Please join us on Sunday, March 6th at 5pm for a RAIM organizational and educational meeting. We will be discussing numerous topics, including planning for upcoming events and campaigns. Please RSVP and let us know if you want to add anything to the agenda.
Agenda:
-Introductions (5 mins)
-News items (10-20 min)
-Discussion on RAIM Strategy (10-15 minutes)
-Planning for events (30 mins)
-Study group intro discussion and assignments (15-30 mins)
Filed under Uncategorized
We’ve begun posting only @ www.antiimperialism.wordpress.com (tell your friends)…
Filed under Uncategorized
A fitting message to the white settler nation.
Filed under Africa, Agitation Statements, Anti-Racism, Black Nation, Culture and Art, Imperialism, Videos, White Amerika
From UMAS MECHA de Auraria:
A Night of Revolution: 100 year celebration of the Mexican Revolution.
Friday, Nov. 19th; 5-10pm
St. Cajaten’s on the Auraria campus
Keynote Speaker: Ricardo Romero
From Resistencia Mexicana:
Film Screening & Discussion: Mexico The Frozen Revolution./Película y Discusión Mexico: “La Revolución Congelada.”
Saturday, Nov. 20th; 6pm
27 Social Centre (2727 W. 27th Ave., Denver, Co)
Raymundo Gleyzer’s masterpiece, Mexico: The Frozen Revolution uses rare newsreel footage of Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata to connect the betrayal of the 1910 Mexican Revolution with the failure of revolution in his own time. At risk to his own safety, he then exposes the PRI – the party that governed Mexico for almost 70 years – as corrupt.
Esta obra maestra del Argentino Raymundo Gleyzer, utiliza imagenes y metrajes poco antes vistas sobre Pancho Villa y Emiliano Zapata para asi enlazar la traición de la revolución Mexicana de 1910 con el fracaso de la revolución en su epoca. Arriesgando su propia vida, Gleyzer expone a el partido del PRI-el partido que domino a Mexico por 70 años-como corrupto.
for more info contact us at mexican.resistance@gmail.com or facebook.com/resistencia.mexicana
para más información contacte con nosotros en mexican.resistance@gmail.com o facebook.com/resistencia.mexicana
From Los Herederos of Change & Esperanza/Beyond Chicanismo
The Black Panthers: 44 Years of Serving the People
Featuring Comrade Steve, a former member of the Black Panther Party.
Monday, Nov. 29th; 10am
Tivoli room 640
(A previous interview with Comrade Steve on the topic of the BPP, conducted by RAIM-Denver, is available here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr-woFTlgpY)
Filed under Actions and Events, Occupied Mexico/Aztlan
http://www.raimd.wordpress.com
Over the next few months, RAIM-Denver’s blog will go through a period of relative inactivity. Members of RAIM-Denver are nonetheless engaged in a number of ongoing projects, including but not limited to: learning Spanish, researching and writing longer essays, writing and doing work with other Third Worldists organizations, organizing study groups, and engaging in local, informal dialogue and education.
In the meantime, we encourage comrades worldwide to step up and pick up some slack. Specifically, we encourage comrades to begin taking steps towards being more proficient writers for the movement. Writing news and analysis, cultural reviews and even research is something that can be accomplished by lone comrades, yet can have far-reaching consequences. Writing up-to-date articles and providing a revolutionary, anti-imperialist analysis is one important role the Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Movement has thus-far fulfilled. We are looking forward to continuing in the role in an even greater way into 2011 and beyond. Now is the time for comrades who’ve thus far been on the sidelines to take a more active role in this regard.
Likewise, study is important. There are now many comrades engaged in serious study to the end of contributing towards revolution. This is good and should continue. We encourage comrades to not neglect study, but redouble their efforts with informal and formal group study programs, insofar as it is possible.
Over the next year, we expect the Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Movement to congeal into a larger, nodal, international network. With this positive breakthrough will come some changes. Our message and mission will be the same: revolution is possible, not based on the collective self-interest of bourgeosified First Worlders, but on the pressing necessity of the vast majority of humanity exploited by capitalist-imperialism; and our role, in betrayal of our immediate interest and often class background, is one in service to the world’s masses and their revolution.
Filed under Organizing
The Amerikkkan electorate: militarist and chauvinist
raims.wordpress.com
U$ imperialists, of both parties, appeal to the chauvinism and militarism of the Amerikans this election cycle. Then again, our readers will be asking by now, “What’s new?” For the past couple years, talking heads and ideologues from both of the main partisan wings of the US system have been rallying their respective “bases” in preparation for the contentious midterm elections. In just the past few weeks, the imperialist media had been inundated with political ads and substanceless, vitriolic rhetoric.
On the Republican side, their Amerikan grassroots “Tea Party” movement has whipped up a white chauvinist frenzy right in time to derail the “Obama phenomenon.” In the midst of this racist uprising by the recently dispossessed Amerikan settler white nation, the favorite target has been migrant labor from Mexico. The most egregious example of the consequences of this radical reaction is the “Papers, please” legislation in Arizona, on Mexican land stolen by Amerika no less! (1) Fast forward over 160 years later, and over 70% of Amerikan are in favor of some similar draconian and fascist legislation. (2) Another side-effect was the recent inflammation of Amerikan chauvinism against Islam in general, which had exceeded levels beyond anything seen during the Bush era. (3)
On the Democratic side, the Obama-lovers are attempting to paint the Republicans as “shipping Amerikan jobs overseas.” (4) This thinly-veiled “pro-labor” racism serves to merely shift the chauvinism of Amerikans towards Latinos, to chauvinism directed towards Asians. To pile onto this chauvinism, the White House itself is attempting to paint their GOP opponents with the “Chinese money” campaign corruption card. (5) As if US imperialism hasn’t attempted to influence political processes by whatever means, monetarily or militarily, worldwide.
The two political parties of US imperialism aren’t just battling over who Amerikans should be more chauvinist against. They are also battling for Amerikan public opinion over which Muslim-majority country to invade and occupy. The Republicans’ latest superstars have been some the most fervent Zionists, with a warmonger’s eye towards toppling the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Democrats’ “common-sense” militarism has its eyes toward continuing the existing occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan in a “non-direct, supervisory form,” as well as continuing the incursions into Pakistan. Long gone are the anti-war voices from the political spectrum, from either “libertarian” Republicans or “progressive” Democrats. One Tea Party-backed congressional candidate in North Carolina includes a US pig soldier suspected of killing two unarmed civilians in Iraq. (6) On the other side, Democrats in Washington State appeal to the votes of “workers” from Boeing, a major imperialist arms manufacturer. One such political ad, from a Democrat no less, makes a simultaneously chauvinist and militarist appeal to Boeing workers. The ad says, in essence, that Amerikans should continue to be paid handsomely for building and maintaining the imperialist war machine. (7)
What else is new with politics in the US empire? Certainly not the brain dead response of the First World so-called “left” to Amerikan elections. The constant meme coming from them states that the top two imperialist parties don’t really represent the “will of the [Amerikan] people.” The supposition here is that the Amerikan so-called “masses” are inherently progressive (if not “revolutionary”) in their majority. (8) Nothing could be further from the truth. One question for our First Worldists: If Amerikans are so inherently “progressive,” why do the two top imperialist parties pour billions of dollars into filling their airwaves with this chauvinism and militarism? (9)
A “democracy” that does not represent the will of the world’s oppressed and exploited majority is not democratic in any real sense. Bourgeois democracy in the First World seeks to affirm the unity of the imperialist populations against the global majority. RAIM struggles for a world where the needs and will of the global popular majority, who make less than $2.50 a day, are placed first per the democratic principle of “majority rules.” (10) To create a truly democratic society, the world must be turned upside down.
Notes:
2. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/05/12/94050/most-americans-approve-of-arizonas.html
3. http://www.lewrockwell.com/margolis/margolis201.html
4. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2013264531_bruce27.html
5. http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/ap/china-bashing-is-bipartisan-in-us-races-106366768.html
6. http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/10/gop-candidate-killed-unarmed-iraqi/
7. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyk3QLaX2nQ
8. http://revcom.us/Constitution/constitution.html
10. http://raims.wordpress.com/2010/10/01/the-anti-kolumbus-day-manifesto/
Filed under Imperialism, Organizing
Anti-Kolumbus Day 2010
(www.raimd.wordpress.com)
Kolumbus Day, amongst Amerika’s quaintest celebrations of its founding genocide, rolled through again throughout Occupied North America. In Denver, the usual crowd of fake Italians and flag-waving crackers put on another grosteque display of parasitism and reaction. In absence of any evident protest plans, RAIM put a call-out to protest against the chauvinist Killumbus celebrators.
Behind the scenes we discussed the issue with interested parties and decided two protests were a good idea: first a rally and demonstration against the parade itself; then a protest across the street from their after-parade lunch.
Our efforts resulted in around 50 protesting the celebration of conquest and genocide. RAIM made a number of signs and banners. Some examples included, “End Amerika’s Longest Running Genocide: 1492-2010,” “I Hate the USA (there, I said it),” “Kick Cracker Bum$ Off Stolen Indian Lands,” and “No Amnesty for Pilgrims or Their ‘Anchor Babies.”
The protest slowly warmed up and was diverse and energetic, especially as the plunder parade drew near. There was no shortage to opposition this blatant display of reaction.
The actual Kolumbus Day parade was as trashy as usual. It was both a celebration of past imperialism and genocide and a reflection of that which goes on today. As usual, the parade was made up of motorcycles, muscle cars, some Hummers, and semis with empty flatbed trucks: all toys for Amerikan parasites. The parade featured Amerikan military troops, who are imitating Kolumbus in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere today.
Tom Tancredo, who was scheduled to appear in the convoy of conquest, didn’t show because he supposedly had a cold. The popular right-wing candidate in Kolorado’s 2010 governor campaign, his politics include: defining unborn Amerikans as living people and abortion as murder; advocating bombing Mecca and other Muslim holy sites; describing Spanish-speaking migrants as “illegal;” and claiming that Hezbollah has activist “terrorist” cells in Mexico. Even though Tankkkredo was too sick to sit in the passenger seat of a slow moving vehicle for 40 minutes, plenty of his racist supporters were there to represent.
The protesters’ chants included “Kolumbus Go to Hell,” “Kolumbus Go Home” “Yankee [and Gringo] Go Home,” and “Face It, You’re Racists, Your Claims On This Land Are Baseless.” These chants reflected the fact that Amerika is in fact a settler-empire founded on stolen land. Many of the protesters wanted to change that. Many people took the opportunity to give the parade-goers history lessons. Some suggested a wider range of other Italian history figures to celebrate besides Kolumbus. RAIMers asked through megaphones, “Where are your hoods, you racists?”
The second protest was even more charged. This was the first year that protesters showed up to the Kolumbus beneficiaries’ after-party. There, many of racists tried to piggishly provoke fights with protesters in front of the cops. Others challenged protesters to back-alley brawls. Some asserted we were lucky the Denver police were near by, suggesting we would be physically harmed if not. For the protesters, this merely confirmed the Kolumbus Day gathering was just another lynch mob.
Some of the krackers called protesters ‘faggots.’ This was met by a wide range of responses. Some protesters admitted to not conforming to traditional gender or sex roles. Others suggested the krackers themselves might by projecting their own repressed desires onto the anti-imperialist opposition before them. George Vendegnia, head of the ‘Sons of Italy,’ with all the grace of a drunken date-rapist at a honky-tonk bar, gestured simultaneously to his genitalia and various protesters numerous times.
A moment of comedy for the protesters occurred when some of the racists again tried to look tough. A large groups of biker-krackers pulled near the intersection next to the protesters and began revving their obscenely loud engines. The protesters’ chants of “Pigs On Hogs” were muffled out by the noise. However, when the biker klan was order by the cops to move along, one kracker’s bike slid out from underneath him, resulting in him dropping it and scratching his multi-thousand-dollar custom paint job. Laughter largely overtook the protest crowd. However, one protester’s effort to help the pig recover his motorcycle from the pavement sent 10 or so more racists running over expecting a fight.
After a time of letting the paraders know they were racists, we headed out, fired up from confronting racial hate in the town. Over the course of the day, RAIMers had handed most of the protesters copies of the ‘Troublemaker’ DVD, from which we still get positive feedback, and our recent programmatic statement, ‘The Anti-Kolumbus Day Manifesto.’
Some local media made note of the declining number of protesters at the first protest, but failed to report on the second protest, which drew additional people. The media also noted the declining participation of the parade. Even with the better weather from last year, the parade was still pathetic at barely 200 participants.
The Kolumbus myth is a center of the official narrative of Amerika as a beacon of freedom and democracy, and glosses over the legacy of imperialism that is at the heart of Amerika. Beginning after the anti-colonial movements, this narrative has been challenged internationally. In many countries and regions, Indigenous Peoples Day or Indigenous Resistance Day has replaced Kolumbus Day: a step in the right direction. Kolumbus Day is not part of a celebration of Italian or Italian-America history or heritage. It is a celebration of US and Western supremacy based on aggression and exploitation. It must be opposed along with imperialism itself.
It is worth noting that in Occupied America, anti-imperialist forces are a vast minority. We are ‘behind enemy lines.’ This was evident at the second protest, which was more of a stand-off at times. The racists were correct in one clear sense. Were the cops not present, they could have easily overran the diverse, smaller crowd of protesters. The 200 or so krackers present represented 200 or so potential modern brownshirts in a future fascist movement; 200 out of many more. To underscore the fascistic nature of the Kolumbus Day paraders and the danger they represent would be an error of underestimating the nature of the enemy. Already, Kolumbus Day has become a rallying cry for those who champion the reassertion of global Amerikan supremacy. (1)
Kolumbus Day, like imperialism, will come to an end. However, it will not be through the singular efforts of a small minority of anti-imperialists in western, First World countries. It will only end when the exploited masses of the Third World stand up, assert control over their own lives, beat back the First World and build a world free from imperialism. Standing against our material interests and becoming a traitor to one’s exploiter background; siding with the world’s exploited majority and supporting national liberation for captive, oppressed nations; opposing Amerikan chauvinism and overt celebrations of genocide and supremacy: these things are the least we can do here.
Notes:
(1) http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/28647
(image by Carlos Latuff)
Palestine and Israel: The Pit and the Pendulum
(www.raimd.wordpress.com)
The theatrical and the macabre are taking place again in the so-called Middle East Peace Process. Israel still wants to rid the land of the Palestinian Question. And it came as no surprise to those of us who pay attention to that part of the world. Netanyahu is exactly as we expected, a fucking racist pig who hails from the tradition of western imperialism. Israel is doing what it has from the beginning, demanding what they’ve already taken; Jerusalem (al Quds), the land Israel has occupied since 1967; The West Bank, land the fucking racist settlers continue to steal. Israel rejects the Right of Return for all refugees to Occupied Palestine, “Israel” for the racists.
The first element in this conflict is the land, whether al-Quds Sharif, Jayous, Bil’in or the Golan Heights and Jaffa. The so-called security fence in the West Bank is actually a well-fortified wall with military back-up that has swallowed up the resources that once fed Palestinians. The wall serves to maintain the lavish consumption of the settlers, who, along with Israel’s themselves, are part of the world richest 15%. Israel won’t budge on “Jerusalem.” The demolitions and land grabs continue in al-Quds. The “security fence”, or apartheid wall, continues to swallow up and maintain resources in the West Bank. The arrests of members of resistance groups continue, and Israel has refused to extend the 10-month ban on settlement building in the West Bank, which expired 26 September 2010.
Once again, the negotiations fail, as if anyone is surprised. The power, the capital, the weapons of Israel, serve to oppress, impoverish, and starve the people of Palestine. Israel continues to murder the Palestinians as the imperialist world watches. The only real justice for Palestine is the dissolution of the settler state of Israel and imperialist system it serves. As with any other monster, only those comfortably in the belly will miss it.
(Here’s a classic example of how the narrative works care of the BBC)
Filed under Barack Obama, Israel, News and Analysis, Palestine, Political Economy
http://www.raimd.wordpress.com
On the early morning of September 24th, SWAT teams in Minneapolis and Chicago kicked in the doors of private residences, seizing computers and documents and serving grand jury subpoenas to at least thirteen US activists. The activists, many associated with First Worldist organizations, are, according to an FBI representative, part of an investigation “concerning the material support for terrorism.” (1)
Ted Dooley, a lawyer for one of the activists, said the raids regard “contact with FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) and Hezbollah, all of which are FTOs (Foreign Terrorist Organizations).” Some of the subpoened activists had recently traveled to Columbia and Palestine to do solidarity work with those resisting US-sponsored militarism and admit to meeting with members of these groups, yet deny providing any material support to any organizations labeled ‘terrorist’ by the US. (2)
The raids against Amerikan activists come during the ‘progressive’ administration of Barack Obama. Despite this reputation, Obama has stepped up the war in Afghanistan (3); increased drone attacks in Pakistan and elsewhere(4); amplified support for Israel (5); and maintains close relations with the comprador dictatorship in Columbia. (6) Now, as White supremacists openly organize militias and street gangs, such attacks come upon members of the self-described ‘peace’ movement. (7)
The First Worldist so-called ‘left’ has made a lot out of the FBI raids. For the most part, the First Worldist ‘left’ is ignored in the US, both by the imperialist state and the petty-imperialist asses. Such raids are therefore a relatively big deal for First Worldists, and small protests were held in dozens of US cities. (8)
Many on the so-called left have described the raids as part of an intimidation campaign meant to silence opposition prior to escalated imperialist militarism in the Middle East and Latin America. Others have described it as a ‘fishing expedition,’ an attempt to acquire as much information on the nominal ‘left’ as possible. (9) While both are likely true to a small extent, it misses the obvious.
The FBI raids concern those who facilitated connections between US activists and those resisting imperialist designs in their respective countries. The raids targeted activists who support, at least at face value, the active struggle of Third World masses.
Any criminal charges will likely be based around ‘material support’ for US-designated ‘terrorist’ organizations. There are only 46 such ‘terrorist’ organizations, a number which does not reflect the far greater magnitude of peoples’ resistance. ‘Material support’ is extremely broad and can be interpreted any number of ways. While we certainly support the activists as defendants for the ‘crime’ of reaching out to those resisting imperialist terror, we question the very nature of First Worldist ‘aid’ to Third World peoples’ struggles.
First Worldism, the thought that the First World masses are exploited and part of a global proletariat, is not a minor error or slight miscalculation. When espoused to Third World peoples, it is an outright lie that misrepresents the true scope of the anti-imperialist struggle. Such a lie is so fundamental, its spread can only set back the anti-imperialist struggles being waged in Latin America, the Middle East and around the Third World. First Worldism, which denies First Worlders are affluent due to the exploitation of Third World peoples, must be opposed on an international level.
True First World anti-imperialist solidarity comes from working to create support for Third World liberation struggles, not globe-trotting while spreading the lie of First Worldism. True anti-imperialist solidarity comes by honestly assessing the social landscape and building public opinion in favor of Third World peoples’ revolution, not opportunistically pimping-off pre-existing resistance movements in an attempt to stand-out amidst an array of similar, First-Worldist grouplets.
The imperialist state vamped on several Amerikan activists for what they did right: work to build support for Third World liberation struggles. However, these attacks are light compared to what imperialism doles out to Third World peoples.
Imperialism will be defeated by the exclusive struggles of the world’s exploited majority and their allies. As the contradiction between the people of the exploited Third World and imperialist First heats up, we can only expect increasing legal attacks against those in the US and First World who foster support for such struggles. The correct route to take is not one of eclecticism, opportunism and appealing to the broad First World so-called ‘masses.’ The correct rout is one of clarity, determined strategy, and honesty guided by the sprit of revolutionary anti-imperialism. Real support is telling the truth and still working to advance the revolutionary struggle of the world’s exploited masses.
Sources:
(1) http://www.pjstar.com/news/x1936771969/Group-plans-protests-of-FBI-raids
(2) http://www.twincities.com/ci_16168424
(3) https://raimd.wordpress.com/2009/08/22/obama-more-troops-more-imperialism-more-of-the-same/
(4) https://raimd.wordpress.com/2010/10/03/drones-kill-28-people-then-hit-the-funeral/
(5) http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Security-Industry/2010/09/28/Israel-gets-boost-in-US-military-aid/UPI-98411285697147/
(6) http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2010/09/obama-congratulates-colombias.html
(7) http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/11/white_power_usa_the_rise_of
(8) http://kasamaproject.org/2010/09/26/actions-planned-in-coming-days/
(9) http://www.frso.org/about/statements/2010/activists-denounce-fbi-raids.htm
Filed under Barack Obama, Imperialism, News and Analysis, Organizing
Drones kill 28 people, then hit the funeral
http://www.raimd.wordpress.com
A recent string of bombings, killing dozens in Pakistan, has the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, or “drone,” making headlines once again. So-called “Predator Drones” have become one of imperialism’s favorite tools of oppression. Bombing attacks by these vehicles are being carried out consistently and more frequently than ever. (1).
Predator Drones are center stage as the US ups its assault on Pakistan’s northwest border region. At least 28 people were killed as a result of drone strikes in South Waziristan during the week of September 19 (2). The week’s two bloodiest attacks, responsible for more than a dozen deaths, took place on September 22. The initial strike launched two missiles at a targeted vehicle, killing seven. A funeral was arranged for the victims in the following hours; subsequently, this funeral was also targeted by a drone strike, resulting in more deaths yet. This absurd sequence mirrors an incident that took place last summer. On the morning of Tuesday 23 June 2009, unmanned drones killed more than 45 people in a series of bombings including a strike on a funeral procession for victims of the earlier assault (3).
Violence caused by drone missiles has sparked outrage in Pakistan, where drones have killed at least 1,700 people(4). The mutilation caused by the bombings makes compiling a solid count of the deaths all but impossible. Even so, it is clear that hundreds of those killed have been civilians (5). Drones have been a fixture in Pakistan for over five years; however, US officials do not officially comment on any drone activities. The attacks fall under the veil of CIA secrecy. It is clear, nonetheless, that using drones has become particularly attractive to decision-makers in the past two years. Estimated death tolls clearly show drone attacks being responsible for more deaths in 2009 alone than in the four years between 2004-2008 combined (6).
With mounting numbers of casualties, drone attacks have become known for their haphazard destruction. Missiles fired from the unpiloted vehicles are often grossly off-target. This, and general belligerence have contributed to the high civilian deaths which have, embarrassingly for the US, included Amerikan citizens (7).
Part of the cause of the vehicle’s reckless imprecision is being revealed in an ongoing lawsuit. Accusations and evidence depict the as CIA consciously utilizing faulty targeting software in the unmanned vehicles. IISI, a small, Massachusetts-based software company alleges that IT firm “Netezza” facilitated the CIA with a pirated, and knowingly-unreliable, version of their software to the CIA for use in US drone vehicles. The location-analysis software in turn may have produced locations up to 13 meters off target (8). IISI was pressured to meet a quick deadline to provide the software, when the company voiced reservations, Netezza allegedly went ahead and reverse-engineered the program themselves. The IISI Chief Technology Officer summarized his earliest feelings on the situation, stating, “they want to kill people with my software that doesn’t work” (9). The lawsuit aims to halt use of the pirated software by Netezza and its clients, including the CIA. IISI has expressed concern that the buggy software may lead to loss of innocent life. Unfortunately, the host of civilian deaths cannot be declared a mere “software issue.” Such recklessness is hardwired into the logic of imperialism.
Predator Drones are becoming a standard instrument in the oppression of Third World peoples by . As RAIM has noted (xhttps://raimd.wordpress.com/2010/07/02/imperialism-drones-on/), US drones are now deployed everywhere from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and recently on the militarized US/Mexico border. Israel used US-provided drones in attacks on Gaza in December 2008. The First World is looking to a high technology, impersonal approach of fighting their battles. These machines cause much destruction, but high-tech gadgetry will not defeat Third Wold resistance. As comrade Lin Biao wrote in “Long Live the Victory of People’s War!”
However highly developed modern weapons and technical equipment may be and however complicated the methods of modern warfare, in the final analysis the outcome of a war will be decided by the sustained fighting of the ground forces, by the fighting at close quarters on battlefields, by the political consciousness of the men, by their courage and spirit of sacrifice. Here the weak points of U.S. imperialism will be completely laid bare, while the superiority of the revolutionary people will be brought into full play. The reactionary troops of U.S. imperialism cannot possibly be endowed with the courage and the spirit of sacrifice possessed by the revolutionary people. The spiritual atom bomb which the revolutionary people possess is a far more powerful and useful weapon than the physical atom bomb. (10)
The Third World majority, collectively terrorized by imperialism, must collectively defeat imperialism. The enemy’s extravagant technology cannot hold up against People’s War.
Notes.
1. Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann’s drones database at the New America Foundation
xxhttp://counterterrorism.newamerica.net/drones
2. xxhttp://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/09/2010921181212227907.html
3. xxhttp://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/06/200962317958264507.html
3. Ibid. Protest
4.xxhttp://counterterrorism.newamerica.net/drones#2010chart
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. xxhttp://blog.washingtonpost.com/spy-talk/2010/09/cia_drones_killed_us_citizens.html
8. xxhttp://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/09/cia-inaccurate-software-drone-attacks/
9. Ibid.
Filed under Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Black-ops, Fuck The Troops, Imperialism, News and Analysis
The Anti-Kolumbus Day Manifesto
(www.raimd.wordpress.com)
Every year in October, in cities throughout the US and occupied America, celebrations and parades are held on Kolumbus Day, in honor of Khristopher Kolumbus. And every year, though in fewer cities, these celebrations are met with resistance by those concerned with indigenous sovereignty and colonialism. This year, the protests continue.
We oppose Kolumbus Day because it is a de facto celebration of conquest, including the genocide and land theft waged against First Nations. Upon arriving in modern-day Haiti/Dominican Republic and viewing the native Tainos, Kolumbus remarked, “with fifty men, we could subjugate them all.” Thirty years after his arrival, the island’s Native population had declined by 90%. This pattern would be recreated across the Americas, particularly in the United States, where a campaign of genocide was waged against First Nation peoples by White settlers. Kolumbus would also pioneer slavery in the Americas, a phenomenon that would officially last nearly 400 years yet remains in the form of exploitation of the masses south of the militarily-imposed US-Mexico border and throughout the Third World.
We oppose Kolumbus Day because it is a de facto celebration of imperialism, the exploitation of subjugation of many peoples by a handful. Kolumbus’s original voyage was a landmark of Spanish imperialism, yet Kolumbus Day transcends this original meaning. Today, the United States stands above the rest of the world, dominating various peoples, in part by operating over 700 military bases around the globe. Today, over a billion people are faced with undernourishment, yet virtually every Amerikan is part of the world’s richest 15%. Kolumbus Day is a celebration of this ongoing imperial legacy.
We oppose Kolumbus Day because it is a celebration of parasitism and imperialist decadence. The ritualistic Kolumbus Day parade, usually consisting of closing roads for slow-moving processions of large vehicles filled with flags-waving crackers, is one made possible only through the exploitation of various countries, including their oil resources, for benefit of a decadent First World population. We protest Kolumbus Day in solidarity with those who suffer for the luxuries Amerikans receive 365 days a year, not just on this or that imperialist holiday.
Though a good start, ending Kolumbus Day alone doesn’t cut deep enough into the problem. Therefore, The Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Movement presents the following program:
1) The end of all US territorial claims; national liberation for oppressed nations. Return of land to First Nations throughout the US and Klanada. National liberation for Mexicanos on both sides of the militarily-imposed border and reunification. National liberation and sovereignty for Puerto Rico and for the Kanaka Maoli of Hawai’i. National liberation and self-determination for the Black nation. The surrender of all US-controlled land throughout the world.
2) The imposition of a globalized democracy of the world’s oppressed and exploited masses upon the United States and First World. The creation of zones throughout the current US and elsewhere to be used as the global proletariat sees fit.
3) The massive payment of reparations from Amerikans to the Third World, to be accomplished through the redistribution of land, capital and through labor.
4) Relocation of many Whites, including to the Third World, and reeducation for all Amerikans, resulting in the liquidation of much of the White nation and eradication of their parasite culture.
These are the demands of a world that suffers from deep problems and requires truly revolutionary solutions. Until these demands are met, resistance will continue.
The Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Movement-Denver
The Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Movement-Seattle
October 1st, 2010
Movie Review: Machete and The Baader Meinhof Complex
http://www.raimd.wordpress.com
Machete (2010, Ethan Maniquin and Robert Rodriguez) and The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008, Uli Edel) are two recent movies set in imperialist countries, both depicting armed struggle against reactionaries.
Machete garnered criticism prior to its release, including campaigns by White supremacists to have the film pulled from Amerikan theaters, ostensibly for fear its depiction of Mexicans engaging in mass-violence against Whites would spark a real-life ‘race’ revolt. (1) The Baader Meinhof Complex is ‘foreign film’ dramatizing the real-life Red Army Faction, a clandestine group which beginning in 1970 waged armed struggle against the Federal Republic of Germany in the name of communism and anti-imperialism.
While the movies follow dissimilar plots, both deal with the topic of revolutionary armed struggle and reaction. It’s worth noting that we at RAIM-Denver are fairly familiar with the situation involving the national oppression of Mexicans on both sides of the militarily-imposed US/Mexico border, yet are largely ignorant regarding the factual details surrounding the RAF. Thus, our treatment of The Baader Meinhof Complex will be solely as a cultural product, and not as historical analysis of the real-life RAF.
In Machete, we meet the protagonist of the same name (Danny Trejo) as a federal agent of the Mexican state. Fleeing a powerful drug cartel, Machete ends up in Texas where, while searching for work as a manual laborer, he’s forced-hired into assassinating an anti-migrant state senator, played by Robert De Niro. It’s a set-up, however. The botched assassination attempt is pinned on Machete in hopes of building public opinion for even more anti-Mexican legislation, including an electrified fence along the border.
The Baader Meinhof Complex opens in 1967, showing a student protest against the despotic Shah of Iran. The students are beat by goons of the CIA-supported monarchy and by German police as they stand defenseless, backed against a wall. Soon into the film, Ulrike Meinhoff (Martina Gedeck), a sharp-worded, progressive journalist, Andreas Baader (Moritz Bleibteu), depicted as arrogant, extreme and prone towards violent action, and Gundrin Esslin (Johanna Wokalek), a young blonde depicted as rebellious and verbally aggressive towards her parents, decide that words alone will not stop “Amerikan imperialists” or the fact that over “half the people in the world do not have enough to eat,” deciding instead to take up arms against the West German state and organs of Western capital. After going underground and running from the law, the group is apprehended and placed in isolation together as their trial begins. Subsequent ‘generations’ of the RAF arise, continuing the armed struggle but with the goal of freeing the original members. After several years and armed actions by various RAF unit, the imprisoned lead members, save Meinhof who previously died in what was called a suicide, lose hope and kill themselves as well.
People who like Machete for its thematic violence of the oppressed against the oppressor will also find The Baader Meinhof Complex interesting, though the latter is fairly longer and has slower moments towards the end. While Machete depicts plenty of over the top, high-action, fight scenes and climaxes with a ‘battle royale’ between the forces led by Machete and White supremacist militias, The Baader Meinhof Complex depicts a number of gun fights, bombings, bank robberies and even an ill-fated plane hijacking. The Baader Meinhof Complex is also explicitly more political. Cries of ‘Ho Ho Ho Chi Mihn’ are chanted at one gathering; students have Mao posters on their dormitory walls; references are made to ‘May ’68’ in Paris and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.; RAF members meet with members of the Palestinian Liberation Organization in Tunis and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in Jordan; and there is a steady denunciation of the West Germany’s support for US imperialism and “fascism.”
Both movies have strong female lead characters. In The Baader Meinhoff Complex, Ulrike Menhoff is the the eldest founder of the RAF and in charge of propaganda. Esslin Gundrun, the youngest lead character and girlfriend of Baader, is nonetheless shown as passionate and as someone who was pivotal in getting things done within the group. Further into the movie, under the pressure of capture and confinement together, both begin to break down emotionally and increasingly argue with one another, reinforcing the view that women are emotional and weak while discounting the psychological pressure brought to bare on them by the reactionary state.
In Machete, the two female lead characters are initially foes. Lulz (Michelle Rodriguez), shown as righteous and socially concerned, organizes an underground “network” to provide services for oppressed migrants while Sartana (Jessica Alba), a naive, sycophantic ICE agent, harasses her and makes threats of criminal charges. The women come together as part of Machete’s quest for revenge. In the process, Lulz gets shot in the eye and comes back fighting even harder: if nothing else an allegory for revolutionary determinism. Sartana recants her previous position in support of imperialist legalism and declares to a crowd of migrants, “We didn’t cross the border. The border crossed us!”
Unfortunately, Machete does drop the ball regarding gender in a number of ways. In one notable scene of question (of many), Machete gives tequila to the wife and daughter of the man who set him up, sleeps with them and films it for his foe to watch later. While there is no doubt an element of humor simply for the outrage this must generate on the part of actual White supremacists, this scene is symptomatic of the film’s larger depiction of women, i.e. they are not treated as independent agents (with perhaps the exception Luz), but instead act as objects, things to be acted upon in one way or another by Machete or the male viewer.
In both movies nudity is prevalent. In The Baader Meinhof Complex, such is not so one-sided. In an opening scene, children and adults are shown nude at a beach. In this regard, that nudity serves not sexual purposes solely, The Baader Meinhof Complex is less reactionary. In another scene however, while the original RAF are training with Muslims in Tunis, they sunbathe nude in plain view. When told by the camp commander to cover themselves, they respond, “fucking and shooting are the same.” In the scene, Baader and Esslin are rightly depicted as crass, almost as if they are Amerikan vacationers. If fact, this is not an example of anti-imperialist fraternity nor spreading sexual liberation, but imposing the culture of a dominating society under the guise of such.
Revolutionary Violence
While there is much to say about the minutia of the films, the main theme of both is violence in name of the oppressed against the oppressor within imperialist countries.
In Machete, a work of fiction, the violence is over-the-top and gratuitous. In one early scene, the protagonist swings his machete in a circle and decapitates three people who were closing in on him. In another set in a hospital, he uses a ‘bone-scraper’ and several surgical knives tied to a belt to cut up several gun-toting men before using one’s small intestine to jump out the window and swing into the floor below. Likewise, the social setting in Machete is narrow, there being only politicians, main characters, hired guns, a few pigs, border militiamen, migrants and some cholo-type Chicanos. Missing from the picture are Whites- particularly the reactionary White masses, including so-called “workers,” or the imperialist state in full force. This, along with the movie’s revenge-based plot, allows Machete to be a movie with a happy ending, where Machete himself defeats the bad guys and ‘gets the girl.’ By the end though, despite the protagonist’s personal achievements, nothing has really changed. In an ironic twist, the right-wing politician played by Robert De Niro is shot to death near the border by White vigilantes who thinks he’s Mexican. Perhaps Machete will return in a sequel and broaden the scope of the struggle? We won’t hold our breath.
In The Baader Meinhof Complex, supposedly based on true events, the ending isn’t as happy. The members of the RAF, mostly student-aged and young adults, are driven by causes such as anti-imperialism and communism and are sympathetic to the plight and resistance of Third World peoples. They are outraged and disenchanted with the response of everyday West Germans to these phenomena, yet never come out and say as much, nor do they ever make the demarcation and write off West Germans entirely. When they launch their clandestine armed struggle, they envision it as being part of a world-wide revolutionary movement yet make efforts to not harm your average West German, seeing this as pivotal to winning public sympathy. After the founding members of the RAF are apprehended, others from similar backgrounds arise, carrying on the struggle and including “the release of political prisoners” as part of their campaign against German reactionaries and imperialism. This too is ill-fated, as these newer members are all apprehended or killed, leading to the climax that is the apparent suicide of the remaining lead characters.
While certainly not the ‘happy ending’ of Machete, the down conclusion to The Baader Meinhof Complex does leave us asking, “what went wrong?,” a serious question for revolutionaries in imperialist countries. Many would say RAF were ultra-leftist and their militant armed struggle freaked out the west German ‘masses.’ In truth, this is not the case. Rather, the RAF was ultra-“left.” Though their action appeared militant and extreme, it was always predicated on a perceived political alliance and unity with a portion of the west German population, all of which were part of a global petty-bourgeoisie and thus an unreliable ally (at best) to their struggle. The founders of the RAF would have done better to develop their writing capabilities under the direction of Ulrike Meinhof, coordinate real ties to foreign fighters, fall under their discipline when appropriate and develop alternative means of contributing to the global revolutionary struggle, not launch an hasty armed struggle in west Germany with the assumption that west Germans would support them.
The Network
More interesting than any possible Machete sequel or the First Worldist focoism of the RAF would be a film featuring She and the Network. In Machete, it’s stated that Lulz has been busy organizing migrants, helping them cross the border, securing housing and jobs and “making sure they play their part” once they’re settled. The operation is called the Network, and it includes a mythology about a militant female leader known only as “She.” When Machete makes his hulkish last stand, his success is aided b y the connections Lulz has already made.
Today, the situation involving Mexicans migrants is dynamic. Historically, there has been a trend towards assimilation. However, as the numbers of Mexicans and Chicanos rise, particularly in the Amerikan ‘southwest’ (occupied Mexico), a situation may arise where the social basis for national liberation struggles becomes more readily apparent. Ultimately, it will be the type of work typified by Lulz, politicized ‘serve the people’ programs organized outside pre-existing power structures, which will advance and aid this struggle.
Again on Violence
One final note. We imagine many First World viewers will find the presentation of violence in both Machete and The Baader Meinhof Complex to be off-putting in one way or another.
In Machete, the violence is unnatural, over-the-top, intense, frequent, etc. However, the same could be said with the Expendables or any number of Amerikan-inspired action movies. In Machete, the difference is that the violence is dished out by forces representing the oppressed against oppressors. Simply put: that is why it stands out, why it is good.
Many so-called “leftists” would reject the violence of the RAF on rotten grounds, whether pacifism, charges of being too extreme and “left,” or other liberal reasons. However, the violence of the RAF should be looked at critically and put in the correct perspective.
Nothing is more violent than imperialism. Every 2.43 seconds, someone dies from starvation- a form of structural violence. The violence in Machete by contrast is mild and restrained. Though ultimately misguided at a fundamental level, the same could be said about the RAF. The question is not whether in either movie violence was depicted in a gratuitous way, this answer being obvious. Ultimately, it matters against whom the violence is being expressed upon, and towards what end. And for this, we see no reason to broadly criticize either movie.
Notes:
Protest KKKolumbus Day:
Saturday, October 9th 9am
Gather at the west steps of the Capitol for a rally followed by a protest of the Kolumbus Day parade
Meet for lunch
11:30am
Gather at 38th and Shoshone to protest their after party
No Kolumbus Day! No Celebrations of Genocide!
Filed under Actions and Events, First Nations, Imperialism, KKKolumbus Day
Army “Kill Team” Targeted Civilians in Afghanistan, Business as Usual for Imperialists
(raimd.wordpress.com)
Recently it was revealed that a secret Amerikan “kill team” murdered Afghan civilians at random, and collected cut-off body parts as trophies, of “finger bones, leg bones, and a tooth taken from the corpses”. Twelve Amerikkkan soldiers are being court martialed, under trial in military court, and 5 of them are charged with murder. The others are charged in aiding a cover-up. There are 76 crimes total pinned on the twelve, including the murder of 3 Afghan civilians, and the beating of a soldier accused of blowing the whistle on their crimes. Whatever the results of the trial these atrocities are nothing new in Amerikan history, and will likely not generate any action on the part of the Amerikan people.
The “kill team” was formed by a group of soldiers from the Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington State. They were part of the 5th Stryker Infantry Brigade in Southern Afghanistan located at the Forward Operating Base Ramrod, west of Kandahar. The founder of this kill team was Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs, who served previously in the occupation forces in Iraq and boasted about the war crimes he committed there and how easy it was to get away with them. Talk of forming this team began in December 2009 after he arrived in Afghanistan for his 2nd tour of duty there. Gibbs emphasized throwing fragmentation grenades at civilians. This kill team performed that method of murder in its attacks on civilians, with 3 deaths being charged on this group.
The first attack happened the following January. A civilian, Gul Mudin, was killed when Cpl. Jeremy Morlock threw a grenade at him, giving other soldiers a reason to open fire. The carnage of this team went on until May of 2010. Another victim was Afghan cleric Mullah Adahada. They also murdered civilian Marach Agha and afterward placed a drop gun, a Kalashnikov rifle, by his dead body to justify the killing.
Six of these soldiers are accused of taking body parts as trophies. One soldier collected fingers for souveniers, and others posed for photos with the dead bodies. One, Michael Wagon, carried a skull of one of his victims.
This team came to light after a soldier was beaten after attempting to blow the whistle on this team. Spec. Adam Winfield, a member of the platoon the team was from, reported to his superiors about members of his unit smoking hashish stolen from Afghan civilians. Gibbs reportedly showed sliced fingers they collected to the informant soldier to force his silence. Gibbs also first solicited soldiers to cut off the fingers of the corpses. Winfield also purportedly discussed the actions of the kill team to his father over Facebook, stating that people there were getting away with murder. His father attempted to warn military authorities, and was repeatedly rebuffed. Eight days after he tried to warn the military the team killed Agha.
The troops are going through the trial process, all of them securing attorneys, and some of the families of the accused have set up websites for their defense.(1)
The military is attempting to sweep this away. This year has been the deadliest year for the occupation forces since 2001 when the invasion began. They have expressed concerns about how this case will effect the already declining support the Amerikan-led occupation has with the Afghan people. The military is painting this kill team as a rogue operation. In truth, this is likely just one of many war atrocities committed by the occupation forces.
With the release of the Afghan War Diary on Wikileaks, this kill team is shown as not news, but part of the official policies of the U.S. imperialists. As Wikileaks states in the introduction on the leaked documents:
“The material shows that cover-ups start on the ground. When reporting their own activities US Units are inclined to classify civilian kills as insurgent kills, downplay the number of people killed or otherwise make excuses for themselves.”
“The reports, when made about other US Military units are more likely to be truthful, but still down play criticism.”
“Conversely, when reporting on the actions of non-US ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) forces the reports tend to be frank or critical and when reporting on the Taliban or other rebel groups, bad behavior is described in comprehensive detail. The behavior of the Afghan Army and Afghan authorities are also frequently described.”(http://wardiary.wikileaks.org/)
The soldier who allegedly linked the documents, Bradley Manning, is currently in jail. He is also suspected of leaking the video of a helicopter attack, unprovoked, on civilians in Iraq. For bringing to light the secret atrocities of these two wars, he is subjected to court martial, attacked for being gay, had his facebook musings publicized, and had his psychology attacked. (2)
After taking over the imperial reigns of the presidency, Barack Obama has escalated the war in Afghanistan. He has increased the number of ground troops, expanded Predator drone attacks in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, and even authorized targeted assassinations including on U.S. citizens. With opposition to the Afghanistan occupation not only from the Afghan people but from the U.S. public itself, in spite of the lack of an antiwar movement, Obama seems to want to have a “peace with honor” before the withdrawal of Amerikan forces. But as seen in this latest case of Amerikan atrocities, the honor of imperialist war is and never was there.
The humanity of the troops reflects the humanity of Amerikans as a whole. Amerikans barely blink an eye when the troops they support commit murder, rape, and torture. In fact, a sizable fraction of Amerika cheers on these atrocities. War is nothing desired by the masses of the world, but in order to end war they must engage in war. The crimes of the imperialists will end when they are defeated through global peoples war waged to create a new world. The people of the world united against a common enemy will defeat the main oppressor.
Sources:
1. This story was reported in the following news sites:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/18/AR2010091803935.html
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/09/2010994272865650.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/09/us-soldiers-afghan-civilians-fingers
http://theweek.com/article/index/206971/did-a-us-kill-team-go-rogue-in-afghanistan
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/09/09/100321/stryker-brigade-soldiers-kept.html
http://www.frumforum.com/wikileaker-struggled-with-dont-ask-dont-tell
Bradley Manning Support Network: http://www.bradleymanning.org
Filed under Afghanistan, News and Analysis
Long Live Mexico: In Commemoration of the 100th Year Anniversary of the Mexican Revolution
By Nick Brown
(Author’s note: This was written in the early part of 2010, my hopes being that it could have been published earlier.
In the various feedback I’ve received, two main things stood out. First, there is not a consensus amongst those queried for comments about the various topics, and in some cases contradictory responses about single issues were given. Second, for this essay to be anything close to definitive it would need to be a series of books.
Without additional time to lengthen and restructure the entire essay and draw in the entirety of historiography and current thoughts, I’ve attempted to reconcile the problems as much as possible in the notes.
Accordingly, this document does not reflect the sole, comprehensive line of The Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism Movement(RAIM) on the matters discussed (see, ‘Fuck the Border, Support Mexican National Liberation‘ for our general program in support of Mexican national liberation). Rather it is being published as a resource and timely effort at education in service of revolution. My hope is that this essay can help contribute to a basic narrative surrounding the Mexican Revolution and the events since, as part of a wider anti-imperialist historical narrative. Certainly, this essay following is hardly all there is to be said about such topics.)
This year, 2010, marks the centennial of the start of the Mexican Revolution, or La Revolucion. [1] It was one of the first major attempts at social revolution in the 20th century and one in many of only partially-successful or failed revolutions throughout the still-developing Third World.
Its age, the fact that it didn’t survive as a social revolution, etc, does not diminish its significance. Rather, the Mexican Revolution is part of the real cultural heritage of many millions of people, both in Mexico and the US. Additionally, the revolutionary project, the idea of achieving the more radical goals of the Mexican Revolution, is one of continued relevance and necessity today.
Background and Outcome of the Mexican Revolution
The Mexican Revolution erupted in 1910 with Francisco Madero’s Plan de San Luis Potsi and rebellion against the quarter-century-old regime of Porfirio Diaz. Diaz’s rule, lauded by many around the world, proved to be a paper tiger and collapsed after only a few short months of simultaneous revolts under a variety of leaderships. [2]
Like all revolutions throughout the 20th century, the Mexican Revolution contained agrarian and anti-imperialism aims. It was seen by many as a revolution of the common masses against the big landlords, the corrupt Mexican state and the foreigners (particularly Amerikans) gaining ever more influence in Mexican society. However, by the end of the decade, the radical aims would be cut sort as splits within the rebelling forces and US intervention led to a series of moderate, inevitably comprador leaders.
The most radical proposals put forward during the Mexican Revolution were done so in part by Emiliano Zapata of Morelos. The Plan de Ayala of 1911, which launched Zapata’s revolt against Madero, called for the return of communal and small-holding lands to those it was stolen from, breaking up monopolies to the benefit of common Mexicans and waging a form of total justice against those power holders who might resist. Sociologist and researcher into revolutions, John Foran, argues “the social revolution reached its apogee in late 1914 with the arrival of [Pancho] Villa and Zapata in Mexico City, and that it was militarily defeated in 1915-16 by [Álvaro] Obregon and [Venustiano] Carranza, who then laid the groundwork for the carrying out of a less thorough-going social transformation in the 1920s and beyond.” (Taking Power 34)
However, it wasn’t Carranza or Obregon who in the main reversed the growing wave of mobilization for social transformation. The United States had a hand in the outcome of the Mexican Revolution. Ramon Ruiz notes:
“The Yankee next door, Mexicans learned immediately, would not easily relinquish his stake in Mexico. To the contrary, investors and their government in Washington watched warily the course of the rebellion, and from the start, worked feverishly to keep it within the bounds of what they believed permissible. They distrusted social revolution and only belatedly tolerated halfway reform.[…] [H]istory amply documents sundry Ameri[k]an efforts to impede and stifle change in Mexico.” (The Great Rebellion 383)
At every turn of La Revolucion, the US attempted to direct the outcome in one manner or another. In 1910-11, the US did little to prevent Francisco Madero from launching his initial rebellion and undermined the Diaz regime by stationing troops at Mexico’s northern border. (Ibid 389) Two years later, the US ambassador to Mexico, Henry Lane Wilson, directly colluded with Victoriano Huerta to overthrown Madero as part of the Ten Tragic Days. (Ibid 391) Later, the US turned on Huerta, compelling his ouster, and by 1915-16 was backing Carranza against the more radical and nationalist factions led in part by Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa. (Ibid 394)
Carranza, in turn, would preside over the writing of Mexico’s constitution in 1917. Rather than resolve the contradictions within Mexico, the Constitution of 1917 blunted them as the comprador-bourgeoisie regained an upper hand within the power structure of Mexican society. With the ascendancy of Carranza and marginalization of more radical forces, the vast majority of Mexicans lost an equal voice in deciding Mexico’s future. In the words of Ramon Ruiz, it was “a cataclysmic rebellion but not a social ‘Revolution’,” i.e, it accomplished minimal social transformation through great upheaval. [3] (ix)
One of the most immediate results of the Mexican Revolution was an influx of refugees into the United States. Already prior to the Revolution, Mexicans were migrating to the US in high numbers (Acuna 150). Combined with US labor demands during World War I, the Mexican Revolution culminated in the first great wave of northbound Mexican migration since the US’s invasion and occupation of Mexico in 1846 and greatly contributed to continuity between previously-existing and future Chicano communities in the ‘Southwest’ and throughout the US. It’s estimated that by 1929 there were nearly a million Mexicans living in the United States. (Taylor)
Unlike the waves of refugees which followed abortive revolutions in central and eastern Europe or the successful one in Cuba, the US played host to Mexicans of a diverse political blend. Nonetheless, the mass arrival of Mexican migrants also coincided with a “brown scare,” mob-violence and lynchings directed at the Spanish-speaking communities at a greater rate than faced by Blacks in the post-Reconstruction South. (Carrigan)
The Mexican Revolution and Today’s Context
Today, the world is not much different than 100 years ago. We can say that the main difference is one of degree. Whereas in the 18th, 19th and early-20th century, patterns of imperialism and dependent development emerged and solidified, in the late-20th and early-21st centuries, even greater interconnectedness and polarization have arisen as well as a host of other problems (largely relating to climate change and resources availability). According to the United Nations, for example, the gap between to richest and poorest countries grew from 3 to 1 in 1820 and 11 to 1 in 1913, to 72 to 1 by 1992. (Human Development Report, 1999: Globalization with a Human Face, 38) Another report suggests the gap between the average incomes of the world’s richest and poorest 5% jumped from 78 to 1 in 1988, to 114 to 1 in 1993, and that, “an American [sic] having the average income of the bottom US docile is better-off that 2/3 of [the] world population.” (Milanovic, 88, 89)
This phenomenon and its social implications were described by a number of thinkers contemporary to the Mexican Revolution. The controversial Black intellectual, William E.B. DuBois, explained with great prescience:
“[T]he white workingman has been asked to share the spoils of exploiting ‘chinks and niggers.’ It is no longer simply the merchant prince, or the aristocratic monopoly, or even the employing class, that is exploiting the world: it is the nation; a new democratic nation composed of united capital and labor. The laborers are not yet getting, to be sure, as large a share as they want or will get…[b]ut the laborer’s equity is recognized, and his just share is a matter of time, intelligence and skillful negotiation.” (The African Origins of War, 1915) [4]
Today, up to a fifth of the world’s population act as effective parasites upon the remaining eighty percent: a bourgeoisified First World minority existing through direct exploitation of labor, unequal exchange and modern-day plunder backed by military might. Contrary to the proclamations of bourgeois intellectuals and their followers, the necessity of revolution has not gone away. Instead, the modern equivalent of the archetypal proletariat is embodied by those exploited and dispossessed by imperialism in the Third World and, to a much lesser extent, those who suffer related national oppression.
Regarding the Mexican Revolution, its continuing significance and the revolutionary project focused in North America, the subject is two-fold. First are Mexicans, often exploited under the dual weight of comprador-capitalism and imperialism; and second, Chicanos, a group born of ties to Mexico and oppression within the US.
Chicanos and Mexicans
It is difficult, if impossible, to talk about Mexicans without talking about Chicanos, and vice versa. [5] Their history, customs, and identity are related. For Mexicans, the US has been a refuge, a source of seasonal work and often permanent home. Thus, Chicanos, those of Mexican descent born in the U.S. with no direct ties to Mexico, are a group very much in flux, born from the historic and ongoing migration of Mexicans into a territory and social structure dominated by Whites. [6]
Jeanne Batalova of the Migration Policy Institute noted, “In 2006, more than 11.5 million Mexican immigrants[sic] resided in the United States, accounting for 30.7 percent of all US immigrants and one-tenth of the entire population born in Mexico.” According to the same report, over a quarter of this group arrived within the last decade. (“Mexican Immigrants in the United States”)
In 2007, ‘Hispanics’ (a demographic term including those of Spanish and Portuguese-speaking, American descent, but mostly comprising of those of Mexican descent) accounted for 45.5 million people inside the US, making them the largest ‘minority’ group and 15% of the total population. This group is most significant in the southwestern region of the US (land seized from Mexico in 1846-48, henceforth referred to as Occupied Mexico). For example, in New Mexico, California and Texas, ‘Hispanics’ make up between 44 and 36% of the total population. This group is also younger: the median age being 27.6 years of age compared to 36.6 in the population as a whole, and almost 34 percent of the ‘Hispanic’ population is younger than 18 years old compared with a country-wide average of 25 percent. (“US Hispanic Population Surpasses 45 Million, Now 15 Percent of Total”)
Inside the US, Chicanos live hardly equal to Whites. During the 2007-8 recession for example, the US Census Bureau reported that median household annual income dropped 2.6% to $55,530 for Whites and 5.6% to $37,913 for ‘Hispanics.’ (“Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the Unites States”) Additionally, Chicanos face a disproportionate amount of policing and imprisonment compared to Whites. The state of Colorado, for example, incarcerates ‘Hispanics’ at twice the rate of Whites (and Blacks at six and a half times). (Mauer, Washington 14) Similarly, Chicanos find themselves increasingly targeted as Mexican migrants are becoming even more criminalized inside the US.
Relatively speaking, Chicanos have it lucky. Their kin in Mexico often face the worst of imperialism: sweat-shops, sex trade, destroyed ecosystems, uprooted communities, disappearing traditional economies and an overall lack of opportunities.
While Mexico has long been held in a state of dependent development, this has only increased with the introduction of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994.
Subcommandante Marcos, a prominent representative of the Zapatista movement, called NAFTA a “death certificate for the Indian peoples of Mexico.” (qtd. in Campbell, “The NAFTA War”) Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution was formally amended to accommodate conditions of NAFTA’s enactment, thus rescinding what little legal protection indigenous people had over communal lands. Also under NAFTA, Mexico was flooded with cheap corn from subsidized Amerikan farmers, destroying the former’s rural economy. (Gutierrez) Thus in 2005, according to the US Department of Labor, the hourly compensation cost of Mexican production workers was $2.63 an hour, compared to $23.65 for their US counterparts. (Bureau of Labor Statistics) Mexico was the hardest hit Latin American country during the recent economic crisis; the number of people in Mexico living on less the two dollars a day jumping from 44.7 million (42% of the total population) to 53 million (46%) between 2006 and 2010. (Mexico Solidarity Network) Though the official unemployment rate is one of the lowest in Latin America, around 20% of Mexicans find a living in the informal sector. (Cevallos) Labor unrest in Mexico is increasingly heated. (Paterson)
Reclaiming History and the Future: Contemporary Movements
Neither Mexicans nor Chicanos have forgotten the Mexican Revolution and its radical potential.
Groups like the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional- EZLN) are well known for their struggle against the Mexican state. They emerged on January 1st, 1994 in the state of Chiapas to the shock and fanfare of many. Their initial ‘Declaration of War ‘ called for the “return of the land to those who work it” and quoted Article 39 of the Mexican Constitution in calling for the overthrow of the Mexican government. (First Declaration from the Lacandon Jungle)
Unlike many resistance groups, the Zapatistas have managed to capture significant world-wide attention. Thus, many interpretations exist of their movement. Early on, some analysts speculated on the EZLN’s ideological origins in Maoism, which seeks to build up base areas and create expanding liberated zones where reactionary forces are the weakest. (La Botz 38) The EZLN leadership has disavowed this interpretation, stating, “We don’t think like the Maoists. We don’t think that the campesino army from the mountains can fence in the cities.” (Marcos, qtd. in Henríquez and Petrich) The Zapatistas now claim they are fighting for autonomy and freedom in areas of Chiapas and have worked intensively at courting support of the local indigenous population. While some on the nominal left have lauded the EZLN, noting their insistence on not ‘taking power’ but instead fighting for ‘justice, freedom and democracy’ and ‘neutral political space,’ (Halloway) others have labeled such as strategy as “armed reformism” (EPR qtd in Weinberg 299) and the EZLN has been criticized as “the first post-modern guerrilla group.” (People of Color Organize!)
The Zapatistas are not the only group attempting to lead armed resistance against the Mexican state. The Popular Revolutionary Army (Ejército Popular Revolucionario- EPR) revealed themselves in 1996 with their Manifesto of Aguas Blancas, stating their aim as creating a “democratic people’s republic” in Mexico. (Lemoine) (Weinburg 208) The EPR has been more prone to a focoist strategy of sabotage and coordinated attacks on state forces than the EZLN, and thus been more easily labeled terrorists by reactionaries. In June of 2007, the group briefly crippled the Mexican economy through coordinated attacks on the country’s gas pipelines, resulting in a crackdown from the Mexican state directed at a number of resistance groups, not just the EPR. (Ibid 286) (Tobar) In the past, the EPR leadership has defended such actions, asking, “Whose pardon are we supposed to ask for not letting the government continue to murder people? And for our armed uprising? The government’s, perhaps?” (qtd. in Lemoine) Other armed leftist groups include the Insurgent People’s Revolutionary Army (ERPI), formed from a 1998 split with the EPR, and the Triple Guerrilla National Indigenous Alliance (TAGIN), which has recently called for unity between various groups and an escalation in attacks. (Ibid) (Ross, “A Real Blast”)
Whereas armed groups in Mexico are attempting to push forward towards a second attempt at revolution, reformers and misleaders also pay homage to the ideals and iconography behind La Revolucion. Perhaps this is nowhere better illustrated than by the Revolutionary Democratic Party (Partido de la Revolución Democrática- PRD), the largest nominally-left grouping and one of the three main electoral parties in Mexico.
The PRD was founded in 1989 as a left-wing split, led by Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, from the historically-ruling Institutionalized Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional- PRI). Cárdenas is the son of the former Mexico President, Lázaro Cárdenas del Río, who, beginning in 1934, pushed through the last mildly-progressive reforms on the heels of the Mexican Revolution, including the compensated nationalization of the country’s oil industry in 1938.
The PRD became involved in civil unrest when its candidate for president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, narrowly lost the country’s 2006 presidential election and made charges of fraud. (Campell, “Calderon inaugurated while lawmakers brawl”) Cárdenas, who still leads the party, frequently refers to the Mexican Revolution, its unfinished nature and continuing relevance. “The revolutionaries fought for democracy, for equality and justice, for education, knowledge and culture, for a just and generous nation, for shared progress and a fair and equitable world order,” Cárdenas told an audience at the University of California, Los Angeles recently. “To build a new Mexico, the lessons we can derive from the Mexican Revolution show us the way.” (qtd. in Matthews)
Though the PRD often uses such lofty, ‘revolutionary’ language, their phraseology is not unlike that of the PRI: slogans to bolster and advance their own rule absent any revolutionary transformation. More than anything else, the PRD’s rhetoric shows how both the memory and goals of the Mexican Revolution remain strong with the people. [7]
In Occupied Mexico and throughout the US, Chicanos continue to hold onto the Mexican Revolution, including its underlying values, as part of their cultural heritage. Beginning in the late-60’s, Chicano nationalism gave rise to a number of organizations, including the Crusade for Justice, La Raza Unida Party, the Brown Berets, MECHA, and the Centro de Acción Social Autónoma (CASA). These and other groups and individuals took up a wide range of ends and means in varying locales to form a quite diverse and tumultuous movement. (“The Question of Youth and Revolution”) [8]
More recently, Chicano nationalism and its references to the Mexican Revolution have begun to reemerge as controversy over ‘immigration’ has spilled into the mainstream. In 1994, California’s Proposition 187, which barred access to public services (such as schools and hospitals) for ‘illegal aliens,’ engendered nationwide outrage and led to a march of 70,000 in downtown Los Angeles. ( McDonnell, Lopez) Over a decade later, in response to US House Resolution 4437, Mexicans, Chicanos, other migrant communities, and their allies, a total of 1.5 million people in the US, staged massive protests on May 1st, 2006. Since then, International Workers’ Day, a holiday long ignored within the US, has been rechristened as a day of support for migrants’ struggles. (“Over 1.5 Million March for Immigrant Rights in One of Largest Days of Protest in U.S. History”) In 2010 and following the passage of Arizona’s SB1070, which gives the police the power to stop and question anyone who ‘seems illegal,’ rallies were held in over 90 major US cities, including one of 60,000 people in Los Angelas. (McDonnell, Watanabe) Similar rallies in Denver drew around 10,000 people, mainly Mexicans and Chicanos, including many students. (Espinoza, McWilliams)
Whereas figures such as Che Guervara have long been icons within the post-60’s nominal left, Emiliano Zapata prominently occupies this role at such political demonstrations. At one of Denver’s most recent May Day rallies, two large banners featuring his likeness were on display, one reading, “Zapata Vive, Le Luche Sigue” [“Zapata Lives, the Struggle Continues”]. (RAIM-Denver, “Denver May Day 2010”) Similarly, an annual March for Zapata is held in Los Angeles. (LA Eastside) Especially during the earlier protests, Mexican flags have been prominently featured. As time has wore on and as reform-oriented coalitions have seized much of the control over the movement, their display has been discouraged in favor of Amerikan flags. In many ways, this symbolized the internal dynamic of Chicano movements, with Mexicano nationalist and assimilationist factions disagreeing on tactics and long term goals and vying for leadership over the broader movement.
Quickening situation
More to any other people’s struggle, that of Mexicans’ is connected to struggles inside the US itself. Due to the relatedness of Mexicans and Chicanos, it should be of no surprise that their respective revolutionary struggles are deeply affective of one another.
John Ross, author of El Monstruo, Dread and Redemption in Mexico City and 50-year resident of the country, recently stated, “Objectively, at this moment, Mexico is overripe for social upheaval.” (qtd. in Ross, “John Ross on ‘El Monstruo: Dread and Redemption in Mexico City'”) He argues that a big cause of unrest in Mexico lies to the north.
“Traditionally, escapers in México came north towards what they called the ‘safety valve.’ But they can’t get across the border now because of the way it has been militarized,” Ross was quoted as saying. “When you turn off the safety valve, you amplify the pressure on the situation.” (qtd. in Terrazas)
It should be of no surprise that the storm center of revolutionary struggle on the North American continent lies in Mexico. There, the masses face the harsh conditions imposed by imperialism and often struggle against its thuggish forces. However, conditions in the north (USA) greatly affect those in the south (Mexico). A speculation-driven ‘financial crisis’ has eroded the confidence of Amerika’s largest body of oppressors, Whites, and provoked amongst them a fascistic backlash directed in no-small part against “illegals;” as well as resulting in even greater militarization of the border. Thus, not only has movement of Mexicans been greatly impeded, but remittances, Mexico’s second largest source of foreign income, have fallen dramatically, down 15.7% in 2009. (Castillo)
Under such conditions, unrest is likely to continue and grow in Mexico. However, a number of other factors need be present in order for a mass revolutionary movement to develop and succeed.
In Taking Power, On the Origins of Third World Revolution, John Foran reduces these factors to five: dependent development, followed by a economic downturn, exclusionary rule, a social culture and coalition of opposition which gains legitimacy amongst the population at large, and a world systemic opening. [9]
It is likely, if only possible, that these conditions will develop simultaneously and in relation to each other. A general degradation of US global hegemony and the effects this will have on the Mexican economy could conceivable lead to a political crisis within Mexico. Rather than the liberal democracy that imperialism traffics in, such a crisis can only be met with increasingly violent, repressive measures from the Mexican state and the US, resulting in the delegitimization of existing power structures and increased support for existing and new revolutionary organizations and coalitions inside Mexico.
Under such a crisis of open class warfare inside Mexico, it is safe to assume that class struggle in the US would also heat up, much of it in favor of reaction and intervention. In the wake of such reaction, an opening might present itself where Chicanos more widely identify with the struggle of Mexicans and, to varying degrees, the international proletariat. This tide of Chicano radicalism, combined with what larger revolutionary internationalist sentiment could be mustered in the US, would alone not be able to carry out a wider social revolution against the forces of reaction throughout the US. However, it might be useful in impeding reactionaries’ full ability to stifle the revolutionary struggle in Mexico.
While this scenario, a winding spiral of the preconditions of revolution described by Foran, may seem far fetched, it is far less so than the “end of history” theory put forward by Francis Fukuyama and many liberal supporters of the capitalist-imperialist system. Rather than entering into an age of peace and harmony as predicted by bourgeois theorists and new-age gurus alike, the world is becoming more unequal and more conflict-ridden. No doubt, it will be against a backdrop of global social unrest, in no small part directed against the imperialist bourgeoisie and its local agents, that any revolutionary struggle in North America, centered in Mexico, will likely develop and find fertile conditions for success.
Northern Stars
Already in the north, where ideas flow more freely, revolutionary Chicano and Third Worldist groups are pushing a political line and culture of broader internationalism of the oppressed and exploited, especially between Chicanos and Mexicanos.
Colorado-based Mexicana Resistencia, in describing the struggles of Chicanos and Mexicans writes:
“We use the term migration as opposed to immigration to challenge the US Settler colonialists’ dehumanizing and dominating view of legality that is based on stolen land and imperialism with the understanding that when injustice becomes law resistance becomes duty; in opposition to the reformist sectors in the non-profit industrial complex working on so-called immigration rights when in actuality they co-opt, pacify, mislead and misdirect our movement; to redefine the perspective as a movement of a people with our own occupied homeland as opposed to a movement into another country; to reclaim the North; to unite our people and political struggle; and to have self-determination in defining our issues and give direction against the oppressive conditions that confront us.[…]”
“Self-determination is based on a revolutionary nationalist culture of resistance with the objective of creating a reunited homeland and liberated future based on human need instead of profit motives.” (Mexicana Resistencia)
Groups such as the Third-Worldist, Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Movement (RAIM) also promote a revolutionary unity between Chicanos and Mexicans, and supports Occupied Mexico’s “reunification with a revolutionized Mexico,” as part of the “division and ultimate destruction of Amerika.” (“Fuck the Border, Support Mexican National Liberation”)
The Mexican National Liberation Movement (Movemento Liberacion National Mexicano-MLNM) stresses that Chicanos and Mexicanos are “one people divided by a militarily-imposed border,” and describes “socialist reunification with Mexico” as their ultimate goal. They support national liberation struggles throughout the world and its membership has suffered repression, including prison sentences for refusing to collaborate with a grand jury investigation into the Puerto Rican Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional (Armed Forces of National Liberation, FALN). The MLMN describe US imperialism as their primary enemy: “We are fighting the biggest empire ever and we are right inside of it.[…] The revolutionary movement here will begin in the south.” (Tizoc)
While there is nothing to suggest any of these groups or their blend of ideologies currently have any mass following in the north, each does represent the kind of totalizing, revolutionary internationalism required as part of any modern, genuine, mass revolutionary movement. As the US becomes more reactionary, their message of unity with the Third World and rejection of the First may gain wider, marginal appeal inside the US. Neither should we discount the possibility of such internationalist messages percolating southward, into Mexico and beyond.
Sunrise
While an open split between Chicanos (or at least a section of them) and Amerika may be heavily influential as part of the revolutionary struggle in Mexico, we should not see it as the overarching factor, or as part of any ‘world systemic opening’ for another, more successful Mexican revolution. While glimmers of light may exist in an otherwise dark, northern sky, the ‘proletarian sun’ will mainly arise from the ‘global south,’ the Third World, and it is these convergent struggles to which particular revolutionary struggles, including that of Mexicans and Chicanos, are bound to.
In 1965, Lin Biao, a general in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army and prominent leftist during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, described the situation similarly. In Long Live the Victory of People’s War!, Lin described the “proletarian revolutionary movement” as “for various reasons …temporarily held back in the North American and West European capitalist countries,” and stated that, “In the final analysis, the whole cause of world revolution hinges on the revolutionary struggles of the Asian, African and Latin American peoples who make up the overwhelming majority of the world’s population. The socialist countries should regard it as their internationalist duty to support the people’s revolutionary struggles in Asia, Africa and Latin America.” (49) [9]
Lin reasoned that expanding wars of liberation would create ‘world systemic openings’ for revolutionary struggle elsewhere and that China could play a pivotal role in aiding these struggles. He saw the revolutionary struggle as one of the Third World masses waging a ‘people’s war’ against capitalist-imperialism, principally that of the United States, and its executioners:
“The struggles waged by the different peoples against U.S. imperialism reinforce each other and merge into a torrential world-wide tide of opposition to U.S. imperialism. The more successful the development of people’s war in a given region, the larger the number of U.S. imperialist forces that can be pinned down and depleted there. When the U.S. aggressors are hard pressed in one place, they have no alternative but to loosen their grip on others. Therefore, the conditions become more favorable for the people elsewhere to wage struggles against U.S. imperialism and its lackeys.” (56)
Unfortunately, the policy articulated by Lin Biao was never implemented in full by the People’s Republic of China. Six years after his writing, Lin disappeared under mysterious circumstances, while China began a rapprochement with the US and deepened its rhetoric against the USSR as part of the Sino-Soviet split. [10]
While much has changed since Lin’s writing, class struggle has not ceased. Were that the case, there would not be continued migration of Mexicans into the 21st century, nor would there exist the rising tide of anti-migrant, reactionary sentiment amongst Amerikans. Rather, the radical goals of La Revolucion have yet to be reached today.
In this regard, Mexico is hardly alone. Eighty percent of humanity lives on less that $10 a day; almost half live on less $2.50 a day. The richest 20%, the First World, receives 75% of the world’s income and accounts for 76% of the world’s private consumption. Thus, 24,000 children die from poverty each day. (Shah) As the Leading Light Communist Organization (LLCO) has recently described, “The principal contradiction in the world is the First World versus the Third World, the global city versus the global countryside, the exploiter countries versus the exploited countries.” (Monkey Smashes Heaven. “The Sun Rises in the East and Sets in the West.”) [12]
According to LLCO, the world’s exploited masses must carry out a people’s war against reactionaries: seizing power and building institutions which serve and defend their common interests. This must be extended to a global scale, a Global People’s War, in which the imperialist First World becomes cut-off and encircled by the revolutionary forces of the Third World, the latter imposing a radical global democracy on the former. The LLCO has called for support and solidarity between exploited peoples worldwide and captive, oppressed nations in the US: “Justice will only come when Amerika and the First World are defeated, the land is returned, the imposed border is torn down, reparations paid. Justice implies a society where the land and resources are organized to benefit humanity, not just a few, privileged rich countries.” (Ibid. “SB1070, The Continuing War Against the Mexicano People.”)
The next Mexican Revolution in perspective
The next Mexican revolution will not occur in a vacuum nor be significant unto itself. Rather, it will occur as part of the next wave of revolution, and its significance will be seen in relation to the international movement for liberation, away from a system of capitalist-imperialism and towards one controlled by the masses in their own interest.
In Mexico and elsewhere, the long-term viability of any revolutionary movement will be ultimately judged by whether or not it is ‘part of a worldwide people’s war waged by the peoples of the Third World, against the peoples of the First World.” (Ibid. “Points on People’s War”) The ability of the worldwide revolutionary movement to rally together and defeat the forces of imperialism, concentrated in the First World, is pivotal in the revolutionary struggle of the global proletariat as a whole.
For revolutionaries in the north and throughout occupied America, the struggle remains building an internationalist conception of revolution which explicitly rejects the First World and First Worldism (First World chauvinism/worship) and connects the struggle along the margins to that in the Third World. This means working to build a Chicano nationalist movement which identifies with Mexicans more than Amerikans, which actively seeks liberation of Occupied Mexico and above all seeks to unite with the struggle of the Third World-centered proletariat against imperialism and for a new world.
Ultimately, world revolution rests on those of the global South. However, this hardly negates the responsibility of revolutionaries in the North towards advancing effective strategies, championing the revolutionary struggle and undermining imperialism where possible. Just as the end of La Revolucion hardly suggested class struggle had ended in Mexico, the closing of the twentieth century hardly marked the end of revolutionary struggle internationally. One hundred years since the opening of the Mexican Revolution, Mexican society, like much of the Third World, has rarely been more poised for the outbreak of open class and people’s warfare. At the beginning of the 21st century, one hundred years after the start of La Revolucion, the vast majority of the world’s people, most Mexicans included, have, in the famous words of Karl Marx, “nothing to lose but their chains,” but “a world to win.” (86)
Notes:
[1] As the essay the explains, the Mexican Revolution was not a revolution in the full sense, i.e. it was not successful in overthrowing the existing economic and social order. Thus for our purposes, ‘Mexican Revolution,’ ‘La Revolucion’ and ‘the revolution years’ are synonymous and roughly correlate to the period between 1910-19.
[2] While this paper does not deal with the causes of the Mexican Revolution, they could be summed up as: the dependent nature of Mexico’s economy in which US investors increasingly controlled much of Mexico’s land and capital; the regime Porfirio Diaz had set up had become more exclusionary over time; the additional pressures created under the 1907 financial crisis; the political crisis created when Diaz recanted his public promise not to rerun for president; and the Diaz regime’s loss of patronage from the US.
[3] While certain political achievements were made through the Mexican revolution, such as the overthrow of Porfirio Diaz’s regime, some land reform and the writing of the Mexican Constitution, social demands of the broad Mexican masses were only partially, if at all, met. Moreover, the Mexican Revolution did not significantly alter Mexico’s path to becoming a nation exploited under capitalist-imperialism.
[4] W.E.B. DuBois wasn’t the only radical thinker of the time to highlight the fact that imperialism bought off it ‘own’ working-class. In 1916 Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin wrote, “The capitalists [of the ‘Great Powers’] can devote a part (and not a small one, at that!) of these superprofits to bribe their own workers, to create something like an alliance … between the workers of the given nation and their capitalists against the other countries.” (“Imperialism and the Split in Socialism”)
[5] There was not unanimous agreement on the use of ‘Chicano’ in this sense. Here on some views on the use of Chicano and its meaning.
One view is that because of historically different material circumstance and subjective inclination, there is a substantive difference between Mexicans and Chicano’s, the latter being so distinct that it constitutes its own nation.
Another view counters the first, stating that Mexicans are one people divided by an imperialist-imposed border. This view is in no small part a response to the legacy of ‘Chicano nationalism,’ which includes sell-outs, reforms and co-option into the Democratic Party while not achieving liberation of the Mexican people on either side of the border. This view sees the extolling of ‘Chicano’ as part of the legitimization of US claims to Occupied Mexico.
The final view and one that I hope comes out in the paper is that Chicanos are Mexicans. Just as we could talk about Mayans as being Mexicans, we can say the same of Chicanos: they are a socially/geographically-identified group within a larger. The use of Chicano in this sense is a matter of having clarity and accounting for the material and subjective differences between Chicanos and Mexicans, not to legitimize the root cause of the differences.
[6] Though we can generally say that today Chicanos are a group born from migration, this has not always been the case. The original Chicanos were Mexicans who stayed on their land in the North after the United States invaded their country and seized its northern half.
[7] The Revolutionary Democratic Party themselves should not be seen as able to carry through a social revolution in Mexico. Rather, they are contenders for power in an existing system, i.e. compradors in-the-waiting.
[8] This glosses over the history of late-60s/early-70s ‘Chicano Nationalism.’
[9] In Taking Power, John Foran discusses these five factors in relation to the 1910 revolution, arguing that Diaz had created a regime which grew exclusionary over time, as well as maintained Mexico in a state of dependent development vis a vis the US. When, Foran argues, Madero launched his revolution (hardly the first against Diaz), the US government essentially sat on their hands, allowing the regime to crumble. Conversely, the revolutionary coalition collapsed, in relation to the closing of the ‘world systemic opening,’ when the US firmly threw its weight behind Carranza.
[10] Lin Biao’s essay also deals with the political-military nature of carrying out the social revolution. This synthesis, in its details, was described as ‘People’s War’ in revolutionary China.
[11] The Chinese state claimed, one year after his disappearance, that Lin died in a plane crash near the Mongolian border after a botched coup plot against Mao Zedong. Though a plane did crash near the Mongolian border, there is no independent evidence or researched arguments that support the Chinese state’s narrative around Lin’s disappearance or the plane crash itself.
[12] This quote comes from the online journal Monkey Smashes Heaven, which has since become the official journal of the newly formed Leading Light Communist Organization.
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Talyor, Paul S. “Critique of the Official Statistics of Mexican Migration to and From the United States.” <http://www.nber.org/chapters/c5119.pdf>
“The Question of Youth and Revolution.” La Verdad!. Union Del Barrio. June, 2007. <http://uniondelbarrio.org/lvp/newspapers/97/junoct97/pg02.html>
Tenudo, Mary Ann. “Chiapis: the Reconquest of Recuperated Lands.” Weblog post. Upside Down World. April 28th, 2010. <http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2469-chiapas-the-reconquest-of-recuperated-land>
Terrazas, Elisa. “John Ross- Mexico is Overripe for Revolution.” Borderzine. April 9th, 2010. <http://borderzine.com/2010/04/john-ross-mexico-is-overripe-for-revolution/>
Tobar, Hector. “A small guerrilla band is waging war in Mexico.” Los Angeles Times. Sept 20th, 2007. <http://articles.latimes.com/2007/sep/20/world/fg-guerrilla20>
Tizoc. Speech given at public discussion, hosted by RAIM-Denver on March 31st, 2010.
US Census Bureau News. “US Hispanic Population Surpasses 45 Million, Now 15 Percent of Total.” May 1st, 2008. <http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/population/cb08-67.html>
US Census Bureau. Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Converage in the Unites States: 2008. http://www.census.gov/prod/2009pubs/p60-236.pdf
Ventura, Stephanie J., et al. “Estimated Pregnancy Rates for the United State 1990-2005: A Update.” National Vital Statistics Review. 58.4. Oct. 19th, 2009. <http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr58/nvsr58_04.pdf>
Weinberg, Bill. Homage to Chiapis: The New Indigenous Struggles in Mexico. Verso. New York. 2000
Zapata, Emiliano. “Plan de Ayala.” 1911. <http://www.ilstu.edu/class/hist263/docs/ayala.html>
From Resistencia Mexicana:
Filed under Actions and Events, Anti-Racism, Occupied Mexico/Aztlan, Organizing
Report Back on Anti-Police Demo
(raimd.wordpress.com)
On August 28th, a march against police brutality was held in Denver, Colorado. The march was held in response to a series of police brutality cases coming to light.
The march was organized by members of Aurora Copwatch, West Denver Copwatch and the All Nations Alliance. Though the pig media lied and initially reported only “dozens” of protesters, at its height on the 16th Street Mall there were well over 200 participants, including not only much of the more ‘radical’ of the Denver activist scene but also people who had joined in as the march passed by.
The recent cases of police brutality and the reaction they sparked have been unprecedented. They have led to Mayor John Hickenlooper, who is running for governor this year, to bring in the FBI to investigate certain cases. It has also led to city public safety manager Ron Perea resigning,
and the city council settling many cases with millions of city dollars.(1)
The public anger of these cases, and many others not as known, set the mood for this march. Days before the march a group of religious leaders denounced plans for a march, and instead called for talks with the pigs to reform themselves.(2) But one cannot negotiate with pigs, and many people outraged about the incidents came out to show it that day. In the press release announcing the march the organizers announced: “It is anticipated that Denver police will be present during the march. We want to be clear in our position that due to the actions of its officers, we no longer trust DPD with its ability to protect our community. We request for the safety of the community members present at the march and rally, and that law enforcement officials keep a reasonable distance from the participants. We are engaging in a peaceful, non-violent exercise of our federally protected First Amendment rights and DPD interference is not welcome.”(3)
The march began by the downtown skatepark, next to where Mark Ashford was beat up by two Denver pigs. He was beaten after speaking with the driver of a vehicle the police had pulled over wrongly, offering to be a witness for the driver in court. The next stop of the march was at 15th St. and Larimer, where Micheal DeHerrera was assaulted by Denver’s grimiest as he was was talking on the phone outside of a club while police were arresting his friend. These two incidents of police brutality were videotaped by H.A.L.O., a network of video surveillance cameras in the downtown area monitored by the Denver Pig Department. The march and protest ended at Denver’s new $158 million, 1500 prisoner capacity “Justice” Center. There, Marvin Booker, a Black street preacher arrested on drug paraphenalia charges, was killed by the pigs running the detention center. He was beaten to death after he reached to get his shoes, his only possessions of value. The pigs have refused to release a video tape of the death citing ongoing investigations, but with the similarities to a previous death in police custody, many see an ongoing cover up that has been typical of DPD.
The protesters carried signs and banners. One read, “All Cops are Murderers.” Others listed the names of recent police victims. RAIM brought signs that read : “Fuck Pigs (And Snitches),” “Self Defense Makes Sense, Defeat Nazi Pigs,” and “Revolution is Good! Resist Amerikkkan Occupation.” Unlike other activist marches in the city, the militancy of this march was evident from the beginning. The march started with a chant “No Justice No Peace, Fuck the Police.” Other chants that echoed through the march were “Oink Oink, Bang Bang, Everyday the Same Old Thing,” “Cops, Pigs, Murderers,” and “When Our Communities Are Under Attack, What Do We Do? Stand Up, Fight Back!” RAIM also did its modest part to raise the militancy of the march, helping lead and initiate such chants through a megaphone.
Overall, like most marches in the First World, the message was mixed to the effect of confusing friends and enemies and in the process miscalculating the actual strength of each.
One positive thing was the rhetorical refutation of pacifism. When the crowd began chanting emotionally-charged slogans, one person put up a peace sign with their fingers. One pacifist type berated a RAIMer for leading slogans against the pigs through a megaphone, saying to us some metaphysical tripe about love conquering hate and peace overcoming violence. We politely brushed the person off and continued to assist in leading chants. Beyond the inane idea that RAIM-Denver was acting violently with no more power than a megaphone is the ideological wrecking-ball that is pacifism. While ultimately the degree of militancy in a single march in Denver is inconsequential, the idea itself, spread by well-to-do cracker-liberals from places like Boulder and Denver, is poisonous to the struggles of oppressed and exploited peoples globally. In a sense, pacifism is much like Christianity in that it is promoted to Third World peoples by Amerikans and various organizations they support, to the effect of diverting the proletarian from actual strategies for liberation. (We suggest everyone read Pacifism as Pathology by Ward Churchill and Negroes With Guns by Robert F. Williams for arguments against pacifism.)
With the presence and influence of pacifists and deescalaters limited, the march soon took parts of the streets, which isn’t usual for Denver protests. The pigs themselves stayed out of sight the whole time. This was a PR tactic as their presence would have surely escalated the toned of the march further and perhaps created even more instances of brutality. But we are sure that they were observing the march from a distance.
At the end of the march, in front of the Injustice Center, the crowd chanted “Fire to the Prisons” and Asesinos, Spanish for “Assassins.” There were speeches by activists highlighting the above pig terror cases and by victims of pig brutality telling the crowd their experiences. A coffin symbolizing the death of Marvin Booker was brought by the marchers and left there at the jail.
Common with virtually all protests in Denver and occupied North America was the great number of stares from people not participating. At times, the march walked past restaurants in affluent neighborhoods. Some protesters expressed affinity with the diners, encouraging them to join the march. Allusions were made that even the rich ‘liberal’ Denverite gawkers would “stand up” against the police.
We ask, why muddy up the picture with outright First Worldism? Rather, these people should be identified, albeit not merely in an agitational manner, for what they are: parasite reactionaries who more often than not support the pigs and the system they represent. Needless to say, the ‘militant’ pleas to shoppers and diners were fruitless. Ultimately, it was chants of ‘Fuck the Police!’ which got large numbers of passer-by youth to join the demonstration, not pacifism or First Worldism.
At another point in the march, the protesters paused to repeat a chant part of which said that they themselves had “…nothing to lose but our chains” (origanally said by Marx, but of course not attributed to him in the chant). RAIM didn’t participate in the contrived bit of self-delusion. We ask those who did to compare themselves to the average person from Latin America, Africa or Asia and take an honest account of the many things they could in fact lose. Though such slogans might give oneself a short-lived sense of self-importance, they do little in the long run to advance the revolutionary struggle. It is only by taking a realistic account of the world that one can hope to meaningfully advance the revolutionary struggle.
The contradiction between the police (or more accurately the system they represent) and the majority of Amerikans is not antagonistic, i.e. it will not lead to sustained revolutionary struggle. Not to say that we do not support reform efforts to reduce police terror, but only see the limitations that these reform efforts will do. There will be attempts by the city to appease the public outrage with more “accountability”, but police brutality is but a symptom of an unjust social order. Thus it will continue, as in these cases against non-white oppressed nationality peoples and others outside of mainstream society. Thus RAIM sees any effective revolutionary strategy inside imperialist Amerika as minoritarian, one that effectively repudiates the majority of Amerikans while seeking to work in alliance with the broad masses of the Third World, whom do in fact constitute majorities in their respective homelands. So-called radicals should promote an independent identity and culture of resistance amongst the oppressed in Amerika as well as a spirit of affinity and solidarity with the Third World masses, not a fallacious, reformist and First Worldist ‘unity’ between the oppressed and White activists as a stand in for a non-existent White proletarian.
More actions on these cases will come up, as they have been so publicized they will stay in the spotlight.
==============
Here is a video of the march from West Denver Copwatch. Check out their website for more information about these cases and their interactive database of Denver pig activity.
Sources:
1. http://cbs4denver.com/investigates/excessive.force.denver.2.1878320.html
2. http://cbs4denver.com/news/ministers.chief.talk.2.1877579.html
3. http://westdenvercopwatch.wordpress.com/2010/08/26/press-release-for-saturday-march-and-rally/
[Last week, we posted the video, Obama Nation, the new single from UK hip-hop artist, Lowkey. The video itself generated some discussion which can be viewed below. Here is a comment by a RAIMer, Antonio, analyzing the content of the song:]
Lowkey is a British rapper, his mother being of Iraqi Arab descent. The title of the song is Obama Nation, pointing out that Obama is a war criminal like every other US president.
Lowkey correctly links the current imperialism of the United Snakes with its brutal colonial history and the national oppression and genocide inflicted upon the people here.
“Since 1945 the United States has attempted to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments,
In the process the US has caused the end of life for several million people,
And condemned many millions more to a life of agony and despair.”
“Natives kept in casinos and reservations,
Displaced slaves never given reparations,
Take everything from Native Americans,
And wonder why i call it the racist experiment,”
“I see imperialism under your skin tone,
You could call it Christopher Columbus syndrome.”
He points out the brutal reality behind the ideals of Amerika and the illusions it propagates:
“The strength of your dreaming prevents you from reason,
The American dream only makes sense if you’re sleeping,
It’s just a cruel fantasy; their politics took my voice away,
But their music gave it back to me,
The land where the lumpen are consumed by consumption,
Killing themselves to shovel down food in abundance,
I guess a rapper from Britain is a rare voice,
America is capitalism on steroids,..”
“The world’s entertainer, the world’s devastator,
From Venezuela, to Mesopotamia,
Your cameras lie, cause they have to hide the savage crimes,
Committed on leaders that happen to try and nationalize,
Eating competitions? while the worlds been starving,
Beat up communism with the help of Bin Laden,”
“Every day you create more Nidal Hassan’s,
Kill a man from the military, you’re a weirdo,
But kill a wog from the Middle East you’re a hero,
Your country is causing screams that never reach your ear holes,
America inflicted a million Ground Zero’s,
Follow the dollar and swallow your humanity,
Soldier’s committing savagery you never even have to see,”
He correctly sees that there is no difference in policy with Obama.
I don’t care if him and Cheney are long lost relations,
What matters more is the policies, I lost my patience,
Stop debating bringing race into the conversation,
Occupation and cooperation equals profit making,
It’s over; people wake up from the dream now,
Nobel peace prize, Jay Z on speed-dial,
It’s the substance within, not the colour of your skin,
Are you the puppeteer or the puppet on the string?,
So many believed it was instantly gonna’ change,
There was still Dennis Ross, Brzezinski and Robert Gates,
What happened to Chas freeman? (AIPAC),
What happened to Tristan Anderson?,
It’s a machine that keeps that man breathing,
I have the heart to say what all the other rappers aren’t,
Words like Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan,
The wars on, and you morons were all wrong,
I call Obama a bomber cause those are your bombs.”
One thing wrong with the lyrics is its wavering on being anti-Amerikan.
He begans the song [thus]
“This track is not an attack upon the American people,
It’s an attack upon the system within which they live.”
The system itself is the enemy but the Amerikan people as a whole benefit from that system. He also states “I’m not anti-America, America is anti-me!.” It is correct that the policies of Amerika turn the masses of the world against it, but the logical conclusion is to go against Amerika and all it stands for. Lowkey likely has an audience in the social movements of the First World who attempt to pander to their exploiter nation’s majority, and try to show their patriotism. Revolutionary anti-imperialists must give the real message out, that exploiter nations and their people who support are the enemy.
In one of the verses he has a version of the Star Spangled banner sung in a hip hop manner. Whether it is to expose Amerikan hypocrisy, or to reclaim Amerikan ideals for the good, is unclear. Either way, the attempt does not come off successfully.
Like other politically minded hip hop artists in the First World, such as Dead Prez, the Coup, Immortal Technique, etc., Lowkey espouses leftist and often revolutionary politics in his music but errs in the direction of First Worldism, or pandering to a majority First World population. At the same time he espouses anti-imperialism he attempts not to offend the Amerikan majority. RAIM takes issue with him on this point. To oppose imperialism is to oppose its main exponent, Amerika. It is no mistake when those rallying around the flag rally for the atrocities committed under that flag. The Peace is Patriotic crowd fails. Those standing with the oppressed and exploited of the world should not play these games by identifying with this symbol of opression. Lowkey should take the logical conclusion that the history of American oppression continues today, and to end it means ending the idea and material reality of Amerika. It did not stray from its ideals in it imperialist interventions, it is what it is about. Amerika from its beginning has been like every other empire, based on conquest. Revolutionary artists need to transcend the meaning of Amerika and the First World and see it for the enemy that it is.
“Dear RAIM
“Your website rocks. I fucking hate Amerika, its culture and everything about it. Sometimes I feel like I’m going to explode living here. What can I do to help or get involved with your movement?
“May we stand together until death,
“Philadelphia supporter”
Greetings Comrade!
We suggest turning your energy into something positive for the movement for global liberation. Here are some tasks to take up:
Study. You should definitely be studying. In addition to reading stuff put out by RAIM, you should learn about the history of revolutionary struggle, as well as other topics. There is a reading list at RAIM. Its meant to be a basic introductory course of texts. We highly suggest you try to find copies of the works listed. Also, explore topics more in-depth. Don’t stop at our reading list. Another current publisher of Third Worldist literature is Monkey Smashes Heaven.
Write. RAIM is always looking for writers. This is something you should eventually try to pursue on some level. If you feel you can’t write, take a basic newswriting course from the journalism department at a local college. It can do a lot of help in this regard. Besides ‘news and analysis’ articles, you can always write culture reviews (movie, cd reviews, etc), longer research articles, and basic agitation. Most people are most comfortable starting with the latter.
Other production work. If writing isn’t your thing, give graphic design, video editing or music production a try. We need to build an entire culture around revolutionary anti-imperialism and a spirit of fighting from within the belly of the beast.
Do local work. Starting a RAIM cell locally is always a great way to contribute to the revolutionary struggle. RAIM’s main job to the agitate in favor of a Third World-based, global revolution; provide local exposure to pressing global problems; and create a space for recruitment and further education into the revolutionary ranks. Some of RAIM’s main tasks are listed above (writing, studying, video production, etc), but we get out to relevant events within the First Worldist activist scene, directly oppose the most vicious elements of imperialism (tea-klanners, Zionists, Kolumbus Day parade participants), talk to various people about revolutionary anti-imperialism, and conduct group (often informal) study. We also distribute the RAIM Global Digest locally.
Distribute the RAIM Global Digest, the Troublemaker DVD (a collection of videos from RAIM and Shubel Morgan) and other anti-imperialist materials. Even if you are not willing to act in a hardcore RAIM fashion, you can still anonymously distribute RAIM materials. Print some off and drop them in appropriate places. You can even hand out RAIM materials to people without officially representing a RAIM cell. Whether you are starting a RAIM cell or just anonymously passing out materials, you should use a fake name and not reveal personal information such as where you live or work. ‘Behind enemy lines’ isn’t simply a catchphrase.
Do work in the Third World. Amerikan college students and professionals are offered many opportunities to travel abroad, often to the Third World. While there, why not engage in private conversations about the depth of imperialist parasitism and the revolutionary solution? Be discreet, but such efforts can pay off over the long run. Don’t forget to give them RAIM’s website and contact info.
Give us money. Don’t want to do the above? Then don’t hesitate to open your wallet. We can accept paypal. If you need to be more anonymous, we can work something out. Contact us for details.
Be healthy. Don’t undermine your own importance to the global revolutionary struggle. The world’s masses need to to have a long, contributory life. Also important is that you have a sharp mind and good physical health.
What else do you have to offer? If you think you have something else to offer to global revolutionary movement, then bring it. Put it into action. Maybe you’ll give us some ideas.
Hope this helps,
RAIM-Denver
Filed under Dear RAIM-Denver...
The Expendables: An Action-Packed Thrill Ride for Chauvinist Pigs
http://www.antiimperialism.wordpress.com
The Expendables (2010, Stallone) is a reactionary movie in which a cast of pigs must go ‘behind enemy lines’ into the Third World. The plot was minimalist, and the characters, all played by big-name action stars, were largely forgettable. Despite this and in no small part because of its ultra-reactionary message, The Expendables debuted number one in Amerikan theaters, grossing 17 million dollars in tickets sales on its opening weekend.
In the movie, Sylvester Stallone accepts a contract from the CIA and leads to small band of mercenaries to the fictional Latin American island-country of Vilena. There, a rogue CIA agent rules via proxy and profits greatly from the production of illicit drugs. On a reconnaissance mission, Stallone and his partner are discovered, resulting in a high speed chase and the outing of their contact on the island, the daughter of a puppet general who nominally rules the island.
Ostensibly because Stallone feels bad about putting the general’s daughter in danger, he and his team return to the island to finish the job. After killing what seems to be hundreds of soldiers and blowing up the presidential palace, Stallone and his crew succeed in killing the rogue CIA agent and his henchmen. Rather than keeping the contract money, Stallone gives it to the general’s daughter before bidding her farewell.
The general message of the movie is not that ‘Amerika saves the day’ or ‘Amerika always wins,’ though both of these elements were present. Rather, the message behind The Expendables is that it is inconsequential and even heroic to travel to Third World countries, killing nameless, faceless brown people and causing untold destruction. The movie is one of tacit hate towards Third World peoples.
Other aspects of the movie are also problematic. Besides the general’s daughter, the only other prominent female is the girlfriend of a ‘protagonist’ character played by Jason Statham. She seems drawn to controlling and abusive, yet emotionally-distant men. She leaves Statham’s character for another man who physically abuses her, and returns to the ‘protagonist’ after he beats up the new boyfriend and his friends. The general’s daughter herself never acts as an independent agent. In both cases, women are portrayed as helpless, naive and in need of rescue. That said, compared to the above analysis regarding the movie’s view towards the Third World, this is a minor issue. In fact, the First World often cynically raises gender issues in its attacks on Muslim and other Third World countries. If the mercenaries were traveling to Iran or Afghanistan, for example, we imagine the film would have included stronger women ‘protagonists’.
The portrayal of people of color is also questionable. The main non-White protagonist is played by Jet Lee, a Chinese martial arts actor. Jet Lee’s character is docile. Throughout the movie he asks for a pay raise and it is implied he makes less than his colleagues. These requests are met with annoyance and dismissal. He’s portrayed as contributing less to the team’s success. Jet Lee’s character helps promote the Amerika’s ideal oppressed national: subservient and loyal, yet marginalized.
The most prominent people of African descent throughout the movie are a group of pirates in the opening scene. After demanding more ransom money, Stallone’s mercenary team massacres them. One ‘protagonist’ character, played by Dolph Lundgren, attempts to hang one of the African pirates but is stopped by his teammates. Though the scene opens a mini-arc revolving around the character’s fall from grace and reform, the racist undertones are apparent and shocking. The mercenary team does include one Black guy, but his role is marginal at best.
The portrayal of men is also extremely one-sided. They are shown as fighters: big muscles, gun and knife toting, ready for action, etc. In some scenes, contrived dialogue is supplemented with hulkish, contrived poses. The Expendables, though hardly alone, helps promote an imagine of men as warriors whose main value is being able to kill, harm and intimidate those Amerika is set against.
The imperialist media often hypes Third World culture which explicitly (and rightly) promotes hate against the oppressor. However, movies such as The Expendables promote an implicit hate of the Third World and its broad masses. The drama and petty motivations of a handful of pig mercenaries is shown as significant whereas the Third World people they rampage through are not. No moment is paid to question what happened to Vilena after the mercenaries leave, though the movie supposedly ends on a happy note as all the conflicts amongst the pigs seem to be resolved. In short, according to the movie, Third World people are worthless and Amerikan pigs are valuable. While it’s not as direct as the revolutionary slogan, “Hate Amerika,” the reactionary message presented by movies such as The Expendables opens the door for great violence to be inflicted up the majority, Third World masses.
Like much of Amerikan culture, The Expendables has nothing to offer revolutionaries and the new world we seek to create. Along with Amerika itself, movies such as The Expendables will be swept away, perhaps viewed most often by and studied by academics, who will remind future generations just how chauvinist, militarist, hate-filled and reactionary Amerikans really were.
Filed under Imperialism, Movie Reviews, News and Analysis
Recently, we received the following letter from a First Worldist critic, ‘Sciencefaction.’ The criticism its pretty basic, and something we’ve encountered plenty of times in the past. Rather than writing some official reply on our blog, we figured we’d post the comment and allow our online readers to respond. The best replies will be edited and included in the next RAIM Global Digest.
Here’s ‘Sciencefaction’s” so-called criticism:
“How is it that first worlders, including whites, are “exploiters” simply by having relatively [and I stress “relatively”] better living conditions?
The logical conclusion is not revolution, but moralism: let’s renounce our computers and cell phones, and live in the most destitute conditions short of homelessness…nah, let’s go whole hog and be homeless, then we can pat ourselves on the back for this gesture of “solidarity.” More than that, let’s not bother to build any struggles in the first world, since, by definition, we are not really exploited or oppressed, so we have no legitimate issues with radical implications.”
Responses:
Filed under Dear RAIM-Denver..., Imperialism, Organizing, Political Economy, White Amerika
So….This is why we like Finkelstein. He’s on point and doesn’t back down under intimidation…
Filed under Agitation Statements, Israel, Palestine, Videos
(www.antiimperialism.wordpress.com)
On July 25th, 2010, the website Wikileaks released the ‘Afghan War Diary,’ over 200,000 pages detailing the US’s terroristic role in Afghanistan. (1) The documents, allegedly collected and leaked by Bradley Manning, a 22-year-old military intelligence analyst now being held on allegations of an earlier leak, consist of battlefield reports and classified intelligence estimates detailing what we already know: the US is increasing its reliance on private mercenary forces, covert operations and unmanned airstrikes; propping up a corrupt, unpopular government; killing civilians and lying about it; and quickly causing the Afghan masses to turn towards resistance. (2) (3)
The release of the ‘Afghan War Diary’ has caused some controversy in the US, with reactionaries waging a counter-offensive in the realm of ideas. Military and intelligence officials have described those involved with the leak as potentially emboldening the Afghan resistance forces and endangering Amerikan lives. “They might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family,” one high ranking official was quoted as saying. (4) This is an example of ruling-class double-speak. Not surprisingly, reactionaries malign anyone who resists or undermines the inherently violent and poverty-ridden imperialist system.
Similar oppressor-minded rhetoric has been provided by Adrian Lamo, a former computer hacker who snitched out Manning following private internet discussions between the two. An extreme sycophant of imperialism and the status quo, he didn’t want to be a “coward” and knew the leak of the Afghan War Diary would “endanger human lives,” he’s told mainstream media outlets. He has no regrets about snitching out Manning and describes him as “someone who was easily led.” (2)
Lamo’s reported comments provide a microcosm into the mindset of Amerikans. Values such as cowardice, and abstract ideas such as “human lives”, are seen through an extremely narrow, Amerika-centric lense. Though Lamo had frequent discussions with Manning in which the latter stated his negative views about Amerika’s wars, one gets the impression that Lamo always felt himself above and never connected with the dissident intelligence analyst. He completely disregards Manning’s view on the war, insisting on the imperialist narrative and defending his own role as a snitch. In short, like so many Amerikans, Adrian Lamo is a fucking pig.
Responding to the controversy, Julian Assange, founder, editor and spokesperson for Wikileaks, describes good journalism as controversial, stresses the need for truth in public knowledge and claims those in power often attempt to hide abuses and wrong-doings. Assange denies the leak endangers Amerikan lives and points to the fact that the documents detail massive killings of Afghan civilians by US-led forces. Wikileaks has reportedly withheld 15,000 pages for “further review,” because they possibly contain information which might endanger ongoing imperialist operations in war-torn Afghanistan. Assange and other spokespeople for Wikileaks claim they are attempting to contact Washington for help in vetting the documents before their release. (5) (6) (7)
These latter facts are troubling, raising questions about where Wikileaks’s true allegiances lie. It highlights the disparity between ultimately pro-imperialist, “social-democrat” thought and revolutionary anti-imperialism. ‘Social democrats’ oppose various aspects of imperialism: in the case of Wikileaks, secrecy by institutions of power. Yet, they fail to connect these aspects to the overall system and never make the leap to opposing the system as a whole. They ultimately seek to reform the existing system, not destroy it and build a better one. Why else would Wikileaks go to such lengths as withholding documents and contacting the White House to vet them. Though less extreme and overt, Julian Assange, an Australian, is also a sycophant of imperialism.
The release of the Afghan War Diary will not change Amerika’s public perception of the occupation. Amerikans support imperialism and its various wars, both explicitly and tacitly. This is not due to ignorance or “false consciousness,” but due to their economic proximity to the imperialist-bourgeoisie. The vast majority of Amerikans, like the Amerikan imperialist-bourgeoisie, stand to benefit from exploiting Afghanistan and the entire Central Asian region. Since the election of Barack Obama, the so-called US ‘anti-war movement’ has virtually disappeared while the reactionary ‘Tea Party Movement’ has grown rabidly. Julian Assange is himself out of his mind, if he believes the Afghan War Diary will ‘wake up’ the Amerikan so-called ‘masses.’
Since the release of the Afghan War Diary, reactionaries have also been working to spin its meaning. (8) One senior official in the Obama administration described the information in the leak as precisely the reason the US is escalating combat in Afghanistan.(9) Others have noted reports suggesting Iran is connected to the Afghan resistance forces, which the imperialists label exclusively as Al Qaeda and the Taliban. (10) Rather than causing Amerikans to take pause in their support for aggression against Muslim countries, the Afghan War Diary is actually being used to promoting expanding wars.
The real wake up call for Amerikans will come when their expanding wars of aggression are met with expanded wars of resistance; when the imperialist-bourgeoisie’s ‘Coalition of the Willing’ is met and defeated by a coalition of necessity and its massive army of the oppressed. Only revolution, the overthrow of imperialist power and installation of a peaceable, egalitarian society, will forever turn the tide against imperialists and their lackeys.
(1) http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Afghan_War_Diary,_2004-2010
(2) http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/07/29/lamo.profile.wikileaks/
(3) http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/wikileaks_afghan_war_diary_20100727/
(4) http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/07/30/2968456.htm
(5) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9uSd-CiD0c
(6) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bD5dxkPwibU
(7) http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/wikileaks-to-seek-pentagon-help-on-war-logs-20100804-11flb.html
(8) http://www.economist.com/node/16693313?story_id=16693313
(9) http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,708314,00.html
(10) http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/25/iran-backing-taliban-alqaida-afghanistan
Filed under Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Black-ops, Fuck The Troops, Imperialism, News and Analysis
Raim Global Digest: Volume 2, Issue 5
Contents:
Obama Sends Special Forces to 75 Countries, Up from 60 Last Year (RAIM-Denver)
Israel Commits Massacre on Freedom Flotilla to Gaza (RAIM-Denver)
Noam Chomsky “Denied Entry” Into Israel (Monkey Smashes Heaven)
Corruption Skyrockets in Afghanistan (RAIM-Denver)
UC-Irvine Moves to Suspend Muslim Students Union (RAIM-Denver)
Obama Signs “Toughest Sanctions Ever” Against Iran (excerpt, Monkey Smashes Heaven)
Imperialism Drones On Along Militarized Border (RAIM-Denver)
The Legacy of Imperialism: Child Mortality Up in Africa (Monkey Smashes Heaven)
Movie Review: The Spook That Sat by the Door (Siglo of Monkey Smashes Heaven)
Revisiting Value on Exploitation (Prariefire of Monkey Smashes Heaven)
Killer of Oscar Grant Gets Off: No Justice in Amerika (RAIM-Denver)
Monstanto, Settlers Inadvertently Create New Superweeds (RAIM-Denver)
Scott McInnis: Plagiarizer and Amerikan Parasite (RAIM-Denver)
Filed under News and Analysis, Organizing
Scott McInnis, Plagiarizer and Amerikan Parasite
(raimd.wordpress.com)
Here in Colorado a scandal in the race for state Governor has emerged. The campaign of Republican front-runner, Scott McInnis, is increasingly derailing due to findings of plagiarism he committed while working for a local, politically-connected foundation. Now, overall we at RAIM can care less about the bourgeois elections in Amerika and have no preference between Mayor Hickenlooper and the Republican candidate appealing to who can give Coloradans more stolen superprofits. We bring this up because the details of this affair is yet another example of Amerikan parasitism in practice.
Before entering the Gubernatorial race McInnis was a congressman from Colorado. After leaving Congress in 2004 he received a fellowship for the next two years from the Hasan Family Foundation, based in Pueblo, Colorado.
The Foundation is run by the Hasan family, who became rich through profit-based managed health care, and who are prominent Republican donors. Some in the family are entering into politics.(1) Hasan family members also formed Muslims for Bush in 2004, later changed to Muslims for America. (2) The purpose of the foundation, founded in 1993 is, “to promote health and education initiatives in Southern Colorado and to bring better understanding of Muslim and South Asian cultures in the United States.”(3) They gave thousands of dollars to McInnis campaigns, and in turn McInnis mentioned the Hasans two times in the public record in Congress. McInnis was paid $300,000 to write and do public work, like speeches, about water policy. An issue not part of the foundation’s goals. This was likely a sweetheart deal for a former congressman and a foundation who wanted a rising political star on their letterhead.
During the campaign questions arose about the work he did for the foundation, and local journalists conducted investigations on that work. The investigations showed that many articles McInnis wrote were directly lifted from previous writings by Colorado Supreme Court Justice Gregory Hobbs. McInnis presented the work to the foundation, titled “Musings on Water,” as original and as his own.(4) In other words, he plagiarized and lied about it. After the story broke he tried to place the blame on a researcher, with the researcher calling bullshit on McInnis. Many Colorado Republicans, who had made an issue over Ward Churchill’s alleged plagiarism, called for McInnis to drop out of the race because of McInnis’ admitted plagiarism. Campaign staff have also resigned.
The foundation, with egg on their face, conducted an investigation which showed McInnis, shockingly, had not done all the work he was paid for. The foundation demanded the $300,000 payment back (5).
Not only was the work he was paid to do plagiarized, but the rest of the so-called writing is so substandard that even the Hasans found it unpublishable. At 150 pages it came to $2000 a page that McInnis was paid. Local scene-magazine, Westword, had one of their bloggers read through it. The blogger said that the Hasans got this for their money: “Writing that would have trouble passing muster in a high school geography class — a repetitious, rambling and generally shapeless excursion through “fun facts” of Colorado water law, history and topography that turn out to be not fun and heavily padded. Much of it is so embarrassingly basic in subject matter and inept
in execution that you wonder who the hell was supposed to be the audience for this extravagantly priced pabulum.”(6) The Hasan’s got for their $300,000 a bunch of sloppy research and lazy writing.
RAIM, being Third World oriented, continually points out the amount of unproductive labor in the First World as a result of imperialist exploitation. This is just a more obvious example. Even for academic labor McInnis was by far overpaid. Getting paid vast sums of money for doing next-to-nothing is what life in the First World nations is all about. Under a more just global distribution of resources this money would go to more useful programs to benefit the masses. Previously RAIM created an article about Water and Imperialism,(7) for much much less than McInnis was paid. First Worlders not only get overpaid, but paid to do much less work. It’s as if First Worlders have an aversion to doing work, a trait gotten from living off the benefits of imperialist exploitation around the world.
Thus we have a simple solution we present to McInnis and the Hasan foundation. Previously we proposed Joe the Plumber be sent to Iraq to help rebuild their water system destroyed by the United Snakes. (8) We offer a similar option now. Since McInnis is so passionate about water, we propose to send him to a Third World country to do work on water. He would do work that millions of women in the world do now: gather water. As piped water exists in only 25 percent of homes in the poorest fifth of the world, water often must be gathered from flowing sources like rivers or wells.
McInnis will be paid $2 a day, which is what the poorest half of the earth live on, for his services. This will likely be the most productive work he will ever do in his lifetime, and he will soon be in need of a gig since his political career is going downhill. This will be a task for most Amerikans when socialism is implemented. Amerikans will have to give up their overpaid positions and get down and do physical labor for their reparations. Requiring Amerikans to participate in real labor for human needs will be one part of creating a more equal distribution of the world’s resources, including water and labor. McInnis in his campaign claimed he will be a “jobs” governor. Well, no better time than now to get to work!
Sources:
1. http://www.westword.com/2008-01-17/news/is-this-muslim-republican-mr-right-or-the-big-cheese/
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslims_for_America
3. http://www.hasanfamilyfoundation.com/about.html
4. http://www.denverpost.com/election2010/ci_15502025
6. A whole review of the Musings are at these pages:
http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2010/06/scott_mcinnis_the_waterlogged.php,
http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2010/06/scott_mcinnis_the_waterlogged_1.php,
http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2010/06/scott_mcinnis_the_waterlogged_2.php
7. https://raimd.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/water-and-imperialism/
8. https://raimd.wordpress.com/2008/10/18/joe-the-plumber-goes-to-iraq/
Filed under Imperialism, News and Analysis, Political Economy
Monsanto, Settlers Inadvertently Create New Superweeds
(www.antiimperialism.wordpress.com)
Over a decade ago, Monsanto made a supposed breakthrough. The idea was simple: sell both genetically-modified seeds and herbicide which would kill all other plant-life. It was marketed with great success to Amerikan farm-owners as a low-cost, high-output alternative to traditional agricultural methods. Critics called it “Frankenfood.” Now, Monsanto and Amerikan farm-owners are acknowledging one recent consequence of genetically-modified crops: superweeds.
Weeds, often those long native to the Americas, have long plagued Amerikan farm-owners. However, new superweeds are resistant to Monstanto’s herbicide, greatly diminishing the usefulness of their twin products, and in some cases grow much larger and quicker than their native ancestors. Farm-owners claim the evolution of superweeds has set their practices back by twenty years.(1) In a video from ABC News, a white guy explains the new weeds can damage heavy machinery while Blacks are shown in the fields doing manual labor.(2)
Monsanto claims a solution is only years away: newer genetically-modified seeds and stronger, sometimes older herbicides, such as 2,4-D, a main component of Agent Orange.(3)
On the surface, it’s hard to explain why Amerikan farmers chose to douse their field with stronger herbicides each year. Amerika is hardly short of food. The majority of the US population is overweight or obese, and around 40-50% of all produce grown in the US goes uneaten.(4) Neither are Amerikan farmers compelled by any feeling of altruism towards the masses of people who are underweight and genuinely malnourished throughout the world. That Amerikan farms overproduce food does little to help your average starving African.
In fact, the opposite is true.
As part of the globalized economy and along with subsidies Amerikan farm-owners receive (both in the form of vast amounts of stolen land and cash from the US government), local, largely autonomous economies have been undermined and destroyed. As a result, hundreds of millions of people have been kicked off of their lands, often their only means of day to day survival, resulting in greater food insecurity throughout the Third World. Exploiters’ quest for profits have caused great pain to the world’s masses. Superweeds are a minor problem compared to any number of plagues imperialism has unleashed.
Imperialism is a system which can not rule without destroying local communities, traditional economies or global ecology. While the world’s masses may never recover everything exploiters have stolen or destroyed, a new world can be built, free from this menacing system. It is out of the ashes of a world imperialism is destroying that the struggle for a mutually and equally beneficial order can emerge victorious.
While over the long run this struggle will benefit humanity in its very ability to survive, the task of building a new world rests mainly on those exploited by imperialism, who have “nothing to loose but their chains.” This group resides mainly in the Third World. At most, a small minority from imperialist First World countries will line up to fight on the side of revolution. Nonetheless, the exploited and their allies must press forward, facilitating the destruction of imperialism and creating of a new, revolutionary global society. Despite everything imperialism has thus far stolen or corrupted, it will be the people who own the future.
Sources:
1. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/business/energy-environment/04weed.html
2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-cka5s4AqE
3. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704025304575284390777746822.html
4. http://www.foodproductiondaily.com/Supply-Chain/Half-of-US-food-goes-to-waste.
Filed under Environment, Imperialism, News and Analysis
Corruption skyrockets in Afghanistan
(www.antiimperialism.wordpress.com)
Afghans paid nearly a billion dollars in bribes in 2009, up from 466 million in 2007, according to the Kabul-based NGO, Integrity Watch Afghanistan. The rapid growth of corruption in Afghanistan, which includes not just monetary payments but nepotism and sexual extortion, occurs only years into the US’s occupation of the country.
According to the report, 15% of households were affected by land-related corruption in 2009. Another report by the UN paints an even grimmer picture, stating Afghans paid out $2.5 billion in bribes, and that Afghans themselves consider corruption to be the country’s biggest problem.
Presumably, neither of the polls asked Afghans what role the occupation might have or if imperialism was the biggest problem facing the country. This is because both surveys were crafted to serve not the masses of Afghanistan, but imperialism’s long-term rule over them.
Nonetheless, the reports offer important insights. Though imperialists deliver pretty speeches about freedom, democracy and prosperity, they impose and maintain a social order which actively denies these things to the masses of the world. At places where imperialism is most directly involved, whether Third World industrial compounds or countries with militarily-imposed puppets, the masses have the least freedom, democracy and prosperity.
Compared with the paltry 1- 2.5 billion dollars in bribes, Afghans have paid many times more than this in the form of exploitation of their labor and resources, as well as in their lives due to the US’s war. This daily injustice occurs not just to benefit of the imperialists and their Third World lackeys, but their First World lackeys as well, i.e. the majority of people in the First World who are bought-off into supporting this rotten system.
Corruption, like many of the world’s problems, finds much of its root cause in imperialism. It is from the Third World masses’ struggle against imperialism that solutions to this and many more problems will arise.
Sources:
http://www.iwaweb.org/corruptionsurvey2010/Main_findings.html
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,672828,00.html
Filed under Afghanistan, Imperialism, News and Analysis
Killer of Oscar Grant Gets Off: No Justice in Amerikkka
(raimd.wordpress.com)
Justice did not materialize in Oakland for Oscar Grant, just as it is delayed and denied for millions of victims of Amerikkka.
The BART pig who killed Grant, Johannes Mehserle, was given the lightest sentence possible short of acquittal, involuntary manslaughter, and the jury rejected the more serious charge of second degree murder. This despite the fact that the shooting was caught on camera and the pig had claimed he was reaching for his taser and not his gun when he shot Grant, who was unarmed.
The people were justifiably angry. There were protests and rebellions in Oakland following, and self-proclaimed community leaders attempted to keep the people calm for the benefit of the system. 78 people were reported arrested in Oakland.(1) Solidarity protests happened across the country, as people all over were outraged. In Denver a solidarity protest turned out 50 people, organized by the local Anarchist Black Cross chapter at the last minute.(2)
The claim of mistaking a Taser for a gun is so dubious in and of itself. Local author and indigenous rights activist Ben Whitmer, who is also a concealed carry holder, tears apart the ridiculousness of that defense here: http://benjaminwhitmer.com/index.php/2010/07/looking-at-johannes-mehserles-defense-from-the-vantage-point-of-an-amateur-gun-nut/
Of the twelve jurors on the trial, held in Los Angeles, not one of them was Black, and several of the jurors admitted to being friends or relatives of cops.(3) Attorney John Burris, representing the Grant family, said at a press conference, “In my long history being involved in police matters since 1979 and well over 30 homicides with police, never have I had a case when a police officer was convicted of any crime against an African American male.”(4)
Oscar Grant is one of several non-white people killed or brutalized by cops, almost all of whom never get convicted. The fact that the pig got even manslaughter is surprising, only after going to trial following much publicity from being filmed. Amerikans supposedly pride themselves on being a nation of laws, but look the other way when the law attempts to bring Amerika accountable. There was no convictions with the Rodney King beating in the 1990’s. Recently pigs killed Aiyana Jones with no one being brought to trial. The cases of pig brutality in Amerika are endless. Abroad military troops commit vast atrocities and are never brought to justice. Despite the photographic evidence at Abu Gharib hardly any of the perpetrators were brought to trial. And recently a video of a massacre by Amerikan troops was brought to light throught the Wikileaks site, with no one hurrying to prosecute.
Often in these cases the Amerikan populace comes to support these pig cops and troops. It is considered sacrilege to question the police and military. Even Barack Obama came under heat for saying that the pig who arrested Henry Louis Gates “acted stupidly.” He was forced to apologize and invited the pig to the White House for a beer. No matter how much mass murder Obama does for the empire, criticizing cops no matter how mildly is frowned upon.
Mao Zedong once observed that political power comes from the barrel of a gun. The Amerikan power that its citizenry wallows in comes from the vast weapons it has and uses. The police and the military of Amerikkka are the shock troops that keep that imperialist system of exploitation running. They bring terror to the populations they oppress, and millions fall victim to the system they enforce. Justice in turn will come to Amerikkka by the oppressed people of the world bringing it to them in turn. It is right to rebel against all reactionaries!
(1) http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/10/us/10oakland.html?_r=1
(2)http://denverabc.wordpress.com/2010/07/09/oscar-grant-denver-stands-in-solidarity-with-oakland/
(3)http://racerelations.about.com/b/2010/06/14/no-black-jurors-in-oscar-grant-murder-trial.htm
(4)http://colorlines.com/archives/2010/07/oscar_grant_verdict_whats_inside_the_jurys_ruling.html
Imperialism Drones On
Washington’s Homeland Security Department recently announced its plans to deploy unmanned “Predator” drones on the border of Mexico and Texas. In addition, 1,000 Border Patrol agents and 1,200 National Guard soldiers are being sent to the area. This is the latest in a series of ongoing attacks on Mexicano people and the escalation of militarism by Nobel Peace Prize-winning US President Barack Obama. (1)
Obama recently requested $500 million from congress for “emergency border security.” These funds will provide the drones, which cost nearly $5 million a piece (2), as well as the thousands of soldiers and police heading to the militarized border zone. Obama spending outrageous funds on brash military expenditures is no surprise. Obama has made sure that under his presidency military spending has been higher than it was under his predecessor George W. Bush. No price is too high for imperialism. (3)
Liberals have previously praised Obama for his rhetorical appeals to Chicano people; however, as president, Obama has stepped up the attacks of his predecessor. In his first year as president, Obama deported 5% more migrants than in George Bush’s last, a new record. The number is expected to grow again in 2010. Furthermore, despite some moderate condemnation from the White House, Immigration Custom Enforcement (ICE) raids and detention centers continue on unabated. (4)
The unmanned Predator drones set to be deployed are said to be strictly for surveillance. Such Unmanned Aerial Vehicles were first used by the US for spying in Bosnia and Kosovo in the early 90s. (5) As of late, however, these aircraft have been known for killing large numbers of civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The US military arms these drones with “Hellfire” missiles and, from a remote location, bombs “enemy targets,” almost always killing sizable amounts of unsuspecting civilians. As Obama once joked of the victims, “Predator drones. You’ll never see it coming.” Nearly 1,000 Pakistani civilians have been killed in drone attacks. (6) The US military does not recognize these bombings on record and does not keep track of casualties.
The Amerikan public is predictably on board with this sort of reckless militarization of the border. A CNN/Opinion Research poll taken last month showed that a near uniform 88% percent supported an increased Border Patrol presence. Sizable majorities support a border wall. Majorities also support racist laws targeting Mexicano and Chicano people in the US, particularly the recent bills passed in Arizona. (7)
Amerikans will go to any extent to protect their stolen land. The US/Mexico border is lined with fences, Minuteklan thugs, pigs, troops and now remote controlled spy planes. All to keep Mexicans off their own land. First worldists call for assimilation. To them, the solution to oppression and exploitation is to beg to be a part of the exploiter-opressor nation. Anti-imperialists support national liberation. The only true way to dispose of arbitrary militarized borders and end oppression is to defeat the Fist World and its lackeys. Amerikan settlers are the real illegals. The Mexicano and other Indigenous nations have the only compelling claim to the occupied land in the southwest United Snakes.
Notes.
1. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/23/AR2010062305358.html
2. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/business/17uav.html
3. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/32272.html
4. http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/05/morton-ice-illegal-immigration-deportation
5. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/business/17uav.html?_r=1
6. http://www.asiantribune.com/news/2010/03/21/us-engaged-%E2%80%98extra-judicial-killings%E2%80%99-civilians-af-pak-iraq-us ing-%E2%80%98unmanned-drones%E2%80%99
7. http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/05/26/poll.border.security/index.htm
ICS/05/26/poll.border.security/index.html
Obama sends US Special Operations Forces to 75 countries, up from 60 last year
(www.raimd.wordpress.com)
The US Special Operations Forces, or Green Berets, are operating in 75 countries around the world, up 25% from last year. Under the Obama administration, special ops forces have been sent to Iran, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, Ukraine, Bolivia, Peru, Turkey, the Philippines, Columbia and Paraguay, among many others. Of the 13,000 Special Operations forces worldwide, 9,000 are split between Iraq and Afghanistan. [1,2]
Obama was and still is perceived by many to be fundamentally different than George W. Bush. This only reveals how widespread gullibility and self-serving ignorance are. Under Obama, the number of US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan jumped to 189,000 at end of 2009, up from Bush’s high of 186,000. Aerial bombings by US-operated drones have increased under Obama. Obama additionally employs an ‘Intelligence Community’ of 200,000 at a cost of 75 billion dollars annually. [3,4]
The United States is, regardless of its individual leadership, the greatest menace to humanity today. There is no force which plays a larger policing or military role worldwide. There is no force which drops as many bombs, invades as many countries, trains as many armed forces and spies on as many dissidents.
While US imperialism and its goons may appear strong, this is not necessarily the case. The real strength lies with the people, the masses of the Third World which make up the broad majority humanity. United under common interest, for peace, freedom and equality, and without illusions about the antagonistic nature of imperialism, the world’s masses can defeat reactionaries and lay the foundation for a better future.
[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/03/AR2010060304965_pf.html
[3] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/12/AR2009101203142_2.html
[4] http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2009/09/dni091509-m.pdf
While the US imperialism and its goons may appear strong, this is not necessarily the case. The real strength lies with the people, the masses of the Third World which make up a broad majority humanity. United under common interest, for peace, freedom and equality, and without illusions about the antagonistic nature of imperialism, the world’s masses can defeat reactionaries and lay the foundation for a new, better world.
[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/03/AR2010060304965_pf.html
[3] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/12/AR2009101203142_2.html
Filed under Afghanistan, Africa, Barack Obama, Black-ops, Fuck The Troops, Imperialism, Iraq, News and Analysis
UC-Irvine moves to suspend Muslim Student Union
(www.raimd.wordpress.com)
Members of the Muslim Student Union are facing one-year suspensions for what school officials at the University of California-Irvine claim was an orchestrated violation of campus conduct during a protest of a presentation by Israeli Ambassador, Michael Oren.
The protest, which occurred last February, included Oren being interrupted 10 times by students who walked out while booing and yelling. Oren himself walked off stage and the University Chancellor took the podium to condemn the student protesters. Oren later finished his screed, but the planned question-and-answer session was canceled. The Muslim students claimed they were protesting Israeli policies of genocide directed against Palestinians. “Propagating murder is not freedom of speech,” they yelled. 11 students were arrested for the action.
This is not the first time administrators at UC-Irvine have moved against the Muslim Student Union. In 2009, school officials snitched on the MSU, asking the FBI to look into allegations that the student group was raising money for Hamas, a Palestinian resistance group labeled terrorists by imperialists. As of yet, no action has been taken against MSU in this case.
UC-Irvine and other colleges in the US are bastions of reaction. When they are not teaching students to be spies and pigs, they are teaching them to be promulgators of bourgeois ideology and cogs in the machinery of death called US imperialism. As the recent ruling against MSU indicates, schools in Amerika do not teach students how to fight oppression; they punish those who do.
Righteous students, i.e. those who side with the world’s exploited and oppressed majority in their struggle against imperialism, can only gain so much from Amerika’s piggish school system. Rather than passively accepting what they are told, anti-imperialist students must look deeper to find the truth. Additionally, we must strategically speak out for the truth and the oppressed masses, challenge the most egregious examples of pro-imperialist and First Worldist thought and unite with others who seek a world free from imperialism.
RAIM applauds the righteous students of UC-Irvine for their bravery, both in standing up against Michael Oren and the settler-imperialism he represents and for their struggle with the suppressive backlash their protest has generated. Yet, our struggle, that of such righteous students and even that of Palestinians are but small parts of the global struggle against capitalist-imperialism. Only with the victory of masses and defeat of imperialism internationally can we truly say the world is free.
Victory to Palestine!
Death to imperialism!
Sources:
http://forward.com/articles/128818/
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/06/uci-seeks-to-suspend-muslim-student-group.html
http://www.scpr.org/news/2010/06/14/uci-muslims/
Filed under Israel, News and Analysis, Organizing, Palestine, Youth
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