Immigrants:No Compromise, No american Flags, On to May 1
think seriously about this... Revolution or Reformation? Do you think a system based on genocide, white supremacy, and capitalism can be reformed, or do we need something completely new? Xiuhcoatl
the imperialist desperados' defeated and really desperate...the 'anti-war' forces must go on the political offensive
to get US OUT & support the heroic Iraqi national resistance
US plots ‘new liberation of Baghdad’
Sarah Baxter , Washington
The Sunday Times April 16, 2006
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2136297,00.html
THE American military is planning a “second liberation of Baghdad” to be carried out with the Iraqi army when a new government is installed.
Pacifying the lawless capital is regarded as essential to establishing the authority of the incoming government and preparing for a significant withdrawal of American troops.
Strategic and tactical plans are being laid by US commanders in Iraq and at the US army base in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, under Lieutenant- General David Petraeus. He is regarded as an innovative officer and was formerly responsible for training Iraqi troops...
Helicopters suitable for urban warfare, such as the manoeuvrable AH-6 “Little Birds” used by the marines and special forces and armed with rocket launchers and machineguns, are likely to complement the ground attack.
The sources said American and Iraqi troops would move from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, leaving behind Sweat teams — an acronym for “sewage, water, electricity and trash” — to improve living conditions by upgrading clinics, schools, rubbish collection, water and electricity supplies.
Sunni insurgent strongholds are almost certain to be the first targets, although the Shi’ite militias such as the Mahdi army of Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical cleric, and the Iranian-backed Badr Brigade would need to be contained.
President George W Bush and Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, are under intense pressure to prove to the American public that Iraq is not slipping into anarchy and civil war. An effective military campaign could provide the White House with a bounce in the polls before the mid-term congressional elections in November. With Bush’s approval ratings below 40%, the vote is shaping up to be a Republican rout...
The operation is likely to take place towards the end of the summer, giving the newly appointed government time to establish itself. If all goes to plan, US troop withdrawals could take place before the end of the year. In the absence of progress by then, the war may come to be seen by the American public as a lost cause.
There are 140,000 US troops in Iraq. Lieutenant-General John Vines, who stepped down as commander of ground forces in Iraq at the beginning of this year, said it was essential to reduce the numbers.
“There is an incredible amount of stress and I’m worried about it,” said Vines. He added that soldiers were on their third or fourth tours of duty in Iraq: “The war has been going on nearly as long as the second world war and we’re asking a lot of the forces.”
Vines said there was “an enormous amount of work in Baghdad under way” but cautioned that any onslaught against insurgents would be “fiendishly complicated”. The approach would have to be “locale by locale”. He added: “Ultimately we want a police solution in Baghdad.”
US forces would try to avoid the all-out combat that was used to subdue Falluja in 2004. “If you cut up the city into pieces neighbourhood by neighbourhood, you can prevent it from becoming a major urban fight,” said Gouré.
According to defence sources the Americans could augment their forces with heavily armed AC-130 aircraft and F-16s. But close air support is more likely to be provided by Cobra and Little Bird helicopters to minimise casualties.
The generals involved in planning the battle are architects of the “clear, hold and build” strategy in Iraq, designed to isolate insurgents from the population and prevent them regrouping in urban strongholds as soon as the military’s back is turned.
Vines’s replacement as commander of ground forces is Lieutenant-General Peter Chiarelli, who pioneered the use of force with Sweat to subdue Sadr city, a working-class Shi’ite district of Baghdad, in 2004. On the eve of his return to Iraq this year he described how the tactics had worked and vowed to repeat them...
Another model for operations in Baghdad is an American-led Iraqi-backed military campaign at Tal Afar, a rebel town on the Syrian border. In a speech last month Bush hailed the campaign as an extraordinary success and brandished a letter from the town’s Iraqi mayor praising US forces as our “lion-hearted saviours”. But Tal Afar remains far from secure and the military tactics cannot be copied wholesale...
Anybody connected, however remotely, with the administration is seen as a target; 18 traffic police officers have been killed in the past two months. “They were simply doing their duty and trying to prevent traffic jams. There are no traffic lights,” said Major Hussein Khadem of the transport police...
Reuel Marc Gerecht, an expert on Iraq at the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute, said that while it was essential to bring Baghdad under control, he feared the Americans would leave the bulk of the fighting to the Iraqis and that a showdown could misfire.
“You would have to come down like a hammer on the Sunni areas of Baghdad and go house to house and nobody wants to do that,” Gerecht said. “It’s inevitably going to come and it’s going to be convulsive. The Americans will be there, but not in the numbers needed because American casualty rates will go up.”
Monday, April 17, 2006
Planning an attack on Baghdad ...
http://abutamam.blogspot.com/2006/04/planning-attack-on-baghdad.html
When cornered (and defeated), smash what is left to get out (if you can).
... US forces would try to avoid the all-out combat that was used to subdue Falluja in 2004. “If you cut up the city into pieces neighbourhood by neighbourhood, you can prevent it from becoming a major urban fight,” said Gouré."
US plots ‘new liberation of Baghdad’ April 16, 2006
"Of all the war crimes that have flowed from the originating war crime of George W. Bush's unprovoked invasion of Iraq, perhaps the most flagrant was the wanton destruction of Fallujah in November 2004.
Now, as ignominious defeat looms for Bush's Babylonian folly, some of the key players in fomenting the war are urging that the "Fallujah Option" be applied to an even bigger target: Baghdad.
What these influential warmongers openly call for is the "pacification" of Baghdad: a brutal firestorm by U.S. forces, ravaging both Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias in a "horrific" operation that will inevitably lead to "skyrocketing body counts," as warhawk Reuel Marc Gerecht wrote cheerfully last week in the ever-bloodthirsty editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal.
Gerecht's war whoop quickly ricocheted around the rightwing media echo chamber and gave public voice to the private counsels emanating from a group whose members now comprise the leadership of the U.S. government: The Project for the New American Century.
As often noted here, PNAC was founded by Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush, Zalmay Khalilzad, and the now-indicted Lewis Libby, among others. In September 2000, they publicly called for sending American forces into Iraq – even if Saddam Hussein was already gone – as well as planting new U.S. bases in Central Asia, putting weapons in space, building new nukes and funding a vast militarization of American society. Being such savvy inside players and all, they recognized that this lunatic program of aggression and world domination would not be accepted by the American people – unless, of course, the nation happened to be struck by a "catalyzing event" like "a new Pearl Harbor." Who says dreams don't come true?"
Dead Cities: The Fallujah Option in Iraq? April 8, 2006
science controlled by capitalist imperialism is a killer
Science, Humanity and the Iraq Holocaust
By Gideon Polya
Al-Jazeerah, April 15, 2006
http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2006%20Opinion%20Editorials/April/15o/Science,%20Humanity%20and%20the%20Iraq%20Holocaust%20By%20Gideon%20Polya.htm
This essay is a message of solidarity from an Australian scientist and writer sent to the Brussells Tribunal (see: http://www.brusselstribunal.org/ ) on the occasion of the Madrid International Seminar on the Assassination of Iraqi Academics and Health Professionals, 22-23 April 2006 (see: http://www.brusselstribunal.org/SeminarMadrid.htm ).
...Scientific approaches have dramatically improved Man’s lot since the beginnings of sophisticated, agriculture-based civilization in the Fertile Crescent encompassing lands from Egypt to present-day Iraq. The scientific approach involves truth, reason, sensible communication and the critical testing of potentially falsifiable hypotheses. The scientific approach was implicit in the process whereby the earliest farmers carefully selected seed for sowing and applied a process of reiterated selection to eventually yield the cereal staples that became the mainstay of humanity. Lying, un-reason, censorship and fraud may serve narrow power interests but are ultimately self-defeating. Thus non-reportage of man-made mass mortality may serve the short-term interests of those responsible but simply ensures continuance of such catastrophes – history ignored yields history repeated...
The tragedy of post-colonial Iraq since the return of Western armies in 1990 illustrates the perversion of humanitarian values, scientific approaches and rational risk assessment. The bottom-line parameter in any discussion about social policy is the human cost. According to the latest, Web-accessible UN Population Division data (see: http://esa.un.org/unpp/ ) and UNICEF data (see: http://www.unicef.org/index.html ), the "under-5 infant deaths per 1,000 births" in oil-rich Iraq versus impoverished Syria were 200 vs 170 (1953), 50 vs 44 (1990) and 125 vs 16 (sixteen) (2004) i.e. infant mortality decreased enormously under the dictator Saddam Hussein but increased hugely after 1990 due to Western intervention. The post-1990 under-5 infant mortality in Iraq under war-criminal UK-US sanctions, bombs and occupation now totals 1.6 million and the post-1990 excess deaths (i.e. avoidable deaths) now total 2.2 million. The 1990-2003 under-5 infant mortality and excess mortality in Iraq under sanctions and bombing totalled 1.2 million and 1.7 million, respectively; the 2003-2006 figures for post-invasion Occupied Iraq are 0.4 million and 0.5 million, respectively. In comparison, the post-invasion under-5 infant mortality and excess deaths in Occupied Afghanistan now total 1.4 million and 1.8 million, respectively (see MWC News: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/5948/26/ ).
...this crucial information is comprehensively ignored by Mainstream Media in a continuing process of racism, lying by omission and holocaust-denial. The horrendous under-5 infant mortality in Occupied Iraq and Afghanistan (1,300 infants dying every day, 0.5 million infants dying each year and with 90% of these deaths avoidable) is occurring because of the non-provision by the Occupying UK-US-led Coalition of the life-preserving requisites demanded unequivocally of Occupiers by the Geneva Conventions (see: (http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/92.htm). Indeed these horrendous crimes constitute "passive genocide" and are the subject of formal complaints to the International Criminal Court (see Countercurrents: http://www.countercurrents.org/us-polya211205.htm).
The appalling, continuing, avoidable mass mortality of infants in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories is a gross violation of the fundamental human behavioral imperative of respect for Mother and Child and reveals the semantically-absurd War on Terror as in actuality a War on Women and Children. While this carnage has been occurring, the very people who can save societies from irrational perversion have been targeted, threatened and killed in Coalition-occupied Iraq, namely Iraq’s intellectuals, academics, lawyers, scientists, teachers and health professionals. According to the eminent Brussells Tribunal, about 220 Iraqi academics have been killed, hundreds of have been forced into exile, hundreds of Iraqi teachers have been murdered and there is evidence for targeting of professionals by death squads (see: http://www.brusselstribunal.org/academicsList.htm and http://www.brusselstribunal.org/SeminarMadrid.htm ). What can decent people do in the face of the racism, violence, unreason and untruth exhibited by the UK-US-led Coalition countries over Iraq? Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity. We are all obliged to INFORM everyone about gross abuses of humanity. Having read this, please inform everyone you know.
Dr Gideon Polya,
Melbourne, Australia
(see: http://members.optusnet.com.au/~gpolya/links.html and http://globalavoidablemortality.blogspot.com/).
Arturo Ui in Baghdad
LENIN'S TOMB
... the war criminals who bombed a city to drive out some of its residents, then encircled it and prevented all males of fighting age from leaving (military age is ten and above for these guys), launched a bombing raid that destroyed the city, killed thousands, used horrifying chemical weapons in civilian areas, committed fucking war crimes in a hospital (because it was a 'propaganda outlet') - yes they, who did all that, will sincerely try... to cut it up into pieces, and destroy it piecemeal...
Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22623
====
Revolution or Reformation? Do you think a system based on genocide, white supremacy, and capitalism can be reformed, or do we need something completely new? Xiuhcoatl
...even though we survived through the struggle that made us We still look at ourselves through the eyes of people that hate us"
Immortal Technique
May 1st, the day of the general strike…No more American flags.
Sunday, 16 April 2006
The Hidden Terror of HR4437: No Compromise in the Movement for Migrants Rights
http://aztlanrising.com/cms/content/view/722/105/
by Juan Santos
What We Must Learn Now from the Black Civil Rights Movement
"I'm not an American. I'm one of the twenty-two million Black people who are the victims of Americanism. One of the 22 million Black people who are the victims of democracy--nothing but disguised hypocrisy. So I'm not standing here speaking to you as an American, or a patriot, or a flag-saluter, or a flag-waver--no, not I. I'm speaking as a victim of this American system. And I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don't see any American dream; I see an American nightmare." -- MALCOLM X
They’re lying to us.
They want us to keep playing their way.
To keep waving American flags.
To keep trusting them to do the right thing.
We dare not.
Millions of people’s lives are at stake.
Racist lawmakers on the Republican ultra-Right now assure us – after they were deeply stung by the protests of millions, and after we won the hearts of 62% of the US population – that they want to drop the provisions in new immigration laws that would make migrants felons.
?Y que?
Some three to six million people would still be arrested and deported.
The Republicans and Democrats alike have decided the arrests would be for misdemeanors – not felonies.
That’s so they don’t clog their courts, a point that was made with crystalline clarity on the House floor when HR4437 first passed in December. It has nothing to do with “compassion” or authentic “inclusion.” They want us to imagine that not being labeled “felons” will make us safe.
But nothing could be further from the truth. Here’s why.
Every immigration proposal still on the table authorizes local police to enforce federal immigration law, just like agents of La Migra, the Border Patrol. The National Immigration Law Center makes it plain:
"State and local police with no immigration law training could claim new authority as enforcers of criminal law to decide when someone who 'looks foreign' or 'sounds foreign' has violated federal criminal immigration law."
Everyone with brown skin would become a stigmatized “suspect.” The only difference is we would be suspects in a misdemeanor – not a felony.
But the penalty for the “crime” would remain the same - for those without papers it means deportation. FOX News tells us that under the Hagel - Martinez “Compromise” that was backed by the Democrats and by organizations like the National Council of La Raza:
"Illegals (sic) in the United States less than two years would be required to leave immediately. If caught once, they would be subject to a misdemeanor, and if caught twice they would be charged with a felony. About 2 million to 3 million people fall into this category."
Under such “compromises” millions of migrants will be deported, their families split apart and uprooted. The “compromise” approach endangers not only migrants, but all Brown people. It will open the door to a new ethnic cleansing, one surpassing the ethnic cleansings of Mexicans the US government carried out during the Great Depression, when 350,000 Mexicans and Chicanos were deported, and during Operation Wetback, when 1,300,000 of us were deported in the mid-1950s.
Imagine – at a minimum - that everyone who’s marched for migrants rights in recent weeks were deported. That will give you a picture of the magnitude of pain and chaos the rulers want to inflict.
Not that life post-“compromise” would necessarily give the impression that mass roundups were underway. More likely, it would all happen quietly, millions arrested, one by one: out of sight.
Call it a slow death, the kind suffered today by impoverished African Americans in the wake of the first Civil Rights Movement. It is imperative that our new movement not suffer the same fate.
This is how it worked then, and what they’re aiming for now.
When outrages like open Jim Crow segregation could no longer be counted on to keep African Americans “in their place” in the context of the world-wide anti-colonial rebellions of the 50s and 60s, the powers that be tried to buy off a sector of Black people in the US by giving them new opportunities; a substantial Black middle class arose almost overnight.
This is the equivalent of the “carrot” of “legalization” and “citizenship” in our context today.
For the rest of the Black nation, stranded in the ghettos, Jim Crow was followed by an even harsher master – mass incarceration. One by one young African Americans have vanished, locked into prison, until the ones added up to millions, each rendered silent - until the silence of the terror and rage in the ghettos of America has grown so loud it has turned the nation deaf.
A similar fate would await the millions, who, under a “compromise,” would face nothing less than mass deportation, mass, legal persecution.
Same trick: different decade.
A sister disappears; a father, a mother...
Here’s the rough numbers.
If every one of the 650,000 cops in the US were authorized to arrest only one migrant once every 3 months, within two years 3 million of the migrants left without papers would be gone. In four years half the migrant population of the US would be gone. No mass roundups, no mobilization of the SS or the National Guard. Just quietly, one by one, until the ones add up to millions, and until the millions add up to silence.
And in that silence, the terror and rage that has engulfed the ghetto would engulf the barrio as well. Then, in a replay of the African American experience following the Civil Rights Movement, our middle class “leaders” will wonder aloud where the “victory” went, never admitting that their “compromise” was not our victory, but our defeat. Never admitting they had helped to seal the fate of millions, and helped advance the surge toward a fascist state in the US.
Don’t imagine that the powers that be don’t understand what they are doing. Even the Minutemen understand it, as evidenced from this all-in–caps-communication from one of their number…
TAKE AWAY WHAT THE ENEMY HAS IT'S (SIC) EYES ON
...AND MAKE HIM CHOOSE FROM THE ALTENATIVES (SIC) WE DECIDE TO OFFER...CONTROL THE OPTIONS
…2.) USE THE RULE OF LAW TO "FEIGN RETREAT"...IN OTHER WORDS...PRETEND
TO SACRIFICE THE FELONY ISSUE, BUT STILL MAKE IT SO!
WHAT DO I MEAN?
THE BOTTOM LINE IS: WE WANT THESE PEOPLE....WHO ARE STOPPED BY POLICE
TO BE DEPORTED RIGHT?
WELL....THE RULE LAW (SIC), RIGHT NOW, IS THIS: ANY ILLEGALS CAUGHT ON THE BORDER IS (SIC)....DETAINED AND DEPORTED!
WHY SHOULD IT BE ANY DIFFERENT?
MAKING A FELONY (SIC) REQUIRES TOO MUCH "COURT TIME" WITH LAWYERS
INVOLVED...RED TAPE...
DON'T YOU SEE? IT IS A TRAP THAT THE ENEMY HAS GRABBED!
KEEPING IT A CIVIL OFFENSE, MISDERMEANOR (SIC)...AND SIMPLY APPLYING THE RULE OF LAW AT THE BORDER TO REFLECT INTERIOR ENFORCEMENT WITH LOCAL POLICE IS MUCH MORE WHAT WE WANT!
ALL WE NEED TO DO, AS I HAVE SAYING (SIC) IS...REFORM ENFORCEMENT!
…TIGHTENING THE NOOSE, SCORCHING THE EARTH...WILL FORCE THE ENEMY TO
LEAVE, VOLUNTARILY!
15 MILLION ILLEGALS, DEPORTED COMES OUT TO BE LIKE 8 THOUSAND ILLEGALS
EVERY DAY NONSTOP FOR 5 YEARS!
THE NAZIS, WHO DID NOT NEED DUE PROCESS...TOOK ALMOST 10 YEARS TO ROUND UP LESS THAN THAT...PRIOR TO THE FINAL SOLUTION...
However poorly articulated, this Minuteman understands the situation clearly. The powers that be are parading an illusion of “due process” before us, and trying to appear as something less than punitive, while they set the stage for a radical ethnic cleansing, American style.
To achieve this, they are using the time tested method of divide and conquer, the same tricks they used to derail the first civil rights movement, and to destroy the lives of millions of African Americans, while keeping their system safe from any rebellion from below by establishing a Black buffer caste who, they hoped, would come to have an investment in being real “Americans.”
That’s the same bait they hope today’s movement will take. But we must understand that what’s gotten us this far is our will to resist. It is our will to resist that spoke most plainly to our would-be persecutors, not flags, not even our dreams. The government that trained and financed the death squads of Guatemala, El Salvador, and, yes, Mexico, cares nothing for our dreams.
We must stand united - un pueblo unido – holding close the bravery and audacity that has caused our movement to sweep the nation and the world into wakefulness.
The answer to this dilemma – to the trap they have laid for us - is clear and simple.
No compromise.
No trading the life of one for the life of another.
And as of May 1st, the day of the general strike…No more American flags.
====
U.S. backup plan: invade Iran by land, air, water strikes
By Maxim Kniazkov
The United States began planning a full-scale military campaign against Iran that involves missile strikes, a land invasion and a naval operation to establish control over the Strait of Hormuz even before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, a former US intelligence analyst disclosed on Sunday.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12753.htm
in case you missed it...
Retired colonel claims U.S. military operations are already 'underway' in Iran
During an interview on CNN Friday night, retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner claimed that U.S. military operations are already 'underway' inside Iran, RAW STORY has found. "I would say -- and this may shock some -- I think the decision has been made and military operations are under way," Col. Gardiner told CNN International anchor Jim Clancy...http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=22606&s2=16>
http://tinyurl.com/s8s5n
Britain took part in mock Iran invasion: Pentagon planned for Tehran conflict with war game involving UK troops
By Julian Borger in Washington and Ewen MacAskill
British officers took part in a US war game aimed at preparing for a possible invasion of Iran, despite repeated claims by the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, that a military strike against Iran is inconceivable.
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12742.htm
Member of Russian State Duma Victor Alksnis said today that the U.S. and Israel are the real enemies of Iran's peaceful nuclear program. http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/060415/2006041502.html
Iran Warns US: "You can start a war but it won't be you who finishes it," said General Yahya Rahim Safavi, the head of the Revolutionary Guards and among the regime's most powerful figures.
http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,94378,00.html
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DEFEAT the U.S. & Israeli State Terrorist 'Final Solution' to Destroy the Palestinian Nation
"...Apologists for the U.S. Empire, who serve Bush, and provide political cover for his butchering of Iraqis, try to distract public attention from reality by spewing out silly articles about how U.S. middle eastern policy is controlled by Israel.
Some are neo-Nazi scum, some may well be on the CIA payroll, others confuse their deluded fantasies with reality, but the result is the same: to relieve the U.S. Imperial class of responsibility for 50 years of oppression, exploitation, and U.S. control operating in the region, including the creation of the racist Zionist terrorist state of Israel to do their dirty work..."
thomasfbarton@earthlink.net GI Special:4D16
CUI BONO? While true that Palestine's armed resistance to u.s./israeli genoccidal state terrorism is JUSTIFIED, this incident very conveniently timed to 'justify' the intensifying u.s./israeli attacks
A suicide bomber killed nine people and wounded at least 49 others in Tel Aviv today in an attack described by Hamas as an act of "self-defence"...
A spokesman for Hamas, the ruling Palestinian party, called the attack "a natural result of the continued Israeli crimes against our people".
"The Israeli occupation bears responsibility for the continuation of its aggression. Our people are in a state of self-defence and they have every right to use all means to defend themselves," Sami Abu Zuhri said.
Israel's acting prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said his country held Hamas responsible for the bombing, and that he was weighing up a response.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1755464,00.html
WASHINGTON -- The White House on Monday condemned a deadly attack in Israel by a Palestinian suicide bomber and warned of grave consequences for the new Palestinian government led by Hamas, which defended the attack.
"It is a despicable act of terror for which there is no excuse or justification," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said...."The burden of responsibility for preventing terrorist attacks such as this one rests with the Palestinian Authority," McClellan said. "We have noted reactions by several Palestinian terrorist groups, including Hamas, that defend or even applaud the barbaric act of terror committed in Tel Aviv today, as we have noted... President (Mahmoud) Abbas' quick denunciation of it."
It was the first suicide attack in Israel since the Hamas militant group took over the Palestinian government 2 1/2 weeks ago. The government called the attack a legitimate response to Israeli "aggression.
"A Palestinian government that encourages or tolerates terrorism against men, women and children not only increases the level of violence against Israelis, but can as well only do great harm to the interest of the Palestinian people and ensure its own further isolation," McClellan said.
"We reiterate that the United States will have no contact with such a government and we call upon all states to demand that it abandon its support for terror," the spokesman added.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1151AP_US_Israel_Explosion.html
Palestinian prime minister says the PA won't flinch from cut off of international financial aid, won't bow to pressure to drop violence and recognize Israel; 'We are ready to eat salt and olives but we won't be humiliated,' he said
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3239771,00.html
http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1916890,00.html
The Palestinian foreign minister has called on Arabs to fulfil their promises of financial assistance to the Palestinian government. http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/0222FF98-FDF9-4581-8E63-56660469E024.htm
The United States has banned its nationals from doing business with the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, a Treasury spokesperson says. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4910860.stm
International help for the occupied territories was close to paralysis yesterday because aid workers, including many Britons, fear that the United States now sees them as terrorists. http://tinyurl.com/qz5hq
Russia promised emergency aid to the Palestinian Authority, breaking with the EU and Washington, which have stopped funding to try to force Hamas to recognise Israel. http://tinyurl.com/flsza
Iran to give the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority $50 million US, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said on Sunday.
http://tinyurl.com/ecv45
An Iranian official said here Thursday night defending the oppressed Palestinian people would be the most important issue of the Islamic world. http://www.irna.ir/en/news/view/menu-236/0604144558161350.htm
===
"The Zarqawi PSYOP program is the most successful information campaign to date" Brigadier-General Mark Kimmitt
Resistance to US Occupation in Afghanistan is now due to the 'defeated Taliban'--whereas Iraqi Resistance is the doing of 'al-Aqaeda/Zarqawi' --finally exposed as creation of u.s. propaganda
Forty-one Taliban and six police officers were killed in a battle in southern Afghanistan in an area where the Taliban's leader once lived, a governor said on Saturday. http://tinyurl.com/zjh33
====
Casualties of War: Making It Plain About New Orleans
By RAFAEL RENTERIA
http://www.counterpunch.org/renteria04152006.html
April 15 / 16, 2006
When hip hop artist Kayne West said "George Bush doesn't care about black people," NBC cameras cut away. "They've given them permission to go down and shoot us," West said. In America, telling simple and obvious truths is going too far. Censors for NBC switched to a comic.
America has no mercy for peoples of color. It bombs them without pity in Iraq--wiping out access to water, to health care. The deaths of over half a million Iraqi children--due strictly to US backed sanctions - was considered "worth it" by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
President Bush thought seizing Iraq's oil fields was worth the sacrifice of the city of New Orleans.
In order to help finance the war, Bush cut spending in 2004 for repair and upgrading of the levee and pump system that protected the city from massive flooding--even though just such a disaster was rated among the top three devastating potentials facing the US in the short term. The city, which has been called a "repository of the deep scars of the American colonization" and slavery, is 67 percent black. Those stranded in the city were, unsurprisingly, overwhelmingly Black.
Let's make it plain, as Malcolm X used to say.
Bush consciously decided that sacrificing the lives of African people in New Orleans was worth the price--that the descendants of America's former slaves were expendable in the face of the empire's gluttony for oil and global supremacy. The city and its poor inhabitants are casualties of war.
Having made such a decision, it must have been hard for Bush to turn back, to put up a front, to pretend suddenly that the lives of Black children matter any more than the lives of Iraqi children. In fact, he couldn't do it, any more than Albright could say Iraqi children mattered to her and keep a straight face.
Black children had to die so that Iraqi children might die, and Iraqi children had to die because Exxon and the Empire need oil. The logic was airtight.
The emperor could only play golf while Black children drowned, while they died of dehydration, hunger, shock and lack of medicines. Just like in Iraq.
During his belated visit the President evaded the worst-hit areas of the city, but to hear Bush tell it, things were "not going exactly right".
Trying to act the part of a truly sober adult he later assured us "I understand the devastation requires more than one day's attention." In a typical Bush-ism he called the situation "worse than imaginable." But before leaving the city he couldn't resist a joke, reminiscing about having come to New Orleans and drinking "occasionally too much.'' Perhaps he'd drunk one too many "Hurricanes."
The President admitted his response to the devastation had been "unacceptable." Asked what he meant Bush said, "Well, I'm talking about the fact that we don't have enough security in New Orleans yet."
A Washington Times op-ed made the point clearly; "This horror will not subside with the flood. The government must treat the battlefield of Katrina as it would any other field of engagement: Protect and provide for the innocent and eliminate the enemy, and do it now, before we lose New Orleans... If looters fire on the troops, the troops should answer with suppressing fire. If the United States can project power anywhere in the world in a matter of hours, it can defend New Orleans and the coast of Mississippi."
It's not Black children that matter--it's having soldiers on the ground to kill those who might feed them, to kill those who dare to survive in the absence of any help from "above."
In this scenario it's not the hurricane or the endless delays in aid and the Black deaths they caused that are destroying the city--the "horror" is people trying to feed their babies and themselves, people trying--literally--not to die of thirst after days with no water. These are the enemy, just as other hungry people, the people of Central America and Viet Nam, were the enemy--and for the same reasons.
As troops arrived on Friday, they were told to point their guns downward, to avoid any comparison with Iraq. But the Army Times called the crisis in New Orleans an "insurgency," and the comparison to Iraq is just the comparison we must make, and make plainly.
The war in the streets of Baghdad gave rise to the deaths of thousands in New Orleans and to the destruction of the city. In both cases peoples of color are regarded--and being dealt with - as America's enemy. "This place is going to look like Little Somalia," Brig. Gen. Gary Jones told the Army Times "We're going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control."
Bush and the system that gave rise to him bear responsibility, direct responsibility, for every single death in New Orleans--without exception. And their plan is to crush people of color who refuse to lie down and die in the interest of Empire.
Just like in Iraq.
Bush and Co. not only allowed the desperation and chaos in New Orleans to develop--they created it. The pressing and deeply disturbing question is "why"?
Rafael Renteria is a freelance writer living in Los Angeles.
He can be contacted at Renteria@RadioJustice.net
====
Americas Gulag: Spy Chief: CIA Detainees Will Be Held Indefinitely: John Negroponte says accused "Al-Qaeda members" will remain in secret prisons as long as 'war on terror' continues http://www.time.com/time/nation/printout/0,8816,1183242,00.html
====
Palestinian framed, fired & deported --U.S. unable to convict on fake "terrorism" charges
Ex-Professor in Terror Case to Be Deported
- By MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press Writer
Friday, April 14, 2006
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2006/04/14/national/w134247D40.DTL&type=printable
(04-14) 13:42 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) --
Federal authorities have decided to deport a former Florida professor and longtime Palestinian rights activist after failing to convict him on charges he helped finance terrorist attacks in Israel...
Sami Al-Arian, who had met with U.S. presidents and other political leaders before his terrorism indictment in 2003, reached an agreement with prosecutors to plead guilty to a lesser charge and be deported, two lawyers familiar with the case said Friday. The arrangement requires the approval of a judge.[...]
===
The 9/11 Pentagon Attack: Planes Simply Do Not Vaporize - Why Didn’t They Show Us the Wreckage?
Jesse - Editor, TvNewsLIES.org
As each day passes, more and more Americans are becoming aware of the startling evidence that clearly contradicts the official explanation of Sept.11th, 2001 offered by the Bush administration. In fact, as more and more evidence comes to light, incongruities in the official explanation become increasingly and undeniably apparent. Ironically, the growing number of people new to these unexpl ained discrepancies poses a new problem for those of us who have been researching 9/11 for many months or years. We will have to find a way to explain the many complexities related to the attacks to those who now doubt the official version of events...
===
no kidding
US Military Exercise Seeks to Intimidate Progressive Governments: Former Venezuelan Deputy Foreign Minister William Izarra told TeleSur on Wednesday that US military operations in the Caribbean are geared to intimidate the progressive governments of the region. http://www.ain.cubaweb.cu/idioma/ingles/2006/abr13venezuela-maniobras.htm
===
When he was in the spotlight during the 2004 Olympics, the State Department was only too happy to exploit him for propaganda purposes. But when he applied four times for a student visa to study in this country, that same State Department found reasons to turn him down. http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/14/opinion/eddude.php
====
Telecom giant in domestic eavesdropping controversy
By Shane Harris, National Journal
http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=33847&printerfriendlyVers=1&
AT&T, which provides phone and Internet service to millions of Americans, is ensnared in the widening controversy over the Bush administration's domestic eavesdropping: A former employee claims firsthand knowledge of AT&T's cooperation in "wholesale" monitoring of Americans' communications.
Mark Klein, who says he was an AT&T technician for more than 20 years, says that the company aids the National Security Agency in "conducting what amounts to vacuum-cleaner surveillance of all the data crossing the Internet -- whether that be people's e-mail, Web surfing, or any other data," according to a statement Klein released. AT&T has given the NSA extraordinary access to its central switching offices, the nerve centers of its digital networks, Klein contends.
At the NSA's behest, Klein says, the telecom giant constructed a "secret room," off-limits to most of its technicians, that siphoned information from the company's residential Internet service. The secret system also captured information from "peering links," which connect AT&T's infrastructure to other telecommunications networks, potentially giving the NSA access to information traversing "the whole country, as well as the rest of the world."
If true, Klein's allegations provide some of the most detailed and tantalizing peeks at how the NSA eavesdrops inside the United States. (Under the Bush administration's "terrorist surveillance program," the NSA seeks, without court approval, to intercept communications that it believes involve terrorists abroad and their associates in the United States.)
With technical specificity, Klein describes how AT&T constructed, at a San Francisco office, a system of "splitter" cables to divert streams from the main network into the secret room, which he says was built after an NSA agent visited the company. Klein's statement lays out a technically plausible scenario and comports with what individuals familiar with the NSA's domestic operations say the agency is doing -- conducting automated analyses of very large streams of telecom traffic in the hopes of finding telltale signs of terrorist activity.
Klein's claims also add another wrinkle to the evolving NSA story. He says that documents instructing AT&T employees how to connect the peering links to the secret room stated that a sophisticated monitoring device was installed there.
Built by Narus, a company based in Mountain View, Calif., the device, which Klein called a "semantic traffic analyzer," collects large amounts of data that can help reveal a message's origin, destination, and meaning. According to Narus's Web site, government agencies use its products to conduct "lawful intercepts" of electronic communications...
Narus sells products to large telecom carriers, including AT&T, according to Steve Bannerman, a company spokesman. Those companies, which have well-established relationships with federal departments and agencies, are valuable conduits for Narus's products. According to government procurement records, AT&T racked up an impressive $304 million in sales to the federal government in fiscal year 2004, with more than 60 percent of that revenue coming from the Defense Department, which oversees the NSA.
An AT&T spokesman declined to discuss Klein's allegations or any work the company might do for the NSA. Klein's written statements were submitted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy-rights group, to a federal court as part of the group's lawsuit against AT&T.
That litigation may prompt other telecom carriers and Internet service providers to wonder if they're targets for lawsuits. Telecom executives have told journalists that they have complied with the NSA's requests for access to their networks. One former government official, who is knowledgeable about the NSA's surveillance program, said that AT&T is probably on safe legal ground, particularly if it is acting pursuant to a presidential order.
"For AT&T, [the lawsuit] means nothing," the former official said. AT&T "understands why its operations are important to national security and has always felt that way."
This document is located at http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0406/041406nj4.htm
how the NYT covers...up the state's fascist infrastructure...
AT&T and Domestic Spying
If AT&T is violating its customers' privacy rights, it
should come clean, and stop immediately.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/17/opinion/17mon2.html?th&emc=th
A Sinister Web Entraps Victims of Cyberstalkers
By TOM ZELLER Jr.
The problem of personal information on the Internet being
used to stalk is not easily legislated away and can be
devastating to those who are targeted.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/17/technology/17stalk.html?th&emc=th
a few of the well-imperialist state-connected media propagandists
Media Moguls Members - Bilderberg meeting in 2005,
http://www.spingola.com/connected%20media.htm
http://kurtnimmo.com/index.php?paged=3[reference]
BILDERBERG MEETINGS
Rottach-Egern, Germany
5-8 May 2005 List
Graham, Donald E., Chairman and CEO, The Washington Post Company
Pearlstine, Norman, Editor-in-Chief, Time Inc.
Vinocur, John, Senior Correspondent, International Herald Tribune
Zakaria, Fareed, Editor, Newsweek International
Trilateral Commission 2005:
David Gergen, Professor of Public Service, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; Editor-at-Large, U.S. News and World Report
Donald E. Graham, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, The Washington Post Company, Washington, DC.
Karen Elliott House, Senior Vice President, Dow Jones & Company, and Publisher, The Wall Street Journal, New York, NY
Robert W. Kagan - columnist for Washington Post
Fareed Zakaria (BORN IN INDIA), Editor, Newsweek International, New York, NY
Mortimer Zuckerman – U.S. News and World Report
CFR Members 2004
Applebaum, Anne E. – columnist for Washington Post
Armstrong, C. Michael – former CEO of Comcast, AT&T, and Hughes Electronic (Hint: Chinagate)
Boot, Max - columnist for Wall Street Journal
Britt, Glenn A. – chairman and CEO of Time Warner Cable
Brokaw, Tom – NBC News
Chavez, Linda – newspaper columnist
Couric, Katherine A. "Katie" – NBC’s Today show
Friedman, Thomas L. – New York Times journalist
Hertog, Roger – The New Republic
House, Karen Elliott – publisher of Wall Street Journal
Kagan, Robert W. – columnist
Kaiser, Robert G. – Washington Post
Kalb , Bernard – retired journalist
Kalb, Marvin – retired journalist
Kimsey, James V. – founding CEO of American Online (AOL)
Kondracke, Morton – commentator on Fox News; Roll Call
Krauthammer, Charles - columnist for Time and Washington Post
Mitchell, Patricia E. – President of PBS
Murdoch, Rupert – CEO of News Corporation (Fox News, Fox Studios, etc.)
Parsons, Richard D. – Chairman and CEO of Time Warner; former CEO of America Online (AOL)
Pearlstine, Norman – current editor-in-chief of Time magazine
Rather, Dan – retired CBS News
Rosenthal, A.M. (Abraham Michael) – former columnist for New York Times
Rubin, Trudy S. – columnist and editorial board member for Philadelphia Inquirer
Sawyer, Diane – commentator on ABC
Shribman, David M. – syndicated columnist
Snow, Robert Anthony "Tony" – the "young" clown on Fox News
Stahl, Lesley R. – "60 Minutes" on CBS
Steiger, Paul E. – Wall Street Journal
Thomas, Evan W. III – co-author of "Wise Men"
Tucker, Cynthia A. – Atlantic Journal Constitution
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr. – editor of American Spectator; author of Boy Clinton
Walters, Barbara - ABC News
Williams, Brian D. – NBC commentator
Zahn, Paula A. – commentator on CNN, former CBS and FOX "journalist"
Zakaria, Fareed – columnist for Newsweek (international edition)
Zuckerman, Mortimer B. – editor-in-chief of U.S. News and World Report
Corporate CFR:
The McGraw-Hill Company, Inc.
Time Warner Inc.
====
(excerpt} WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION FOUND IN IRAQ
Walter A. Davis
Preface: The Sum of All Fears
april13, 2006
http://mwcnews.net/content/view/6057/26
http://www.walteradavis.com/
Thanks to Seymour M. Hersch (The New Yorker, April 17,2006), Jorge Hirsch (ZNet, April 10, 2006) and others we now know that the unthinkable is being actively contemplated by the Bush Administration; namely, the use of nuclear weapons in an upcoming assault on Iran. Moreover, this action will mark the beginning of a period in which the use of tactical nuclear weapons will become an official part of U.S. policy. If these things happen one reason will be our failure to understand the present and the past. The past I refer to is marked by the continued effort of Americans to deny the horror and immorality of Hiroshima and Nagasaki despite the efforts of historians to establish the truth about those actions and the admission by the architects of those actions that the official explanation that we dropped the bomb to end the War and save countless lives was a myth constructed to hide our actual motives: (1) to avenge Pearl Harbor, (2) to create a laboratory so that our scientific and military personnel could study the effects of the Bomb, (3) to justify the amount of money spent developing it, and (4) to impress the Russians and the rest of the world with this opening salvo of the Cold War. The first act of global terrorism. * The present I refer to is the continued use by the U.S. of depleted uranium weaponry in Iraq. A large conference on The Nuclear Future held last year in New York was dedicated to the question whether the U.S. would cross the nuclear threshold in the near future. At one of the plenary sessions I suggested that it already had crossed that threshold and that we should not remain fixated on the Bomb as the term of reference in deciding the issue. Although I cited a number of studies as the basis of my claim, that claim was greeted with stern rebukes from the “scientific” members of both panel and audience and became a common reference point for jokes and jeers the rest of the conference. Subsequent studies of the effects of Depleted Uranium have only served to strengthen the argument I presented there. And so I would submit once again that the evidence is in, is in fact overwhelming: that the U.S. has been fighting a nuclear war in Iraq and that the mainline media continue to avoid that story like the plague. With obvious results: getting away with that kind of nuclear weaponry in Iraq emboldens the Administration to take the next step in Iran. There still is time to try to stop this. And the best way perhaps is to now make public in all media what the U.S. has done and is continuing to do in Iraq, and in effect to every American serviceperson who serves there.
In hopes of contributing to the effort to bring that repressed story to attention I’ve asked the editors of MWCNews to make available here the fourth chapter of my recent book Death’s Dream Kingdom: The American Psyche Since 9-11 (London: Pluto Press, 2006). [,,,]
Today marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Samuel Beckett. Theodor Adorno correctly termed Beckett’s greatest work Endgame the first work of art of the nuclear age. It was so because of Beckett’s uncompromising effort to comprehend the historical, ontological, and aesthetic implications of the Bomb. Beckett took up the challenge Einstein set when he said that “the Bomb changed everything—except the way we think.” Because the latter has not yet taken place we today again face the unthinkable. To reformulate a well known maxim: those who do not understand the present are condemned to its more horrifying future.
I. Laugh In Brings You the News:
Death's Dream Kingdom: The American Psyche since 9-11
By Walter A. Davis
The US CODE, TITLE 50, CHAPTER 40 Sec. 2302 defines a Weapon of Mass Destruction as follows: “The term ‘weapon of mass destruction” means any weapon or device that is intended, or has the capability, to cause death or serious bodily injury to a significant number of people through the release, dissemination, or impact of (A) toxic or poisonous chemicals or their precursors, (B) a disease organism, or (C) radiation or radioactivity.”...
Depleted uranium (DU) is a waste product of the uranium enrichment process that fuels both our nuclear weapons and civilian nuclear power programs. In fact, over 99% of the uranium enrichment process results in this waste product, which has a half life of 4.5 billion years. DU is both a toxic heavy metal and a radiological poison. The U.S. currently has over 10 million tons of DU. The disposal of nuclear waste is, of course, one of the unintended consequences of the development of nuclear power. Fortunately, a solution to the problem of DU has been found. DU is now used in virtually every weapon employed by the U.S. in Iraq (and earlier in Afghanistan and in Kosovo). To cite the most conspicuous example: every penetrator rod in a shell shot from an Abrams tank contains 10 pounds of DU. DU is selected for weapons for three reasons: it’s cheap ( made available to arms manufacturers free of charge) and easy to develop; it’s heavy, 1.7 times the density of lead and thus most effective at killing because it penetrates anything it hits; and it’s pyrophoric, igniting and burning on contact with air and breaking up on contact with its target into extremely small particles of radioactive dust which is dispersed into the atmosphere. The result: permanent contamination of air, water, and soil.2
DU was first used by the U.S. in Desert Storm. The amount used was between 315-350 tons. Five times as much was used during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Over a third of the U.S. soldiers who served in the first Gulf War are now permanently disabled. The Department of Energy and the Department of Defense of course continue to deny that DU has any harmful effects. A U.N. sub-commission on Human Rights has ruled that DU, which fits the definition of a “dirty bomb, ” is an illegal weapon. 3
Huge chunks of radioactive debris full of DU now litter the cities and countryside of Iraq. Fine radioactive dust permeates the entire country. The problem of clean-up is insoluble. The entire ecosystem of Iraq is permanently contaminated. The Iraq people are the new hibakusha. Their fate, like that of the “survivors” of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is a condition of death-in-life. The long term health effects of DU on the Iraqi people (and on our own troops) are incalculable. There is no mask or protective clothing that can be devised to prevent radioactive dust from entering the lungs or penetrating the skin. Moreover, DU targets the DNA and the Master Code (histone), altering the genetic future of exposed populations. Because it is the perfect weapon for delivering nanoparticles of poison, radiation, and nano-pollution directly into living cells, DU is the perfect weapon for extinguishing entire populations. The Iraqi’s are not alone. Vast regions of the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Balkans have been permanently contaminated with radioactive dust and debris.4
These facts are worth bearing in mind the next time we are told what has now become a bipartisan article of faith: the Iraqi people are better off with Saddam Hussein gone. Or as Bill Maher put it on his show of Sept. 24, 2004: “Eventually they’re better off.”
We need a new term to describe our actions in Iraq. Genocide is inadequate. Thus: Ecocide [from Gr oikos, house; and –cide, the destruction of] Ecology has two referents. It refers to that branch of biology that deals with the relations between living organisms and their environment and that branch of sociology that deals with relations among human groups with reference to material resources and consequent social and cultural patterns. The destruction of both is the goal of Ecocide. Ecocide is the deliberate production of a condition of permanent radiological, biological, and chemical contamination whereby death comes to inhabit an entire ecosystem. A condition of ecocide exists when life itself and all possibilities of its renewal are being systematically destroyed in an identifiable geographical area, which is also defined in terms of specifiable racial and religious characteristics. As is now known, the cumulative result of such actions may bring about for the entire planet the condition of homo sacer described by Giorgio Agamben. 5 The European Council on Radiation Risk, for example, calculated the damage to human health of the low level radiation thusfar released into the atmosphere from nuclear weapons testing to be 61, 600, 000 deaths by cancer alone. Moreover, in our wars since 1991 the U.S. has now released in terms of global atmospheric pollution the equivalent of 400, 000 Nagasaki Bombs. 6 [...]
====
Filipino American Hip-Hop and Class Consciousness: Renewing the Spirit of Carlos Bulosan
by Michael Viola
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/viola150406.html
author's intro.:
This essay is my attempt to write about Filipino American hip-hop from a historical materialist perspective with the deeper understanding that hip-hop is an art form that was created "for the people." I begin with an analysis of hip-hop and its absorption into a culture of capitalism. I argue that its absorption has not occurred in a vacuum but is actually related to a larger weakness of U.S. society and the progressive left. Second, I claim that, for Filipino American hip-hop to effectively resist its co-optation, it must revive the anticapitalist and antiracist perspectives embodied in the cultural work Carlos Bulosan. Lastly, I look at Filipino American hip-hop artists Native Guns as a timely case study. I show that their music continues the long history of Filipinos in America who use their cultural work to resist and challenge structures of exploitation, domination, and an ideology of racism.
excerpt:
...Historically, the oral expression central to hip-hop reflected the youth of color who were struggling to survive in a system that continually justified the injustice that surrounded them. Hip-hop as an art form originated from the youth of inner city New York who were making sense of a history of contradiction that was not of their choosing. For hip-hop to uphold its history of resistance and assist in an emancipatory struggle, it will need to rise above glorifying "thug life" or, in the words of Bulosan, "adding form to decay." Instead, hip-hop must expose the origins of people's hunger and deprivation, in the hope that people will take part in the struggle to attain "a higher dream of human perfection."23
The Filipino American rap group Native Guns is an important case study for hip-hop. Emees Kiwi and Bambu grew up in Southern California, highly influenced by the gangster rap that originated in their communities. Bambu discusses the influence of gangster rap -- how it helped him come to grips with the experiences he faced in his community such as police harassment, drugs, and a lack of academic or job opportunities. He states, "Our music is just a continuation of a story started by gangster rap. I'm strongly influenced by [that] music and have learned and progressed from it."24 While hip-hop originated from the experiences of African Americans, according to Victor Wallis, "hip hop authenticity is rooted not in anyone's physical traits or language, but in the shared experience of oppression."25 Native Guns' music demonstrates how Filipino-Americans are making use of hip-hop to articulate the contradictions of capitalism they experience. Their work continues in the tradition of Carlos Bulosan as they express a clear understanding that they are products of a specific history marked by struggle and resistance. Acknowledging this history, Kiwi states, "We come from a long tradition of . . . artists who have challenged the status quo and mainstream thinking," and he elaborates that "our voice comes from a Filipino American perspective, giving us some distinct experiences to rap about."26 As a result, their music takes cultural action against the ruling elite while addressing the social conditions that have left their communities devastated.
Click here to listen to Track 17 of Stray Bullets by Native Guns!
Prior to the tragic events that took place in Washington D.C. and New York City on September 11, 2001, the U.S. government controlled the challenge of immigration with a concealed logic of racism (recall Propositions 21, 209, and 227 in California). Anti-immigration policies were anchored in the assumed tax burden of immigrants as well as their supposed propensity for criminality. However, with the shallow sentiment of pluralism celebrated in the United States, borders were still represented as open for immigrants who were willing to work hard and sacrifice to attain the "American Dream." Native Guns expresses the realities for immigrants in the United Sates prior to 9/11 in track 17 of their latest CD, Stray Bullets Mix Tape Volume 1. They sing,
All my illegal aliens, black or Mexican
Whether banana boat or hole in the fence
I'm down with ya, come across that border, get rich.
But first let me tell you about the land of opportunity,
The ones who run the country look nothing like you and me,
So they patrol the community, cage us into poverty,
Feed you television so you'll know that you're an anomaly,
That means you're different,
Good luck trying to pay the rent,
And welfare, well yeah, it really does exist,
But you'll be on that shit for good,
Cuz, in the hood, you'll have to work a few jobs
So that your kids eat like they should,
And the junk food epidemic keeps your kids unhealthy
To die at thirty-five and leave the world unwealthy.
So that's the Promised Land you left your country for
But it's the same, it's corrupt, and you still poor.27
The realities of immigrants have only worsened in a post 9/11 world. The U.S. government has been given the "green light for a full blown and bipartisan agenda of repression at home, as well as for the expanded imperial project abroad."28 Reminiscent of McCarthyism in the 1950s, the U.S. is again on a crusade -- this time, to hunt anti-patriotic, domestic terrorists. The reactionary legislative agenda did not end with the Patriot and Homeland Security Acts that have institutionalized racist policing of all immigrants deemed unassimilable. On December 16, 2006, the United States House of Representatives passed H.R. 4437 titled "The Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005."29 If passed by the United States Senate, President Bush could sign a bill that equates illegal immigrants with terrorists. Undocumented immigrants as well as any individual or organization that "harbor" them could be charged with criminal penalties and subject to incarceration. Furthermore, if this bill passes, a 700-mile fence will be constructed along the Mexico border to deny access into the United States.30
The subjugation immigrants face in the "belly of the beast" is connected to the outright repression in the Third World: to take just two examples, in the Philippines, commonly referred to as the "second front" in the "war on terrorism," students, activists, and politicians are continual targets by military death squads supported by the U.S. government, and in Iraq, we will probably never know the number of civilians killed by U.S. "smart bombs." The common denominator is what Lenin acknowledged as the evolution of capitalist development in all its complexity (military, political, social, and economic). Peter McLaren identifies inseparable dominations at home and abroad as the new imperialism "connected to the increased competition for control over global territories (raw materials and resources) between imperialist rivals such as the United States, Britain, and France; the coming of age of 'new mammoth' corporations that seek competitive advantage through their own home-based nation-states; and the development of an entire world system of colonization that creates uneven development and economic dependencies."31 However, it is important to remember that, whenever such a system of subjugation exists, there are always resistance to it, voiced in thunders as well as whispers. In the same song, Native Guns unites the resistance found worldwide:
Free Palestine, Iraq and all victims of occupation,
Every human got to fight for their self-determination.
By any means necessary, pencil or pistol,
Beats and lyrics being played at the disco
They label us criminals cuz we got guns,
We got guns cuz we got no other options.
Guerilla armies up in Third World jungles,
To gangs in the hood, it's all the same struggle.32
The struggles for self-determination in the Philippines, Palestine, Iraq, and the United States are not necessarily all based on the praxis of anti-capitalism, anti-racism, or anti-imperialism. However, Native Guns rightfully grounds the sentiment for justice, dignity, and social transformation in the experience of love, echoing Che Guevara's description of revolutionary praxis that he describes as "guided by strong feelings of love," without which "it is impossible to think of an authentic revolutionary without this quality."33 Allow me to conclude with the lyrics of Native Guns that reproduce Che's conviction:
We want freedom,
We want something to be proud of.
When it comes down to it,
Revolution's all about love.
The kind of love that one would give up their life for,
So that their family won't ever have to die poor.34
Michael Viola is a graduate student at the University of Oregon with research interests in education, race studies, imperialism, and the Philippines. He is the west coast director and one of the co-founders of Sandiwa, a national Filipino American youth organization. You can contact him at mviola@uoregon.edu.
===
Beginning a New Interruption, Closer to Home
US capital, after 30 years of pounding down the living standards of
workers at home and abroad; after driving Latin American into the lost
decade of the 1980s, and leading it into the advanced export deprivation
of the 1990s; after ruining village, small scale agriculture; after
IMF/WB austerity program after austerity program dismantling mine and
factory; after a one dozen, two dozen years of NAFTA, the Plaza Accords,
the Washington Consensus; after decades of "special zones,"
"entrepreneur enclaves," "development areas," turning borders and entire
countries into maquilladoras, sweatshops, and massage parlors, finally
found itself face to face in its home territory with the labor it had
imported as the result of the capital it had exported.
http://thewolfatthedoor.blogspot.com
posted by lizburbank at 4/17/2006 11:58:00 AM
6 comments
