RAIM Global Digest Vol. 2 Issue 4
Contents:
-RAIM Seattle Drives Away Crackers from Mayday
-Mayday 2010 Denver
-RAIM Protests Teaklanners and Amerikkka
-Arizona SB1070, the Continuing War Against the Mexicano People
-Big Majority of Amerikans Support Racist Arizona Law
-On the Upcoming Election in the Philippines
-Pigs Kill Aiyana Jones While Being Recorded for Reality TV
-Movie Review: Clash of the Titans
(monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com)
One of the latest victims of the pig brutality is Aiyana Jones, a 7 year old girl who was living in Detroit who was murdered by gunfire earlier this month. (1) The assailant responsible for her death, Officer Joe Weekley, has recently been put on paid leave. (2) Blacks who are murdered in this way will sometimes receive media attention, but in general life goes on as usual for Amerikans, who have displayed little interest in Jones’ death. Rather than being the object of widespread outrage or condemnation, the brutality and murder of oppressed peoples cause most Amerikans to end up siding with the pigs no matter how blatant the their aggression. Jones’ death is not an aberration on an otherwise just police system. Rather, it is part of the systematic violence aimed at Blacks living in the United $nakes.
In a display of absurdity, one of the most incriminating pieces of evidence is an unreleased recording for a television series called “Detroit Police Tech: SWAT Team,” a show meant to glorify the pigs. There is currently some disagreement about what exactly is depicted in the recording. Geoffrey Fieger, the lawyer representing the victim’s family, claims that the video shows that the shooting was intentional. In contrast, the pigs claim that the gun was accidentally fired while they fought with Aiyana Jones’ grandmother. Even if the pigs are telling the truth and Jones’ death was an accident, her death was preventable and a direct result of the pigs’ inclination towards using excessive force. These types of shows that aim to glorify the pigs as heroes add cultural fuel to the fire of gross police violence. These shows are a dime a dozen. Among the worst are shows like “Border Wars” and “Detroit Police Tech: SWAT Team,” which glorify subduing oppressed nations by force.
Such shows are popular with many Amerikans. However, Mayor Dave Bing of Detroit, who claims to have no knowledge of what his police were doing, has since banned reality TV from accompanying Detroit police officers. (4) However, capitalist culture dishes up so much reactionary slop that whether or not this particular show continues to air matters little. If this show is banned, there are a hundred copycat, or even worse, shows to take its place. Like so much trashy pig culture, such a television program has no place in socialism, except, perhaps, to make known the failings of past culture. As a rule, such shows will be condemned to the dustbin of history.
Still, in our current environment there is a pattern where recordings that were not intentional on the part of the state end up exposing the state’s actions. This was the case during the public execution of Oscar Grant in Oakland, California, and was similarly the case when Saeed Chmagh and the other Iraqis around him were gunned down in Baghdad. If the state possesses such videos itself, it consistently fails to release them. It would not be unreasonable if, instead, all actions undertaken outside of Amerikan society by its police and military were recorded by an impartial third party, and the videos placed in a publicly viewable archive online. Of course, this will never happen under capitalism.
In “Detroit Police: SWAT Team,” the intended message very clearly is that Detroit needs a White overseer. In a promotional video for the show, a pig representative proudly explains the SWAT team’s special role in enforcing state oppression, thus giving a backdrop for the series. (5) When most Amerikan viewers see the show, they will accept without question that Detroit, a city with an 84% black population, needs a White overseer armed with tanks and submachine guns to keep Blacks in line. (6)(7) So entrenched is imperialist culture that the idea of subduing Blacks with tanks makes perfect sense to Amerikans, who are increasingly fascist in their mentality. After all, the United States is a country that was founded upon conquest, murder, and genocide. Frighteningly, fascist-styled organizations such as the Minuteman Project have already begun to develop and take root in U$ society. Fascism has a strong social base of support in Amerikan the labor aristocracy. This reactionary class, which comprises the vast majority of the Amerikan population, is dependent on imperialism for its survival. The labor aristocracy will fight tooth-and-nail for imperialism to protect its privileges.
Virtually all Amerikans are thoroughly reactionary. Amerikans consistently align with imperialism against the Third World. Only a tiny minority of Amerikans are willing to stand with the vast majority of humanity against imperialism. Imperialism is a beast that demands constant sacrifices. Aiyana Jones’s was one of its latest victims. Until imperialism is destroyed along with Amerika itself, more and more people will continue to be sacrificed to the beast. Imperialism’s appetite for blood is unrelenting. Even more people will be killed indirectly through starvation, lack of medical treatment, or other problems created by unnecessary poverty. This way of things does not advance humanity in any meaningful way, but instead only exists to transport stolen wealth from the Third World to a global minority in the First World. To move forward, the beast must be slain and all the world’s people set free.
Notes.
1. http://detnews.com/article/20100516/METRO/5160325/Detroit-Police-shoot-7-year-old-girl-in-house-search#ixzz0p1pAUJTY
2. http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2010/05/officer_whose_bullet_killed_ai.html
3. http://www.newser.com/article/d9fp3utg0/reality-series-crew-was-with-Detroit-police-during-search-where-7-year-old-g irl-was-killed.html
4. http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/05/25/1646828/detroit-mayor-bans-tv-crews-from.html
5. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWvgo17dHik
6. http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/ADPTable?_bm=y&-context=adp&-qr_name=ACS_2007_3YR_G00_DP3YR5&-ds_name=ACS_2007_ 3YR_G00_&-tree_id=3307&-redoLog=true&-_caller=geoselect&-geo_id=16000US2622000&-format=&-_lang=en
7. “Black” is not capitalized here to signify that the US census is not talking about nations, but simply “ethnic” qualities such as skin color. Rather than focusing on “race” or “ethnicity,” Marxists tend to focus on the more scientific concept of nations. Even though the US census thus does not divide people in a scientific way, the qualities that lead one to be labelled as “ethnically black” still correlate roughly to membership of the Black Nation, so this percent offers a good picture of Detroit practically speaking.
Filed under Anti-Racism, Black Nation, News and Analysis, Police Brutality, White Amerika
RAIM is proud to be featured in the latest issue of ‘Pick-Up Lines,’ a pamphlet series which features reviews, debates and polemics from Third Worldist organizations.
Study up, comrades!
Table of Contents-
By the Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Movement:
-Code Pink: Pigs for More Pie
-Review: Arun Gupta asks, ‘What Anti-War Movement?’
-Seven Years of Ongoing U$ Imperialist Slaughter in Iraq
-Review: Raj Patel, the Value of Nothing
-Earthquake Strikes Haiti, Imperialism is a Disaster
By Monkey Smashes Heaven:
-MSH on Healthcare, NPR on Barefoot Doctors
-A Quick Look at Some of Mao’s Errors
-RCP Elaborates on the Tragic Oppression of NFL Millionares
-What About the RIM
-Review: Nickel and Dimed, On (Not) Getting by in America
-On Sectarianism
Filed under News and Analysis, Organizing, Political Economy, RAIM-Seattle
Israel Commits Massacre on Freedom Flotilla to Gaza
(raimd.wordpress.com)
ISSrael on Monday attacked an aid flotilla heading to Gaza, killing several international activists. The flotilla was attempting to break the Israeli blockade imposed since 2007 and deliver 10,000 tons of needed supplies to the 1.5 million people of Gaza imprisoned by the Zionist entity.
Israeli commandos from 14 warships and military helicopters, reportedly 1/4 of the Israel navy, boarded one of the Turkish ships and began shooting. Recent news reports at least 19 dead civilians. This was all done in international waters, violating international law. But as shown before, no international law or condemnation has deterred aggression by the terrorist nation of Israel.
The pigs in the Israeli government and military said they were acting in “self-defense” and the activists attacked them. This is the typical excuse given by Israel when it uses its occupation military on those who resist. It has shown in the past that it will use violent force on international activists as well as Palestinians.
Israel is a settler state, formed by terrorist occupation of Palestinian land by Zionist imperialists. Just like Amerika, Israel is based on subjugation of native peoples and exploitation of their labor, land, and resources. It is no surprise that Israel and United Snakes are deep allies, as they desperately keep their parasitic way of life going through brutal military force. This way of life is supported by the majorities of each of these countries. Although there will be a few in the imperialist countries to voice opposition to these acts, most of these settler citizens will actively and passively support these policies. The oppressed and exploited majorities of the world should not wait for the imperialist country citizens to wake up. It is right to resist imperialist occupation, and the struggle is now.
There are protests happening all over the world right now in response to this atrocity. We encourage all supporters to assist and organize where they are to stand in solidarity with Palestine and agitate to bring the end to illegitimate terror nations like Israel and Amerika.
Down with all settler states!
Israel and United Snakes!
We at RAIM support the crackdown on all these damn illegal Europeans.
By Monkey Smashes Heaven
(monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com)
Noam Chomsky has been described as one of the most influential living intellectuals. His work revolutionized the field of linguistics in the 1960s. Even today, his contributions in linguistics still play an important role. However, Chomsky is more popularly known for his politics. Chomsky, a Jewish-Amerikan, has been a consistent critic of Zionism, Israel, and U.S. foreign policy in general.
Chomsky was scheduled to deliver a lecture earlier this week at Bir Zeit University, near the West Bank city of Ramallah, in Palestine. When Chomsky attempted to cross the border, he was stopped and questioned for hours. “Denied Entry,” was stamped on his passport. The 81-year old professor was told by the border agents, “Israel does not like what you say.” Chomsky compared Israel’s actions to apartheid South Africa’s in the 1960s.
Even though the Zionist state claimed Chomsky was not blacklisted and that the incident was a misunderstanding, they refused to guarantee Chomsky’s entry if he attempted again. For this reason, Chomsky chose to deliver his lecture from Jordan to Israel via video link.
Chomsky is not the first author to be blacklisted by Israel. Norman Finkelstein was also denied entry iin 2008. The 53-year old professor, holocaust scholar, and critic of Israel’s apartheid system was deemed a “security risk.” This usually means that a person is barred for a decade. The racist settler state has a long history of barring its critics from entry into either Palestine or lands held by Israel. In 2009, United States Green Party Presidential Candidate Cynthia McKinney and several other activists were stopped by the Israel armed forces when they tried to bring medical supplies, children’s toys, and food to Gaza. Israel illegally seized their property, including their ship, then imprisoned and deported them. These are just a few examples among many. Israel’s systematic apartheid and genocide against the Palestinians is so indefensible that Israel fears the scrutiny of a few First World activists. Israel seeks to defend the indefensible, even if it means clumsily censoring its critics.
Chomsky’s works contain useful information. However, Chomsky’s criticism does not cut deep enough. Chomsky acknowledges that Israel has waged a genocidal war against Palestinians since its founding. It is a genocide that has been bankrolled by the United States and other Western countries for about half a century. Chomsky exposes the barbarism of imperialism and Zionism. However, Chomsky fails to recognize that the people of Israel, just like the people of the First World generally, have a material interest in supporting imperialism. And it is no accident that Amerikans find common cause with Israel. Israel’s very existence as a settler society is bound-up with the genocide and exploitation of Palestinians. Amerika too is a settler society that is based on the ethnic cleansing of North America and the exploitation of peoples all over the Third World. Genocide and exploitation are at the very core of both Amerikan and Israeli society. In countries like these, where the vast majority of the population is made up of exploiters, there is a degree of responsibility that is shared by society as a whole. These populations as a whole bear collective responsibility for their exploitation and oppression of others. Because Chomsky fails to understand the problem fully, he fails to understand the solution. First World peoples, including the Israel people, will not voluntarily toss imperialism into the dustbin of history. Rather, they will defend imperialism tooth-and-nail. Imperialism will be smashed by those it oppresses, not by those who benefit from it. It will be smashed through a global people’s war waged by the Third World against the First World. The armies of the Palestinians and the Third World will not be held up by a “denied entry” stamp.
Notes
1. http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100518/wl_mideast_afp/mideastconflictchomskyban
2. http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/middleeast/news/article_1407232.php/US_political_author_Norman_Finkelstein_denied_entry_to_Israel
3. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/07/02/cynthia-mckinney-remains-imprisoned-israel-gaza-bound-boat-seized/
Filed under Anti-Racism, Israel, News and Analysis, Palestine
May Day 2010 Denver
(raimd.wordpress.com)
This year the May Day events in Denver, as elsewhere in occupied Amerika, were about migrant rights and were influenced by the recent passage in Arizona of SB1070 that would further criminalize migrants without documents. There were two different events in Denver, each illustrating the different politics around the most recent struggle for migrant rights.
The first event was one RAIM participated in and helped organize. The May Day March for Social Justice, Human Dignity, and Self-Determination was made up of a loose coalition of more radical and independent tendencies. RAIM Denver marched with our allies Resistencia Mexicana, with banners featuring Mexican revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata. At least 500 people participated in this march, which went from the State Capitol through downtown, ending in Skyline Park for a rally. A Mexica/Aztec dance group performed a ceremony and led the march.
photo by Shareef
This particular march was unique with respect to the diverse makeup of the participants, who had a more clearer understanding of the repressive character of the state’s response to the “immigrant rights” movement. It showed that there is a progressive sector in Denver that is against reform oriented liberal politics and for more radical change. There were many beautiful banners and signs, good chants, and a more liberatory attitude. The rally included music, food, tables of the participating groups, and speakers.
photo by Resistencia Mexicana
photo by Resistencia Mexicana
photo by Shareef
The first speaker was Ricardo Romero, a long time Chicano/Mexicano human rights organizer and a leader in the Mexican National Liberation Movement, who brought up the ongoing war against the Mexican people exemplified by the anti-migrant movement. Romero pointed out that there is a coming fascist offensive against the Mexicano peoples on their own occupied homeland, and highlighted the need to get educated, organized, and prepared for self-defense and national liberation.
Antonio spoke on behalf of RAIMD, stating that the recent struggle in Arizona is only one of many that has happened since 1848 when the U.S. settler empire invaded Mexico and imposed a border on its northern half. Today, the fight continues on many fronts with Third World peoples fighting against the exploiter countries of the First World. Antonio pointed out that it is important to support the struggles against imperialism everywhere.
RAIMD also brought a pinata for the festivities, in the form of Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer as a pig. The elementary school-aged children at the rally enjoyed participating in the beating of the pig Brewer, and tore it open for the candy and toys inside.
Kids getting candy and toys from "Jan Brewer" pinata. Photo by Resistencia Mexicana
At the rally at Skyline RAIMD and other organizations had tables and distributed information. Here many groups handed out a wide range of literature outside of mainstream discourse. Our own materials were well received by the participants there. We distributed: over two hundred of our program in support of Mexican nation liberation; around 75 new and old RAIM Global Digests; dozens of Troublemaker DVDs; copies of chapter eight from Lin Biao’s ‘Long Live the Victory of People’s War’ and some interviews with J. Sakai, author of ‘Settlers, the Mythology of the White Proletariat;’ even some child-sized t-shirts. Our material sparked many conversations and drew both nods of approval and skeptical looks.
The rally ended later that afternoon with some good music and on a positive note. Despite our real political differences with many of the groups there, overall it showed that there is an organized progressive sector in Denver that is nominally against reform oriented liberal politics and for more radical social change, no matter how small that sector is.
The Other Rally
We should note the other event that went on that day, which was much larger for many reasons. It was organized by Reform Immigration for America, a liberal reformist group that steers the migrant rights struggle into the safe hands of the Democratic Party realm. To illustrate their strategy, at their massive immigration reform rally in Washington back in March of this year, they ended it with a televised speech by President Obama promising reform.
While the coalition that did the May Day March for Social Justice was planning this march months in advance, the liberal groups did not want a march at all. Their last minute changes in response to our organizing and to a changing public opinion show their opportunistic nature. Their original event for May 1st was going to be a “Grade Your Senators” event at Sunken Gardens Park, where participants would fill out faux report cards on legislators. Basically directing people into electoral work, using Latinos as another interest group to gain leverage on the legislative level. The response to Arizona changed this. The days before there were many school walkouts organized in protest of the law in Arizona. In Denver on April 30th many schools walked out and ended at a rally at the Capitol that day. The energy level on May 1st was high, people wanted to march. Also, the legislative campaign would not appeal to the mostly youth and non-citizens that were mobilized. So the liberal non-profits changed plans at the last minute and tailed where the mass movement was going in order to regain leadership.
This is what awaited marchers at the reformist event at Sunken Gardens Park
The resulting march that went from Sunken Gardens through downtown and back to the park turned out about 10,000 people at its height. Their larger turnout was due to the liberal groups larger resource base. They purchased advertising on Spanish television and radio the day before. The organizers brought several pre-printed signs and Amerikan flags to promote “We Are America.” The crowd was encouraged to chant “USA, USA.”
The liberals did what they are expected to do, channel discontent into safe and controllable arenas. In this case promoting assimilationist and reformist messages. Their hope is that mainstream Amerika will see that immigrants are “Americans” too. In the end this strategy, which denies the people the right to their identity, culture, and land, will weaken the necessary independent struggle that is needed to build power to fight against repression. The non-profit industrial complex serves those that use it to continue to get grant funding and patronage, not the people itself.
Our comrades at Monkey Smashes Heaven said this of May Day:
“May Day, May First, or International Workers Day, originally was a day to commemorate the victims of the Haymarket Massacre in Chicago in 1886. Chicago workers had called a general strike for the eight-hour workday. The peaceful strikers were fired on by police. A bomb exploded.
Several deaths of strikers and police occurred. Some of the police deaths were a result of their own hand, “friendly fire.” [Eight organizers were tried and wrongfully convicted, with some getting the death penalty before they all were exonerated (RAIM)]. Since then May Day has been embraced by revolutionaries and reformists in the labor movement alike. However, May Day means nothing to the vast majority of First World peoples who have no interest in building socialism or ending imperialism. May Day when celebrated by First Worldists is nothing but a parody.”
This march we participated in gave some mixed messages too, but created a space where RAIM, Resistencia Mexicana, and others presented alternatives to Amerikan assimilation and to build real power to bring national liberation.
From the May Day Organizing Committee:
MAY DAY MARCH FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE, HUMAN DIGNITY AND SELF-DETERMINATION
Social Justice and Migrant rights activists will converge at a March and Rally this Saturday to build popular support for immigrant/human rights and social change.
The May Day March for Social Justice, Human Dignity, and Self-Determination will kick off this Saturday, May 1st 2010. It will begin at the State Capitol at 10:00 am and March through Downtown to a rally at Skyline Park (16th & Arapahoe) to last until 3:30pm.
This rally, on the verge the draconian anti-immigrant law SB 1070 in Arizona and the coming debates on immigration reform, is intended to show that migrant rights are human rights, and those being affected should have a say in the debate and participate in the construction of a world in which many worlds fit. It will call to end the criminalization and repression of immigrant workers, to stop the ICE raids, and to continue the construction of community self-determination, peace, and justice.
May 1st is International Workers’ Day, which began in the United States in the 1880s around the fight for an eight-hour work day. Since then it has spread around the world and continues to serve as a time for celebration and inspiration to millions. It has been revived recently due to the mass migrant rights marches the past few years.
This March and rally in Denver will be peaceful and celebratory. Among the featured speakers will be longtime human rights activist Ricardo Romero, as well as a musical performance by local Latin Reggae band Mono Verde.
Filed under Actions and Events, Anti-Racism, Occupied Mexico/Aztlan
Politics Are Over created this awesome graphic, inspired by our last protest against the racist Tea Party. We are honored:
They have much more sweet revolutionary agitational art at their site, check it out: politicsareover.wordpress.com
Filed under Agitation Statements, Anti-Racism, Images, Imperialism, White Amerika
Code Pink: Pigs For More Pie
(raimd.wordpress.com)
Times have been tough for the remnants of the antiwar movement in the United Snakes. Liberals crossed over to Obama, a recession has driven down donations, and healthcare reform and Tea Party opposition became the focus in Amerika. Code Pink, led by non-profit profiteer Medea Benjamin, is working to “extend an olive branch” to the reactionary Tea Party, using their anti-tax rhetoric to focus on military spending. Benjamin sent an open message to teaklanners and Code Pink supporters:
“Don’t relax on tax day. Your country needs you to start a difficult conversation right now. Because building peace means reaching out to the other side, CODEPINK is extending an olive branch to the Tea Party. If the Tea Party is really against runaway government spending, then certainly we can work together to cut a slice out of the military pork that is bankrupting our nation. After all, one way to shrink big government is to rein in military spending.
Similarly, we are asking you to reach out to your conservative family members, friends and co-workers, with this very special e-card to start a conversation about how a bloated military budget is affecting our share of the pie. Maybe you will find common ground!”
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/424/t/4589/postcard.jsp?postcard_KEY=470
And a graphic:
Besides the total lameness and lack of direction, Code Pink’s most recent campaign gives a clear message about “our share of the pie.” According to Benjamin and Code Pink, Joe Amerikan should be fat too, not just those at the Pentagon spending his tax dollars.
Certainly, Code Pink isn’t lying about the great amount of Amerikan tax dollars which go to war-making. Obama’s “defense” budget for 2011 will be $663.7 billion, making up 42 percent of all the worlds military spending. This is compared to China with 5.8 percent of world military spending and France with 4.5 percent of world military spending. However, the real victims of this militarism are those killed by Amerikan bombs and locked into imperialist exploitation, not Code Pink and the Tea Party’s reactionary parasite constituency.
The Tea Party almost never brings up the spending on military. In fact many of them are current or former troops and embedded in military culture. Many Tea-baggers wear military caps and insignia and flirt with armed insurrection against the federal government. Their message of reducing taxes and spending is one based on narrow labor-aristocratic interest, not of concern for non-Amerikans facing direct and proxy aggression from the US.
In their attempt to find “common ground,” Code Pink’s politics in essence are shown as no different from the Tea Party’s. Both pander to the base interests of Amerikans; neither question where Amerikan wealth truly comes from. Rather than raising principled opposition to the most murderous system the world has ever seen, US-led imperialism, Code Pink reveals their chauvinism as they opportunistically ignore the blatant racism and jingoism of the Tea Party movement. Code Pink will likely find few supporters within the Tea Party movement, as many of the latter consider the former no more than traitors and subversives. Medea Benjamin and other modern Don Quixotes, rather than standing in principled solidarity with the world’s people, comes off as big chauvinists in an attempt to find and activate a mythical progressive Amerika majority.
The Amerikan right and the Amerikan “left” agree on one thing: Amerikans should have more. They do not question that Amerikans should have so much, just an argument over how it should be directed. We at RAIM say the opposite, Amerikans deserve less. They got their wealth from the beginning of their history through stolen land, labor, and resources. They already get a disproportionate share of the wealth of the world, maintained mainly through the expenditure on the military. We realize this message will not get us supporters, money, or fame, but we say it anyway because it is the truth based on fact. Half the world lives off only $2 a day or less. So we can care less about the menial troubles of an average First Worlder about taxes, gas prices, healthcare, etc. The oppressed and exploited peoples of the world, in the final analysis, will be the ones who in the end bring down Amerikan imperialism and subsequently all oppression. We stand with the majority of the world who wants liberation, not for Amerikan morons wanting more.
Filed under First Nations, Images, Imperialism, Occupied Mexico/Aztlan, White Amerika
¡BEYOND CHICANISMO PRESENTS!
The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police
Murdered a Black Panther.
FEATURING: Author Jeffrey Haas.
WHAT: A discussion by Jeffrey Haas, author of The Assassination of Fred
Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther.
WHERE: AURARIA CAMPUS, TIVOLI ROOM 640.
DATE & TIME: THURSDAY, APRIL 22, 2010. 1:00 P.M.
WHO: Haas was born to German Jewish parents in Atlanta, Ga. in 1942. His grandfather was one of the lawyers for Leo Frank, the Jewish businessman, who was lynched outside Atlanta in 1915 in a wave of anti-Semitic fervor led by many of Atlanta’s elite. Jeff’s father worked with John Lewis of SNCC to set up the Voter Education Project, which registered hundreds of thousands of Black voters in the South. His mother founded the Atlanta Committee for International Visitors and she played a critical role in convincing Atlanta Hotels to integrate.
Jeff graduated from the University of Michigan as an English Major in 1963 and obtained his Juris Doctor Degree from the University of Chicago Law School in 1967. He worked for the Legal Assistance Foundation in Chicago from 1967 to 1969.
In August of 1969 Jeff, three other lawyers and two law students started the People’s Law Office, (PLO) setting up the law collective in a former sausage shop in Chicago’s Lincoln Park. PLO’s first clients were Black Panthers, Young Lords, SDS, and demonstrators against the Vietnam War. In the month after PLO started, the trial of the Conspiracy 8 (charged with disrupting the 1968 Democratic National convention) began. National Panther Chairman Bobby Seale was bound and gagged inside the courtroom. Fred Hampton, the young charismatic leader of the Chicago Black Panthers led large nationally viewed demonstrations outside the Federal Courthouse protesting Seale’s treatment. Two months later the Chicago Police under the direction of then Cook County State’s Attorney Edward Hanrahan, raided Hampton’s apartment at 4:00 am. Fred Hampton was executed as he lay sleeping in his bed and the police killed another Panther Mark Clark. Four other Panther occupants were shot, and no policeman was injured.
For the next thirteen years Jeff and his partners at PLO represented the families of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark and the Panther survivors in a civil suit against the raiders and Hanrahan. In 1973 they joined three FBI Agents and an FBI informant as defendants after learning that the FBI initiated the raid as part of its Cointelpro Program to destroy and neutralize the Black Movement.
In addition to the Hampton case, Jeff worked at PLO as a criminal defense and civil rights lawyer for thirty-five years until 2004. During that time he and his partners represented the Attica Brothers, Lolita Lebron and the Puerto Rican nationalists who invaded Congress, as well as the entire spectrum of the Movement including Iranian students, Act-Up, and protesters against US supported death squads in Central America. Jeff was one of the lead counsel in defending the seventeen Pontiac prisoners charged with the capital offense of murder following the Pontiac prison rebellion in 1978 in which three guards were killed. In 1981, after a six-month trial, all were acquitted.In 1994, Jeff and his PLO partners together with other lawyers represented the Ford Heights 4; four young Black men framed up for the murder of two whites. The four spent 18 years in prison, two on death row, before their convictions were reversed. The evidence showed that the sheriffs were sitting on documents that proved the Ford Heights Four were innocent and that in fact four other people were the killers. In 1997 the Plaintiffs obtained a $38 million dollar settlement.
In 1989 Jeff and fellow PLOers Flint Taylor, John Stainthorp sued Jon Burge, a Chicago Police Commander for torturing Andrew Wilson to extract a confession. In the course of the trial they discovered Burge and his cohorts had regularly used electroshock and asphyxiation, putting typewriter bags over suspects’ heads until they passed out, a technique known as dry submarino, to obtain confessions from Black suspects. What followed the disclosures was twenty years of litigation, public protests, and constant pressure from the Black community. Eventually not only was Burge fired, but everyone’s sentence on Illinois’ death row was commuted by Governor Ryan, in large part due to the exposure of Burge’s techniques for obtaining death penalty convictions. PLO’s has led the litigation resulting in millions of dollars being paid to Burge’s victims. Most recently Burge US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald indicted Burge for perjury for denying under oath at depositions that he tortured Black suspects. For more on the People’s Law Office go to http://www.peopleslawoffice.comIn 2002 Jeff and his family moved to Taos New Mexico, where he and his wife Mariel Nanasi passed the New Mexico Bar. They settled a large civil rights law suit on behalf of two Native American children, whose father was denied medical and psychological treatment in custody in the Santa Fe Jail. Also, in Taos they, began the Action Coalition of Taos, (ACT) which organized a 3000-person protest at the home of then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in Taos. Most recently Jeff’s family moved to Santa Fe where Jeff is again representing victims of police abuse. Jeff is also a founder of Another Jewish Voice of Santa Fe, which seeks to offer alternatives to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict acknowledging and respecting the rights of Palestinians as well as Israeli Jews.
Jeff is currently the Chair of the Foundation for Self Sufficiency in Central America, which provides support to La Coordinadora, an organization in El Salvador representing 12,000 people in 85 communities. La Coordinadora provides the structure for communities to build and control their future through sustainable agriculture, youth development programs, protecting the environment, providing food and water security and promoting grass roots leadership. See http://www.fssca.net/.The author has four children, Roger Haas-Roche, who lives in Chicago, Andrew Hampton Haas-Roche, who is a third year student at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, and Justin and Rosa Haas, who are at Santa Fe Prep High School in Santa Fe.
In 2004, Jeff began writing about the intersection of his life with the life and death of Fred Hampton, the young Panther leader killed by the Chicago Police. Chicago in 1969 was a microcosm of the forces in conflict in the world. The book attempts to capture the mood and political tensions of that moment and how they led to Hampton’s murder.
To enrich his writing, Jeff enrolled in Bennington College’s MFA program in creative non-fiction, where he obtained his master’s degree in 2007. The first part of The Assassination of Fred Hampton served as his master’s thesis. Chicago Review Press/Lawrence Hill Books will release Jeff’s book in the fall of 2009 on the fortieth anniversary of Hampton’s death. The launch event includes a reading, panel discussion and reception. It will be in Chicago at Thorne Hall at Northwestern Law School on November 5, 2009. Fred Hampton spoke at Northwestern Law School forty years ago in Novmeber, 1969.
This event is FREE and open to the public.
Sponsored by: The MSCD Department of Chicana/o Studies, Los Herederos of Change & Esperanza, and Conscious Journey.
Filed under Actions and Events, Anti-Racism, Black Nation, Black-ops, White Amerika
RAIM Protests Teaklanners and Amerikkka
(www.raimd.wordpress.com)
The Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Movement has always been in the lead of militantly opposing the most reactionary aspects of Amerikan society while bringing to bear larger contradictions. This was certainly the case during the ‘Tea-Party Tax Day Protest’ and concurrent ‘Tea Party Against Amnesty,’ held at the Colorado State Capitol on April 15th, 2010.
RAIM was the first in Denver to put out a call to oppose the Tea Party rally.
Our call-out attracted country-wide attention. Right-wing blog and media personality, Michelle Malkin, quoted our call-out on her website and highlighted the sentence, “Cut loose and let these racist crackers know they’re opposed.” Some find the phrase “racist crackers” to be an oxymoron or ironic. Really though, it’s just redundant. The plug drew thousands of visitors to the RAIM-Denver blog over a period of a few days. Most of these people were racist crackers themselves or of a similar mindset.
The day of the protest was sunny and warm. An estimated 1,500-2,000 crackers and some ‘fort Indians’ gathered to show support for the Republican Party and other reactionary causes. The gist of the Tea Klan Rally was simple: while they don’t mind paying taxes to bomb people halfway around the world, they’re angry about paying taxes to provide services for people perceived as poorer than them (often Blacks, Mexicans, Native Americans, etc). Whereas Obama’s election can be seen as opening up the door for a few others to join the labor aristocracy, the Tea Party Movement is one to contract the labor aristocracy to its core constituents (i.e. Whites).
RAIM isn’t about picking sides in a debate about how to divide up stolen wealth. Our message that day, while including many things, highlighted two points: restorative justice and destroying imperialism and hence the USA.
The night prior, RAIM prepared an awesome and on-point, 50-foot banner which read: ‘TYRANTS, YOU STOLE THIS LAND AT GUNPOINT’. This simple statement was meant to juxtapose the Tea Party’s national and class-centric demands for ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’ against the reality of the situation.
View of of the Tea Klan Rally, as seen from near the speakers podium.
The counter-protest of around 50 gathered across the street from the Tea Party Rally and berated the racists through two bullhorns. Terryn, a Denver RAIMer, told the racist crowd they were on “stolen land and borrowed time.” She explained numerous times why they are racists: “Colorado is a Spanish word…You stole the land at gunpoint and killed the people. You stole everything you have. You steal the resources and labor from Africa, Asia and Latin America. You bomb people half-way across the world and you don’t fucking care. You don’t have empathy and that is why you’re racists.”
Nick Brown praised those resisting imperialism worldwide, shouting through a bullhorn, “God Bless Iran. God Bless Ahmadinejad. God Bless Venezuela and Bolivia.” RAIMers led chants such as, “Who do we love? Mexicans! Why? ‘Cause they’re people! Who do we hate? Racists! Why? ‘Cause they’re evil!” and, “No love for land-grabbers, deport the teaklanners.” Chants such as “Viva Mexico” and “Sí se puede” also rang out. RAIMers insisted the racists’ grandchildren would learn Spanish and they themselves would be deported to the Third World to “learn some empathy.” One woman even jeered the teaklanners in Lakotah.
In many ways, this is all standard stuff for RAIM. We bring out contradictions and conflicts. It’s what we do; nothing unusual.
However, the real high point was a group of local high school students who were bussed in to do interviews during of the tea klanner rally. The students, who were mainly Chicano, Mexican or Black, found the Tea Party repulsive and chose to hang out on our side. Many RAIMers refused to talk to the pig-media, but we gladly spoke with the youth who found themselves alienated by the pasty patriots. RAIMers explained why the Tea Party Movement is racist, including the real motive behind their anti-tax politics, the role of overt and covert US interventions worldwide and our message of militant global equality and solidarity with the Third World. Many of the students explicity identified as Mexican and were visibly turned off by the crackers, even without RAIM having to make the case. At one point, a racist cracker came over to our side of the street and smugly stated, in front of the students, the US should nuke various countries in the Middle East. A RAIMer called the guy a “fascist cracker” through a bullhorn and encouraged the students to do the same, but this was harshly discouraged by a nearby teacher. Nonetheless, RAIMers got plenty of time to talk with the students, passing out dozens of RAIM Global Digests and Troublemaker DVDs.
Numerous times, racists came over to our side of the street, causing some minor altercations. About 20-30 pigs remained behind the anti-racist counter-protest, preventing more serious fighting from breaking out. No arrests were made.
RAIM’s message, both rhetorically and in practice, is clear: it’s right to hate the USA.
***
Also, check out RAIM-Denver agitating and educating in the first part of this video, exclusively at Denver Open Media.
***
Update 1:
After Michelle Malkin, the concentration camp loving right wing hack, linked us on her blog, we got the biggest number of hits ever. We were inundated with comments, many with bad spelling, grammar, and logic. There was the common refrain that we use cracker to describe racist crackers.This just goes to show that Amerika has a lot of crackers out there.
Malkin later went into a tizzy over the term “Tea-Klanner” to refer to her teabagging minions. (http://michellemalkin.com/2010/04/15/tea-klanner-the-lefts-shameless-new-smear/)
Of course this is after this of many comments went up on her board. Here was an interesting one:
On April 15th, 2010 at 11:06 am, Ignatius Reilly said:
So the commies wanna rumble, eh? I say, Bring it on! and Remember Greensboro! (They need a little booster shot.)
Of course Greensboro refers to the massacre in 1979 in Greensboro NC where a Nazi and Klan death squad shot dead 5 communists and anti-racists at an anti-Klan rally.
This is the common refrain from Tea-Klanners, they are not racist. Yet it is all there exposed when really pressed. No one should be fooled.
Update 2:
Along with RAIM many other radicals in the Denver area responded to our call. There was also a bunch of liberals and Democrats who were there for different reasons. With much less people and resources RAIM called the action and others responded while highlighting our anti-imperialist, anti-settler, pro-national liberation, pro-migrant and Third Worldist messages. This is significant because many groups there have hopes that the Amerikan labor aristocracy can be moved for progressive social goals. We at RAIM factually see the majority of Amerika as benefiting from imperialist exploitation and shaping their politics to it. This has been the interests of the majority White Amerikan Nation, and also creeping into the captive nations of the United Snakes. The captive nations are still nationally oppressed although growing economic integration leads to a decline in national consciousness in favor of Amerika. The Tea Party phenomena visibly shows that privileged White Amerikans when organized go into a right wing and proto-fascist direction.
Movie Review: Clash of the Titans
Clash of the Titans (2010, Louis Leterrier) is a reactionary film which promotes compradorism and lackeyism in the main, as well as white supremacy and patriarchy.
In the movie, people abandon the gods of Greek mythology, thus incurring their wrath. Perseus (Sam Worthington), the mortal son of Zeus, is chosen to lead a campaign to stop an impending assault by the ancient monster, the Kraken, on the port city of Argos.
Perseus’s journey is long. It is assumed he’s fighting the gods themselves. However, by the end of the film we see Perseus siding with one faction of the gods, represented by Zeus, against another, led by Hades. Rather than overthrow the gods in the entirety, Perseus reinforces their lofty position and remains on earth as a demi-god amongst men.
The “gods” of Clash of the Titans can be seen as representing what the masses must revolt against: capitalist-imperialism and the First World itself. Perseus thus is akin to any number of supposed rebels who cut deals and hold back the whole struggle. As in the film, such people are aided by that which they nominally stand against and rewarded with positions of authority for helping preserve the overall system. By the end of the movie, like many of the struggles of the past, nothing has changed. In fact, Perseus’ campaign ends the revolt against the gods and returns people to their subordinate position. The main character is revealed to be not a rebel but a more effective lackey. Despite the film’s seemingly distant setting and apolitical nature, such ideas defeat social revolutions and subjugate people under continued imperialist exploitation.
The film is reactionary in other ways as well. All of the characters are White, alluding to an overall chauvinism on the part of the filmmaker and audience. Likewise, for his task of only opposing a faction of the gods in service to another, Perseus is awarded Io (Gemma Arteton), a youthful-looking girl who previously guided Perseus but was killed over the course of the journey. All and all, this film is irredeemable.
In the First World, social conflict is non-antagonistic, thus reformism and cutting deals makes sense. However, for the Third World masses, social struggles are matters of life and death. Selling out is an act of treason to oppressed peoples. Underneath Clash of the Titans is a political stance which lauds the ascendency of compradors and the continuing oppression and abject poverty of billions of people. There is no good faction of imperialism or the First World for the broad masses. It must all be overthrown.
Filed under Imperialism, Movie Reviews, News and Analysis, Organizing, Political Economy
On April 15th, the Tea Party Movement is planning major rallies throughout the country, including one in Denver. Part of this year’s convergence is a blatantly anti-Mexican ‘Tea Party Against Amnesty.’
The Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Movement is calling on all radicals – anarchists and communists, Mexican and Black nationalists, Third Worldists and Indigenists, students, social critics and anti-racists – to come out and oppose this vile, hateful message in the midst of the Tea Party Movement. Bring signs, bullhorns, props, a hat and sunglasses, etc. Cut loose and let these racist crackers know they are opposed.
What: Oppose the racist ‘Tea Party Against Amnesty’
When: Thursday, April 15th; 10am-1pm
Where: Across the street from the Capitol building
Awesome graphic on the cover of the latest RAIM Global Digest:
Filed under Barack Obama, Images, Imperialism
Crackers arrest “illegal” McDonald’s workers, cite economic and cultural reasons
In March, raids targeting migrants in Phoenix-area McDonald’s restaurants concluded in the arrest of 21 people and a hunt for dozens more.
Maricopa County Sheriff, Joe Arpaio, who in the past has grabbed national headlines with his ultra-reactionary approach, led the raids. In an interview that followed, Arpaio explained some of the reason behind the arrests. He described McDonald’s as an “American[sic] institution…a place that my kids and yours could always count on for their first job ever” and deplored the company’s “giving jobs away” to people “working here illegally.” The raid is part of a larger effort by Phoenix officials to intimidate and repress Spanish-speaking migrants, in particular Mexicans.
An older Amerikan institution is that of national oppression. The city of Phoenix was founded a mere 150 years ago, after the settler-invasion and occupation of northern Mexico. The city sits atop a network of ancient canals, dating back to around 500 CE, some of which are still in use today. During the 20th century, Mexicans worked in the fields of their occupied homeland, threatened with withheld wages, deportation, etc. This legacy, an ‘Amerikan institution,’ continues today under evolved terms and conditions.
Source: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/03/26/people-arrested-immigration-raids-arizona-mcdonalds/
Filed under Imperialism, News and Analysis, Occupied Mexico/Aztlan, White Amerika
US leading offensive against Somalia
They’re at it again. The US is quietly leading a major military operation against the African country of Somalia.
Since last year, the US had been training and funding the ‘Transitional Federal Government'(TFG). Now, the US is planning an offensive in the country’s capital, Mogadishu, in hopes of countering the growing influence of the Islamic group, Harakat al-Shabaab Mujahideen (al-Shabaab).
In 2006, US-backed Ethiopian forces occupied the country’s capital to drive out the ruling Islamic Courts Union (ICU). The task proved too great and in 2009 Ethiopian forces withdrew. Al-Shabaab, a splinter from the ICU, has since made significant gains against the ‘internationally-recognized’ TFG. Despite the substantial backing the TFG receives from the US, al-Shabaab controls the south of the country and much of the capital.
The current offensive against Mogadishu is the first major operation to be headed by the United States Africa Command, or AFRICOM, since it was founded in 2007. However, the US has a long history of intervening in Somalia. In 1993, members of a US Special Forces team were killed, the bodies of some dragged through capital by a crowd. Most recently, in 2006 the US bombed Mogadishu as Ethiopian forces invaded the country.
The US says operations in Somalia are part of a ‘global counter-terrorism’ effort. An ‘imperialist offensive’ is more accurate.
US offensives in Somalia or anywhere else are part of a wider range of wars and conflicts, meant to reinforce US dominance around the world, including unfettered access to cheap raw materials. Sub-Saharan Africa is thought to be the center of the “next big oil-boom” and the “last real high-potential area in the world that hasn’t been fully explored.” Much of the untapped oil resides in the center of the continent, in Uganda and the Congo, and near the Horn of Africa, in Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia. Somalia may have 10 billion barrels in oil reserves but, due to instability, these reserves have yet to be tapped. It is the US’s intentions have as much control over this oil as possible. Overthrowing al-Shabaad’s rule and installing the TFG is all part of this plan.
Since Barakkk Obomber was elected president of the chief imperialist country, imperialist aggression has only increased. Troops remain in Iraq and have increased in Afghanistan. In the last year alone, the US has been exposed for drone bombings in Yemen and Pakistan, as well as covert operations elsewhere. Despite this, there has been no rise in anti-war, anti-militarist sentiment within the US. Anti-war marches have been at their lowest levels. For example, in the most recent ‘national march’ in Washington DC, attendance was estimated at 3,200-4,000 people (or .000013% of Amerikan citizens). Not only do Amerikans seem to think it’s OK when Obomber bombs people, some are even saying he should be more aggressive. Michael Bolton, former US ambassador to the UN, and several other conservatives have come out and publicly encouraged the US president to bomb Iran. Behind Obama and Amerika’s progressive veneer, we see the real debate: quietly bombing Third World people vs doing so in a big, highly-visible way. Regardless of which of these ‘policies’ Amerika chooses, it can only be a difference between the manner in which Amerika expands its wars in Africa and around the world.
Notes:
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=64156
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/06/world/africa/06somalia.html
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0523/p07s01-woaf.html
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/02/08/who_wants_to_bomb_iran?page=full
Filed under Africa, Imperialism, News and Analysis
Filed under Organizing
At 6pm, on Wednesday, March 31st, The Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Movement (Denver) will host a discussion on revolution in the contemporary world and fundraiser. Free snacks and drinks provided. There will also be plenty of literature, t-shirt, dvds, etc to give away and for sale.
Come prepared for an evening of critical engagement. Nick Brown will be moderating the discussion and briefly talking about RAIM and its politics. Special presenters include Tizoc, speaking on Mexican National Liberation, and Hector, speaking on Maoism-Third Worldism. Question and answer session to follow.
What: Discussion on Revolution and Fundraiser, led by RAIM-Denver
When: March 31st, 2010; 6pm
Where: Brother Jeff’s Cultural Center (2836 Welton St, Denver)
Filed under Actions and Events
Movie Review: Shutter Island (Martin Sorsese, 2010)
(www.raimd.wordpress.com)
[spoiler warning]
Shutter Island, the cinematic thriller by director, Martin Scorsese, adapted from a novel by Dennis Lehane, presents a choice between two narratives. Reality is skewed in the movie. Tension unfolds in an purposeful, ambiguous way, forcing the audience to choose between reality and delusion, normalcy and ‘insanity.’
–Plot Summary–
The story takes place in 1954, during the Cold War. World War II veteran and US Marshall, Teddy Daniels, (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his new partner, Chuck Aule, (Mark Ruffalo) go to the Ashecliff Hospital for the criminally insane on Shutter Island to investigate the disappearance of Rachel Solando (Emily Mortimer), a patient who seems to have vanished from a locked room. Dr. John Cawley (Ben Kingsley), the head psychiatrist, explains that Rachel was institutionalized after drowning her three children. She believes, however, she is still at home and her children are still alive. Dr. Cawley refuses to share any of the patients’ files and implies Rachel may be dead. The island is surrounded by steep, jagged cliffs and crashing waves, the nearby lighthouse was already searched and a heavy storm is rolling in. However, inside Rachel’s room, Teddy finds a hidden note with the message “who is 67?” The meaning is unclear and Teddy begins investigating further.
That night, early in the movie, Teddy has a dream about his wife, Dolores (Michelle Williams), who died in a fire two years before. In the dream, Dolores tells Teddy that Rachel is still on the island as well as Andrew Laeddis, the man who started the fire that killed her.
The next morning, Teddy interviews patients from Rachel’s group therapy sessions. While Teddy’s partner is briefly away, one seemingly ‘normal’ patient writes him a note that says “RUN.” Shortly after, Teddy tells his partner, Chuck, the real reason why he’s investigating Ashecliffe. According to Teddy, Andrew Laeddis, the arsonist who killed his wife, got off for the death. A year later, Teddy says he saw a newspaper article in which Laeddis was found to have burnt down a school and sent to Ashecliff, where he vanished. Chuck asks Teddy what he intends to do once he finds Andrew Laeddis and mentions killing him. Teddy explains he’s had enough of death and recalls his traumatic part in the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp, including an extra-legal mass execution of the Nazi guards. Instead, Teddy says, he wants to find out the truth. From a colleague he heard that Ashecliff was funded by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Teddy says he met a former patient, a student named George Noyce (Jackie Earle Hawley), who killed three people after being at Ashecliff for a year. Teddy thinks the staff is conducting experiments on the human mind. He tells to his partner he’s there to find proof, go back to the mainland and expose it. His partner says they should be careful and agrees something isn’t right about the place. “What if they wanted you here?” Chuck asks Teddy. They agree to find the proof and get off the island.
Back at the hospital, Teddy walks into a conversation between Dr. Cawley and Dr. Naehring (Max von Sydow), the chief of staff at the hospital, about how they should prepare the violent patients of Ward C in the event the electricity goes down during the storm. Teddy notes Dr. Naehring is German, implying he was a Nazi recruited through the Office of Strategic Services. Through briefly listening to the conversation, Teddy picks up on the fact that there are 66 patients at the hospital. Remembering the note he found in Rachel Solando’s room, Teddy asks the hospital administration who Rachel thought the 67th patient was. Cawley claims he doesn’t know but says Rachel was found near the lighthouse Teddy can ask her himself, Dr. Cawely says.
During the interview, Rachel has no recollection of being missing. She still thinks her life is normal. Teddy is introduced to her as a police officer who’s investigating ‘communist subversives passing out literature.’ She claims Teddy is her husband and embraces him, but shortly after becomes upset, stating that her husband is dead and shouting, ‘who the fuck are you?’
After interviewing Rachel, Teddy’s dreams continue. At Dachau, a young girl who is seen throughout Teddy’s visions tells him, “you should have saved me, you should have saved all of us.” Teddy briefly talks to Laeddis and his partner, Chuck, before finding Rachel and helping her re-drown her children. He supposedly wakes up and has another delusion: his dead wife, Dolores, walks in the room and tells him Laeddis is still alive and on the island. She tells Teddy to find Laeddis and kill him.
Teddy wakes up and due to the storm, many of the patients have escaped. Teddy and his partner decide to go to Ward C to investigate. There Teddy gets separated from his partner but runs into George Noyce, the former patient of Ashecliff Teddy had previously interviewed. Noyce tells Teddy the whole thing is a game and says he’s afraid of going to the lighthouse.
Teddy tries to go to the lighthouse, but high-tide prevents him. Instead, Teddy discovers a cave and to his surprise the real Rachel Solando (Patricia Clarkson). She explains she was a doctor at Ashecliff who was institutionalized after questioning shipments of psychotropic drugs and experimental surgeries. She says she was called insane: “reasonable protests are called acts of denial.” According to Solando, mind control experiments are being conducted at Ashecliff to create ghost agents for the Cold War. Rachel warns Teddy the same may be happening to him, but kicks him out of the cave for fear the staff will find her when they come looking for him.
After entering the lighthouse, Teddy finds Dr. Cawley and the plot twist is revealed: Cawley says Teddy is Andrew Laeddis. Cawley tells the protagonist he has been at Ashecliff for two years, ever since killing his wife after she drowned their three children. ‘Teddy Daniels,’ ‘Rachel Solando’ and the investigation is all a delusion he’s created to avoid the painful truth. Chuck appears, claiming to be Teddy’s primary care physician, Dr. Sheehan, the man previously thought to be Rachel Solando’s vacationing physician. Dr. Cawley displays a picture of the young girl from Teddy’s dreams, and tells him it’s his daughter. Cawley says they’ve been unsuccessful in getting him to accept reality with the treatments they’ve tried. Cawley says they let him play out his detective fantasy with the hopes it would bring him back to reality without ‘relapsing’ into believing he’s Teddy again, as had previously happened. “You’ve been running around this place for two days. Where are the Nazi experiments?” Cawley asks. Speaking in humanitarian terms, Cawley says he hopes this therapy will be a breakthrough in psychiatry, one which will forgo the need for more drastic measures. If Teddy doesn’t come to terms with the fact that he’s really Andrew Laeddis, the next step will be to give him a lobotomy.
Distraught, at first the protagonist denies it but then has another vision, this time seeing Dr. Cawley’s scenario play out: an alcoholic with a manic-depressant wife, he comes home to find his three children drowned and shoots his wife, Dolores. He thinks he is Andrew Laeddis and not Teddy Daniels. He believe Cawley’s story.
In the last scene, the protagonist appears to have ‘reset,’ again thinking he’s Teddy Daniels investigating disappearances at the hospital. Dr. Sheehan, who is sitting next to the protagonist, quietly shakes his head while looking at Dr. Cawley and Dr. Naehring, themselves watching anxiously. The movie ends in a moment of high drama. Before going with the staff for experimental brain surgery in the lighthouse, the protagonist looks at his ‘partner’ and asks, “which is worse, to live as a monster or die as a good man?”
–Analysis–
In Scorsese’s Shutter Island, the audience is forced to choose between two narratives. Is the movie a fiction about Teddy Daniels, a US Marshall who, after investigating Cold War-era, mind control experiments on Shutter Island, falls into an elaborate conspiracy in which he becomes a victims of such experiments? Or, was the story an elaborate fantasy of Andrew Laeddis, who killed his wife two years previously and created the delusion of Teddy Daniels to shield himself from the truth?
During the period in which the movie is set, the Office of Strategic Services and CIA did experiment with drugs such as LSD on US and Kanadian citizens, recruiting Nazi scientists to do so. Through MK-Ultra, the US government secretly sought to implant thoughts and memories and to control the mind, hoping to create agents for Cold War operations.
From the movie’s opening scene we notice something is amiss. Daniels wakes up ill on a ferry to Shutter Island. He can’t find his cigarettes and is given one by his new partner who he’s meeting for the first time. Throughout the movie, we see Daniels smoking other people’s cigarettes and taking medicine and beverages the faculty at the institution give him. He goes to Shutter Island specifically to investigate mind control experiments and possible connections with HUAC and Amerika’s Cold War policy. Unfortunately for him, he finds what he’s looking for.
Scorsese’s ambiguity, i.e. that he can make the audience question what is real and make them think Daniels may be Laeddis, is a testament to the ongoing delusion of Amerikans today. The choice Sorsese’s offers in the movie translates into real life. Is there something sinister underneath Amerika’s facade; or, is Teddy Daniels- an analogy for anyone who seriously questions and challenges Amerika’s dominant pretenses- abnormal in someway, unstable, delusional, paranoid, etc.? This is precisely the question one must answer while watching Shutter Island.
Like the scripted intrigue which ensnares Teddy, Amerika’s culture is a charade which both covers up for and reflects that which it ultimately serves. In the movie, Dr. Cawley frequently couches his work in ‘progressive’ pretenses even though he is an active accomplice to horrible crimes. Similarly, Amerika promotes itself as ‘progressive’ while simultaneously acting as the greatest global purveyor of violence, both direct and structural.
Teddy, the individual dissident, is pushed to accept a dominant narrative through immense social pressure. In Amerika however, such ‘programming’ isn’t the result of a well-coordinated conspiracy, but a function of imperialism: the bribery of empire’s citizens with stolen wealth.
For anti-imperialists, Teddy Daniels final words are compelling: “Is it better to live as a monster or die as a good man?” Perhaps this should not be taken as a literal choice between selling-out or dying in a blaze of moralistic glory. For us in the First World, being a monster and being perceived as a ‘good person’ are in many ways synonymous: both reflect acquiescence to the system. Thus, once we know the truth, the choice becomes different. Will we succumb to the pressures of First World society and play along, i.e. living as what we know to be a monster? Or, will we continue to inquire and resist, deny the system our active complicity and refuse to be a ‘good person’ by Amerika’s standards?
Filed under Black-ops, Imperialism, Movie Reviews, News and Analysis, Uncategorized, White Amerika
Hit squad kills Hamas leader, caught on tape
(http://monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com)
On January 19, 2010, Mahmoud Abdel Rauf al-Mabhouh, a Hamas senior military commander leader, was assassinated in his hotel room in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. According to reports, he was drugged with a strong sedative that causes paralysis. And, while still conscious, he was suffocated with a pillow.
The Dubai police investigation has revealed that the murder was a coordinated effort that involved several individuals. This hit squad was caught on various video security tapes. These tapes show the hit team marking their target, shadowing him with disguises, and following him to his room where the hit occurred.
Who did it? Mossad is the main suspect. Mossad is Israel’s intelligence agency. They are also responsible for covert and black ops, including paramilitary operations. More than half of the passports used by the hit squad are linked to Israelis who were born in foreign countries but have emigrated to Israel. For example, 12 British passports have been linked to the hit. However, according to the British Serious Organized Crime Agency (SOCA), none of the real owners of the passports are suspects. This is an indication that even the British are pointing the finger at the state of Israel. Many countries are upset that Israel appears to have forged their documents. Australian Foreign minister Stephen Smith stated that forging passports were not the “act of a friend.”
More evidence points to Israel. The credit cards used by the hit squad trace back to companies with strong ties to Israel. One of the banks that provided some of the funds has been linked to Payoneer, Inc., which provides prepaid MasterCards. This company is headed by CEO Yuval Tal, a former member of Israeli special forces. Tal is known for his strong racist views. He stated in a 2006 interview, “It’s a war that they cannot lose. … The Israelis have to win this war.” Payoneer, Inc. has a history of ties to Zionist activism. Payoneer, Inc. is also affiliated with Taglit-Birthright Israel. They organize trips to Israel for Jewish youth to “strengthen participants’ personal Jewish identity.”
Dubai’s police chief Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim states that they are “99 percent, if not 100 percent” certain that the murder was carried out by Israel’s Mossad. The emerging international consensus agrees that Israel is behind the murder. Of course, the Israeli state denies any involvement. Even so, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, the Israeli Trade Minister, bragged about the operation on Israel’s army radio. He even issued a cryptic-threat by stating that the operation proved that “none of [Hamas’] people are untouchable.” Also, Tzipi Livni, leader of the parliamentary opposition and a former Mossad recruit, said the murder was “good news.”
This assassination is an act in a long series of acts whereby Israel flagrantly disregards international law and standards, yet is not held to account. In the end, there will be no serious repercussions for Israel. Israel is a rouge state that does as it pleases on the U.S.’s dime. The racist apartheid state has waged a continuous war against its neighbors since its founding. It is an imperialist outpost in the middle of the Arab and Islamic world, an outpost used by the imperialists to wage war on its Third World neighbors. It is no surprise that Israel carries out murder operations in the region. Such is par for the course. The only difference here is that the hit squad was caught on tape. Thus the incident has caused a bit of embarrassment for the Zionist entity
Notes.
1. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article7044326.ece
2. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/08/AR2010030800095.html
3. https://raimd.wordpress.com/2010/03/04/imperialism-has-blood-on-its-hands-again-in-the-assassination-of-mahmoud-al-mabhouh/
4. http://www.youtube.com/user/KidonBlackOps
Filed under Black-ops, Imperialism, Israel, News and Analysis, Palestine
Northwestern Shoshone Nation Marks Anniversary of Bear River Massacre
(raimd.wordpress.com)
A few weeks ago this year many Native people gathered at the burial grounds of Bear River in Idaho, near the city of Preston, to remember and honor their ancestors who were murdered by Amerikan soldiers. 147 years ago, on January 29 1863 the Amerikan military massacred hundreds of indigenous peoples in Bear River, Idaho. A great many of them were women and children. This massacre was one of the bloodiest massacres of indigenous peoples in Amerikan history, yet it is little remembered as it happened during the Civil War, and Amerika is not too concerned with examining its sordid history.
Other massacres of indigenous peoples were Wounded Knee in South Dakota, where some 146 Lakotah were shot dead in 1890, and Sand Creek here in Colorado which 150 Cheyenne and Arapaho were murdered in 1864.
The number of dead at Bear River is disputed. The commanding Army officer stated 220 to 270 dead, the tribe estimates 400 were killed, white settlers who moved into their land estimated up to 500 dead, a figure cited by the National Park Service. There was never an official count of the victims, as their bones were often left scattered in the surrounding hills.
On this fateful day the Northern Shoshone were encamped along the Bia Ogoi, or Bear River for the Warm Dance, a yearly ritual in winter to drive away the cold.
A collection of sources, including Army reports, historical tracts, and oral histories from the tribe, describe what happened. Col Patrick Conner and 200 soldiers from the 3rd California Infantry attack at daybreak the encampment. There was rising tensions between the Natives and white settlers, with attacks and deaths on both sides leading up to the day of the massacre. The Shoshone were blamed for thefts of horses and cattle, and the deaths of three settlers, although other tribes were likely at fault.
What followed was a day of savagery on the part of the Amerikans, with soldiers smashing infants’ skulls, raping dying women, and ending the lives of the wounded with bullets, clubs and axes. The federal government designated the Bear River Massacre site as a National Historic Landmark in 1990, having admitted many of the victims were women and children.
The effect of the massacre has had long-lasting effects on the Northwestern Shoshone. The killings virtually wiped out the tribe, which today numbers around 500. Many of the survivors in the years after the massacre were taken up by the Morman church, and others dispersed into other Shoshone reservations in the area. The small number of Northwestern Shoshone prevented them from obtaining a reservation of their own.
The policy of Amerikan expansion was one of extermination and genocide of the indigenous peoples. What smallpox and other diseases did not complete, the US military attempted to finish. Many nations were wiped out of existence altogether, and those remaining were subject to brutal national oppression. Yet many indigenous nations survived and continue to fight for their existence.
The fact that it is up to the ancestors of the surviving tribes to continue the memory of these atrocities shows how Amerika is a nation of Holocaust deniers. Its professed values of freedom and democracy are nothing but shallow doctrines to mask a nation founded by murder and genocide. History lessons are not enough to correct these injustices. The ultimate correction for this history of oppression is the return of land and resources to those it was taken from, in the United Snakes and the rest of the world.
Source:
Bonner, Jessie L. “Tribe marks massacre with burial ground gathering.” Associated Press, linked at
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100207/ap_on_re_us/us_bear_river_massacre_3
Filed under First Nations, Imperialism, News and Analysis, White Amerika
On February 8th, 2010, a bunch of troublemaking, Muslim students of the Unifarcity of Kalifornia disrupted a speech by the war-mongering Israeli ambassador to the US. RAIM-Denver applauds these friends of the oppressed. Victory to Palestine!
Filed under Uncategorized
RAIM Global Digest Vol 2; Issue 2
Contents:
-In India, forests grow with Naxalite peoples war [cover]
-RAIM-Seattle on the WTO 10 -year anniversary [cover]
-Net-exploitation by the numbers (hypothetically)
-IDF arrests peaceful resistance organizers in West Bank
-Amerika “disappears” migrants into secret detention facilities
-Movie review: Avatar [by Monkey Smashes Heaven]
-Earthquake strikes Haiti; imperialism is a disaster
Filed under News and Analysis, Organizing, Palestine, White Amerika, Youth
A bunch of troublemakers, West Denver Copwatch, has recently unveiled a database of local pigs.
Also check out their videos featuring Denver’s grimiest.
Filed under Police Brutality
Earthquake Strikes Haiti; Imperialism is a Disaster
(www.raimd.wordpress.com)
Also available as a ready-to-print PDF
On Tuesday, January 12th, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake rocked the country of Haiti, its epicenter a mere fifteen miles from the country’s capital, Port-au-Prince. By that Thursday, 80,000 people were already buried in mass-graves and 200,000 people were estimated to have perished. In the wake of the tremor, international aid has rushed to the small Caribbean country. The news of the massive earthquake and its human toll has overshadowed a larger crisis in Haiti: crushing poverty, widespread malnutrition and imperialist super-exploitation.
A history of imperialism
Haiti became the second independent republic in the Western Hemisphere after Black slaves rose up against their owners and then the French between 1791 and 1804. Quickly after defeating France, however, they were straddled with debt. Their former colonial masters demanded 130 million francs (later lowered to 90 million) in indemnity for the Haitian war of liberation. The newly consolidated Haitian government had no such funds and resorted to borrowing the first 30 million from the Bank of France at exorbitant interest rates. It would not be until after World War II that Haiti fully repaid debt accrued from its war of independence.
During the Haitian Revolution, US President Thomas Jefferson initial offered military aid to the French, but backed out at the last minute. After Haiti attained independence, Jefferson signed a legislative bill barring trade between the two countries. The United States, a country with its own substantial Black-slave population, refused to recognize the new, Black republic for six decades in an attempt to stifle it.
Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, has also suffered the most imperialist meddling. Between 1849 and 1919 US troops were sent to the country 24 times to “protect American (sic) lives and property.” Throughout the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s, the US supported ‘Papa’ and ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier as strong-men puppets in country. This ended after much conflict in 1990 when a reformer, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was elected to the presidency.
In 1991, Aristide was overthrown by a U.S.-backed military coup. As part of a compromise deal to return to power three years later, Aristide made a slew of concessions, including wholesale, IMF-sponsored structural adjustments and the occupation of the country by U.N. ‘peacekeepers.’ Aristide began appealing to the international community regarding the plight of Haiti and Third World. Aristide was again ousted in 2004, Haiti’s bicentennial.
Throughout this process, imperialism has tightened its squeeze on the Haitian masses. Prior to the 1970’s and 80’s, Haiti was a moderately self-sufficient, agrarian society. Then, the IMF forced the Haitian state to cut tariffs on US imports of rice and other food commodities. Because US farms are heavily subsidized, a flood of cheap agricultural imports drove the Haitian masses off the land and into the slums. Another major blow to Haitians came when international agencies persuaded the Haitian government that a pig acclimated to the island needed to be killed off and replaced. The native pig, which served as a hedge against starvation, needed little water or food, whilst the breed imported from Iowa needed clean water, shelter and feed daily, something the majority of Haitians couldn’t provide even for themselves. Thus, Haitians were deprived of their two traditional, staple foods and left at the whim of international food prices. Western-demanded privatizations have also swept Haiti in recent years, closing of country’s only flour mill and cement factory and furthering the Haitian masses’ dependence on an unfair, uncaring market. Despite so-called ‘aid,’ foreign debt has crippled the Haitian economy. In 2003, for example, Haiti paid $57 million dollars to service foreign loans while receiving $39 million from aid programs.
An ongoing disaster in Haiti
During the Summer of 2008, it was reported that Haitians in the slums of Port-au-Prince began widely eating sun-baked mud pies. Food riots occurred the same year. An estimated three-quarters of the country lives on less than $2 a day. Over half the country subsists on less than a dollar a day.
Cite Soleil, the shanty town adjacent to Port-au-Prince, is home to 2-300,000 residents and is one of the largest slums in the Western Hemisphere. The residents, often the children of former farmers, are said to sleep in shifts for lack of space. Basic education is a privilege; illiteracy is on the rise. There is no welfare or economic safety-net in Haiti. Life expectancy in the country is around 52. Very little modern infrastructure exists.
The Haitian masses are trapped in their miserable condition. Their border with the Dominican Republic is closed and the surrounding waters are patrolled by the US Coast Guard. Haitians caught on the water or ‘illegally’ inside the US are forced back into the squalid conditions of their home country. Even after the quake, US military airplanes have broadcast a message over Haiti, telling residents to not flee the country. This stands in stark contrast to Cubans, who are deemed ‘political refugees’ and given free residency status once inside the US.
Most Haitians were unaware the possibility of a quake even existed. In 2008 however, Patrick Charles of Havana’s Geological Institute reported, “conditions are ripe for major seismic activity in Port-au-Prince. The inhabitants of the Haitian capital need to prepare themselves for an event which will inevitably occur….” “Thank God that science has provided instruments that help predict these type of events and show how we have arrived at these conclusions,” he added.
Unfortunately, social conditions prevailed over science’s ability to predict and mitigate the human devastation caused by natural occurrences. The earthquake struck Haiti’s capital city just before 5 pm, rocking the imperialist-ravaged country at the peak of daily activity.
The response from the West
Predictably, the response from the West, especially Amerikans, has been disgusting.
Pat Robertson, a right-wing, Amerikan religious leader, said on his television show, the 700 Club, that the earthquake, along with Haiti’s poverty, was a punishment from god. According to Robertson, Haiti’s 18th-century rebels “signed a pact with the devil” in order to get free from the French. Racist to the extreme, Robertson has a daily television audience of 1 million viewers.
Within the more mainstream of Amerikan society, the response has been similar but toned-down. ‘Why were so many Haitians killed? Can’t they build proper buildings? Now we have to help them, again? They really owe us now!’ Most Amerikans expressed a viewpoint which blames the victim; views them as ‘backwards’; offers ‘aid’ as part of the responsibility carried by ‘advanced’ countries; and expects ‘gratitude,’ i.e. unchallenged political and economic control of their country, in return. Amerikan broadcasters played into the view that Haitians are incapable of being anything besides poor and miserable. Associated Press, in one early story, quoted a man who was “wielding a broken wooden plank with nails to protect his bottle of rum.” Western media has sensationalized so-called looting while extolling the roll of the US military in the quake’s aftermath. Youth in “lawless” Haiti are said to be at risk of “sex trade, slavery and murder.” Reports tell of difficultly getting food to hungry Haitians due to civil disorder, as if such is somehow exceptional in a deeply impoverished, densely-populated city after a major earthquake. All of this paints a picture of Haitians as violent imbeciles whose misery is their own fault. This racist narrative ignores the two-centuries-long unnatural disaster that has crippled Haiti’s self-reliance, including Haiti’s institutions’ ability to respond.
US take-over and imperialist penetration
By January 24th, 20,000 US troops arrived to ‘save’ Haiti. As part of the first act of the relief effort, the US military seized the airport in Port-au-Prince, one of the few in the country. Thereafter, the US has controlled all air-traffic in and out of the capital.
Thus far the US has assumed a de facto governing role in Haiti, with the Dept. of Defense, the State Dept., and USAID taking the lead. Of the 20,000 US troops in Haiti, over half are stationed off the coast, a virtual blockade meant to prevent Haitians from taking to the waters in an expected wave of migration.
Some commentators have called it an occupation. Some have condemned the security-style tactics, such as shooting live rounds into the air and pointing M16s at crowds. Others have noted the impediment to relief efforts the massive troop presence is causing. Journalists and Haiti-advocate, Kim Ives, explained:
“Watching the scene in front of the General Hospital yesterday said it all. Here were people who were going in and out of the hospital bringing food to their loved ones in there or needing to go to the hospital, and there were a bunch of Marine[s]—of US 82nd Airborne soldiers in front yelling in English at this crowd. They didn’t know what they were doing. They were creating more chaos rather than diminishing it. It was a comedy, if it weren’t so tragic.”
One thing that can’t be missed is the near-hegemonic role the US has played in the so-called relief and recovery effort. Despite the good intentions of some individuals, intervention in Haiti is part of a larger strategy for imperialism.
One influential group, the right-wing Heritage Foundation, noted early-on how the crisis could be used to further Amerikan interests. “In addition to providing immediate humanitarian assistance, the US response to the tragic earthquake in Haiti offers opportunities to reshape Haiti’s long-dysfunctional government and economy as well as to improve the public image of the United States in the region,” it stated in a draft report.
Thus far imperialism has rushed in and already pulled off a number of PR stunts.
First, Obama granted temporary amnesty to Haitians scheduled for deportation from the US, after it was demanded by advocacy groups. Likewise, it was reported early on, perhaps erroneously, that the US-controlled IMF demanded wage freezes and rises in electricity prices as part of an emergency 100 million dollar loan package. Later, the IMF came out with a statement, declaring that the $100 million loan would be interest and condition-free. Managing director of the fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, went even further by saying, “the most important thing is that the IMF is now working with all donors to try to delete all the Haitian debt, including our new loan. If we succeed–and I’m sure we will succeed–even this loan will turn out to be finally a grant, because all the debt will have been deleted.”
The IMF’s statement should be seen for what it is: imperialist doublespeak. While imperialism, especially Amerikan imperialism, is promising to help Haiti, the real intention is to help itself.
Under the imperialist system, ‘aid’ is almost exclusively used as a political weapon. Aid packages and loans often come with strings, such as the freezing of wages and rises in prices for public services, among other things. When Washington’s edicts are not followed, aid money to poor countries is withheld and instead given to opposition groups, as was the case in Haiti after Aristide was reelected in 2000. Additionally, ‘aid’ rarely makes it to those it is professed to serve. 84% of US aid money to the Third World returns to the US economy in the form of contracts, wages, consulting fees and payments for goods. Of the remaining 16%, an unknown amount is pocketed by the recipient country’s goonish puppet-elite.
Recently, the United Snakes has been touting investment in Haiti. Twice in 2009, Bill Clinton, acting on behalf of the UN, made high-profile visits to Haiti. In one trip, Clinton gave 150 investors a tour of potential investment sites in the country. Prior to this, Clinton visited with UN General Secretary, Ban-Ki Mon, who said during a press conference the country must do more to attract investment. However, this investment is of a narrow type, as illustrated by a post-earthquake opinion piece in the Ottawa Citizen:
“[Regarding ‘rebuilding’ and ‘development’ plans,] [t]he Haitian government has singled out tourism, “export processing zones” (EPZs) and agriculture as sectors that hold promise and should be supported. But donors seem to be placing the bulk of their faith in EPZs, or expanding the textile industry.”
Facing a ‘financial crisis,’ US imperialism likely sees the Haitian earthquake as an opportunity to ratchet up and expand exploitation in the country. Food sustainability and commercial agriculture for Haitians is not profitable for imperialism and will not be promoted as part of imperialist ‘development’ schemes.
Impetus will be given to legal ‘reforms,’ new building construction and infrastructure development. However, such will not be geared to the benefit of the people of Haiti, but rather those who control the Haitian economy: imperialists and a small comprador class. Infrastructure and ‘development’ will expand imperialism’s exploitation of the country and perhaps convert the country’s north shore into a resort destination for the exclusive use of Western vacationers. For the bulk of Haiti’s population though, conditions will not change. Though a few new sweatshop jobs may come to the country, most Haitians will continue to rely on small-scale agriculture, the informal sector and remittances from abroad for daily survival.
Recent resistance in Haiti
Since the mid-90’s, resistance to continual imperialist meddling and economic strangulation amongst Haitians has coalesced under former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the Fanmi Lavalas [Avalanche Family] party.
While president of Haiti, Aristide used Fanmi Lavalas and other independent institutions to provide services to and render support from the poor, especially where the Haitian state’s hands were tied by US-sponsored trade agreements. Chief among Aristide’s plans for Haiti was a more democratic productive and distributive method within the grassroots and informal sector, those areas which imperialism and the Haitian state had the least control over.
Though Aristide was supported by the masses of Haiti, he never prepared them to struggle against inevitable imperialist suppression. His politics and program were heavily tinged with liberalism: an inability to make and follow through with clear distinctions. In a very real sense, he wanted to have it both ways. He wanted to be both a legitimate statesman within the imperialist system as well as someone leading progressive social change within Haiti. This, in addition to his pacifist tendencies, left himself and his supporters vulnerable to attacks.
Aristide’s liberalism was perhaps best expressed as he looked for allies in Haiti’s struggle against imposed poverty. Rather than building alliances on the basis of clear common interest, i.e. with those countries also struggling under IMF-imposed debt and unfair trade deals, Aristide spent a considerable amount of time appealing to rich countries. Rather than championing and joining in solidarity with those being attacked and threatened by the imperialism globally, he formed a government-in-exile inside the US after his first ouster. In Eyes of the Heart, a short book published in 2000, he made a moral case against modern globalization; attempting to expose the plight of Haitians to Western audiences in a non-threatening way.
The logical result of Aristide’s misguided politics came in 2004, an election year. The US-funded opposition made allegations of fraud and labeled Aristide a dictator. They staged acts of civil unrest and launched a rebellion which threatened to violently overtake the capital, prompting the US to “restore democracy,” i.e. kidnap Aristide and fly him to Africa as part of a coup d’etat. Since Aristide’s ouster, Fanmi Lavalas has been banned from running in elections, branded “violent, pro-Aristide gangs” and subject to repression. The small gains Haitians made during Aristide’s short stints as president have been reversed. For all his internationally-directed appeals, they went unheard and ignored in the West. When he was overthrown a second time by the US, there was no outcry from the Western “masses.”
What is revealed here is that the struggle for Third World liberation is a political-military one. In this regard, Aristide’s strategy failed the Haitian masses, leaving them to languish under the jackboot of imperialism.
It also reveals the saliency of class in today’s world. The illusionary ‘morality’ of the First World is not reliable in any effective sense. Any ‘progressive movement’ within Amerika is overstated, largely for propaganda purposes. Generally, First Worlders are exploiter enemies of the Third World masses.
Anti-Imperialist Alternative
One thing should be clear: the disaster that’s befallen Haiti is not natural. It is the result of an economic system, a class system which actively benefits a minority of humanity at the expense of the majority.
There are two ideas at the core of this. First, Haitians are far from alone in their plight. They are one small part of the exploited masses of the world. Second, it will take more than reforms or even revolution in a single country to relieve its people of the capitalist-imperialist threat eternally. It will take a global revolution- an uprising of the exploited Third World masses against imperialism, its agents and supporters- to end this system forever.
The idea that a cataclysmic, global revolution will be unleashed upon the world is millenarian. Because of this, the Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Movement (RAIM) supports various forces actively opposing imperialism throughout the Third World. We support a united front against imperialism, i.e. unity between forces resisting imperialism in individual countries.
Revolutionaries push for widespread social transformation. While it is important to accept and support reforms when they are on the table, revolutionaries must also defend reforms from attacks and organize to transform society on a more widespread basis. Society must be revolutionized on all levels, including the adoption of a foreign policy based on revolutionary internationalism and not narrow state interests. Revolutionaries the world over must make clear distinctions and have a clear strategy; not cloud up the picture with liberalism, uninhibited moralism and unwarranted reverence for the First World. Above all, revolutionaries are anti-imperialists and see their own struggle as global in scope.
Which way from here
The lack of a revolutionary or popular democratic movement in Haiti places it in great disadvantage vis-a-vis imperialist penetration and restructuring in the aftermath of the recent earthquake. As it looks, the living conditions in Haiti will be hellish for some time.
However, from this ongoing disaster, Haitians and the global masses have the opportunity to learn from and reject the errors of Haiti’s most recent struggles. As revolutionaries, we also have an obligation to study and learn from what is happening in the world, presenting our findings with utmost clarity to the Third World masses and those who might be their allies. In the First World, we have an obligation to agitate for and meaningfully support the united front, using our own bourgeois privilege when expedient. In the Third World, revolutionaries must incorporate these lessons into their struggle, so as to not repeat the same mistakes.
While doctors and food may help in this time of emergency, they are hardly long-term solutions to the problems inherent in capitalist-imperialism. The best form of relief for Haiti would be a global, anti-imperialist movement. Unlike the US-dominated ‘recovery’ effort, a successful, class-conscious movement on the part of exploited Haitians and the Third World masses is the only thing capable of truly saving Haiti.
(1)http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/us2010rja6.php
(2)http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/29/food.internationalaidanddevelopment
(3) http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=4010185&blogId=526390389
(4)http://www.cbn.com/700club/showinfo/about/about700club.aspx
(5) http://www.cbn.com/700club/showinfo/about/about700club.aspx
(6)http://www.9news.com/rss/article.aspx?storyid=130993
(7)http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122777051
(8)http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122669505
(9)http://www.haiti-info.com/spip.php?article2713
(10)http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122803650
(11)http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=57661
(12)http://newsjunkiepost.com/2010/01/20/us-militarys-security-not-helping-haitians/
(13)http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/20/journalist_kim_ives_on_how_decades
(14)http://content.usatoday.com/communities/Religion/post/2010/01/sex-haiti-earthquake-relief-mark-driscoll-/1
(15)http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2010/01/imf-clarifies-terms-haitis-loan
(16)http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2010/01/economic-shock-haiti-disaster
(17)http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/517494/
(18)http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/really+help+Haiti/2484340/story.html
(19)http://www.haiti.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=115:092609-royal-caribbean-boosts-haitis-tourism-comeback-efforts&catid=1:latest-news
(20)http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N10536583.htm
(21)http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/americas/03/02/aristide.claim/
(22)http://www.uruknet.info/index.php?p=m62226&hd=&size=1&l=e
Aristide, Jean-Bertrand. Eyes of the Heart: Seeking a Path for the Poor in the Age of Globalization. 2000. Common Courage Press. Monroe, ME.
Filed under Imperialism, News and Analysis, Organizing, Political Economy
RAIM-Seattle on the recent WTO 10 year anniversary
originally published, December 21st, 2009 by RAIM-Seattle
(www.raims.wordpress.com)
The imperialist media hype around the recent slayings of police (the enforcers of empire) in the Seattle and Lakewood, and the predictable show of support for the kkkops by the general cracker population, overlaps the ten year anniversary of the “Battle of Seattle”. RAIM-Seattle doesn’t believe in conspiracy theories per se, but the coincidental timing of all this shit is not lost on us in the least. If these recent events did not take place, the imperialist media would have been more than likely (just for a “story”) to do a piece noting the 1999 WTO rebellion. The resulting reports would have reminded these kop loving crackers how pig repression extended itself into the white communities from its usual mandate in occupying oppressed nation communities. This would have exposed the imperialist hypocrisy around “free speech” with former mayor Paul Schell’s “Free Speech Zones” and the resulting swine assault upon any expression outside of those zones. In turn, this would have demoralized the white oppressor nation’s faith in the Amerikkkan system, and we at RAIM-Seattle think this is a good thing. Instead, because of recent events and its coverage by the media, you have a more united white oppressor nation against “those people”. That is, those people of the internal oppressed nations. People hungry for justice should consider their moves carefully and with a sense of overall strategy. It is plainly and tragically obvious that individuals just shooting pigs within the u$ (as deserving of the death penalty as they might be as enforcers of the system) outside of a legally solid (presumably) self-defense context, doesn’t lead to liberation. In fact, it leads to more repression, more kkkops, more prisons, and more of Amerikkka in general. Likewise, praising or defending kkkop assassinations promotes that type of strategy-less focoism instead of promoting solidarity with active and organized resistance to imperialism in the Third World.
With that out of the way, RAIM-S is going to do what the Amerikan imperialist media conveniently wasn’t going to do: Revisit the 1999 WTO rebellion!
Brief history of the WTO up to 1999
The WTO was originally founded in 1947 as the General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade, or GATT. GATT, in turn, had its origins in the 1944 Bretton Woods conference as the proposed but never implemented “International Trade Organization” (ITO). The GATT, along with other Bretton Woods creations like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, essentially made the rules of global capitalism (on international trade, “development” loan packages, property rights, some interest rates, currency exchange rates, etc.) for the post-WW2 period. Alongside the Marshall Plan, the resulting agreements helped forge a “new imperialism” of a parasitically united First World, headed by the united $tates, to jointly exploit the Third World. This was the true origin of a “New World Order” of imperialism, as opposed to the kind of inter-imperialist wars for colonial spheres of dominance that characterized the first half of the 20th century. The Soviet bloc (referred by some as the historical “Second World”) and the so-called “Cold War” was both the top exception and the chief impediment to the blooming of this united imperialist corpse flower.
These international institutions of free trade were only so in name, as the united $nakes and the rest of the First World would always insist upon special exceptions (like agricultural subsidies for cracker-settler Amerikkkan farmers) to prop up their privileged status as “developed” nations. Resistance to imperialism by the peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America from the early 1950’s to the late 60’s was a key factor in smashing the old Bretton Woods system (the u$ dollar fixed to a gold standard as the global reserve currency). The imperialists had their revenge by replacing the original Bretton Woods with a floating exchange rate system. The consequences of this lead to further disruption of some of the only means of Third World nations to generate national capital; their own natural resources and agriculture. (1)
This predatory battering of the Third World by these First World expanded with the fall of the rival Soviet bloc in 1991. This event was infamously marked by George Bu$h Sr.’s announcement to the u$ congreSS of this New World Order finally coming into fruition; right on the eve of the “multilateral” imperialist attack on Iraq in 1990. (2) With the all potential challenges to this New World Order (really the New Amerikkkan Order) neutralized, from the Soviet Union to Saddam Hussein, the First World kicked up its exploitation yet another notch during the Uruguay Round of GATT in 1994. (3) These deck-stacking measures moved beyond “business as usual” for the imperialists with regard to tariffs and price controls, and into uncharted economic territory involving agricultural products, intellectual property, services, etc. This renewed global economic framework culminated in the founding of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995. Naturally, the agenda of the world’s exploited majority and all those who resist imperialism was shutting down the gathering of imperialists at the WTO. All this came to a head at the Seattle conference on November 30, 1999.
The “Battle of Seattle” (of 1999, not 1856!) (4)
RAIM-S won’t bother recounting all the various events around the WTO shutdown. Both the righteous direct actions of the anarchist John Browns and the pig mobs running wild from mayor Paul $chell’s “State of Emergency” in response has been covered countless times in the independent media (5), and mostly mischaracterized and scandalized in the corporate media. A Hollywood feature film was even made. A recounting of the minutia of details around the protest is not our purpose here. Ours is an account of the where the margins of class struggle are in this movement for justice against the globalized machinations of imperialism.
The direct actions were successful in shutting down the first day of the conference, preventing delegates from entering the convention center and cutting off pig supply lines. The pig counterattack was a brutal and massive military operation that utilized tear gas, rubber bullets, beatings, mass arrests, and an invasion and occupation of the nominally progressive Capitol Hill neighborhood. The world attention of the WTO protests and the police repression helped to bring certain contradictions inside the following days of the WTO Seattle conference to a head, thus derailing the entire conference. The story for most ends here, with the narrative of the germinating “brand new left” (local and/or globetrotting) to oppose various imperialist dominated gatherings as the future of “left wing” resistance. Now RAIM-Seattle has to stink it up a little bit, for the sake of the truth, with the following remark from some Black Nation youth to some radical white youth as they pushing back against the pig assaults:
“Hey, where were you when we were getting beat down by the police?”
This brings up a larger issue to RAIM-S of the class outlook of the various groups involved in the protest. Is there some kind of white Amerikkkan exceptionalism within the outlook of many on the so-called “left”? Is this how many activists in the First World feel exempted from confronting the relative privilege of white “workers” and their parasitic i$$ues, even as they claim to support the issues of the internal oppressed nations and the Third World as a whole? Did fantasies of u$ “revolutionary working class” lead to a white dominated politics? Did this, in turn, keep away too many oppressed nation peoples from representing their nations at the WTO protests? That’s not to say that oppressed nations and the Third World weren’t represented, but let’s take a hard look at the following account from Betita Martinez to examine where RAIM sees this problem (6). Martinez quotes Jinee Kim of the Third Eye Movement:
“I was at the jail where a lot of protesters were being held and a big crowd of people was chanting ‘This Is What Democracy Looks Like!’ At first it sounded kind of nice. But then I thought: is this really what democracy looks like? Nobody here looks like me.”
This is not to say that individuals of white background, even as an organizational majority, cannot contribute to a net gain for global justice. That would put an incorrect subjectivist primary focus on who a person is versus what a person does on the one hand. Indeed, Martinez documents the solid discipline, knowledge, and organizational skills of many settler-descended activists, as well as its positive reception from the relative minority of oppressed nation activists. However, “democracy” is something more than gathering to protest and for voter registration drives. The struggle for democracy is overwhelmingly a torturous, long term armed struggle for national liberation in the Third World. The white so-called “left” needs to be aware of its First Worldist subjectivism with regard to concepts like democracy. RAIM-Seattle thinks that the best democracy that can exist is that of “one person, one vote” on a global scale. Because of imperialism, the mechanism for this global democracy, in the full utilitarian sense, does not exist as of yet. Since those of us in RAIM like to think of themselves as being consistent global democrats (small “d”; fuck the Demokkkratic parasite Party), we uphold the interest of the global majority in the Third World against the global minority in the First World. This makes it possible for us to act in a way that respects the “general will” of the global majority the best way possible, lacking the practical ability to count 6 billion votes under imperialism. Betita Martinez then shows RAIM the economic origins of this “left-wing” self-deception on “democracy”:
Unfortunately the heritage of distrust was intensified by some of the AFL-CIO leadership of labor on the November 30 march. They chose to take a different route through downtown rather than marching with others to the Convention Center and helping to block the WTO. Also, on the march to downtown they reportedly had a conflict with the Third World People’s Assembly contingent when they rudely told the people of color to move aside so they could be in the lead.
This is the crux of the issue for RAIM. In the midst of all this righteous militancy, where were the John Browns (traitors to the white oppressor nation) in the march to shut down Jimmy Hoffa Jr.’s parasite goons? Who was there to defend the nominal Third World leadership against imperialism? Perhaps it is because of a continuing fantasy among the “left” about some “natural” role for the Amerikkkan worker as some kind of leading “revolutionary” force for progressive change. RAIM holds that the only societal change that Amerikkkan labor can bring is fascism. Observe (7):
“The Seattle summit will be a historic confrontation between civil society and corporate rule”, says Mike Dolan. He works for the American consumer watchdog group Public Citizen founded by Ralph Nader. Public Citizen is connected to the IFG and initiated the campaign against the MAI treaty. Dolan now acts as the great coordinator and spokesman of the counter movement in Seattle. Not everyone seems to be happy with him, but little can be done about his presence. He sits in the middle of the web, like a spider. On the one hand Dolan supports the American PGA caravan with several thousand dollars, on the other he speaks up for the extreme Right Pat Buchanan, now a candidate for the American presidency, representing the Reform Party. “Whatever else you say about Pat Buchanan, he will be the only candidate in the 2000 presidential sweepstakes who will passionately and unconditionally defend the legitimate expectations of working families in the global economy,” Dolan writes. Indeed, Buchanan supports American workers. As long as they are conservative and obedient and not unemployed, black, gay, female, lesbian or Jewish. He’s also not particularly fond of left-wing workers. Buchanan on Argentina: “With military and police and free lance operators, between 6.000 and 150.000 leftists disappeared. Brutal: yes; also successful. Today peace reigns in Argentina; security has been restored.”
And this:
Former Republican big shot Buchanan is known for his sharp attacks on international trade treaties like GATT, NAFTA, MAI and now the WTO. “Traditional antagonists as politically far apart as Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan are finding some common ground on trade issues,”says IFG member Mark Ritchie. He is also director of the American Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, which supports small farmers. Reform Party spokesman in New Hampshire John Talbott agrees with Ritchie. “If you close your eyes, it is difficult to hear much of a difference between Ralph Nader on the left and Pat Buchanan on the right when they talk about the devastating effect of free international trade on the American worker and a desire to clean big money and special interests out of Washington.”According to Buchanan this big capital is mainly in the hands of “the Jews”. He presents himself as “the only leader in this country who is not afraid of fighting against the Jewish lobby”. Buchanan calls Hitler “an individual of great courage” and doubts whether the holocaust really was that big an event. But “Jewish capital” isn’t the most important reason why Buchanan wants to be a candidate for the presidency. No, in the first place he wants to end “illegal immigration”, that is, according to Buchanan, “helping fuel the cultural breakdown of our nation”. The populist Buchanan is probably the foremost representative of the extreme right in the US. His constituency consists of Christian fundamentalists, militia members and neo-Nazis. These millions of people might explain Dolan’s flirt with Buchanan. Together with his enthusiastic commentary Dolan sent around a newspaper article in which Buchanan openly says: “American workers and people first.”But Buchanan is not alone with that opinion. Also the big right-wing trade union AFL-CIO wants to make “the rights and interests of US workers a priority”. The union also mobilises their rank and file for the demonstrations in Seattle.
Make no mistake: The fascist agenda of the Amerikkkan organized labor is not the “false consciousness” of Amerikkkan workers ideologically swindled by Patrick Buchanan the AFL-CIA (yes, that’s how we spell it) and other u$ labor leaders. The protectionism, racism, and militarism of the Amerikkkan labor aristocracy are, in reality, their true class consciousness. The imperialist structure of the world set up by the Bretton Woods conference, with all its various phases, have made 90% of Amerikkkans among the world’s richest 15%! (8,9) Why in the hell would they want to change the very exploitative basis for that privilege? (10) Unless, of course, these crackkkers are complaining about Third World and oppressed peoples driving down their parasitically inflated wages, taking “their jobs”, or driving up the cost of “their” gasoline for their pick-up trucks and SUVs. This is the “Amerikkka first” fascist agenda, not a progressive global justice one. It is an agenda that the left-wing of parasitism keeps giving space to with their fantasies of a white-worker led revolution. The common “left” narrative of strategy goes something like this: Win the “90% against the 10%” in within country by country, rather than on a overarching global scale. Treating every country, both in the First World and Third World, as if they all have progressive national majorities will only lead to disaster. One can see where this white populist fantasy leads: to the teaCrackkkers and the goddamn minuteKlan. To RAIM, this is NOT what democracy looks like… This is what DUMBokkkracy looks like.
J. Sakai quotes ideological founder of fascism Benito Mussolini (11):
[Mussolini understood] his need to put forward the most “left” face possible on his way to State power. Mussolini even spoke favorably about the spontaneous workers councils movement that was taking over factories and calling for anti-capitalist revolution:
“ No social transformation which is necessary is repugnant to me. Hence I accept the famous workers’ supervision of the factories and equally their cooperative social management; I only ask that there should be a clear conscience and technical capacity, and that production be increased. If this is guaranteed by the trade unions, instead of by the employers, I have no hesitation in saying that the former have the right to take the latter’s place.”
Again, does today’s third position fascism sound more radical than that? Not hardly.
Never forget class struggle!
RAIM-S gives a clenched-fist salute to those John Browns of the global justice movement in their continued harassment of the imperialist states at the various international policy conferences around the world, including at the recent Copenhagen conference. Never forget that First World “labor” is not the friend of the world’s exploited and oppressed. Your real friends are the freedom fighters of the Third World proletariat who are landing the hardest blows against imperialism (12,13).
Fuck the AFL-CIA! Up with the Third World!
Turn the World upside down!
Notes:
1. Steven M. Suranovich, International Finance Theory and Policy, chapter 100, http://internationalecon.com/Finance/Fch100/F100-1.php
2. http://www.al-bab.com/Arab/docs/pal/pal10.htm
3. The Uruguay Round, http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/tif_e/fact5_e.htm
4. http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&File_Id=5208
5. John Tarleton, Love and Rage in Seattle: The Day the WTO Stood Still, http://johntarleton.net/wto.html
6. Elizabeth ‘Betita’ Martinez, Where Was the Color in Seattle?: Looking for reasons why the Great Battle was so white, http://colours.mahost.org/articles/martinez.html
7. Merijn Schoenmaker and Eric Krebbers, Seattle ’99, marriage party of the Left and the Right, http://www.savanne.ch/right-left-materials/seattle-marriage.html#13
8. US Census Bureau, 2006; income statistics for the year 2005
9. http://globalrichlist.com/how.html
10. J. Sakai, Aryan Politics & Fighting the W.T.O, http://colours.mahost.org/articles/sakai2.html
11. J. Sakai, excerpt from Confronting Fascism: Discussion Documents for a Militant Movement, http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/books/fascism/shock.html
13. https://raimd.wordpress.com/2009/12/20/in-indian-forests-grow-with-naxalite-peoples-war/
Filed under News and Analysis, Organizing, Political Economy, RAIM-Seattle, White Amerika, Youth
Presented by Resistencia Mexicana:
Join us in a discussion of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which is historically rooted in a White Supremacist, Settler Colonialist inspired War of Aggression. This came about because Mexico was in a weakened position in the aftermath of In-dependence from Spain in 1821. Then, in conflict with Mexico’s land and indige-nous people the expansionist aims of Manifest Destiny declared that Anglos had the god given right to expand their land base from sea to shining sea in search of new labor and markets for profit and plunder. Also, after of the rebellion and annexation of Texas, President James K. Polk used a conflict on disputed territory near the Rio Grande as a pretext for War.
Eventually Mexico lost the war and was forced to sign the Treaty of Guada-lupe Hidalgo at gunpoint on February 2, 1848. We were divided and conquered be-cause of this action and became foreigners in our native land. The Treaty of Guada-lupe Hidalgo was continually violated, and over time Mexicana/o’s lost their land, became cheap labor and a Colonized people. However, this Colonization was not passively accepted and Mexicana/o organizations and individuals such as Tiburcio Vásquez, Joaquin Murrieta, Gregorio Cortez, Juan Cortina, El Mano Negro, and Las Gorras Blancas rose-up in Resistance.
Since then we have been subjected to a continuing Colonial War in the form of the militarization of the border, migra brutality, detentions, deportations, impris-onment, high drop-out/ push-out rates from school, racism, poverty, and oppression. For these reasons we don’t recognize the Treaty or the border that divides our people and nation. We feel that we must raise our voice and expose our right to the land and resources that are stolen from us every day and our absolute right to Self-defense, Self-determination and our people’s National Libera-tion and Reunification. Furthermore we must articulate our own history and collec-tively come up with our own solu-tions to the conditions we ex-perience as a people and what we can do to build a better world.
When: Saturday, February 6th, 2-4pm
Where: Sisters of Color United for Education, 2895 W. 8th Ave, Denver
More info: mexican.resistance@gmail.com
Filed under Actions and Events, Occupied Mexico/Aztlan
Amerika “disappears” migrants into secret detention facilities
Recently, journalist Jacqueline Stevens uncovered a list of 186 previously-secret Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sub-field offices. The list reveals the locations into which an unknown number of migrant workers and other non-citizens have been “disappeared.”
According to Stevens, the hidden-plain-sight facilities, five of which are near Denver, Co, are often located in suburban office parks or commercial warehouses. The buildings carry no signs or flags to indicate a government operation. The facilities themselves were designs for processing and transporting detainees; they have no beds or showers. Nonetheless, Stevens states as many as 100 detainees are held at some facilities on any given day. Rather than being deported or sentenced for a crime, they are shuffled between facilities for periods of months, making it virtually impossible for individual detainees to be located by family or legal counsel. They are not told where they are going nor when they will be released.
Such treatment is unusual even by US prison standards. However, it should be of no surprise those with the least power in US society, “illegals,” should be targeted with the most extreme and unusual forms of state oppression. The story for migrants in the US is ironic and sad. Often victims of imperialist-sponsored state-terror and economic strangulation in Latin America, those few who have escaped past Amerika’s militarized borders find themselves criminalized and threatened by both vigilante groups (such as the Minutemen) and extra normal, police-state measures. Many migrants are returning to land that was originally theirs, as the US/Mexican border was established by gun-point after the 1848 invasion and occupation of Mexico.
‘Working’-class Whites are often the biggest proponents of the modern police state. This is because they see it as attacking others within US society, oppressed nations, and not themselves. They have an economic incentive also: rural prisons and border policing provide well-paid pig-jobs that require little, if any, college education. All of this feeds into the fascistic, anti-migrant, anti-Third World sentiment expressed by many Whites.
Thus far, the Amerikan public has shown little outrage over ICE raids, secret, quasi-legal detentions or similar acts of state oppression directed towards migrants. Ultimately though, it matters little what Amerikans think of the system they’ve set up to oppress other people. Real justice will come when Amerika and Amerikans are judged by the masses of the Third World and their allies.
Source:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100104/stevens
Full list of ICE sub-field offices:
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