the actor Danny Glover read a portion of the 1852 speech here).
 

“I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.”

“I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.”

“Dark and terrible as is this picture, I hold it to be strictly true of the overwhelming mass of professed Christians in America. They strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. Could any thing be more true of our churches?”

“They attend with Pharisaical strictness to the outward forms of religion, and at the same time neglect the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith.”

Yesterday They Called Him a Terrorist

Nelson Mandela (L) in Robben Island prison.

Slightly expanded from a note I wrote on Facebook. I actually saw Mandela briefly, though an odd moving cage of glass. He visited New York City after his liberation, and was given a ticker-tape parade which I attended with my friend Pat. I still have the felt flag printed with ANC colors that we waved from the sidelines, amazed at the turning wheels of history.

As of this writing South African hero Nelson Mandela is hospitalized, in critical condition. While he is quite possibly near death, he has survived previous bouts of a lung ailment aggravated by his years in a white-supremacist prison.

But in advance of all the pretty, laudatory words sure to come upon his death, it's really important to remember that the biggest backers of the racist system of apartheid in South Africa were the United States, the UK, and the State of Israel. All the world's politicians will be crying crocodile tears for Mandela when he passes, but they all considered him a terrorist virtually up until the moment he was released from his life-stealing 27 years in prison. Much of the radical promise of Mandela's African National Congress was (predictably) set aside upon their assumption of power, but that pales, in the scale of political horrors, in comparison with the whitewashing of decades of racist lies, backed by massive amounts of money and weapons, that propped up the racist white minority regime in South Africa and made life desperate and dangerous for its black majority.

Reagan, Thatcher, and all their ilk believed Mandela deserved to rot in jail. The Israelis understood what Apartheid South Africa meant for them and studied its methods carefully as they exchanged military and financial aid. These are not accidents nor inconsistencies.

Back in the day the divestment movement met the same arguments that today's BDS movement meets. Don't be fooled, the companies and conglomerates and multinational corporations of international capitalism believe oppression is profitable. That's how they want the world organized.

The governments of the world believe they have a right to label freedom fighters terrorists.

The apartheid state in Israel believes that some people are not as human as others. If South Africa teaches us anything about humanity it teaches us about the justness of the struggle of the Palestinian people.

Who are tomorrow's Mandelas? Don't let the Reagans and Thatchers of today off the hook. The struggle continues; it's right to rebel.

Thank you Nelson Mandela for your part in changing history.

The Meaning of Boston: A Fragile and Threadbare Society Revealed

I've tried to contextualize the events of the past week in Boston as elsewhere. I've put this up first on Kasama threads, crossposting it here.

As everyone knows now, the entire Boston metro area was locked down Friday so law enforcement authorities could pursue a manhunt against suspected terror bomber Dzhokar Tsarnaev, a young U.S. citizen of Chechen ethnicity. The streets of the Boston suburb of Watertown saw parades of black-uniformed paramilitary SWaT teams and armored military vehicles parked at intersections. In unprecedented fashion, mass transit was shut down, businesses were closed, even travel in the northeast corridor was halted.

Just five days before, Tsarnaev, with his brother Tamerlan — killed in a shootout with cops on Thursday night — allegedly dropped off two pressure-cooker bombs filled with BBs and nails at the finish line of the Boston marathon. When the bombs exploded, they killed three people — including an 8-year-old boy who had previously been photographed protesting the racist murder of Trayvon Martin — and maimed dozens more. Witnesses described limbs ripped from bodies flying through the air. While the days between the bombing and Tsarnaev's capture witnessed an orgy of clueless and racist media speculation, false leads and accusations, racial profiling, and even a handful of violent incidents against random, innocent “Muslim-looking” people, there's reasonably strong evidence against the Tsarnaev brothers. The evidence, combined with the circumstances of their final confrontations with police suggest the veracity of police claims against them. As of this writing, the motives of the Tsarnaevs remain unknown to anyone but themselves. Of course all sorts of further details are yet to be exposed, including some alleged history of contact between the elder Tsarnaev brother and an FBI antiterrorism task force.

Repression Laid Bare
8-year-old Marathon bombing victim Richard MartinIf the events in Boston revealed the incompetence of the capitalist media, they also revealed a massive apparatus of state repression. Authorities were able to sift through thousands and thousands of surveillance photos, taped phone conversations, and a massive crowd-sourced information gathering and snitching operation to identify the Tarnaevs before they moved in on them...

Read the whole article

Iraq: Ten Years Ago the Massacre Began

I have featured this photo, by the late photojournalist Chris Hondros, before on this blog. It is the quintessential image of the Iraq war, which marks its shameful tenth anniversary today.

That's not her blood.

It's the blood of her parents, with whom she had been riding as they drove through nighttime Baghdad. The American soldiers claimed they had ordered the car to stop, as though they had that right in the first place, and the parents failed to do so. So they opened up their automatic weapons.

The child survived, the parents did not. This child survived a horror of light and sound and screams and splashing blood. I cannot imagine what it would be like to be that child. I wish I could not imagine what it was like to live in the country that did that to her. But I do.

Ten years ago the U.S. attacked the sovereign state of Iraq unprovoked, having spent the ten years previous trying to starve the country into submission through blockade. The blood of hundreds of thousands, like this little girl's parents, is on the hands of every rightwinger and neocon who promoted, lied, and cheated to make that war happen. It's also on the hands of every cruise missile liberal who enabled them. Hillary Clinton and the New York Times are as guilty as Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz and George W. Bush. I'm not holding my breath waiting for well-deserved war crimes trials.

Some people are trying very hard to forget what they did.

I doubt this girl will ever forget it, and neither will I.

This Is Not Gay Liberation

 

It's gay pride season. This weekend is New York City's big gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender pride parade. I've gone almost every year since I've lived in New York City, over thirty years. My first Pride was 1977, before I lived here. In the middle I went to Pride in Chicago. I marched many of those years. For a while I was even a member of the official planning coalition, before it became a nonprofit corporation. Back in those days we called it a gay pride "march."

The gay world has been abuzz with what would seem to be a slew of victories. The repeal of DADT has brought gay pride to, of all places, the Pentagon, where the masters of war plot how to subvert and attack people around the world. Apparently they will be taking a few moments from piloting child-killing drones over Pakistan and Yemen to celebrate "our rich diversity," as the flyer above reads. Later this year there will be a celebration of the end of DADT at the Intrepid, the aircraft-carrier turned museum floating in the Hudson off a New York City pier. That is, if they can swab the decks free of the bloodstains of thousands of Vietnamese killed by the Intrepid's planes in its period of service in the American war of aggression against Vietnam in the 1960s. Look! A rainbow flag!

Corporate sponsors are big news this year: a whole bunch of dubious corporations from Wells Fargo to Target have rolled out those rainbow flags, and the gay community rejoices, apparently turning a blind eye to the actual, you know, business practices and social role of these corporations. Hey, they're pro gay!

And speaking of taking time off from piloting drones, President Obama, er, came out in support of marriage equality. Well, he came out personally as a supporter of gay marriage. The day after the lesbian and gay community of North Carolina was devastated by a brutally anti-gay referendum that the President failed to comment on. Did I mention he thinks marriage equality is a states rights issue so his personal opinion doesn't mean he will intervene in such state struggles in the future? Oh sure I understand the limits of his executive power. He has certainly made clear the limits of his moral authority. It might come as no surprise that the gay community, deeply distrustful of Obama, immediately jumped full force on his reelection bandwagon. Seemingly, the only gay voices continuing criticism of the president are those on the right tainted by the dogwhistle racism of the Republicans.

Oh and a new book came out, which I can't imagine myself reading, by a heterosexual woman I'd not heard of before named Linda Hirshman entitled "Victory: The Triumphant Gay Revolution." Yes, it seems we have won. The struggle for our civil rights is over! No doubt we are now approaching the same state of grace as all of "post-racial" America.

This needs to be said: This is not gay liberation.

I'm finding myself surprisingly pissed off this year. Lesbian and gay pride always seemed like an opportunity to take our star turn: to celebrate our place in the fabric of the city, in the fabric of society. To walk about openly without worry, armed with great numbers in mutual solidarity. It seemed to me that while it was not always an overtly political event, it certainly had the political subtext of bringing our own struggle for social justice to the same field of battle where all the other struggles are waged.

But this year it feels to me like the gay community is saying, "hey, we got ours!" I think the community understands the threat from the religious right: it's clear a large minority of people in the United States have no love for the gays. But I think the gay establishment, and hence a large segment of the community, has also been utterly seduced by those fluttering rainbow flags. Gay pride has literally been sold to corporations. And those who question the sale, or suggest that a pinkwashing sleight of hand is at work, are being silenced or marginalized.

What a sham it is that corporations are waving rainbow flags at the same time they're busting unions, taking back basic benefits like paid healthcare and time off, and generally engaging in the looting of society for their own financial gain.
 
For me, "gay liberation" has always been intimately tied to "the revolution." That is, one social justice struggle among many that got at the core nature of capitalist society and its divide-and-rule strategies and materially-based oppressions inherent in that politico-economic system. I always argued that victory for our struggle as gay people — deeply connected to the role of women in capitalism — was not possible in a capitalist society. I don't feel equipped to address that huge question head-on in this essay, but I have to say that what the gay community is experiencing right now doesn't feel like a victory to me. I suppose the end of certain forms of legal discrimination are an advance for a certain privileged layer of the community that may benefit many gay people up and down the class spectrum, but something feels hollow.

While semi-covert gay organizations quietly existed for years before the  legendary Stonewall rebellion, the mass gay civil rights movement has its roots in the social uproar of the 1960s and the radical movement against American involvement in Vietnam. It's no accident that the first militant gay organization, the Gay Liberation Front, was named in the spirit of the South Vietnamese National Liberation Front, more commonly known as the Vietcong.

  

At its beginning the queer movement was a revolutionary movement. Perhaps the theory was undeveloped but the impulse was clear. One early group was even called STAR, or Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries. And in its earliest days gay liberationists united with others who recognized the connections. While shamefully some forces on the left were slow to embrace the gay struggle, black and Latino revolutionaries in the same gritty urban centers as the multi-racial gay community understood a natural alliance. The Occupy movement neighborhood assembly I work in, Occupy/Ocupemos Sunset Park, just showed the extraordinary documentary film "Palante, Siempre Palante" about the Young Lords Party, roughly the revolutionary Puerto Rican equivalent of the Black Panther Party. The film tells how the Young Lords openly and proudly supported gay liberation.

The gay movement went on a long journey toward moderation and respectability. A trans-class movement, it's no particular surprise that today's mainstream "LGBT" organizations are solidly in the pocket of the Democratic Party. But when I see today's pride parades built around corporate sponsorship or the narrow focus on "what's good for the gays" to the exclusion of any other social justice concerns, I am reminded over and over that it hasn't always been this way. Once upon a time gay people were protesting militarist monstrosities like the Intrepid. Now our political leaders are throwing a party on it.

It's not widely enough circulated, but back in 1970 the Black Panther Party's Huey Newton gave a speech in which he touched on the women's and gay liberation movements. The Black Panthers are sadly maligned in historical memory: virtually massacred by government COINTELPRO terrorism, the Panthers are misremembered as being violent, misremembered as some kind of glorified retrograde gang. Nothing could be further from the truth and Newton's far-thinking words from 1970 help reveal this:

"Remember, we have not established a revolutionary value system; we are only in the process of establishing it. I do not remember our ever constituting any value that said that a revolutionary must say offensive things towards homosexuals, or that a revolutionary should make sure that women do not speak out about their own particular kind of oppression. As a matter of fact, it is just the opposite: we say that we recognize the women's right to be free. We have not said much about the homosexual at all, but we must relate to the homosexual movement because it is a real thing. And I know through reading, and through my life experience and observations that homosexuals are not given freedom and liberty by anyone in the society. They might be the most oppresed people in the society.... And maybe I'm now injecting some of my prejudice by saying that "even a homosexual can be a revolutionary." Quite the contrary, maybe a homosexual could be the most revolutionary. When we have revolutionary conferences, rallies, and demonstrations, there should be full participation of the gay liberation movement and the women's liberation movement." 

The whole text is quite remarkable, far more advanced than the politics of much of the left at the time. This history of connected revolutionary struggles needs to be revisited.

In New York and San Francisco #OWS contingents will be marching in the parades. They'll be pointing out all the corporate pinkwashing that's going on. Mainstream gays have already suggested this act of elementary and obvious political education is "disruption." They have accused Occupy people of being "outsiders," as if no actually queer person could possibly reject the sale of gay pride to corporate America.

"Not gay as in happy, but queer as in fuck you."

Fighting civil discrimination is good. But fighting for the liberation of society is better. Let's not lose sight of the prize at the end: it's not about queer people being free just to be like suburban "middle-class" heterosexuals, it's about freeing society from all forms of oppressive relations.

The celebration of that victory will take place on the ruins of the Pentagon and at the site of the Intrepid being broken down into scrap.

Happy gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer pride. The struggle continues.

Justice for Trayvon Martin!

"This is America and the killing of Black people is just not considered a crime.

After 1955, the sweet face of Emmett Till, tortured to death in Mississippi by angry white men, haunted anyone with a conscience. Now we have the face of Trayvon Martin to remember. This is America, and that much has not changed.

And we have to deal with the fact that his killer was not even arrested. Not even arrested....

This is America, and whole sections of people are assumed to be criminal. It is called profiling — but it is really the ingrained standards inherited from slavery, Jim Crow and a whole structure of white supremacy. This is America, and armed white men are presumed to be innocent, justified and not a danger to their community. That too is a racial profiling — that envelops the militant racist like a protecting shield.

This is America. And when Black boys are murdered by angry white men, the authorities treat it as a tragic accident, not a crime."
— Kasama's Mike Ely

Without Comment: Peace Prize

Found on facebook.

Republican Candidates Threaten Cuba

I watched about half of tonight's Republican Presidential debate in Florida. I'm struck by how little these people actually talk about. The debates have been a really bad long-running reality show where they basically accuse each other of all manner of horrible things. They don't discuss their plans, they don't discuss the reasons things are the way they are, they don't discuss any real facts or issues. Except they do make a lot of threats and insinuations. Against each other. Against President Obama. Against black people. Against gay people. Against immigrants.

Tonight they threatened Iran, and, it being a debate in Florida, they threatened Cuba. There was something so visceral in their attempt to outdo each other in their bloodthirsty desire to return the laws of organized crime and plantation rule to Cuba. Well, except for poor Ron Paul, who said the U.S. should leave Cuba alone. Though today I also watched a video clip of him speaking in front of a Confederate flag in 2003 denying that the Civil War was fought over slavery which pretty much cancels out anything he says about anything else at all. The new Republican frontrunner Newt Swingrich basically said the CIA should be going to Cuba to overthrow its government. Which we presume the US has already been trying to do for over fifty years.

The government established by the Cuban Revolution in 1959 has made its share of mistakes, sure. But there is something about what Cuba has managed to do through the course of its revolution that really is meaningful, and that has to do with values and priorities. These start with healthcare and education. It really shouldn't be a surprise that someone like Gingrich, who thinks poor children should be earning their keep cleaning out bathrooms, sees the Cuban reality as a threat. American politicians have never actually cared about democracy in Cuba; they certainly didn't care about democracy when Batista was in power. What they care about is returning the rule of capitalist property relations and US dominance to a country that has dared to reject those things so close to our shores.

There's lots that could be said about the horrible things these candidates keep saying: their bigotries and their swaggering lies, their love of ruthless financial exploitation. Their charade is going to go on for a while, and I for one am not convinced that Gingrich won't be the last man standing.

It's often hard to know where to start when considering just how awful all these politicians are — from both parties. But here's another thing to add to the list. When they talk about attacking Cuba, they're talking about attacking the right of any and every social movement to break free from the clutches of corporate America.

There's only one response for the 99%: Defend Cuba!

An Invitation to Ethnic Cleansing

“Remember there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire. And I think that we’ve had an invented Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs, and were historically part of the Arab community. And they had a chance to go many places.” — Republican presidential candidate, serial adulterer and alleged intellectual Newt Gingrich in an interview with The Jewish Channel.

I wish I could say I was shocked by Gingrich's comments, which have received pretty wide coverage. But I've had many many arguments over the years with supporters of Israel who have said pretty much the same thing. Forget any logical response to this outrage, like does he therefore suggest Bulgaria, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Jordan are equally undeserving of statehood since they share a similar historical pedigree as Palestine? Nevermind his glossing over of the fact that whatever he chooses to call them the indigenous inhabitants of the land occupied by Israeli military force are currently violently besieged, suppressed, and deprived of their civil and human rights. Nevermind that not so long ago people of his political ilk were blaming the Jews for the evils of the world not fantasizing about the money they could earn by pantomiming prostration before the agenda of a foreign country's entirely questionable political policy.

What game are these politicians playing? Even George W. Bush, for crissake, paid lip-service to the idea that Palestinians deserved recognition of their personhood. The Republican presidential lineup have every last one of them (except far-right nutjob libertarian Ron Paul) been stumbling over each other to be the greatest supporter of Israeli Apartheid of all the rest. It's hard not to see it as a certain extension of the Republicans' formerly blatant anti-Semitism, this cartoonish courtship of a small country and a small American demographic which they imagine to require such outrageous genuflection. It's made even more odd by the fact that notwithstanding a little bit of rhetoric here or there, the Obama administration has proved itself a loyal lapdog of the rightwing Netanyahu government.

"And they had a chance to go many places." Absolutely chilling. Imagine for a moment he's talking about the Jews of prewar Europe, or the Tutsi of Rwanda. Newt Gingrich is an amoral sociopathic monster.

If you have a strong stomach here's a little reality check. Mustafa Tamimi was 28 years old; he attended a nonviolent protest in the occupied West Bank, protesting land seizures by so-called settlers. He was shot point blank in the face with a (US-made?) tear gas cannister. This is video of the aftermath of that shooting. Mondoweiss recounts, "The impact blew off half of Tamimi's face, and when his friends and family cried out in horror, Israeli soldiers laughed and said, "So?".

Boom! U.S. Fails In Attempt To Legitimize Child-Murdering Weapons

Anybody who has read anything about war in the last fifty years knows something about cluster bombs. They're large bombs containing hundreds of smaller bomblets: the large bomb is dropped and spreads its payload over a wide area, expanding the death-dealing capacity of airborne munitions. The bomblets can kill hundreds of human beings in a wider area than a single powerful explosive. Plus, the bomblets either don't always or are designed not to go off upon impact, but lie around waiting to explode and kill some unfortunate who stumbles upon them or picks them up. As you can imagine, said unfortunates are often children who live in an area and come out to play after a battle has moved on. Some countries have been accused of designing the bomblets in bright and shiny ways meant to actually attract children to them. The Soviet Union was heavily condemned for using them in Afghanistan as was Israel for using them in Lebanon. Cluster bombs are the deadly child-murdering gift that keeps on giving.

And so I read an article on the BBC that seemed confusing at first until I really read it. Then it becomes outrageous. It was titled "UN rejects US-backed cluster bombs regulation bid", and at first glance you would think it's the story of the nasty United Nations failing to endorse a brave American attempt to limit the use of cluster bombs: "UN member states have rejected a US-backed plan to introduce new regulations on cluster bombs - munitions which break up into hundreds of smaller bomblets. The plan would have eliminated all cluster munitions made before 1980. ... The US said that it was "deeply disappointed" by the decision..." But if that's what you thought was happening you would be wrong, dead wrong.

Because it turns out this American resolution is an age-old sleight of hand trick: by feigning moral outrage over older cluster bombs, it legitimizes the modern production of these fiendish weapons. The resolution was meant not to eliminate cluster bombs, but to undercut the Oslo Convention, signed by 111 nations, that actually prohibits the production, distribution and use of cluster bombs. Guess what countries have not signed the Oslo Convention? Here's a few: China. Russia. Belarus. Israel.... and the United States of America.

Yes, read on: "'The protocol would have led to the immediate prohibition of many millions of cluster munitions [and] placed the remaining cluster munitions under a detailed set of restrictions and regulations,' the US embassy in Geneva said in a statement.... A senior US official said the bombs were a military necessity for when targets were spread over wide areas, and that using alternative armaments would cause more collateral damage and prolong conflicts."

The world has seen through this transparent hypocrisy. The article continues: "though the proposal would have eliminated millions of ageing cluster munitions, even military allies of the US, like Britain, chose not to support it. Many UN member states felt, she says, that getting rid of some cluster weapons while officially sanctioning others would set a dangerous precedent, and might even legitimise their use in the long-term. The US move was also opposed by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the top UN officials for human rights, emergency relief and development."

Thank you Ambassador Susan Rice via Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for your strong moral stand in favor of murdering innocent children. Oh yes, did I forget to mention? The U.S. is the largest manufacturer of cluster bombs in the world.

In not unrelated news, Egyptian dock workers are protesting the shipment of tear gas shipments being unloaded in the port of Suez. The tear gas is destined for the military government's repression of demonstrations of Tahrir Square. Oh yes, where is this tear gas coming from? That would be its point of manufacture at Combined Systems Inc. in Jamestown, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. Among CSI's other leading clients are the Israeli Defense Forces.

Notice any patterns?

Those with strong stomachs may click here for a google search which shows the diversity of cluster bombs and the cold reality of what children look like after they have been murdered or maimed by them.

Palestine and UNESCO: Two Videos

The video above actually made me tear up as Palestine is voted full state membership in the United Nations agency UNESCO. Note that, as Jews sans Frontieres blog points out, the whole world laughs at Israel as it casts its "no" vote. (Sorry about the advertisement; it's worth sitting through). The joy of the Palestinian delegation, indeed the vast majority of the room, is awesome to behold.

On the other hand, the video below is nausea-provoking as an American official defends the United States' "no" vote. (First noted on AngryArab). Note the journalist Matt Lee who doesn't let the soul-dead American bureaucrat get away with her nonsensical rationalizations and hypocrisy:


Transcript here, thanks to Mondoweiss.

It took about five minutes for the Republic of South Sudan's application for U.N. membership to be approved by the U.N. What ever could the hold-up be with the Palestinian application made a month ago?

Did You Hear the One About the Iranian Used Car Dealer?

An Iranian used-car dealer in Texas has a relative in the Iranian military and they're actually super spies who tried to hire the Mexican mafia to kill the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the U.S. because, well, just because. I mean, everybody knows ALL IRANIANS ARE TERRORISTS!!!11!. And the news just happened to break the same day President Obama's jobs bill was defeated in its first test vote in Congress strangely pushing that event off the headlines. And strangely Secretary Hillary Clinton and various members of Congress are now rattling sabers against Iran again instead of commenting on the U.S.-supported Yemeni dictatorship gunning people down in the streets. And just a couple weeks ago it turned out the U.S. sold bombs to Israel that would be perfect to destroy, say, an underground nuclear facility in Iran.

Suuurrrre. I believe it's all happening just like the government says it is. Don't you?

We Will Kill You Because We Can, No Due Process Necessary

Two dissident Americans were assassinated today by terrorists.

Although the two were active vocal opponents of United States policies, and though they were accused by some of being "linked" (whatever that means) to various acts of violence and conspiracy, the two dissidents were not charged with crimes, apprehended or arrested, nor prosecuted and tried by American authorities. Nobody was asked to prove their guilt or allowed to profess their innocence before the button was pressed that ended their lives.

The two Americans were killed, apparently by a CIA predator drone, in a military strike on Yemen, which allegedly is at peace with the United States. The U.S. is currently attempting to bolster the rule of Yemen's beseiged dictator. The two were Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, both allegedly propagandists for the Al Qaeda network.

Let it be said: this was extra-legal murder, and anybody who has ever said a critical word about the United States or its policies — including American citizens who falsely believe themselves to be protected by the rule of law — should feel a chill at this action undertaken by the Obama administration. These two American citizens were executed without any due process because the government said they deserved to die. No evidence, no charges, no trial, no defense, nothing.

Al-Awlaki and Khan were accused of being members of an organization that any fighter for justice, indeed any decent human being, should abhor. With a faux anti-imperialist sheen, Al-Qaeda's politics are a vile blend of religious fundamentalism and nihilism: these alleged fighters for Islam have killed thousands and thousands of decent, peace-loving Muslims. They've killed children at a rate to rival the worst excesses of the American war machine or Apartheid Israel. But advocating for a horrible organization is not a capital offense: and if the two were engaged in capital crimes or conspiracies, why were they not brought to the halls of blind justice that the U.S. claims to be so proud of?

The action that the CIA undertook today was a blatant act of terrorism: a random act of death from the skies for which there could be no defense. The people in Yemen killed today were going about their lives as hapless as the Americans killed on 9/11.

This was a terrible, terrible precedent. And one has only to read columnist Glenn Greenwald's tweet today to ponder the unleashed potential:



While it seems highly unlikely that she will be the one to replace President Obama, Michele Bachmann (or someone just as bad as her) has just been enabled to dispatch murderous predator drones to kill opponents of her policies on her say-so. Samir Khan is accused of publishing a web-based Al-Qaeda magazine. Al-Awlaki is accused of giving pro-Al-Qaeda video sermons on Youtube. If these are now considered executable crimes without proof or process, what will the next resident of the White House consider kill-worthy?

It is not enough that the government said these two men were criminals or terrorists: that's not the way the law is supposed to work. Or perhaps, we've just been shown that the law is an utter illusion. Look to the skies.

Graphics snagged from today's Times.