April 28, 2018

READ: Full declaration of North and South Korean summit 27 April, 2018

Official translation provided by the Inter-Korean summit:

"During this momentous period of historical transformation on the Korean Peninsula, reflecting the enduring aspiration of the Korean people for peace, prosperity and unification, President Moon Jae-in of the Republic of Korea and chairman Kim Jong Un of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea held an Inter-Korean Summit Meeting at the 'Peace House' at Panmunjom on April 27, 2018.
The two leaders solemnly declared before the 80 million Korean people and the whole world that there will be no more war on the Korean Peninsula and thus a new era of peace has begun.
The two leaders, sharing the firm commitment to bring a swift end to the Cold War relic of longstanding division and confrontation, to boldly approach a new era of national reconciliation, peace and prosperity, and to improve and cultivate inter-Korean relations in a more active manner, declared at this historic site of Panmunjom as follows:
    1. South and North Korea will reconnect the blood relations of the people and bring forward the future of co-prosperity and unification led by Koreans by facilitating comprehensive and groundbreaking advancement in inter-Korean relations. Improving and cultivating inter-Korean relations is the prevalent desire of the whole nation and the urgent calling of the times that cannot be held back any further.
    1. South and North Korea affirmed the principle of determining the destiny of the Korean nation on their own accord and agreed to bring forth the watershed moment for the improvement of inter-Korean relations by fully implementing all existing agreements and declarations adopted between the two sides thus far.
    2. South and North Korea agreed to hold dialogue and negotiations in various fields including at high level, and to take active measure for the implementation of the agreements reached at the Summit.
    3. South and North Korea agreed to establish a joint liaison office with resident representative of both sides in the Gaeseong region in order to facilitate close consultation between the authorities as well as smooth exchanges and cooperation between the peoples.
    4. South and North Korea agreed to encourage more active cooperation, exchanges, visits and contacts at all levels in order to rejuvenate the sense of national reconciliation and unity between South and North. The two sides will encourage the atmosphere of unity and cooperation by actively staging various joint events on the dates that hold special meaning for both South and North Korea, such as June 15th, in which participants from all levels, including central and local governments, parliaments, political parties, and civil organizations, will be involved. On the international front, the two sides agreed to demonstrate their collective wisdom, talents, and solidarity by jointly participating international sports events such as the 2018 Asian Games.
    5. South and North Korea agreed to endeavor to swiftly resolve the humanitarian issues that resulted from the division of the nation, and to convene the inter-Korean Red Cross Meeting to discuss and solve various issues including the reunion of separated families. In this vein, South and North Korea agreed to proceed with reunion program for the separated families on the occasion of the National Liberation Day of August 15 this year.
    6. South and North Korea agreed to actively implement the projects previously agreed in the 2007 October 4 Declaration, in order to promote balanced economic growth and co-prosperity of the nation. As a first step, the two sides agreed to adopt practical steps towards the connection and modernization of the railways and roads on the custom transportation corridor as well as between Seoul and Sinuiju for their utilization.
    2. South and North Korea will make joint efforts to alleviate the acute military tension and practically eliminate the danger of war on the Korean Peninsula.
    1. South and North Korea agreed to completely cease all the hostile acts against each other in every domain including land, air and sea, that are the sources of military tension and conflict. In this vein, the two sides agreed to transform the demilitarized zone into a peace zone in a genuine sense by ceasing as of May 1 this year all hostile acts and eliminating their means, including broadcasting through loudspeakers and distribution of leaflets, in the areas along the Military Demarcation Line.
    2. South and North Korea agreed to devise a practical scheme to turn the areas around the Northern Limit Line in the West Sea into a maritime peace zone in order to prevent accidental military clashes and guarantee safe fishing activities.
    3. South and North Korea agreed to take various military measures to ensure active mutual cooperation, exchanges, visits and contacts. The two sides agreed to hold frequent meetings between military authorities, including the Defense Ministers Meeting, in order to immediately discuss and solve military issues that arise between them. In this regard, the two sides agreed to first convene military talks at the rank of general in May.
    3. South and North Korea will actively cooperate to establish a permanent and solid Peace regime on the Korean peninsula. Bringing an end to the current unactual state of armistice and establishing a robust peace regime on the Korean peninsula is a historical mission that must not be delayed any further.
    1. South and North Korea reaffirmed that non-aggression agreement that precludes the use of force in any form against each other, and agreed to strictly adhere to this Agreement.
    2. South and North Korea agreed to carry out disarmament in a phased manner, as military tension is alleviated and substantial progress is made in military confidence-building.
    3. During the year that marks the 65th anniversary of the Armistice, South and North Korea agreed to actively pursue trilateral meetings involving the two Koreas and the United States, or quadrilateral meetings involving the two Koreas and the United States and China with a view to declaring an end to the War and establishing a permanent and solid peace regime.
    4. South and North Korea confirmed the common goal of realizing, through complete denuclearization, a nuclear-free Korean peninsula, South and North Korea shared the view that the measures being initiated by North Korea are very meaningful and crucial for the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and agreed to carry out their respective roles and responsibilities in this regard. South and North Korea agreed to actively seek the support and cooperation of the international community for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
    The two leaders agreed, through regular meeting and direct telephone conversations, to hold frequent and candid discussion on issues vital to the nation, to strengthen mutual trust and to jointly endeavor to strengthen the positive momentum towards continuous advancement of inter-Korean relations as well as peace, prosperity and unification of the Korean Peninsula.
    In this context, president Moon Jae-in agreed to visit Pyongyang this fall.
    April 27, 2018
    Done in Panmunjom
    Moon Jae In
    President
    Kim Jong-un
    Chairman
    Republic of Korea State Affairs Commission
    Democratic People's Republic of Korea

    Fascistic Ukraine government attacks communists, squashes May Day preps April 25, 2018, Peoplesworld - BY JOHN WOJCIK

    Fascistic Ukraine government attacks communists, squashes May Day preps
    Volunteers of the right-wing paramilitary Azov Civil Corps swear an oath of allegiance in central Kyiv on January 28 | Efrem Lukatsky, AP
    In an attempt to thwart pro-worker demonstrations planned for May Day in Ukraine, government “security services” broke into Communist Party buildings in that country yesterday, according to press releases sent out of the country by the party. The party statement said the government security forces acted on information provided by Svoboda (Freedom).
    Svoboda, which is connected to the Social Nationalist Party of the Ukraine, a well-known pro-Nazi party, claimed the communists were harboring illegal activities including passing out post cards in celebration of the May 9, 1945 allied victory over fascism and planning illegal pro-worker demonstrations on May Day next week. While those activities have indeed been declared illegal by the Ukrainian government the use of fascist symbols and flags, fascist marches and the construction of memorials honoring Nazis are all entirely legal now in that country.
    The current government in Kiev came to power in a coup that ousted Viktor Yanukovych, the democratically elected president of the country and then slaughtered thousands of ethnic Russians who resisted the new fascist government.
    According to the communists, the government has declared as illegal leaflets seized yesterday that read: “Long live May 1 – the day of solidarity with working people.” Incredibly, Ukraine is now one of the very few countries where the celebration of May Day has been banned. It is currently celebrated in at least 142 countries, the Ukrainian Communist Party notes in its statement on yesterday’s raid.
    Other leaflets seized read, “We demand Peace, Jobs, and Salaries!” The government said the leaflets were seized because they endanger the “sovereignty” of the Ukraine. “These guardians of the regime apparently confused the interests of the state with the interests of the oligarchs,” the communist statement read.
    The party has appealed to the United Nations Human Rights Council for action against the government’s violation of its rights.
    The Kiev government has a long and dubious record in the area of human rights, a record ignored by much of the U.S. media which portrays the Ukrainian government as a bastion of freedom fighting against Russian “invaders.”
    Celebrations of anniversaries of progressive victories have always been a sore spot for the Ukrainian fascists. When the 70th anniversary of the end of the Holocaust was celebrated three years ago, for example, the parliament in Kiev extended official recognition to political groupings that had collaborated with the Nazis in murdering Jews. Among those recognized as legal groups was the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, an ultra right, anti-Semitic group that had openly worked with the Nazis.
    In the time span of only a few months in 2015 there were at least ten mysterious deaths of opposition figures with the government claiming they were all suicides. One of those killed was Oleg Kalishnikov, a leader of the opposition Party of Regions, who was shot in his own home after he had been campaigning for the right of Ukrainians to celebrate the allied victory in World War II.
    His death and the killing of numerous opposition journalists have been largely ignored in the western media.
    Those included the murder of Ukrainian journalist Oles Buzna, a critic of the Kiev fascists, who had protested censorship that the Ukraine has imposed on news outlets that don’t carry forward the government’s positon on issues. Also murdered was the dissident journalist Seriy Sukhobok. There were reports after his death that his assailants had been found but later the government changed its story and said they had not been found.
    The U.S. State Department, both during the Obama years and now under Trump, has pushed the narrative that the Ukrainian government has been initiating democratic reforms. While there is little evidence of any such reforms the government has been busy, however, slashing pensions for seniors, hiking fuel prices and implementing International Monetary Fund demands for austerity in exchange for that fund having bailed out Ukrainian banks.
    Nazism has a long history in Western Ukraine since World War II, particularly in cities such as Lviv which boasts a well-kept cemetery to veterans of the Galician SS, the Ukrainian chapter of the Nazi SS.
    The “mass” protests against the last legally elected president, Yanukovych, included 100-member brigades of neo-Nazi militias bused into Kiev. After the coup, Anriy Parubiy, a leader in Svoboda who was a fascist commander of the so-called “defense forces” of the demonstrators in Kiev, was elevated to the post of national security director. He led the government expeditions into eastern Ukraine to fight the ethnic Russians resisting the coup. Thousands of the pro-fascist fighters marched into ethnic Russian villages in eastern Ukraine under banners bearing swastikas and other fascist symbols.
    The generally right-wing London Telegraph departed from the type of reporting at that time generally seen in the U.S. when its correspondent, Tom Partiff, wrote in an article: “Kiev’s use of voluntary paramilitaries to stamp out Russian-backed Donetsk and Luhansk ‘peoples republics’ should send a shiver down Europe’s spine…the men use the neo-Nazi Wolfsangel (Wolf’s Hook) symbol on their banner and members of the battalion are openly white supremacists, or anti-Semites.
    In interviews with the Telegraph, fighters denied the Holocaust, expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler and said that they were in fact Nazis.

    April 27, 2018

    How The Military Defeated Trump's Insurgency in Foreign Policy, Moon of Alabama, Sept 18, 2017

    September 18, 2017

    How The Military Defeated Trump's Insurgency

    Trump was seen as a presidential candidate who would possibly move towards a less interventionist foreign policy. That hope is gone. The insurgency that brought Trump to the top was defeated by a counter-insurgency campaign waged by the U.S. military. (Historically its first successful one). The military has taken control of the White House process and it is now taking control of its policies.
    It is schooling Trump on globalism and its "indispensable" role in it. Trump was insufficiently supportive of their desires and thus had to undergo reeducation:
    When briefed on the diplomatic, military and intelligence posts, the new president would often cast doubt on the need for all the resources. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson organized the July 20 session to lay out the case for maintaining far-flung outposts — and to present it, using charts and maps, in a way the businessman-turned-politician would appreciate.
    Trump was hauled into a Pentagon basement 'tank' and indoctrinated by the glittering four-star generals he admired since he was a kid:
    The session was, in effect, American Power 101 and the student was the man working the levers. It was part of the ongoing education of a president who arrived at the White House with no experience in the military or government and brought with him advisers deeply skeptical of what they labeled the “globalist” worldview. In coordinated efforts and quiet conversations, some of Trump’s aides have worked for months to counter that view, hoping the president can be persuaded to maintain — if not expand — the American footprint and influence abroad.
    Trump was sold the establishment policies he originally despised. No alternative view was presented to him.
    It is indisputable that the generals are now ruling in Washington DC. They came to power over decades by shaping culture through their sponsorship of Hollywood, by manipulating the media through "embedded" reporting and by forming and maintaining the countries infrastructure through the Army Corps of Engineers. The military, through the NSA as well as through its purchasing power, controls the information flow on the internet. Until recently the military establishment only ruled from behind the scene. The other parts of the power triangle, the corporation executives and the political establishment, were more visible and significant. But during the 2016 election the military bet on Trump and is now, after he unexpectedly won, collecting its price.
    Trump's success as the "Not-Hillary" candidate was based on an anti-establishment insurgency. Representatives of that insurgency, Flynn, Bannon and the MAGA voters, drove him through his first months in office. An intense media campaign was launched to counter them and the military took control of the White House. The anti-establishment insurgents were fired. Trump is now reduced to public figure head of a stratocracy - a military junta which nominally follows the rule of law.
    Stephen Kinzer describes this as America’s slow-motion military coup:
    Ultimate power to shape American foreign and security policy has fallen into the hands of three military men [...]
    ...
    Being ruled by generals seems preferable to the alternative. It isn’t.
    ...
    [It] leads toward a distorted set of national priorities, with military “needs” always rated more important than domestic ones. 
    ...
    It is no great surprise that Trump has been drawn into the foreign policy mainstream; the same happened to President Obama early in his presidency. More ominous is that Trump has turned much of his power over to generals. Worst of all, many Americans find this reassuring. They are so disgusted by the corruption and shortsightedness of our political class that they turn to soldiers as an alternative. It is a dangerous temptation.
    The country has fallen to that temptation even on social-economic issues:
    In the wake of the deadly racial violence in Charlottesville this month, five of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were hailed as moral authorities for condemning hate in less equivocal terms than the commander in chief did.
    ...
    On social policy, military leaders have been voices for moderation.
    The junta is bigger than its three well known leaders:
    Kelly, Mattis and McMaster are not the only military figures serving at high levels in the Trump administration. CIA Director Mike Pompeo, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke each served in various branches of the military, and Trump recently tapped former Army general Mark S. Inch to lead the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
    ...
    the National Security Council [..] counts two other generals on the senior staff.
    This is no longer a Coup Waiting to Happen The coup has happened with few noticing it and ever fewer concerned about it. Everything of importance now passes through the Junta's hands:
    [Chief of staff John] Kelly initiated a new policymaking process in which just he and one other aide [...] will review all documents that cross the Resolute desk.
    ...
    The new system [..] is designed to ensure that the president won’t see any external policy documents, internal policy memos, agency reports and even news articles that haven’t been vetted.
    To control Trump the junta filters his information input and eliminates any potentially alternative view:
    Staff who oppose [policy xyz] no longer have unfettered access to Trump, and nor do allies on the outside [.. .] Kelly now has real control over the most important input: the flow of human and paper advice into the Oval Office. For a man as obsessed about his self image as Trump, a new flow of inputs can make the world of difference.
    The Trump insurgency against the establishment was marked by a mostly informal information and decision process. That has been destroyed and replaced:
    Worried that Trump would end existing US spending/policies (largely, still geared to cold war priorities), the senior military staff running the Trump administration launched a counter-insurgency against the insurgency.
    ...
    General Kelly, Trump's Chief of Staff, has put Trump on a establishment-only media diet.
    ...
    In short, by controlling Trump's information flow with social media/networks, the generals smashed the insurgency's OODA loop (observe, orient, decide, act). Deprived of this connection, Trump is now weathervaning to cater to the needs of the establishment ...
    The Junta members dictate their policies to Trump by only proposing to him certain alternatives. The one that is most preferable to them will be presented as the only desirable one. "There are no alternatives," Trump will be told again and again.
    Thus we get a continuation of a failed Afghanistan policy and will soon get a militarily aggressive policy towards Iran.
    Other countries noticed how the game has changed. The real decisions are made by the generals, Trump is ignored as a mere figurehead:
    Asked whether he was predicting war [with North Korea], [former defence minister of Japan, Satoshi] Morimoto said: "I think Washington has not decided ... The final decision-maker is [US Defence Secretary] Mr Mattis ... Not the president."
    Climate change, its local catastrophes and the infrastructure problems it creates within the U.S. will further extend the military role in shaping domestic U.S. policy.
    Nationalistic indoctrination, already at abnormal heights in the U.S. society, will further increase. Military control will creep into ever extending fields of once staunchly civilian areas of policy. (Witness the increasing militarization of the police.)
    It is only way to sustain the empire.
    It is doubtful that Trump will be able to resist the policies imposed on him. Any flicker of resistance will be smashed. The outside insurgency which enabled his election is left without a figurehead, It will likely disperse. The system won.

    Posted by b on September 18, 2017 at 11:20 AM

    Nelson Mandela: “The Algerian Army Made Me A Man” by Abdeldjalil Larbi Youcef

    Mandela: “The Algerian Army Made Me A Man”

    Abstract
    Abdeldjalil Larbi Youcef reveals startling facts about a little-known period of Mandela’s life, when he was on the lam in northern Africa and received a short, yet formative, introduction to armed resistance from the Algerian revolutionary forces
    On his arrival at Houari Boumediene International Airport in Algiers on May 16, 1990, Nelson Mandela said that it was the Algerian army that had made him a man. Three decades earlier, with an Ethiopian passport, Mandela (under the assumed name of David Motsamayi) sought to learn what he could about armed resistance from the Algerian National Liberation Army (ALN) in Oujda, Morocco. “The situation in Algeria was the closest model to our own in that the rebels faced a large white settler community that ruled the indigenous majority,” Mandela writes in Long Walk to Freedom. The ALN’s resistance to the “Native Code” that imposed strict regulations on Arab inhabitants of the country, and its struggle for Algerian independence from the French, became a beacon and a model for other freedom movements, and Mandela and other freedom-fighters sought to learn from the Algerian example. During his three weeks with the ALN, Mandela would receive, in addition to military training, guidance on the importance of diplomacy. But upon his return to South Africa, he would be arrested and imprisoned for twenty-seven years.
    The children who were playing noisily and carefree in the tiny village of Qunu, South Africa, hardly expected they would, one day, be interrupted. The games seemed endless and the future bright. Least expected was to be prematurely thrown into adulthood and impelled to embark upon a singular enterprise, a fight for freedom that would prove long, strenuous, and risky. White settlers, determined to break the rolihlahlas[End Page 67] the trouble makers, because they dared question the inconsistencies of the apartheid system, did not have any qualms about unleashing unimaginable forces of brutality. In Algeria, thousands of kilometers to the north, other children would undergo similar provocations and embark upon the same long walk to freedom. The raggedy yaouleds [a pejorative term for young Arabs] spent their time trying to make their parents’ ends meet. All means were justified. Some, for a few Francs, roamed the streets looking to polish the shoes of passing Europeans; others, to transport the Europeans’ heavily-provision-loaded straw baskets. When these activities did not yield enough, the alternative was to steal. One found among those kids a young man named Ali Ammar (1930–1957) also known as Ali la Pointe—a guerilla leader who fought for Algerian independence against the French and who is portrayed in the Italian-Algerian film, The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966). Recently, the CIA and the FBI supposedly screened the film for their agents to inspire their work to win the war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan. La Pointe was accustomed to prison; the first time he was arrested, he was thirteen. Slapping a European on the face led to La Pointe’s arrest for the second time and to his being condemned to forced labor; he was twenty-two. After his escape, he went to the capital, Algiers, where he joined the leadership of the National Liberation Front (FLN). One year earlier, on November 1, 1954, the FLN had announced the outbreak of the Algerian Revolution.
    No description available
    Nelson Mandela being briefed by the ALN, c. 1962.
    In Algiers, La Pointe met the militant Hassiba Ben Bouali (1938–1957), and a liaison agent—twelve-year old “Little Omar” (1944–1957)—who reminded him of his younger self. In order to rid the capital of the FLN militants, the French paratroopers resorted to interrogation with torture and eventually located La Pointe, Ben Bouali, and Little Omar. Their hiding place was blown out with dynamite, and they became martyrs for the cause of Algerian independence. All three knew that their sacrifice was the price of freedom. Their forebears had unsuccessfully tried to stop the invading troops that disembarked in Algeria in 1830. As the tide of colonization grew, they became victims of the perfidy of a system that divided people into superior and inferior races, into citizens and subjects. The inferior race consisted of foreigners: Spanish and Italians, Arabs and Jews. France resented the presence of the Spanish because they were taking hold of western Algeria; the Italians were seen as bringing nothing to the colony and were, in the words of a fierce advocate of French colonization, Paul Leroy-Baulieu, of a “somehow inferior type.” Arabs and Jews were seen as uncivilized people. But as the superior old-family French, Germans, and Swiss showed reluctance to emigrate, France had no other solution but to impose citizenship for Jews and foreigners. Arabs, however, remained colonized subjects, and were forced to bow to a peculiar piece of legislation called the Native Code (1881–1946).
    The Native Code, which, starting from 1887 was extended to other French colonies, codified an absolute denial of political and civil rights. Though not illegal under the common law of France, the offenses (thirty-seven in total) were held illegal and punishable when Arabs committed them. The offenses included traveling without a permit, begging outside one’s district, shooting in the air at a celebration, refusing to pay taxes, gatherings of more than twenty persons without prior permission, giving shelter to tramps, and refusing to salute an officer, civil or military, even when off duty. The struggle that would ensue against this Native Code in Algeria became the model for and led to the mobilization of many other independence movements in the twentieth century. 
    The War of Independence (1954–1962) cost Algeria much blood; 1.5 million people were killed. The French army, deeply ashamed of having been ridiculed at Dien Bien Phu, was determined not to let success elude it one more time. According to Yves Courriere in La Guerre d’Algérie, its high ranking officers swore that:
    the army does not accept—and will never accept—a policy that would lead to another desertion. There had been Indochina, Tunisia, Morocco. That’s enough. It does not want to be deprived of a victory that it feels is at hand.
    Referring to the activities of La Pointe and his companions, those officers were also determined not to let a handful of “terrorists” ignore the rules. To the world, they insisted that there was no “war” in Algeria—only some uprisings—and they maintained their position that Algeria was part of France. The Algerians thought differently, of course. But conscious that they would be quickly overpowered by French troops if they engaged in direct action, they instead adopted guerilla tactics.
    No description available
    Audience Chez un kalifat by Eugene Fromentin (1859). Hand tinted digital collage. 63 × 80 cm. Courtesy of Rosa Issa Projects. ©2014 Nermine Hammam
    Soon, however, the French began to displace and confine the countryside populations to special areas. They believed that by isolating these groups, they could prevent them from aiding and further organizing [End Page 70] with the independence movement, and that surrender would automatically ensue. Furthermore, to prevent guerillas and weapons from entry into Algeria, two lines, the Morice Line (1957), named after the defense minister, André Morice, and the Challe Line (1959), after the commander in chief of French troops in Algeria, Maurice Challe, were constructed along the Tunisian and Moroccan borders respectively. The ground on each side of the fence, through which ran 5,000 volts of electricity, was stuffed with antipersonnel land mines. But unbeknownst to the army, in 1957, the French government was secretly negotiating with the Temporary Government of the Algerian Republic (GPRA) set up in Cairo in 1956. Feeling betrayed a number of generals staged a putsch, which was swiftly thwarted by Charles de Gaulle’s loyal forces.
    It is worthy of note that many French metropolitan leftists and intellectuals were shocked by the atrocities of this war; in particular, by the torture that was sanctioned. Jean-Paul Sartre, Andre Malraux, Simone de Beauvoir, Francois Mauriac, and Francis Jeanson vigorously campaigned for Algerian independence. In a great measure, Jeanson moved a step further. A philosopher, political activist, and collaborator of Sartre on the editorial board of the journal, The Modern Times, he founded in 1955 an underground organization, The Jeanson Network, also known as Les Porteurs de Valises [The Suitcase Bearers]. Espousing the Algerian cause, his network settled to giving the outlawed FLN aid and assistance by providing its members with forged documents, shelter, and the transportation, in suitcases, of the cash the FLN had collected from immigrants. The funds to buy weapons were smuggled to Switzerland, and then dispatched, to Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco.
    The Jeanson Network was eventually stopped, and many of its members arrested. The Jeanson Network Trial (September 5, 1960) charged six Algerian and eighteen French citizens with breaching the security of the state, leading French intellectuals in support of Algerian independence to condemn the decision and, in retaliation, to sign on September 6, The Manifesto of the 121 also known as the Declaration on the Right to Insubordination in the Algerian War.
    In Situations V: Colonialisme et néo-colonialisme, Sartre, unwilling to remain a silent observer of the situation, warned:
    . . . against what might be called ‘neo-colonialist mystification.’ Neo-colonialists think that there are some good colonists and some very wicked ones. . . . [I]t is not true that there are some good colonists and others who are wicked. There are colonists and that is it. When we have understood that, we will understand why the Algerians are right to attack. . . .
    Nelson Mandela, the South African, understood that there were colonists and that is it. Some time before the cease-fire in 1962, he was at one of the Algerian Liberation Army training camps, Base 15, in Oujda, Morocco. Mandela was not the only freedom-fighter to seek out the ALN. Several other figures that would play prominent roles in the liberation of their countries were at the same camp seeking training and financial assistance. Eduardo Mondlane from Mozambique, a Harvard graduate and a History and Sociology Assistant Professor at Syracuse University, came with Samora Machel, a revolutionary socialist leader and the eventual President of Mozambique; there was the leader of the MPLA (Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola), Agostinho Neto, and the “African revolution theorist” of Guinea and Cape Verde Islands, Hamílcar Lopes Cabral.
    During the First Pan-African Cultural Festival (PANAF) in Algiers (July 21–August 1, 1969) Cabral noticed that Algeria had become home to all kinds of movements: liberation, opposition, and guerilla—they were all friends to the Algerian Revolution. In attendance were Frantz Omar Fanon and Francis Jeanson; African and African American writers, movie makers, jazz musicians and singers, including Archie Schepp, Grachan Mancour, Ted Joans, and Nina Simone; and activists from the Black Panther Party, whose request to be given asylum was granted without hesitation by Algeria’s information minister, Seddik Benyahia. The Panthers at the festival, to name a few, were Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver, Emory Douglas, Raymond “Masai” Hewitt, Hubert Gerold Brown (Rap), and Donald “DC” Cox.
    Kathleen Cleaver made it plain that their choice was rooted in the fact that they saw in Fanon and in La Pointe the kind of people with whom they wanted to identify and in Algeria “a second land that inspired noble ideals for mankind.” No wonder, then, to see Cabral tell the journalists “take your pens and write: Moslems go on pilgrimage to Mecca, Christians to the Vatican, revolutionaries to Algiers.”
    The singer-revolutionary, Miriam Makeba, also decided to go to Algiers to attend the PANAF. South Africa’s authorities had accused  Makeba, nicknamed Mama Africa during the festival, of being a trouble maker because of her campaign against apartheid. She was forbidden to return after having her passport and citizenship revoked. Makeba moved the audience when she sang I’m free in Algeria and Africa, which was written by the well known Algerian composer, Mustapha Toumi.
    Her performance, her convictions, and engagement did not go unnoticed. Much to her surprise she was, with her daughter Angela, handed Algerian passports by Algeria’s president, Houari Boumediene. During the ceremony at the Cinema Atlas, Algerian citizen Makeba declared that she was “honored to have the nationality of a country that did so much for the liberation of Africa.”
    Early on, Nelson Mandela had relentlessly stressed the importance of disciplined, peaceful, and non-violent struggle. In the course of time, however, he noticed that this was proving useless because “South Africa [was] now a land ruled by the gun.” Coming to the conclusion that, after all, “no country became free without some sort of violence,” he saw that the path to freedom meant breaking with the policy pursued to that point. And anyway, even Mohandas K. Gandhi, who had inspired Mandela’s belief in non-violent resistance, held that “where choice [was] set between cowardice and violence, [he] would advise violence,” preferring to use arms in defense of honor “rather than remain the vile witness of dishonor. . . .” The ANC’s leadership forged Umkhonto we Sizwe [The Spear of the Nation]—its armed, militant wing—and attempted to obtain support from leaders that shared similar aspirations to freedom. To that end, it sent Mandela (under the assumed name of David Matsamawi), Oliver Tambo, and its would-be bureau chief in Algiers, Robert Rescha, to Ethiopia to attend the Conference of the Pan-African Freedom Movement of East and Central Africa (PAFMECA) scheduled on February, 2, 1962 in Addis Ababa. When the conference was finished, they went on to tour other African and European countries. They went to Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco. After he had received training, Mandela went to Mali, Congo, and Senegal, where, after a meeting with President Leopold Sedar Senghor, he and Tambo were given diplomatic passports and a flight to London.
    It was in Egypt that Mandela met representatives from the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic (GPRA). Mandela, Tambo, Rescha, and Cabral arrived in Morocco in March 1962. Nourredine Djoudi, the head of the ALN political branch, welcomed them at the railway station. He had been requested to do his best to keep Mandela’s identity and stay a secret, for Algerians knew he was being tracked by South African intelligence. Since his stay was not to last long, not more than three weeks, the training he received was rudimentary but essential.
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    Nelson Mandela with the ALN for military training, 1962
    In Morocco, Mandela also met Dr. Chawki Mostefaï, the GPRA’s diplomatic mission head, and a graduate of ophthalmology from Algiers, Toulouse, and Paris University. Dr. Mostefaï understood Mandela’s desire to receive military training so as to wage a war against apartheid, but drew his attention to the important role that international public opinion played in speeding recognition of the legitimacy of his struggle. In his book, Long Walk to Freedom, Mandela describes his meeting with Mostefaï in Morocco:
    While there, we met with freedom fighters from Mozambique, Angola, Algeria, and Cape Verde. It was also the headquarters of the Algerian revolutionary army, and we spent several days with Dr. Mustafa, head of the Algerian mission in Morocco, who briefed us on the history of the Algerian resistance to the French. The situation in Algeria was the closest model to our own in that the rebels faced a large white settler community that ruled the indigenous majority. He related [End Page 74] how the FLN had begun their struggle with a handful of guerrilla attacks in 1954, having been heartened by the defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam. At first, the FLN believed they could defeat the French militarily, Dr. Mustafa said, and then realized that a pure military victory was impossible. Instead, they resorted to guerrilla warfare. Guerrilla warfare, he explained, was not designed to win a military victory so much as to unleash political and economic forces that would bring down the enemy. Dr. Mustafa counseled us not to neglect the political side of war while planning the military effort. International public opinion, he said, is sometimes worth more than a fleet of jet fighters.
    All the same, the journalist Slimane Zeghidour, who interviewed Djoudi, was told the ALN taught Mandela “how to handle weapons, landmines, and their impact on combatants. It was not actually training; it was a general instruction that a future leader of an army had to know.”
    Djoudi was impressed “by the safari-clad, tall, strong, boxer-like Mandela” who said that he was “glad to be with his brothers, the Algerians.” He put Mandela in touch with Commander Slimane (Kaid Ahmed) who, in turn, entrusted him to instructors, the most conspicuous, Algeria’s future Chief of Staff, Mohamed Lamari.
    In a conversation with Ahmed Khadrata (one of the accused in the Rivonia Trial) in 2010, Mandela burst into laughter as he remembered the ALN’s reaction to him. The instructors had asked him:
    Can you shoot at that point across the valley?
    He shot and hit the target.
    Is this the first time you shoot?! He replied: “Yes.”
    Mandela told Khadrata: “They were all stunned!”
    Djoudi recalled the performance. He explained that Mandela shot with a Mauser rifle and did amaze the ALN, which gradually became confident that Mandela was a person that could not only lead politically but who could also lead an armed resistance.
    In a statement during the Rivonia Trial on April 20, 1964, Mandela explained that he:
    No description available
    At Rest in the Syrian Desert by Eugen Felix Prosper Bracht (1883).
    Hand Tinted Digital Collage. 41 × 80cm. Courtesy of Rosa Issa Projects. ©2014 Nermine Hammam
    No description available
    The Desert at Assouan Egypt by Stanford Robinson Gifford (c.1869).
    Hand tinted digital collage. 34.5 × 80cm. Courtesy of Rosa Issa Projects. ©2014 Nermine Hamma


    Started making a study of the art of war and revolution and, whilst abroad, underwent a course in military training. If there was to be guerrilla warfare, I wanted to be able to stand and fight with my people and to share the hazards of war with them. Notes of lectures which I received in Ethiopia and Algeria are contained in Exhibit 16 produced in evidence . . . I have already admitted that these documents are in my writing, and I acknowledge that I made these studies to equip myself for the role which I might have to play if the struggle drifted into guerrilla warfare.
    Part of Mandela’s training consisted of spotting the enemy. He was taken to the battlefront and handed a pair of field glasses that enabled him to “actually see French troops across the border.” The French were there—real, within reach, fine targets, and surprisingly looking like the ones in South Africa. He wrote in Long Walk, “I confess I imagined that I was looking at the uniforms of the South African Defense Force.” The ALN did their best to protect Mandela from harm while the French artillery and planes were in action. In truth, it was not just any force, they stressed; it was that of France, a power that was a member of NATO.
    One thing that surprised Mandela was the absence of discrimination within the ranks of the ALN. Taken to another base, Zegangan in Nador (Morocco), he saw a “very competent instructor,” named Soudani. He was a black man giving orders to whites. Mandela exclaimed “here we are in a country where a black leads whites!”
    Mandela also attended a military parade at the invitation of Ahmed Ben Bella. A founder of the underground Special Organization (OS), Ben Bella was arrested in 1951 and sentenced to eight years imprisonment because of a holdup in a bank; the money was intended for use in buying weapons. His escape was short-lived. He was released as a result of the Evian Accords. The parade, to celebrate Ben Bella’s return, unlike the one Mandela saw in Ethiopia, was unimpressive. The soldiers looked uninterested in parades and uniforms. However, in the struggle for freedom he was about to wage, Mandela felt certain that his men would look more like the soldiers of the ALN than of Ethiopia because:
    They won their stripes in the fire of battle; they cared more about fighting and tactics than dress uniforms and parades. As inspired as I was by the troops in Addis, I knew that our own force would be more like these [End troops here in Oujda, and I could only hope they would fight as valiantly.
    As Mandela writes in Long Walk to Freedom, he went to Algeria to obtain support as well as training. When in Morocco, the ALN informed him that he “would be provided with all that he needed not because they wanted to help him but because his struggle was Algeria’s struggle.” Weapons, financial aid, and the training of his men ensued. But Mandela’s stay in Algeria led to his being labeled a “terrorist.”
    Mandela would have, in all probability, followed Dr. Mustafa’s advice to consider diplomacy, in addition to guerilla tactics, in the fight against apartheid. Unfortunately, Mandela was unable to do battle on the diplomatic front. Upon his return from his northern tour, he was arrested on August 8, 1962 and sentenced to five years in prison for having left without a passport. At the Rivonia Trial two years later, he was declared guilty of sabotage (for acts committed by Umkhonto we Sizwe) and was condemned to life imprisonment. On June 13, 1964 he was transferred to a place that was not, a guard warned, “Johannesburg, not Pretoria; this is Robben Island.” Prior to his arrest, he had succeeded in convincing the ALN that the cause he was defending was just; and subsequently succeeded in inducing its members to stand up for it. They carried on the cause on his behalf.
    First, independent Algeria hosted several ANC members in military camps and authorized, under Ahmed Ben Bella, Algeria’s first prime minister, the opening of an ANC office in 1966, with Reisha at its head and Johnny Makatini as chief representative. Second, slightly more than a decade later, in 1974, Algeria chaired the United Nation’s 29th Assembly. At thirty-six, the youngest chair ever, Abdelaziz Bouteflika (Algeria’s current president) showed much discontent in his address. Bouteflika was infuriated to see the United States show bias. They vetoed the membership of the Republic of South Vietnam and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, but when it came to South Africa, they refused to suspend the country’s membership. “That the United States” he told the General Assembly “explained their double veto by the fact they adhered to the principle of universality perhaps deserves to be stressed . . . because, in reference to the same principle, they vetoed the suspension of South Africa. . . .”
    Bouteflika managed to expel “the racist South African delegation” in 1974. Although the United States contested, the decision was confirmed by a majority vote: ninety-one ayes, twenty-two nays (including the votes of the nine members of the European community (CEE) and nineteen abstentions). In 1998, when the South African delegation returned to the U.N., it was with Mandela at its head. The suspension was not limited to the United Nations; South Africa was also expelled from UNESCO, FAO, and the Olympic Games.
    Mandela and his wife Winnie visited independent Algeria on May 16, 1990. The purpose of the visit was to express gratitude for the help he had obtained nearly thirty years earlier. Mandela, whom President Chadli Bendjedid awarded the Medal of distinction for his struggle, said on his arrival that “the Algerian Army made me a man” and thanked Algeria as well as other countries for their support in “the struggle of the South African people against apartheid.”
    This short journey into a page of Mandela’s story, if anything, helps to expose the man’s extraordinary legacy. A life spent in prison, surprisingly, did not induce him to carry forward hostility for his enemies. Hatred and a spirit of revenge, he was sure, had no room in the rainbow nation he envisioned. Thus, despite the military training he had received from the ALN, when he emerged from his long confinement he chose to endear people to the power of reconciliation rather than to the power of violence. The esteem that ensued undoubtedly came from his having moved, ideologically, from the specific to the universal, from South Africa to the larger world. Furthermore, well aware of the incompatibility of good governance and holding the presidential office too long, he decided to step aside for younger generations to carry the movement forward. Before bidding farewell, he felt it was his duty to thank the Algerian army for making him a man. Many around the world thanked him for believing in man’s capacity to change for the best. Still, many remain, to borrow from Gandhi, eager to garland his photos but not to follow his advice. 


    Abdeldjalil Larbi Youcef was born in 1953 in a tiny village, Mazouna, in western Algeria. After graduating from the University of Oran Es Senia, he undertook postgraduate studies at the University of the Sorbonne (Paris IV). He received his doctorate in 1983, having produced a dissertation on The Constitutionalism of John Marshall. He presently teaches American civilization at the University of Abd El Hamid Ibn Badis. His field of interest is American Constitutional Law and Afro-American Studies. He resides in Mostaganem with his family. Email: abdelyoucef@hotmail.fr

    Labor in China: “Harmonious Society” or class struggle? BENNETT GUILLAUME March 9, 2018

    The owners of global capital have been delighted to gain access to a huge and relatively inexpensive workshop in which to produce the goods that European and North American shoppers consume. They are almost as happy right now to be selling those same goods—and services—in a huge and increasingly affluent Chinese market. Meanwhile, mainstream and business media, along with western politicians frustrated with sluggish growth or recession in their own jurisdictions, have had little choice but to swoon over Chinese growth rates. Decades of double-digit GDP expansion in China may have slowed to seven percent today, but such a figure still makes many occidental mouths water.
    Of course, the same story is what enrages much of the western left. The Chinese Communist Party, they say, has pursued wild growth while forgetting social justice and the environment. Now, market forces rule a land freed in 1949 from imperial domination in the name of human liberation. The prevailing faith in the People’s Republic is no longer equality but shopping and the gospel of elevated social status. Socialism, just a word for power, is not to be taken seriously any longer. And the workers have been forgotten.
    The CCP naturally ridicules this notion. Workers are more prosperous than ever. Almost all of them are, including (and sometimes especially) the children of migrants from rural areas, as well as those who are themselves migrants from rural areas to the country’s booming industrial zones.


    Sidewalk scene on The Bund, the waterfront area in center of Shanghai. | Rene Fluger / CTK via AP Images

    And Shanghai looks like Paris, Milan and New York. Or better.
    Indeed, neither the social-justice-minded critics of the Chinese model nor those who praise its extraordinary achievements are without evidence for their assessments. Young people with few prospects at home have flocked by the hundreds of millions from the countryside to China’s cities and factory towns. Or they have opened restaurants or become providers of other services in the country’s huge metropolises. They have done so, it needs to be said, voluntarily, in quest of a richer life—and they have very often found one.
    They have also worked frightfully long hours for low pay, suffered industrial accidents, been cheated of wages, and left unemployed when their employers closed shop. Investing multinationals have been known to exploit student labor as well; a fairly recent scandal involved the Taiwanese Foxconn Technology Group’s use of interns enrolled in vocational institutions. These students’ assignments had little to do with their studies, and they reportedly put in 11-hour shifts on a seasonal basis to assemble the iPhone X.
    During the late 1990s and early 2000s, tens of millions were laid off from once-secure jobs as the government closed economically unviable firms and consolidated others in an effort to fashion a smaller-but-better fleet of state-owned enterprises (SOEs). These SOEs will remain the flagship(s) of the Chinese economy, but they will do so as trim, efficient players. Even now, a reduction of anywhere between 1.8 and 6 million additional jobs in coal and steel is underway. (The government has ear-marked considerable funds for income support and loans to, for example, help laid-off workers launch micro-enterprises and start-ups.)
    Not afraid to strike
    Which brings us to other practical questions. What are workers in this giant socialist market economy doing to defend themselves and enhance their situation? And to what extent are the government and the All-China Federation of Trade Unions aids or hindrances in this process?
    An important thing to keep in mind: workers here strike. In my “white-collar” workplace, when grievances arise, colleagues joke about striking. But more than once I have been told that, in reality, Chinese people are obedient and will not cause trouble. Yet this is only true, if at all, about certain workers in certain situations.
    Data from organizations that monitor labor issues suggest that work stoppages and work-related protests have been increasing since well-publicized industrial actions rocked Honda plants in Guangdong province eight years ago. In both 2015 and 2016, documented strikes across the country reportedly approached 3,000. In 2014, an epic struggle involved over 50,000 workers in various shoe factories at Yue Yuen Industrial Holdings in Dongguan, as workers contested company failure to make contributions to the social insurance fund. In the same year in Guangzhou, some 2,500 workers at Lide Shoes stopped work following a relocation announcement by the employer—and reported attempts to force workers to sign poorer contracts. 2015 saw 5,000 workers at Stella Shoe Co. leave the factory due to company failure to make housing fund payments.

    It would be misleading to call actions such as these spontaneous. Many no doubt involved considerable planning and collaboration among workmates. Social media have become key tools for unhappy workers planning protests. But such actions are clearly not coordinated and led by the official All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU)—which is not to say that functionaries in the organization are necessarily unsympathetic to those who protest.According to China Business Review, by 2016 incidents of unrest in the retail and service sectors were overtaking those in manufacturing. Stoppages at Walmart outlets broke out when the retail giant sought to impose draconian scheduling ‘flexibility’ measures on workers accustomed to regular shifts of sensibly limited duration.
    Harmonious society or class struggle?
    What is the official response to class friction? It is not hard to discern. For Beijing, a key feature of “socialism with Chinese characteristics” is “harmonious” development. “Harmonious” is one of the favorite official adjectives in China in 2018. And I don’t think that it is employed with sarcasm.
    In general, Communist Party leaders do not want to respond to worker discontent with an iron fist (though the state has prosecuted individuals associated with NGOs involved in workplace struggles). But they do want labor peace. So the plan, or hope, is that the ACFTU will assume a greater role in economic management—leading the negotiation of collective agreements in workplaces throughout the country, identifying problems before they explode, and institutionalizing industrial relations in a way not unfamiliar to students of the post-war West. Reportedly, the Party has said it would like a unionization rate of around 90 percent.
    Chinese labor law is quite explicit, if not too detailed, about bargaining rules. In workplaces of 25 or more, employees can form an enterprise trade union. In smaller facilities, committees can be created. In the event that a majority of workers express a desire to enter into bargaining, “a collective agreement shall be concluded by the representative elected by the employees under the guidance of the trade union at the upper level.”
    That is not all. Employee Representative Councils and Worker Assemblies are supposed to function. Chapter 1, Article 4 of the Labor Contract Law is clear on the requirement that company rules affecting the working conditions and remuneration of staff be the fruit of consultation, though workers are not given a veto over measures and changes.
    Of interest perhaps is a distinction made between the trade union and the workers themselves, acknowledging the opportunity of both to identify a workplace measure as inappropriate. Western human resources specialists working in China today warn their corporate clients against flouting such provisions. According to one firm present in the country, there have been of late “many cases where an employer’s internal policies were found to be invalid during arbitration and litigation for not completing the democratic procedure.” These companies should protect themselves by at least consulting their employees over new measures, advises Global Legal Insights.
    The workers’ state…at least when people are watching
    But life and legislation can also be worlds apart. Here is a case, merely an anecdote. There is a prestigious academic institution in the country’s largest city whose chief administrator, in early 2018, announced a radical reform in classroom instruction methods. Affected educators were horrified by the hurriedly announced plan. No real consultation had occurred, despite the law, though asses might have been formally covered by some official union stamp of approval. When the time approached to implement these changes, some brave educators protested loudly, with the clear support of their colleagues. Result? The measure was quickly shelved, at least for now.
    Officials and influential people do not want to be seen running roughshod over the rights of working people in a country that proclaims itself to be a State of the Working People. But many will abuse their power if they can manage to do so without making too big of a scene.
    So for how much does the law count? Regarding the right to strike, here is an interesting note: at the moment, relative silence reigns. Article 27 of the Trade Union Law mentions the union’s duty in the event of a “work stoppage or slowdown.” In other words, the possibility of a strike is acknowledged. Otherwise, as far as I know, official China has nothing to say about work stoppages—although local governments and police might respond in ethical or unethical ways in given situations.
    In a study conducted between 2012 and 2015, Ivan Franceschini, a contributor to the journal Made in China and an expert on labor relations in the socialist giant, conducted interviews at the gates of nine factories in Shenzhen, Yangzhou, and Chongqing. His conclusions regarding workers’ perceptions of the legality and morality of industrial action were interesting. According to Franceschini, 38.5 percent of respondents considered striking legal, as opposed to only 13.9 per cent who adopted a contrary position (with the balance unsure or declining to express a view).
    So we have a grey area (a term I have heard repeatedly since arriving in Shanghai in August). For some, that means an opportunity to assert an essential right that workers don’t prefer to exercise. But how will the Party and government proceed? China’s leaders, who are at least as intelligent as their critics, know that harmony can neither be imposed nor simply wished on the population. Will they at some point address unrest by shackling industrial action in legislation? By saying that workers can strike…after fulfilling umpteen obligations? Or will they understand that greater autonomy for labor is the only way to go? That labor unions are only labor unions if they are run by members and serve members’ needs and interests—and not manipulated by salaried executives at the top of the enterprise or by functionaries beholden to others and far removed from the workplace. That workers, left to their own devices, will only stop work when they feel they absolutely must. But when that happens, they must be able to do so.
    It’s a fluid situation, to say the least.
    This article originally appeared in People’s Voice.

    April 25, 2018

    Book Review: Pierre Trudeau, Organized Labour, and the Canadian Social Democratic Left, By Christo Aivalis

    The Constant Liberal

    Pierre Trudeau, Organized Labour, and the Canadian Social Democratic Left

    UBC Press

    Pierre Elliott Trudeau – radical progressive or unavowed socialist? Christo Aivalis argues that although Trudeau found key influences and friendships on the left, he was in fact a consistently classic liberal, driven by individualist, capitalist principles.
    Trudeau’s legacy is still divisive. Most scholars portray Trudeau’s ties to unions and the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation as either evidence of communist affinities or as being at the root of his reputation as the champion of a progressive, modern Canada. The Constant Liberal traces the charismatic politician’s relationship with left and labour movements throughout his career. Trudeau worked with leftists in the 1950s to oppose right-wing Quebec premier Maurice Duplessis but against them as prime minister when workers and progressives were seen as obstacles to higher corporate profit margins.
    While numerous biographies have noted the impact of Trudeau’s engagement with the left on his intellectual and political development, this comprehensive analysis is the first to showcase the interplay between liberalism and democratic socialism that defined his world view – and shaped his effective use of power. The Constant Liberal suggests that Trudeau’s leftist activity was not so much a call for social democracy as a warning to fellow liberals that lack of reform could undermine liberal-capitalist social relations.
    Historians, political scientists, and political historians are the primary audience for this book, but it will also find readers among scholars of political economy, economics, industrial relations, and Canadian studies. It will appeal broadly to those interested in the life and thinking of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the Canadian social democratic left, and liberalism/neo-liberalism.

    April 24, 2018

    Every armed conflict going on in Arab lands has its source and subsistence in and from the US, by Thomas Riggins

    by Thomas Riggins, Editor of the former "Political Affairs, (CPUSA)


    Amnesty report below: it fails to mention the "Saudi Arabia-led coalition" is actually enabled by the US which arms it and provides the aircraft that refuel the Saudi jets (US made) on their way to bomb Yemen. This slaughter of children is made in the USA and could not be going on without the US support both politically and materially.

    Every moral outrage and condemnation the West has hurled at Assad and the Syrians is equally applicable to presidents Obama and now Trump, they and their supporters and defenders are no better (or worse) than those who support Assad and Putin -- and if Assad and Putin have blood on their hands so do Obama and Trump (not to mention every US president bar none since the end of World War II). The only difference between Assad and the Obama-Trump gang seems to be that the former is waging a defensive war against the latter who, just as in Yemen, are aggressively financing and supporting insurgent groups (including jihadists) trying to overthrow the Syrian government and are unnecessarily prolonging this terrible war. 

    In fact every armed conflict going on in that part of the world -- Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon's border areas, the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza, Libya, Somalia, and beyond has its source and subsistence from the US -- the millions of deaths and refugees are all thanks to the policies of the US and our "American Democracy" -- our party has to be more militantly involved in denouncing the crimes of US imperialism and exposing the myths that the "other side" whether they be the Russians, North Koreans, Chinese, Syrians, Venuzuelans, Iranians, Cubans, and genuine rebels and revolutionaries everywhere opposing US imperialism are some how to be criticised for opposing, by any means necessary, the world's greatest purveyor of violence (MLK). 

    AMNESTY STATEMENT

    "Buthaina a five-year old-—" was pulled from the rubble of her family home in Yemen’s capital. Badly bruised, she struggled to pry open a swollen eye with her fingers, to look at a world that dealt her such cruelty Her uncle told an Amnesty investigator, “She had five siblings to play with. Now she has none.”
Buthaina’s entire immediate family was killed in their sleep when the Saudi Arabia-led coalition rained down bombs on their neighborhood overnight.In Yemen, Amnesty crisis investigators have documented airstrikes on schools and hospitals, as well as the use of internationally banned cluster munitions which have killed and maimed children. A staggering 80% of Yemeni children are in need of humanitarian assistance."

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