Search

Results for "cuba"

Nov 27

2016

0

Uncategorized

Cuba Fidel Castro

Cuba’s Achievements Over the Decades

TeleSUR

March 18, 2016

Despite a fierce U.S. economic blockade, Revolutionary Cuba has made tremendous gains.

 

 Gender equality: Cuba was the first country to sign and the second to ratify the Discrimination against Women convention. Nearly half of the parliamentary seats in the Cuban National Assembly are occupied by women.
Gender equality: Cuba was the first country to sign and the second to ratify the Discrimination against Women convention. Nearly half of the parliamentary seats in the Cuban National Assembly are occupied by women. Photo:EFE
Health: For all Cubans, healthcare is completely free. Cuba created the Meningitis-B vaccine in 1985, and later the vaccines for Hepatitis-B and Dengue.
Health: For all Cubans, healthcare is completely free. Cuba created the Meningitis-B vaccine in 1985, and later the vaccines for Hepatitis-B and Dengue. Photo:EFE
Global humanitarian programs: Since 1969, a total of 325,710 Cuban health workers have participated in missions in 158 countries.
Global humanitarian programs: Since 1969, a total of 325,710 Cuban health workers have participated in missions in 158 countries. Photo:EFE
Under Cuba
Under Cuba’s constitution “any form of discrimination harmful to human dignity” is prohibited and gender reassignment surgeries have been available under its national healthcare, free of charge, since 2008. Photo:EFE
Education: The literacy rate in the country is 99 percent. Cuba offers free education from elementary school through university.
Education: The literacy rate in the country is 99 percent. Cuba offers free education from elementary school through university. Photo:EFE
Employment: The unemployment rate in Cuba as of 2014 was 2.7 percent. International Worker
Employment: The unemployment rate in Cuba as of 2014 was 2.7 percent. International Worker’s Day, or May Day, is a major national workers celebration in Cuba. Photo:Reuters

Sep 01

2016

0

Uncategorized

Brazil BRICS Group CELAC Coup Cuba Imperialism UNASUR

Declaration of the Revolutionary Government of the Republic of Cuba on Brazil Coup

Cuba MINREX

Sitio oficial del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Cuba

August 31, 2016


The Revolutionary Government of the Republic of Cuba strongly rejects the parliamentary and judicial coup d’état perpetrated against President Dilma Rousseff.

The Government’s estrangement from the President, without presenting any evidence of corruption or crimes of responsibility against her, as well as from the Workers’ Party (PT) and other left-wing allied political forces, is an act of defiance against the sovereign will of the people who voted for her.

The governments headed by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff implemented a socio-economic model that made it possible for Brazil to take a step forward in areas such as production growth with social inclusion, the creation of jobs, the fight against poverty, the eradication of extreme poverty among more than 35 million Brazilians who used to live in inhumane conditions and income increase for another 40 million; the expansion of opportunities in the areas of education and health for the people, including those sectors who had been previously marginalized. During this period, Brazil has been an active promoter of Latin American and Caribbean integration.  The defeat of the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA), the celebration of the Latin American and Caribbean Summit on Integration and Development (CALC) which led to the creation of CELAC and foundation of UNASUR are transcendental events in the recent history of the region which show the leading role played by that country.

Likewise, Brazil’s approach to the Third World nations, particularly Africa; its active membership in the BRICS Group (made up by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa); and its performance at the United Nations Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO); and the World Trade Organization, among others, are an acknowledgement of its international leadership.

Equally praiseworthy has been Brazil’s performance under the Workers’ Party governments in crucial international issues for the defense of peace, development, the environment and the programs against hunger.

The efforts made by Lula and Dilma to reform the political system and organize the funding of parties and their campaigns as well as in support of the investigations started against corruption and the independence of the institutions responsible for such investigations are too well known.

The forces that are currently exercising power have announced the privatization of deep water oil reserves and social programs curtailments. Likewise, they are proclaiming a foreign policy focused on the relations with the big international centers of power. Quite a few among those who are impeaching the President are currently under investigation for acts of corruption.

What happened in Brazil is another expression of the offensive of imperialism and the oligarchy against the revolutionary and progressive governments of Latin America and the Caribbean which threatens peace and stability of nations and is contrary to the spirit and the letter of the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace, signed at the Second CELAC Summit in January, 2014, in Havana by the Heads of State and Government of the region.

Cuba reiterates its solidarity with President Dilma and comrade Lula as well as with the Worker’s Party, and is confident that the Brazilian people will defend the social achievements that have been attained and will resolutely oppose the neoliberal policies that others may try to impose on them and the plundering of its natural resources.

Havana, August 31, 2016.

 

Further reading: Neoliberal Offensive and the Death of Democracy in Brazil

 

 

Jan 29

2016

0

Humanitarian Agencies, Imperialist Wars/Occupations, Non-Profit Industrial Complex, Social Engineering, Whiteness & Aversive Racism

"Humanitarian War" Allende Castro Chomsky Cuba Faux Left Imperialism R2P USAID

FLASHBACK: The Responsibility of the Intellectuals: Cuba, the U.S. and Human Rights

The James Petras Website

April 18, 2003

by James Petras

42435 cuba _web.ae.5.19.revolutionarycuba.picao

Cuba 1959. In all of Cuba’s armed forces, women play an important role.


Isn’t it time that we, in the United States, with our illustrious and prestigious progressive intellectuals with all our majestic moral sensibilities recognize that there is a vital, heroic revolution struggling to defend itself against the U.S. juggernaut and that we modestly set aside our self-important declarations, support that revolution and join the one million Cubans celebrating May Day with their leader Fidel Castro?

Rebelion

Once again the intellectuals have entered into the center of a debate – this time over the issues of U.S. imperialism and human rights in Cuba.

“How important is the role of the intellectuals?”, I asked myself as we walked past the Puerto del Sol in Madrid on a sunny Saturday afternoon ( April 26, 2003 ) and heard the anti-Castro slogans of a few hundred protestors echoing through the near empty plaza. Despite a dozen articles and opinion columns by well known intellectuals in the leading Madrid newspapers, and hours of television and radio propaganda and endorsements by the major trade union bureaucrats and party bosses, only 700-800, mostly Cuban exiles turned up to attack Cuba. “Clearly,” I thought, “the anti-‘Cuban intellectuals have little or no power of convocation, at least in Spain.” But the political impotence of the anti-Castro writers does not mean that intellectuals in general do not play an important role; nor does the lack of a popular audience mean that they are without resources, especially if they do have the backing of the U.S. war and propaganda machine, amplifying and disseminating their word throughout the world. In order to come to reason about the debate raging between intellectuals on the issues of human rights in Cuba and U.S. imperialism it is important to step back and consider the role of the intellectuals, the context and major issues that frame the U.S.-Cuba conflict.

The Role of the Intellectuals

The role of the intellectuals is to clarify the major issues and define the major threats to peace, social justice, national independence and freedom in each historical period as well as to identify and support the principal defenders of the same principles. Intellectuals have a responsibility to distinguish between the defensive measures taken by countries and peoples under imperial attack and the offensive methods of imperial powers bent on conquest. It is the height of cant and hypocrisy to engage in moral equivalences between the violence and repression of imperial countries bent on conquest with that of Third World countries under military and terrorist attacks. Responsible intellectuals critically examine the political context and analyze the relationships between imperial power and their paid local functionaries who they describe as “dissidents” – they do not issue moral fiats according to their dim lights and their political imperatives. Committed intellectuals who claim to speak with moral authority, especially those who lay claim to being critics of imperialism, have a political responsibility to demystify power and state and media manipulation particularly in relation to imperial rhetoric of human rights violations by independent Third World states. We have in recent times seen too many self-styled “progressive” Western intellectuals supporting or silent on the U.S. destruction of Yugoslavia, the ethnic cleansing of over 250,000 Serbs, gypsies and others in Kosovo, buying into the U.S. propaganda of a “humanitarian intervention”.

All the U.S. intellectuals (Chomsky, Zinn, Wallerstein etc…) supported the U.S.-financed violent fundamentalist uprising in Afghanistan against the Soviet-backed secular government in Afghanistan – under the pretext that the Soviet Union “invaded” Afghanistan and the fundamentalist fanatics entering the country from all over the world were the “dissidents” defending “self-determination” – an admitted propaganda ploy successfully executed by the boastful former National Security Adviser, Zbig Bryzinski. Then and now prestigious intellectuals brandish their past credentials as “critics” of U.S. foreign policy to give credibility to their uninformed denunciation of alleged Cuban moral transgressions, equating Cuba’s arrest of paid functionaries of the U.S. State Department and the execution of three terrorist kidnapers with the genocidal war crimes of U.S. imperialism. The practitioners of moral equivalents apply a microscope to Cuba and a telescope to U.S. – which gives them a certain acceptability among the liberal sectors of the empire.

Moral Imperatives and Cuban Realities: Morality as Dishonesty Intellectuals are divided on the U.S.-Cuba conflict: Benedetti, Sastre, Petras, Sanchez-Vazquez and Pablo Gonzalez Casanova and scores of others defend Cuba; right-wing intellectuals including Vargas Llosa, Savater, and Carlos Fuentes have predictably issued their usual diatribes against Cuba; and a small army of otherwise progressive intellectuals – Chomsky, Galeano, Saramago, Sontag, Zinn and Wallerstein – have joined the chorus condemning Cuba, waving their past critical postures in an effort to distinguish themselves from the right-wing/State Department Cuban opponents. It is the latter “progressive” group which has caused the greatest harm among the burgeoning anti-imperialist movement and it is to them that these critical remarks are directed. Morality based on propaganda is a deadly mix – particularly when the moral judgments come from prestigious leftist intellectuals and the propaganda emanates from the far-right Bush administration.

Many of the “progressive” critics of Cuba acknowledge, in passing and in a general way, that the U.S. has been a hostile aggressor against Cuba, and they “generously” grant Cuba the right to self-determination – and then launch into a series of unsubstantiated charges and misrepresentations devoid of any special context that might serve to clarify the issues and provide a reasoned basis for …”moral imperatives”. It is best to begin with the most fundamental facts.

The left critics, based on U.S. State Department labeling, denounce the Cuban government’s repression of individuals, dissidents, including journalists, owners of private libraries and members of political parties engaged in non-violent political activity trying to exercise their democratic rights.

What the “progressives” fail to recognize or are unwilling to acknowledge is that those arrested were paid functionaries of the U.S. government. According to the Agency of International Development (AID), the principal U.S. federal agency implementing U.S. grants and loans in pursuit of U.S. foreign policy, under USAID’s Cuba Program ( resulting from the Helms-Burton Act of 1996) AID has channeled over $8.5 million dollars to Cuban opponents of the Castro regime since 1997 to publish, meet, propagandize in favor of the overthrow of the Cuban government in co-ordination with a variety of U.S. NGO’s, universities, foundations and other front groups. (Profile of the USAID Cuba Program – on the AID web site ). The U.S.AID program, unlike its usual practice, does not channel payments to the Cuban government but directly to its Cuban “dissident” clients. The criteria for funding are clearly stated – the recipients of payments and grants must have demonstrated a clear commitment to U.S. directed “regime change” toward “free markets” and “democracy” – no doubt similar to the U.S. colonial dictatorship in Iraq. The Helms-Burton legislation, the U.S.AID Cuba Program and their paid Cuban functionaries, like the U.S. progressive manifesto, “ condemn Cuba’s lack of freedom, jailing of innocent dissidents, and call for a democratic change of regime in Cuba”. Strange coincidences that require some analyses.

Cuban journalists who have received $280,000 from a Cuba Free Press -AID front- are not dissidents they are paid functionaries. Cuban “Human Rights” groups who receive $775,000 from CIA front “Freedom House” are not dissidents – particularly when their mission is to promote a “transition” (overthrow) of the Cuban regime. The list of grants and funding to Cuban “dissidents” (functionaries) by the U.S. government in pursuit of the U.S. policy is long and detailed and accessible to all the progressive moral critics. The point is that the jailed opponents of the Cuban government were paid functionaries of the U.S. government, paid to implement the goals of the Helms-Burton Act in accordance with the criteria of the U.S.AID and under the guidance and direction of the head of the U.S. Interest Section in Havana. Between September 2, 2002 and March 2003 James Cason, head of the US Interest Section, held dozens of meetings with his Cuban “dissidents” at his home and office, providing them with instructions and guidelines on what to write, how to recruit, while publicly haranging against the Cuban government in the most undiplomatic manner.

Washington’s Cuban functionaries were supplied with electronic and other communication equipment by USAID, books and other propaganda and money to fund pro-U.S. “trade unions” via the U.S. front, the “American Center for International Labor Solidarity”. These are not well-meaning “dissidents” unaware of their paymaster and their role as U.S. agents, since the USAID report states ( under the section entitled “The US Institutional Context”), “The Cuba Program is funded through Economic Support Fund, which is designed to support the economic and political foreign policy interests of the US by providing financial assistance to allies (sic) and countries in transition to democracy”. No country in the world tolerates or labels domestic citizens paid by and working for a foreign power to act for its imperial interests as “dissidents”. This is especially true of the U.S. where under Title 18 ,Section 951 of the U.S. Code , “anyone who agrees to operate within the United States subject to the direction or control of a foreign government or official would be subjected to criminal prosecution and a 10 year prison sentence”. Unless , of course, they register as a paid foreign agent or are working for the Israeli government. The U.S. “progressive” intellectuals abdicate their responsibilities as analysts and critics and accept at face value the State Department characterization of the U.S. paid functionaries as dissidents striving for “freedom”. Some defenders of the U.S. agent-dissidents claim that the functionaries received “scandalously long sentences”.

Once again empirical myopia compounds mendacious moralizing. Cuba is on a war footing. The Bush government has declared that Cuba is on the list of military targets subject to mass destruction and war. And in case our moralistic intellectuals don’t know it : What Bush, Rumsfeld and the war-mongering Zionists in the Administration say — they do. The total lack of seriousness in Chomsky, Zinn, Sontag, Wallerstein’s moral dictates is that they fail to acknowledge the imminent and massive threat of a U.S. war with weapons of mass destruction, announced in advance. This is particularly onerous given the fact that many of Cuba’s detractors live in the U.S., read the U.S. press and are aware of how quickly militaristic pronouncements are followed by genocidal actions. But our moralists are not bothered by context, by U.S. threats to Cuba immediate or proximate, they are eager to ignore it all to demonstrate to the State Department that they not only oppose U.S. foreign policy but also condemn every independent country, system and leader who opposes the U.S. In other words, Mr. Ashcroft, when you crack down on the “apologists” for Cuban “terror”, remember that we are different, we too condemned Cuba, we too called for a change of regime. The critics of Cuba ignore the fact that the U.S. has a two-pronged military-political strategy to take over Cuba that is already operative. Washington provides asylum for terrorist air pirates, encouraging efforts to destabilize Cuba’s tourist-based economy; it works closely with the terrorist Cuban American Foundation engaging in attempts to assassinate Cuban leaders.

New U.S. military bases have been established in the Dominican Republic, Colombia, El Salvador and there is an expanding concentration camp in Guantanomo – all to facilitate an invasion. The U.S. embargo is in the process of being tightened with the support of the right-wing Berlusconi and Aznar regimes in Italy and Spain. The aggressive and openly political activity of James Cason of the Interest Section in line with his Cuban followers among the paid functionaries/ “dissidents” is part of the inside strategy designed to undermine Cuban loyalties to the regime and the revolution. The inter-connection between the two tactics and their strategic convergence is ignored by our prestigious intellectual critics who prefer the luxury of issuing moral imperatives about freedom everywhere for everyone, even when a psychotic Washington puts the knife to Cuba’s throat. No thanks, Chomsky, Sontag, Wallerstein – Cuba is justified in giving its attackers a kick in the balls and sending them to cut sugar cane to earn an honest living. The death penalty for three ferry boat terrorists is harsh treatment – but so was the threat to the lives of forty Cuban passengers who faced death at the hands of the hijackers. Again our moralists forgot to discuss the rash acts of air piracy and the plots of others uncovered in time. The moralists failed to understand why these terrorists desperadoes are seeking illegal means to leave Cuba. Bush’s Administration has practically eliminated the visa program for Cuban emigrants wishing to leave.

Visa grants have declined from 9000 for the first four months of 2002 to 700 in 2003. This is a clever tactic to encourage terrorist acts in Cuba and then denounce the harsh sentences, evoking the chorus of ‘yea’ sayers in the ‘Amen’ corner of the progressive U.S. and European intellectual establishment. Is it simply ignorance which informs these moral pronouncements against Cuba or is it something else besides – moral blackmail? , to force their Cuban counterparts to turn against their regime, their people or face the opprobrium of the prestigious intellectuals – to become further isolated and stigmatized as “apologists of Castro”. Explicit threats by Saramago to abandon his Cuban friends and embrace the cause of U.S. paid functionaries. Implicit threats of no longer visiting Cuba and to boycott conferences. Is it moral cowardice to pick up the cudgels for the empire and pick on Cuba when it faces the threat of mass destruction over the freedom of paid agents, subject to prosecution by any country in the world? What is eminently dishonest is to totally ignore the vast accomplishments of the revolution in employment, education, health, equality, and Cuba’s heroic and principled opposition to imperial wars – the only country to so declare – and its capacity to resist almost 50 years of invasions.

That counts for nothing for the U.S. intellectuals – that is scandalous!! That is a disgrace, a retreat in search of respectability after “daring” to oppose the U.S. war along with 30 million other people in the world. It is not time to “balance” things out – by condemning Cuba, by calling for a regime change, by supporting the cause of the “market oriented” Cuban functionary-dissidents. Let us remember the same progressive intellectuals supported “dissidents” in Eastern Europe and Soviet Union who were bankrolled by Soros and the U.S. State Department. The “dissidents” turned the country over to the Russian mafia, life expectancy declined five years ( over 10 million Russians died prematurely with the sacking of the national health system), while in Eastern Europe “dissidents” closed the shipyards of Gdansk , enrolled in NATO and provided mercenaries for the U.S. conquest of Iraq. And never among these current supporters of Cuban “dissidents” is there any critical reflection on the catastrophic outcomes resulting from their anti-communist diatribes and their manifestos in favor of the ‘dissidents’ who have become the soldiers of the U.S. Middle Eastern and Central European empire. Our U.S. moralists never, I repeat, never, ever reflected critically on their moral failures, past or present because, you see, they are for “freedom everywhere”, even when the “wrong” people get into power and the “other” empire takes over, and the millions die from curable diseases and white slavery rings expand. The reply is always the same: “That’s not what we wanted – we were for an independent, free and just society – it just happened that in calling for regime change, support for dissidents, we never suspected that the Empire would ‘take it all’, would become the only superpower, and engage in colonizing the world.”

The moral intellectuals must accept political responsibility for the consequences and not hide behind abstract moral platitudes, neither for their past complicity with empire building nor their present scandalous pronouncements against Cuba. They cannot claim they don’t know the repercussions of what they are saying and doing. They cannot pretend innocence after all they we have seen and read and heard about U.S. war plans against Cuba. The principal author and promoter of the anti-Cuban declaration in the United States (signed by Chomsky, Zinn and Wallerstein) was Joanne Landy, a self-declared “democratic socialist”, and lifelong advocate of the violent overthrow of the Cuban government – for the past 40 years. She is now a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), one of the major institutions advising the U.S. government on imperial policies for over a half century.

Landy supported the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Yugoslavia and the Albanian terrorist group, the KLA – calling publicly for overt military support – responsible for the murder of 2000 Serbs and the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Serbs and others in Kosova. It is no surprise that the statement authored by this chameleon right-wing extremist contained no mention of Cuba’s social accomplishments and opposition to imperialism. For the record, it should be noted, that Landy was a visceral opponent of the Chinese, Vietnamese and other social revolutions in her climb to positions of influence in the CFR. For all their vaunted critical intellect, the “progressive” intellectuals overlooked the unsavory politics of the author who promoted the anti-Cuba diatribe.

 The Role of the Intellectual Today

Many critics of Cuba speak of “principles” as if there were only one set of principles applicable to all situations independent of who is involved and what are the consequences. Asserting “principles” like “freedom” for those involved in plotting the overthrow of the Cuban government in complicity with the State Department would turn Cuba into another Chile – where Allende was overthrown by Pinochet – and lead to a reversal of the popular gains of the revolution. There are principles that are more basic than freedom for U.S. Cuban functionaries , that is , national security and popular sovereignty. There is, particularly among the U.S. progressive left, a certain attraction to Third World victims, those who suffer defeats ,and an aversion for successful revolutionaries. It seems that the U.S. progressive intellectuals always find an alibi to avoid a commitment to a revolution.

For some it is the old refrain “Stalinism” – if the state plays a major role in the economy; or it can be mass mobilizations – that they dub “plebicitary dictatorships”, or it can be security agencies which successfully prevent terrorist activity which they call a “repressive police state”. Living in the least politicized nation in the world with one of the most servile and corrupt trade union apparatus in the West, with virtually no practical political influence outside a few university towns, the practical intellectuals in the U.S. have no practical knowledge or experience of the everyday threats and violence which hangs over revolutionary governments and activists in Latin America. Their political conceptions, the yardsticks they pull out to condemn or approve of any political activity, exists nowhere except in their heads, in their congenial, progressive, university settings where they enjoy all the privileges of capitalist freedom and none of the risks which Third World revolutionaries have to defend themselves against.

A little modesty, dear prestigious, critical, freedom preaching intellectuals.

Look deep inside and ask yourself if you would like to be pirated by a Miami-based terrorist organization. Ask yourself if you would enjoy sitting in a café in a major tourist hotel in Havana when a deadly bomb goes off – greetings from the terrorists taking a beer with the President’s brother, Jeb. Think about living in a country which is on the top of the hit list of the most violent imperial regime since Nazi Germany – and then perhaps your moral sensibilities might awaken to the need to temper your condemnations of Cuban security policies and contextualize your moral fiats. I want to conclude by establishing my own “moral imperatives” – for the critical intellectuals.

The first duty of Euro-U.S. intellectuals is to oppose their own imperial rulers set on conquering the world. The second duty is to clarify the moral issues involved in the struggle between imperial militarists and popular/national resistance and reject the hypocritical posture that equates the mass terror of one with the justified if at times excessive security constraints of the other. To establish standards of political and personal integrity with regards to the facts and issues before making moral judgments. Resist the temptation to become a “moral hero of the empire” by refusing to support victorious popular struggles and revolutionary regimes which are not perfect which lack all the freedoms available to impotent intellectuals unable to threaten power and therefore tolerated to meet, discuss and criticize.

Refuse to set themselves as Judge, Prosecutor and Jury condemning progressives who have the courage to defend revolutionaries. The most appalling instance is Susan Sontag’s scurrilous attack on Colombian Nobel Prize winning novelist, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who she accused of lacking integrity and being an apologist of Cuban terror (sic). Sontag made her blood libelous accusations in Bogata, Colombia. The Colombian death squads working with the regime and the military kill more trade unionists and journalists than any place in the world, and do so , for far less than being an “apologist” of the Castro regime. This is the same Sontag who was an enthusiastic supporter of the U.S. imperial invasion and bombing of Yugoslavia, apologist for the fundamentalist Bosnian regime and who was a silent witness to the killing and ethnic cleansing of Serbs and others in Kosova. Moral integrity indeed! The precious sense of moral superiority found among New York intellectuals allow Sontag to finger Marquez for the death squads and feel that she has made a great moral statement. U.S.-European intellectuals should not confuse their own political futility and inconsequential position with that of their counterparts among committed Latin American intellectuals. There is a place for constructive dialogue and debate but never personal assaults that demean individuals facing daily threats to their lives.

It is easy for critical intellectuals to be a “friend of Cuba” in good times at celebrations and invited conferences in times of lesser threats. It is much harder to be a “friend of Cuba” when a totalitarian empire threatens the heroic island and puts heavy hands on its defenders. It is in times like this – of permanent wars, genocide and military aggression, when Cuba needs the solidarity of critical intellectuals, which they are receiving from all over Europe and particularly Latin America. Isn’t it time that we, in the United States, with our illustrious and prestigious progressive intellectuals with all our majestic moral sensibilities recognize that there is a vital, heroic revolution struggling to defend itself against the U.S. juggernaut and that we modestly set aside our self-important declarations, support that revolution and join the one million Cubans celebrating May Day with their leader Fidel Castro?

 

[James Petras has a long history of commitment to social justice, working in particular with the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement for 11 years. In 1973-76 he was a member of the Bertrand Russell Tribunal on Repression in Latin America. He writes a monthly column for the Mexican newspaper, La Jornada, and previously, for the Spanish daily, El Mundo. He received his B.A. from Boston University and Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley.]

Jul 08

2014

0

Non-Profit Industrial Complex, USAID, Whiteness & Aversive Racism

Cuba Cuban Five USAID

USAID & the Cuban Five: Criminalizing Counterterrorism, Legalizing Regime Change

RT

By Nile Bowie

June 16, 2014

A mural, depicting five Cuban agents held in prison in the U.S. for over ten years, in Havana (Reuters / Enrique de la Osa)

Posters with portraits of five Cubans jailed in the United States – Rene Gonzalez Sehwerert, Gerardo Hernandez Nordelo, Fernando Gonzalez Llort, Ramon Labanino Salazar and Antonio Guerrero Rodriguez – are dispayed in front of the Cuba’s Consulate during a demonstration in support of Cuban revolution in Sao Pablo, Brazil (AFP Photo / Nelson Almeida)

The plight of five imprisoned Cuban counterterrorism officers, known collectively as the Cuban Five, has been the subject of a growing campaign to lobby Congress in favor of releasing the men.

The five officers were monitoring Cuban exile groups based in Miami with an established track record of orchestrating terrorist acts inside Cuba. The group had informed US authorities of their actions, and were not in possession of any weapons, nor did they engage in any act of espionage against the US or cause harm to any person.

In September 1998, the five officers were arrested by FBI agents and were accused of conspiracy to commit espionage. Their trial, which lasted over six months, became the longest in US history. Though the group was never directly accused of espionage, nor were any acts of espionage committed, the five Cuban men were sentenced to a total of four life sentences plus 77 years.

No fair trial

The men were initially kept in solitary confinement for 17 months, and were later imprisoned in five separate maximum-security prisons spread across the US without the possibility of communication with each other. Their case represents the first time in US history that life sentences were meted out on espionage charges.

The consensus among various legal experts and advocacy groups is that political and partisan considerations worked against justice and the five Cuban men were not given a fair trial. The trial was held in Miami, a region that is synonymous with maintaining open hostility toward the Cuban government, making it incredibly difficult to seat an impartial jury in such a politically charged atmosphere.

According to reports, the US government commissioned several Miami-based journalists to write negative stories to discredit the five defendants, which were widely publicized to influence public opinion. Moreover, the US government even recognized in writing that it was unable to substantiate the conspiracy to commit murder charges against Gerardo Hernandez, one of the five defendants.

During the lengthy appeals process, a three-judge panel in 2005 overturned all of the convictions on the grounds that the defendants had not received a fair trial in Miami, but Washington pressured the Court of Appeals in 2006 to reverse the decision.

The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention also concluded that the imprisonment of the group was arbitrary, and urged the US government to correct the situation. Despite dissenting opinions from judges in the Court of Appeals, the US Supreme Court intervened in 2009 to announce its decision not to review the case of the five Cuban nationals, despite strong arguments made by their defense attorneys. →

Apr 04

2014

0

The International Campaign to Destabilize Venezuela, USAID, Whiteness & Aversive Racism

Bolivia Cuba Freedom House Haiti USAID Venezuela

USAID Subversion in Latin America Not Limited to Cuba

Che-Guevara-Cuba-Drawings-On-The-Wall-Graffiti-720x1280

cepr

April 4, 2014

by Dan Beeton

A new investigation by the Associated Press into a U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) project to create a Twitter-style social media network in Cuba has received a lot of attention this week, with the news trending on the actual Twitter for much of the day yesterday when the story broke, and eliciting comment from various members of Congress and other policy makers. The “ZunZuneo” project, which AP reports was “aimed at undermining Cuba’s communist government,” was overseen by USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI). AP describes OTI as “a division that was created after the fall of the Soviet Union to promote U.S. interests in quickly changing political environments — without the usual red tape.” Its efforts to undermine the Cuban government are not unusual, however, considering the organization’s track record in other countries in the region.

As CEPR Co-Director Mark Weisbrot described in an interview with radio station KPFA’s “Letters and Politics” yesterday, USAID and OTI in particular have engaged in various efforts to undermine the democratically-elected governments of Venezuela, Bolivia, and Haiti, among others, and such “open societies” could be more likely to be impacted by such activities than Cuba. Declassified U.S. government documents show that USAID’s OTI in Venezuela played a central role in funding and working with groups and individuals following the short-lived 2002 coup d’etat against Hugo Chávez. A key contractor for USAID/OTI in that effort has been Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI).

More recent State Department cables made public by Wikileaks reveal that USAID/OTI subversion in Venezuela extended into the Obama administration era (until 2010, when funded for OTI in Venezuela appears to have ended), and DAI continued to play an important role. A State Department cable from November 2006 explains the U.S. embassy’s strategy in Venezuela and how USAID/OTI “activities support [the] strategy”:

(S) In August of 2004, Ambassador outlined the country team’s 5 point strategy to guide embassy activities in Venezuela for the period 2004 ) 2006 (specifically, from the referendum to the 2006 presidential elections). The strategy’s focus is: 1) Strengthening Democratic Institutions, 2) Penetrating Chavez’ Political Base, 3) Dividing Chavismo, 4) Protecting Vital US business, and 5) Isolating Chavez internationally.

Among the ways in which USAID/OTI have supported the strategy is through the funding and training of protest groups. This August 2009 cable cites the head of USAID/OTI contractor DAI’s Venezuela office Eduardo Fernandez as saying, during 2009 protests, that all the protest organizers are DAI grantees:

¶5. (S) Fernandez told DCM Caulfield that he believed the [the Scientific, Penal and Criminal Investigations Corps’] dual objective is to obtain information regarding DAI’s grantees and to cut off their funding. Fernandez said that “the streets are hot,” referring to growing protests against Chavez’s efforts to consolidate power, and “all these people (organizing the protests) are our grantees.” Fernandez has been leading non-partisan training and grant programs since 2004 for DAI in Venezuela.”

The November 2006 cable describes an example of USAID/OTI partners in Venezuela “shut[ting] down [a] city”:

11. (S) CECAVID: This project supported an NGO working with women in the informal sectors of Barquisimeto, the 5th largest city in Venezuela. The training helped them negotiate with city government to provide better working conditions. After initially agreeing to the women’s conditions, the city government reneged and the women shut down the city for 2 days forcing the mayor to return to the bargaining table. This project is now being replicated in another area of Venezuela.

The implications for the current situation in Venezuela are obvious, unless we are to assume that such activities have ended despite the tens of millions of dollars in USAID funds designated for Venezuela, some of it going through organizations such as Freedom House, and the International Republican Institute, some of which also funded groups involved in the 2002 coup (which prominent IRI staff publicly applauded at the time).

The same November 2006 cable notes that one OTI program goal is to bolster international support for the opposition:

…DAI has brought dozens of international leaders to Venezuela, university professors, NGO members, and political leaders to participate in workshops and seminars, who then return to their countries with a better understanding of the Venezuelan reality and as stronger advocates for the Venezuelan opposition.

Many of the thousands of cables originating from the U.S. embassy in Caracas that have been made available by Wikileaks describe regular communication and coordination with prominent opposition leaders and groups. One particular favorite has been the NGO Súmate and its leader Maria Corina Machado, who has made headlines over the past two months for her role in the protest movement. The cables show that Machado historically has taken more extreme positions than some other opposition leaders, and the embassy has at least privately questioned Súmate’s strategy of discrediting Venezuela’s electoral system which in turn has contributed to opposition defeats at the polls (most notably in 2005 when an opposition boycott led to complete Chavista domination of the National Assembly). The current protests are no different; Machado and Leopoldo López launched “La Salida” campaign at the end of January with its stated goal of forcing president Nicolás Maduro from office, and vowing to “create chaos in the streets.”

USAID support for destabilization is no secret to the targeted governments. In September 2008, in the midst of a violent, racist and pro-secessionist campaign against the democratically-elected government of Evo Morales in Bolivia, Morales expelled the U.S. Ambassador, and Venezuela followed suit “in solidarity.” Bolivia would later end all USAID involvement in Bolivia after the agency refused to disclose whom it was funding in the country (Freedom of Information Act requests had been independently filed but were not answered).  The U.S. embassy in Bolivia had previously been caught asking Peace Corps volunteers and Fulbright scholars in the country to engage in espionage.

Commenting on the failed USAID/OTI ZunZuneo program in Cuba, House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) commented that, “That is not what USAID should be doing[.] USAID is flying the American flag and should be recognized around the globe as an honest broker of doing good. If they start participating in covert, subversive activities, the credibility of the United States is diminished.”

But USAID’s track record of engaging in subversive activities is a long one, and U.S. credibility as an “honest broker” was lost many years ago.

Jun 25

2012

0

USAID

Cuba Destabilization USAID

FLASHBACK: Obama Continuing to Spend $20 Million on USAID Subversion in Cuba

Granma

Havana, Cuba, June 16, 2011

by Jean-Guy Allard

WHILE the economic crisis is sentencing hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens to poverty, the Washington government continues channeling tens of millions of dollars into plans of interference whose ineffectiveness is well known.

This is the case with USAID subversion plots in Cuba which, according to analysts, have merely served to prompt the arrest and sentencing of one of the employee’s of this State Department body.

The U.S. administration’s obsession for programs costing $20 million to “promote democracy in Cuba” and which are a front for intelligence and destabilization activities, has come up against the decision taken by Senator John Kerry, head of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, to suspend funds for these programs on April 1.

The USAID programs aimed at Cuba and comprising “investments” in anti-government groups and intelligence have ineffectively cost $150 million from the 90s. →

Oct 28

2023

0

Imperialist Wars/Occupations, Pacifism as Pathology, Social Engineering, Whiteness & Aversive Racism

Algiers Arafat Fatah Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) NGO-isation Oslo Accords Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Palestinian Authority Palestinian National Movement (PNM)

Palestine Through the Lens of Frantz Fanon [2015]

Middle East Monitor

October 19, 2015

by Nick Rodrigo 

Part 1: Why Fanon? The indispensability of thought and the urgency of action

Palestine is in the throes of revolt. It started with protests and demonstrations at the presence of Israeli “Temple Mount” activists (and their political benefactors) at the Noble Sanctuary of Al-Aqsa in Jerusalem, the symbolic pillar of Palestinian spirituality and national redemption. The unrest then spread to other cities on both sides of the Green Line. From Nazareth to Nablus to Bethlehem, young Palestinians have taken to the streets to hurl stones and Molotov cocktails at an occupation which plunders their future and consigns their bodies to be broken on the wheels of a colonial machine. Individual acts of violence have also injected a sense of terror into the Israeli population, prompting a paranoid state to respond with unbridled brutality from its military, and unabated mob-driven lynching by its civilian population.

Unorganised, sporadic and youth-led, these Palestinian demonstrations and violent attacks do not appear to be tethered to any political party. The rejection of political factions as the incubator of rebellious actions by the “Children of Oslo” is perhaps the final indictment on the political malaise which has characterised Mahmoud Abbas’s tenure as Palestinian president; he has operated hand in glove with the Israelis, to protect a regime which safeguards the interests of his political class.

The Question of Palestine, as Edward Said framed it, has gone through numerous changes since 1948; through the Nakba of 1948 to the Sumud, which characterised the first intifada, to the compromise of Oslo and the current post-second intifada division and status quo. Throughout these phases, various normative discourses and institutions arose, which shifted the nature of the Palestinian national movement. However, the reality of Israeli colonialism has remained the same: violent, intransigent and unaccountable. In order to understand the current events in Palestine properly, it vital to look towards the writings of Martinican psychologist-cum-Algerian revolutionary, Frantz Fanon, whose divisive thoughts have contributed prodigiously to the field of postcolonial studies.

Rebel without a pause

1925 was a bumper year for Black revolutionaries. In the space of twelve months, Malcolm X, Patrice Lumumba and Frantz Fanon were born. It was the latter’s lyrical polemics and psychoanalytic inquiries which presented vast swathes of humanity with the framework for picking apart the layers of oppression which typified their lives under the yoke of colonialism. In his short life, Fanon developed a philosophy which provided colonised peoples with the blueprint for breaking out of their stupor, to create a “new man” and a new form of resistance to domination and oppression. Added to his literary panache and intellectual intrigue, he was able to interweave his subjective experiences into his works. By the time of his untimely death at thirty-six, Fanon had first-hand experiences of colonial society in a variety of contexts; through his youth in the French colonial department of Martinique; to his service for “Mother France” on the battlefield against Nazi Germany; to his academic training in Frances metropoles; and to his works with Algerian revolutionaries in the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN).

Black Skin, White Masks

In Black Skin, White Masks Fanon developed a sociogenic and psychoanalytic explanation of the anti-black racism inherent within colonial societies, drawing on his objective experiences. In this seminal text, Fanon passes the Hegelian phenomenological master/slave dialect under a black lens. In Hegel’s dialect, the slave is in pursuit of recognition and, through fear of the master, develops sentience, acquiring independent thought and consciousness of his essentiality and master’s dependence on him. However, when the slave is black, Fanon notes that, “What [the master] wants from the slave is not recognition but work.” The result was for the black person to aspire for “values secreted by his masters.” Fanon stays with Hegel when he acknowledges that mutual recognition is not achieved at the end of this dialect, yet departs from him in denying that the black slave necessarily achieves any independent consciousness: “But the black man does not know the price of freedom because he has never fought for it.” Echoing the words of Malcolm X, he wrote, “No one can give you freedom, if you are a man, you take it.” This ongoing struggle for recognition and freedom informed Fanon’s work and life.

Revolutionary therapy and the process of disalienation

In 1953 Fanon moved from colonial France to Blida, Algeria, where he developed a revolutionary approach to psychoanalysis, developing occupational therapy remedies with Algeria’s native communities with a direct effort to draw Arab and Islamic idiosyncrasies into his work. Fanon published 15 papers on psychiatric approaches throughout his career, and many of the findings were intertwined with his philosophical conclusions in Black Skin, White Masks. At the centre of Fanon’s psychoanalysis and “sociogenic” inquiries was a pursuit of disalienation from the social death caused by colonialism. In Marx’s Capital, alienation from labour is scrutinised, and through this process he lays bare the opposite of humanity within a capitalist society; a society freed from capital, able to pursue its own praxis. Fanon examined the way in which the human society under colonialism is alienated from its own cultural creativity; from this he wanted to create a way of breaking out of the colonial replications of that which is colonised. For Fanon, the colonised must pursue this process of disalienation actively.

Concerning revolutionary violence and the pitfalls of neo-colonialism

During his time in Algeria, Fanon was approached by the FLN to provide healthcare and a sanctum for their fighters in his clinic. He subsequently threw his weight behind their cause, writing for their publication El Moujahed and representing them at conferences in sub-Saharan Africa, where he forged ties with Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah and the Congo’s Patrice Lumumba. With them he developed the idea of an African Legion, to liberate African nations from colonialism, as well as opening up a southern arms route from Sub-Saharan Africa to Algeria. Fanon saw that the conclusion of the Algerian struggle would serve as the pace-setter for the trajectory of the postcolonial movements and newly-liberated nations throughout Africa.

With the publication of A Dying Colonialism he had moved considerably from the concept of negritude, towards revolution as the prime negative in his de-colonial framework. By the colonised finding themselves through revolutionary struggle, whilst at the same time realising the role played by national demands and racial particularities, a new humanity can be forged.

In 1962, Fanon was diagnosed with leukemia, and started work on The Wretched of the Earth, which was to be completed within months of his diagnosis but only published posthumously. Written with furious energy, the text is as much a timeless field manual for postcolonial movements as it is a piece of historical literature. It is his treatise on violence which has often been misconstrued, by supporters and detractors alike. Fanon does not valorise violence, as some contend, but rather acknowledges that colonialism is a project, which is, in and of itself, violence manifested. This violence has shaped the social constitution of the colonial subject. His land, resources and life have been seized by a state of violence, and within the framework laid before him, the only route out is violence. With prescience, Fanon writes that unless this violence is checked, it can turn inwards on the colonised, leading to tribalism and internecine conflict. Out from this a neo-colonial project will emerge, where elites from the revolutionary movements will barter their political capital with the old colonialists, for political power and capital, granting the latter rapacious access to resources and economic wealth.

Before he died in 1963, Fanon sent a parting letter to his friend Roger Taïeb in which he wrote the following: “We are nothing on this earth if we do not first and foremost serve a cause, the cause of the people, the cause of freedom and justice. I want you to know that even when the doctors had lost all hope, I was still thinking, in a fog granted, but thinking nonetheless, of the Algerian people, of the people of the Third World, and if I managed to hold on, it was because of them.”

Israel’s occupation as a neo-colonial project

What Fanon implored us to do was to view the struggle of the oppressed as a struggle to create a new mode of being, a new form of humanity. Within the revolutionary struggles of the masses, he insisted, lie the seeds of a new humanity. The ongoing resistance in Palestine today is not a new phenomenon, but is rather the latest episode in a decades’ long struggle for freedom and what Hegel and Fanon both agree on, recognition. Not recognition to live within shrivelled little cantons and drip-fed subsistence, but recognition as a human being in the holistic sense of the term. The stone throwing, the stabbings and the bombings are a reaction to a colonial regime which denies this recognition.

Over the course of these essays, Fanon’s key works, as outlined briefly above, will be utilised to examine the Palestinian national movement since it broke away from the paternalist hold of the Arab world and began, in earnest, to seek recognition. Navigating this history, with one eye firmly on Fanon’s work, it will conclude with where the movement is today; largely rudderless, but still yearning. Through this process, it is hoped that the reader will not only think and empathise with the Palestinians, but also, in respect of Fanon’s work, act on these feelings in the spirit of a collective humanity.

Fanon in Palestine Part 2: From Sumud to Surrender

Last week, the life, times and writings of Frantz Fanon were examined, with specific focus on his concept of recognition. Fanon, with literary deftness and intellectual mastery, managed to save Hegel from his racialised self and utilise his master/slave dialect in a conceptual apparatus that explicates the pitfalls of the neocolonised mindset.

Fanon asserted that colonised populations tend to internalise the sneering images imposed on them, and thus as a result these images, along with structural relations, come to be recognised as natural. Settler colonialism operates through the elimination of indigenous people’s existence on the land. Without this reducible element, settler colonialism cannot operate. Settler colonialism it not interested in exploitating the natives, rather it attempts a totality though eradicating its negation, the existence of indigenous people, and reducing them to an invisible, a persona non grata. This is why the Palestinian-Israeli impasse should not be seen from the angle of a particular event, rather as a structure that operates on the elimination of indigenous Palestinians as an entity. The desire for recognition on its own terms of the overarching colonial structure can be seen as a form of misrecognition as it reinforces the dominance of the oppressor, seeking its legitimacy from the very source of the dilemma, making the coloniser appear to be the final redeemer: ‘’that is, I will compel the white man to acknowledge that I am human.”

In the second part of this essay series, I will trace the socio-historical development of the Palestinian National Movement and its quest for recognition. By picking apart various tactics for recognition, I expose the source of the symbolic capital of the current intifada, and where the failure of the current Palestinian leadership has presented more obstacles to the fundamentals of Palestinian recognition.

Sumud

In English, sumud can refer to steadfastness, but it can be manifested as different practices and ideas. For instance, many refugees refer to their existence as “resistance”, or a manifestation of sumud when discussing their forced exile after 1948. Tracing Sumud within the PLO’s (Palestine Liberation Organization) discourse help demonstrate how the change in political strategy from resistance to the recognition of Israel affected the discourse from within the PLO, which in turn has affected the whole of the PNM. Such a framework highlights the ways Palestinians were involved in anticolonial struggle how they were able to construct a Palestinian political history through speech, and how it was constrained after recognising Israel and seeking recognition of statehood from Israel and the international community.

Sumud: The 60s and 70s

The grassroots nature of the Palestinian movement that emerged in 1959 gained traction after the successive failures of pan-Arabism and the emergence of a distinct national Palestinian agenda which centred around the concept of armed struggle. The national struggle was formulated around being exiled in the diaspora and the life of the Fedayeen in the refugee camps, who were represented as the archetypal Palestinian. The idea of the militant-fedai as a national and a cultural hero was utilised by Fatah to galvanize support in the refugee camps. Where previously there was no unified and collective Palestinian struggle, this represented a rupture and change in Palestinian discourse and identity, profoundly demonstrated in Ghassan-Kanafani’s novels.

Arafat seized on such imagery, mirroring it in his discourse, most notably In his speech to the United Nations in 1974. Appearing at the UN general assembly, dressed in the garb of the Fedayeen, Arafat emphasised the right to armed resistance, placing the Palestinian struggle within a wider global struggle against racism, imperialism and colonialism. This speech would serve to gain much legitimacy and recognition for his cause. Although the PLO, of which Fatah was the dominant faction, was eventually recognised as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestine people by the international community, it failed to achieve any results on the ground. This, coupled with the exile of the PLO from Jordan and Lebanon, created a sense of disillusionment in the OPT (occupied Palestinian territory), leading to the rise of grassroots activism which surprised a detached leadership.

The Intifada: Shaking off the occupation

Palestinian resistance in the OPT’s reached a zenith during the first intifada through large-scale confrontation with the Israeli army, mass demonstrations and civil disobedience such as strikes and refusal to pay taxes – a direct attempt to extract Palestinians from the structures of colonialism. The Intifada differed from Fatah’s operations as it was led by community councils and a united national leadership of the uprising (UNLU) with very limited control from Fatah and the PLO. The uprising was eventually steered by Fatah, leading to the Madrid peace conference of 1991, in effect paving the way for the Oslo process and the establishment of the Palestinian National Aassembly (PNA) in 1994. With the intifada and the influence of the PLO, there was a change in the discourse from the liberation of mandate Palestine to one of state building which marked recognition and diplomacy as a new political strategy.

Surrender

The Madrid Conference, which was the marking point for the initiation of the peace process, failed to bring about any real outcomes apart from ending the Intifada. This was due to Palestinian refusal to postpone key issues, and the efforts by Israeli PM Yitzhak Shamir to delay the negotiations. This tactic of delay, whilst altering the facts on the ground through the entrenchment of the occupation, has been a central theme of all Israeli–Palestinian negotiations within the peace process framework. The Madrid process failed to consider the central issues of refugees and land loss that was insisted upon by the Palestinian delegation, it was the marking point for the beginning of the end, setting the precedent of future peace negotiations to come. Oslo would serve to provide the institutions to sustain this “differed agreement”, with the establishment of structure bent on constructing a state within the international legal sovereign model. However for the first time there was a tangent narrative of the PNM, that of the institutionalisation of Zionist-ideology and practices, hence the postponement of core issues.

Institutionalisation of the status quo

Through seeking recognition, the PLO had to engage in the language of the international community and the colonial power – Israel – therefore ensuring the maintenance of the status quo, i.e. not challenging the colonial structure of violence. Throughout the Oslo peace process the PLO de-facto acknowledged two Zionist-practices and ideas which characterise the discourse in Palestinian-Israeli relations; ethnic cleansing and land maximisation. The Oslo agreements make no reference to the exile of Palestinians during 1948, something that continues to govern the rules of negotiation in the Palestinian-Israeli relations. Although-the refugees were referenced, there was no explicit responsibility placed on Israel that acknowledged the forced exile of Palestinians. Alongside transfer was land maximisation, a strategy employed since Zionism’s inception. Today similar practices can be seen in Jerusalem, and the West Bank – the Naqba’s constant land maximisation is ongoing.

The sacrificing of key components If the Palestinian struggle on the alter of recognition and according to the terms of the coloniser was done in pursuit of of the hegemonic Eurocentric ideal of statehood. As Azmi Bishara predicted in 1999, if the PNA declares a Palestinian state, the issue will shift to recognition of such state, while there will be talks on settlements and refugees, the real focus and political strategy will turn toward seeking recognition for that state. Thus the PNA’s internal strategy becomes reducing any possibility of confrontation as Palestinians are forced to direct their energy on securing recognition and the survival of the pseudo state. The pursuit of recognition for this state has resulted in a whole range of PA actions, such as cooperative security with the Israelis, entrenchment within the international finance system, and the bureacratisation of occupation management. These very neocolonial practices will be scrutinised in more detail in the third party of this series, “The Economics of Capitulation”.

The development from sumud to surrender, which has characterised the PLO’s attitude towards Israel, demonstrates what Fanon called the “racist epidermalisaton of the oppressed”, where the PNA has became a product of the internalisation of what the oppressor thinks they must become. Through negating its own history and accomplishments, the PNA attempted to present a new image of the Palestinians as peaceful and civilised, and therefore worthy of their own state. Thus, as a result of seeking recognition overall, the focus of struggling and resisting shifted towards recognition of this new Palestinian image rather than addressing the overall structure of settler colonialism which created the need for such recognition in the first place. As Fanon found, the-colonised become obsessed with attention from the white man, where there is a strong desire to demonstrate to the white man that he is wrong about the black man.

Fanon wrote feverishly that it was the masses who “stormed the heavens” and in the process overcame their inferiority complex in the face of the colonial oppressor. What has occurred during the era of “Sumud” was a leadership and people who understood the transformative possibilities of engaging in a revolutionary process that creates “a new man”. Fanon was not a slave to nationalism, but understood that the particularities of race and nationness are indispensible in mobilising the people. The crude reduction of the Palestinian Authority’s claims that they are acting in the national interest is symbolic of the collapse of the revolutionary components of Palestinian nationalism. In the next part of these essays, the institutions which have emerged out of the neocolonial capitulation, will be scrutinised.

Fanon in Palestine part 3: The institutions of capitulation

In part two, the historical development of the Palestinian National Movement (PNM) was traced, from its break with the paternalist hold of the Arab world, through the years of Sumud, to the historic compromise of the Oslo Accords. Through recognising Israel at the Madrid Conference, the PNM had achieved recognition, but on behalf of its colonial oppressor and the broader hegemonic ideals of the contemporary international system. Through recognising Israel, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) had also granted tacit approval to the former’s founding principles of ethnic cleansing and land maximisation. Oslo and its accompanying Paris Protocols entrenched the socioeconomic dynamics of a settler-colonial project, enshrining the Palestinian Authority (PA) as its outsourced management. In order to conceptualise how Oslo birthed the institutions of capitulation which play a large role in upholding the infrastructure of occupation, land expropriation and displacement, it is important to turn again to how Frantz Fanon forewarned about the development of neo-colonialism after independence.

Fanon’s prophesy

By 1958 Charles De Gaulle had increased France’s military presence in Algeria whilst coaxing former colonies away from the unfolding drama in Algeria through membership of the Francophone community; this tactic placed diplomatic and military pressures on the National Liberation Front (FLN). During this time, Fanon’s critique of the national bourgeoisie as an impediment to the development of a truly de-colonial revolutionary praxis began to crystallise into a coherent polemic. Some of his thoughts were laid down in “A Dying Colonialism”, but it was “The Wretched of the Earth”, published posthumously, that became Fanon’s political testament. This incendiary text is a field manual for indigenous guerrilla movements as well as an exposé of the particular spirit which drove the de-colonial movements of the sixties. Fanon’s examination of the emergent bourgeois leadership in Africa, and his relentless broadsides against their betrayals, echo loudly when paralleled with the post-Oslo Palestinian leadership.

Fanon notes that a revolution differed by a myopic conception of nationhood can lead to “the confusion of neo-liberal universalism to emerge, sometimes laboriously, as a claim to nationhood.” The development towards recognition folds revolutionary components of nationalism in on its particularities, stymying the development of a truly revolutionary dialect. In the bid to gain recognition, the national leadership will take up the positions vacated by the departing coloniser, and becoming “not even the replica of Europe, but its caricature”. This caricature, for Fanon, is defined by a rapacious desire to line pockets, and attract economic power from the former colonial overlords and the world powers. With razor sharp clarity, Fanon notes how the economic programme of the post-independence leadership attracts foreign investment for industrial projects, which are built from the “tête-a-tête” negotiations leading up to the withdrawal of the coloniser. Hedonistic projects are developed to mask the leaks in their economic plans, which do little to develop the nation, and before long, the national bourgeoisie become mere managers and intermediaries of foreign investment.

Fanon’s polemic draws up three institutions which seem applicable to the Palestinian context:

  1. The party: A political machine emptied of its revolutionary potential, merely a symbolic and bureaucratic mechanism of the neo-colonial system.
  2. A national bourgeoisie of capital managers and bureaucrats.
  3. A foreign-advised army, called on increasingly to step in when the contradictions of post-independence solicit widespread protest.

Fatah and the PA

Founded by Yasser Arafat in 1959, Fatah was once uncompromising on the merits of armed resistance popularising the re-conquest of Palestine through the deployment of sophisticated and popular imagery and execution of armed actions. It’s dominance within the PLO and popularity within the refugee camps endowed it with authority over all other factions after 1967. However, by the time of the first intifada (uprising) in 1987, the once revolutionary zeal of Fatah was subsumed by the Palestinian committees and grassroots organisations. Finding itself surplus to requirements, the Fatah-dominated PLO accepted the Oslo Accords and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, sidelining the popular appeal of mass movements of the intifada.

Fanon notes that the party’s mission after independence changes to give the people instructions “from the summit”, with party branches “completely demobilised”. Instead of a dialogue between the people and the party, from the bottom up, the party becomes a block between the masses and the leader. Fatah’s rallies and political meetings, emptied of any praxis or tactic, vindicate Fanon’s warnings of the lethargy which demobilises the party. Mahmoud Abbas’s amassing of political power, and embedding of Fatah into the institutional framework of the Palestinian state institutions, is also telling. Once the vehicle of the revolution, Fatah is now caught between its revolutionary phantoms of yesteryear, and maintenance of a status quo which benefits its apparatchiks and party bureaucrats. The result has been a divided party, reactionary towards rivals, sporadically condemning the occupation but on the terms of the international system.

The Palestinian bourgeoisie and the international community

The Palestinian national bourgeoisie has become an intermediary for global capitalism, but in a way that supports the infiltration of western “humanitarian capital” facilitating a humanitarian structure which buttresses the human rights and development regime of the west. The Oslo Accords created a system in which its “logic” informed the development of institutions engineered for “statehood”. The conflict was dramatically reframed after Oslo, from an ongoing anti-colonial struggle to a depoliticised development-orientated industry of “capacity building”. Capacity building would usher in the development of an NGO sector which would forge institutions for “statehood” whilst managing the material impacts of the occupation.

Since Oslo, the Palestinian economy has been dependent overwhelmingly on foreign aid, which is transferred through a complex web of NGOs. Staffing these organisations are the Palestinian leadership, intimately wedded to the Palestinian Authority, often with ties to Fatah as well. The “NGO-isation” of Palestinian politics has spawned a complex bureaucracy which works hand-in-hand with the PA to develop institutions which do little to enhance an economy stricken by the detrimental effects of Israel’s military occupation. A Gulf-based transnational capitalist class joins these intermediaries of neoliberal state funding logic. This class controls major banks, industrial and manufacturing companies and telecommunications firms, and facilitates the regional dominance of Gulf conglomerates. The Palestinian economy has developed through NGO funding and direct investment into the economy from the Gulf, but this has had little trickle-down impact on ordinary Palestinians. Instead, it has given birth to an out of touch NGO/transnational capitalist class whose members reap huge benefits from investment into an economy which only seems to service a select few.

Collaborative security

Fanon parallels the poverty and stagnation of the post-independence nation with the growing dependence of its leadership on a foreign advised and funded military. However, in Palestine it is not an army which has grown to become one of the largest post-Oslo institutions, but the cooperative paramilitary security establishment, the actions of which the PA coordinates with Israel’s Shin Bet internal security agency.

As the Palestinian economy has faltered and the Israeli occupation increases its disregard for the rights of the Palestinians, the Palestinian security sector has stepped in, clamping down on popular protest and pre-empting resistance activity through coordinated preventative measures with the Israelis. This cooperative security nexus enjoys international support with a budget of more than $8 million each year from the EU Police Mission for the Palestinian Territories. Meanwhile, Britain has allocated £76 million to the PA for security reform, much of which has been channelled towards the Presidential Guard intelligence service and the Preventive Security Force, both of which are headed by Fatah strongmen. Many of these institutions, trained indirectly by the US, follow what is known as the Dayton doctrine, in which an obedient “esprit de corps” is installed throughout the chain of command. They have been found complicit in the torture of Hamas and Islamic Jihad members, as well as the arbitrary detention of protestors. Former PM Salam Fayyad championed the collaborative security system as a key institution to assist with the development of a “Palestinian state”.

This posture echo’s Fanon’s understanding of the pitfalls of national consciousness when it is pegged to recognition on the terms of the coloniser. The security sector is not protecting the nation, but a specific bourgeois model of it, which benefits the class and bureaucratic privileges of the bourgeois elites. Perhaps the most candid representation of this was in 2007 when a faction within Fatah, with Israeli and western backing, attempted to launch a coup d’état in the Gaza Strip to dislodge the Hamas-led Palestinian government after it won the 2006 legislative election.

The institutions of capitulation in Palestine are laid deep, and many are rooted in a number of international structural factors external to the control of the current leadership. Furthermore, the political stagnation, economic strangulation and general immobility with regards to the “Question of Palestine” begins and ends with an intransigent, unaccountable Israeli occupation. However, the Palestinian leadership, once intertwined cognitively with the broader Palestinian people, especially those in forced exile, have narrowed the horizons of the PNM dramatically. Part of this is due to their pursuit of recognition, but they are also emulating the rapacious attitudes of their coloniser. This has led to institutions which obfuscate the asymmetric power of the current occupation, placing legitimacy in a political project which has failed, and serves no one but a tiny clique.

 

[Nick Rodrigo is a research associate at the Afro-Middle East Centre in Johannesburg; his writing has appeared in Al-Araby Al-Jadeed.]

 

Apr 08

2022

0

Neo-Liberalism and the Defanging of Feminism, Pacifism as Pathology, Social Engineering, Whiteness & Aversive Racism

Canadian Labour Congress Class war. Imperialsm Lockdowns Teamsters Truckers Protest Vaccine Mandates Working Class

Why Many Progressives Misrepresented and Condemned the Ottawa Trucker Protest

Chicago ALBA Solidarity

March 27, 2022

By Stansfield Smith

 

“Mothers hold the line.” – Photo: Cory Morningstar, Twitter, February 18, 2022, Ottawa Truckers Protest

 

Canada’s “Freedom Convoy” began with protesting rules implemented in January by the Canadian and later the US governments requiring truck drivers to be fully vaccinated to enter their country. It snowballed into a demonstration against dysfunctional coronavirus restrictions. The Ottawa trucker protesters demanded: No Lockdowns, No Mandates, No Vaccine Passports, and if not, that Trudeau resign.

Working people are increasingly angry at the failures of the neoliberal regimes in Canada and the US to meet our needs. Unfortunately, we on the left are not positioned to effectively utilize this sentiment and grow our forces, leaving an open field for leaders with rightwing solutions to fill the vacuum. They played on public resentment to advocate getting the state off our backs rather than our demand that the state prioritize our well-being.

Working class activists should participate and build these protests, bring working class solutions to the problems we confront and lead the people in fighting back. Instead, many on the left condemned the trucker convoy, or sat on the sidelines, seeing themselves as mere critics, not leaders in this class struggle.

Liberal Party Prime Minister Trudeau called the truckers “a few people shouting and waving swastikas,” a “fringe minority” conspiracy theorists “with the tinfoil hats.” They “don’t believe in science.” He threatened, “Do we tolerate these people?”  These elitist anti-working class statements echo Hillary Clinton’s dubbing Trump supporters “deplorables.” The hysteria led by Trudeau and the corporate media even reached the point where a Member of Parliament absurdly declared trucker honking of horns meant Heil Hitler. Trudeau’s Big Business dictated covid policies even denied visas to vaccinated Cubans because they had Cuban, not Big Pharma vaccines.

Anti-trucker Leftists Repeat Trudeau’s Smears

Many left criticisms of the truckers follow the rulers’ talking points. For instance, they spread a corporate media cartoon smear, Bryan Palmer’s condemnation of the truckers as a “lumpen” alt-right petty bourgeois protest, as well as anti-war activist Stephen Gowans’ early attack on the Ottawa occupation as “a far-right movement of racists, evangelicals, union-haters, and conspiracy-minded lunatics, inspired and supported by the likes of Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Elon Musk.” Gowans complained the Ottawa police had “done nothing to liberate the city” from what were peaceful protesters.

Rather than refuting the rulers’ smears, many either repeated them or remained silent in face of the onslaught. They, in effect, allied with the imperial state’s attacks on the truckers and their working-class allies. They compounded their error by making only mild objections to the central rightwing feature of the Ottawa occupation: Trudeau using martial law measures to crush peaceful protests – measures which could be used against leftists in the future if we become a social force.

What were some of the distortions so many disseminated in their unwitting role as transmission belts for ruling class propaganda against the truckers?

  1. That the protesters were racists and fascists was repeated over and over. Enough evidence shows this was not a racist protest (and here), It was claimed, with scant evidence, that the protest contained numerous Nazi and Confederate flags. A photo showed a man with a Nazi flag and another one or two with a Confederate flag. One man had the Nazi flag on a long pole underneath a sign on top saying “F*ck Trudeau,” which could mean he was equating Trudeau with Nazis. The person holding a Confederate flag was considered to be a provocateur made to leave the protest. Government agent provocateurs have played a role in other Canadian protests.

Benjamin Dichter, who is Jewish, and key spokesperson for the protest, said “Let’s assume there were guys there who did have a Confederate flag. They believe in the Confederacy of states’ rights in a foreign nation? I don’t care. I’m not here to police people’s ideas.” In a swipe at Trudeau, Dichter added “I want to hear unacceptable opinions because I want to challenge them.”

Another Freedom Convoy leader was Metis, Tamara Lich. Pat King, a fanatic racist in the Nazi mold, was portrayed as convoy leader, but this was denied by the actual leaders (and here).

  1. That the right funded the trucker protest became a key charge. Republicans do fund popular protests to further their aims. So do the Democrats, as the women’s marches testify. A protest bringing out masses of people likely involves corporate political party funding. It is a political mistake to condemn or boycott movements, MeToo, Black Lives Matter, anti-vaccine mandate, or climate change protests because they had corporate donors. To condemn a protest funded by Republican corporate donors, but not those funded by Democratic ones, given these donors serve the same ruling class owners of the US, is a double standard. To do so suggests aligning ourselves with the Democratic (or Liberal) Party faction of the ruling class.

Reports on big rightwing funders of the trucker convoy failed to establish significant dollar contributions. PressProgress gave “a round up of some of the big money donors.” The corporate donors listed contributed merely $67,300 of the $10 million raised. That amounts to less than 1% of the total, showing corporate donors gave very minor support.

GiveSendGo raised another $8.6 million for the protesters. The largest, $215,000 came from an anonymous donor, $90,000 from billionaire Thomas M. Siebel, and $75,000 from another anonymous donor. Even if we assume these three are by big rightwing donors, that amounts to $380,000, 4.4% of the total.

A Washington Post article on donors noted, “Only a handful of contributors gave more than $10,000 apiece,” which does not substantiate corporate and billionaire funding of the protests.

It seems these donations do not include seed money for the Freedom Convoy, but they do show it was no “fringe,” but gained broad support.

The GoFundMe platform raised $10 million dollars for the convoy before being shut down. The reason given was for “violating the platform’s Terms of Service prohibiting the ‘promotion of violence and harassment.’” Yet no protester had been charged with violence. Defenders of civil liberties should have condemned that repression, not approve of it.

  1. That the trucker convoy represented a social fringe is belied simply by some news reports, such as this or this.
  2. Many falsely claimed the Freedom Convoy protesters were anti-vaxxers, pointing out that 90% of Canadian truckers are vaccinated. However, the protesters were united against vaccine mandates, not against vaccines. Benjamin Dichter and Chris Barber, two convoy leaders, said they were not anti-vaxxers but fully vaccinated.
  3. Some asserted the truckers were petty bourgeois owner-operators, therefore not working class, because they owned their instruments of production. Even assuming some of the truckers are in the petty bourgeoisie, that in itself is no reason to condemn a petty bourgeois movement in struggle with the big bourgeoisie.

Aren’t owner-operators among the millions of workers who companies “contract out” to cut labor expenses and increase their profits? Are Uber drivers also middle-class owner operators? Or any worker hired by a business as an “independent contractor”? This new category of atomized workers is a product of the long neoliberal offensive to weaken solidarity among workers.

  1. Many used Trump’s support for the truckers as another reason to condemn it. That makes no more sense than saying if Biden or Trudeau opposes the protest, we should too. This liberal-left fear and loathing of Trump ignores a number of commendable statements he made on issues anti-imperialists advocate for.
  2. Some bolstered their attacks on the truckers by referring to the Teamsters and Canadian Labour Congress. The Canadian Teamsters condemned the trucker convoy as a “despicable display of hate lead by the political Right,” but provided no evidence to back that up. The statement said nothing against the central demands of the protest. The Teamsters represent only 15,000 long haul truck drivers of the 300,000 long haul drivers in Canada.

The Canadian Labour Congress condemned the protest but was also silent on vaccine mandates. “This is not a protest, it is an occupation by an angry mob trying to disguise itself as a peaceful protest.” Of course protesters are angry, otherwise they do not protest. Being angry does not mean you are not peaceful. The CLC adds “This occupation of Ottawa streets…is having a devastating effect on the livelihood of already struggling workers and businesses.” Such statements could be used against the Occupy Movement in 2011, or against Black Lives Matter protests, as Trump did. “Frontline workers, from retail to health workers, have been bullied and harassed.” Yet so was at least one pro-trucker Ottawa store owner bullied and harassed for simply donating to the protest.

True, the Freedom Convoy had no working class demands for government action to ease the hardships workers face. Neither did the CLC or Teamsters, actual workers class organizations with the social and economic weight to have their demands met.

  1. Many followed Trudeau and claimed the convoy organizers were violent and extremists. However, the police reported no physical violence, and none of the protest leaders were arrested for violent acts.

Tamara Lich was charged with ‘counselling for the offense of committing Mischief,” convoy leader Chris Barber for the same charge, plus “counselling to commit the offense of Disobey a Police Order” and “counselling to commit the offense of Obstruct Police.” Pat King was charged with mischief, counselling to commit the offence of mischief, counselling to commit the offence of disobey court order, and counselling to commit the offence of obstruct police.

Many had claimed they were guilty of violence, sedition, and attempting to overthrow a “democratic” government. Here they are, charged with “counseling” mischief (interfering with or destroying someone’s property), telling people to defy a court order or police order. What activists have ever been innocent of these charges?

  1. It was claimed the police had treated the protesters with kid gloves. Maybe. Yet, once the police cracked down, they used horses to trample some protesters. When the 2011 union protesters in Madison Wisconsin seized the Capitol building – not for a day but for weeks – the police were not only letting us enter and exit, but periodically joined the protest (and here). That was no sign that the Madison protests were rightwing, nor did leftists object to their solidarity.

As Caleb Maupin pointed out, liberals and leftists took the Fox News playbook to denounce the Black Lives Matter movement and used the same methods to attack the trucker protest. Those who support Black Lives Matter suddenly were okay with police repression of the Ottawa protests. By favoring government crackdown on peaceful protests, we gave the ruling class rope to hang ourselves with.

Working Class and Rightwing Programs towards Covid and Health care

Being vaccinated protects you from getting very sick if you have underlying conditions but does not protect you from being infected or infecting others. People know that, so resent government vaccine requirements.

Mandates work when applied by governments that put the protection of citizens over the protection of corporate profits – not the case in the United States or Canada. Targeted lockdowns once covid makes its appearance, constant testing of the population, combined with a wide array of public health measures neither Canada nor the US ever instituted, has enabled China to almost eliminate deaths from covid.

China contained covid long before their vaccine was even developed. China provided house to house care for those locked down, constant and widespread testing, as well as relatively free health care for all. As a result, China has had three covid related deaths since January 2021, while the US has had one million.

Nicaragua, which has a free, universal preventive health care system, has by far the lowest covid death rate per million inhabitants of all the Americas, yet never instituted any sort of mandate or lockdown, beyond wearing a mask inside public buildings.

Participate in the Ottawa Protests with Working Class Demands

While the demands of the trucker protest had some merit, the Freedom Convoy leaders were ideologically rightwing. Their view of health care as an individual responsibility does not conflict with the neoliberal model. This benefits those with the privileges and financial resources to handle it.

Our working class view sees the state as the protector of public health, since health is a public issue, not simply a “free” individual’s responsibility.

We missed an opportunity to participate in the Ottawa occupation and organize working class solidarity with our message: government should meet the health and economic needs of the people affected by the pandemic; the government protects big business and big pharma super profits during the pandemic while our standard of living suffers; health care is a community issue and should be a human right. It should focus on prevention, with continuous education of the public, and establish clinics in every neighborhood, cultivating regular interaction between the health workers and the community.

If we fail to help lead workers and popular struggles, we leave the field open for middle class or rightwing leaders. Even the sometimes liberal Nation recognized, “the far-right origins of the protest shouldn’t be an excuse for ignoring the fact it is attracting the support of a segment of the population that doesn’t identify with the far right but does feel economically marginalized and hurt by a pandemic now entering its third year…Those who have sympathy for the convoy tend to be poorer, younger, and less educated.”

Some activists did stand for the working class approach to the Ottawa occupation. Dust James, a trucker, encouraged the left to join the protesters and explain to them that all truckers share a common problem with others: small businesses and workers are being crushed by the larger monopolies, big banks are ripping off all of us.

Richard Wolff said leftists made a serious error by not actively participating in and solidarizing with the trucker protest, showing workers how to use their power to achieve their demands. A struggle to push back against mandates that don’t work can ignite actions against other policies that don’t serve people’s interests. Struggles often begin as a fight against a specific injustice, eventually opening the door to struggles on more fundamental issues.

Leila Mechoui and Max Blumenthal applauded actions by working class people to improve their situation and resist impositions by private and public authorities. The truckers protest scared the rulers because they fear losing their control over who determines how society is run. They don’t want workers thinking they should have some say in societal decision-making. They don’t want workers to start thinking “why should we do what the bosses tell us to do if it doesn’t make sense.”

Richard Wolff and Jimmy Dore emphasized we should be and can be everywhere workers are struggling. “The left should not put itself in a situation where the protesters can lump them together with the authorities as enemies of their struggle, which is the case now.” Here, the left isolated themselves from the working class by attacking the movement as a whole.

Why Many Repeated Ruling Class Liberal Smears of the Truckers

Being an anti-war writer like Stephen Gowans does not mean you have close connections with working class struggles at home. Likewise, many working class fighters do not possess an anti-imperialist outlook.  Unfortunately, working class and anti-war fighters often operate in distinct social and political milieus.

Many have made critiques of the convoy and Ottawa occupation, such as a recent webinar by left intellectuals. Yet the problem we face is that the function of a working class leftwing goes beyond evaluating a movement. Our function should be to create a plan of action to participate in and help lead social struggles in a working class direction through demands that benefit the working classes as a whole. We are not there, nor are we making headway in building the army of working class activists needed to carry it out.

At present, far too many critics of the truckers feel in their heart of hearts that our white working class is full of “deplorables.” That illustrates the current disconnect of leftists from the white working class. Too many feel the working class may be the force that will overthrow capitalism and build a just society, but not with the working class we have. This white working class today is too ignorant, bigoted, backwards, bought-off, too white privileged. If it is not kept in check, things could only get worse.

So, where do they turn for a social power to rotate around for building progressive social change? Often it means to the more enlightened intelligentsia, the more progressive politicians. That leads to the Democratic Party or the Canadian versions: pressure them from the left and build support for them in their struggle against Trumpers. This approach became pronounced as fear of Trumpism grew.

This may explain why many on the left repeated Trudeau’s smears and may be why they – who normally support workers – sided with the government against working people when they organized and protested. Such an approach, if not corrected, leads to more police state repression and an increasingly divided working class confused over where to turn to solve their problems.

 

 

 

 

Mar 27

2022

0

Social Engineering, Whiteness & Aversive Racism

Amnesty International fascism Guarimba Libya Nazis Nicaragua Syria Truckers Protest

The Outrageous Depths to Which the Fallen Left Have Descended

Internationalist 360

February 22, 2022

By Alexandra Valiente

 

Featured Image: Orlando Figuera, beaten, stabbed, and burned alive by “protesters”, gangs of the fascist right-wing in Venezuela – a tragic victim of racist hate crimes during the Guarimbas.

As the dust settles over this fallen country, the faux left continue their psychological warfare operation, spinning narrative in a desperate effort to bolster the crumbling edifice of their fortress of deception. However, their workmanship is flawed, their statements unsubstantiated, porous and weak. No effort on their part can prevent their descent into oblivion. The tide of truth is rising. The dams of collective outrage are bursting.

The depths to which they have descended are astonishing. While attention was focused on immediate events, their evolving narrative grew ever more fantastic. One group of collaborators composed an odious statement, Guarimbas in Canada, where they attempted to garner support for their position through distortion and manipulation. The statement offered lame criticism of the Canadian government, while thoroughly demonizing the protesters, presenting as “facts”, statements from corporate and government-funded media and organizations serving empire, including Amnesty International, government-funded Antihate.ca and the utterly discredited Communist Party of Canada. None of the authors of this statement were actually present at the protests.

None of their statements were based on fact and are contradicted by “on the ground” reporting done by journalists from all sides of the political spectrum (extreme right, moderate right, moderate left, extreme left).

By invoking Guarimbas, they went too far. They mocked and desecrated those who died in that tragic wave of terrorist attacks as they cover for the Nazis that supported Guarimbas – the Canadian government.

I challenge these agents of deception to explain themselves. To account for their lies. Show us the corpses, the bodies of our Black or Indigenous brothers and sisters set on fire, or crucified by protesters in Ottawa! Where were the health clinics and maternity hospitals set ablaze with patients inside? Where are the bodies of those massacred in communes and poor neighborhoods in the night, while their homes burned to the ground? Where were the “white Al Qaeda/White Helmets” mercenaries? Where the flaming barricades? The armed gangs? Where was there evidence of right-wing terrorism in Canada’s protests?

If they have forgotten what happened in Guarimbas, there is an archive of these horrific events on this website.

There are no parallels between the Freedom Convoy protests in Canada and the Venezuelan Guarimbas. The only violence witnessed came from the government of Canada itself, deeply infiltrated by Nazis.

I would like them to explain why they ignored or concealed the multi-ethnic components participating in the protests?

[Source: Instagram]

Why did they ignore all the evidence from those on the ground reporting actual events as they unfolded, who shared the stories of the people?

The lies they have promoted are blatant media crimes, including lies of omission, all in service to the oppressor.

In this, they not only betrayed Canadian workers oppressed under the Trudeau dictatorship, they betrayed Venezuelans.

Another journalist who lost his way during the recent protests, made wonderful contributions to unmasking the Nazis in the Canadian government and military.

He said,  regarding their involvement in destabilization in Venezuela:

“Over the past two decades Ottawa has aligned with fascistic forces there in the hope of overthrowing a leftist government.
Ottawa supported Juan Guaido’s Voluntad Popular (Popular Will), which repeatedly instigated violent protests. Not long after the Democratic Unity Roundtable opposition coalition presidential candidate Henrique Capriles conceded defeat in a contentious election in January 2014, VP leader Leopoldo López launched La Salida (exit/departure) in a bid to oust Nicolas Maduro. VP activists formed the shock troops of “guarimbas” protests that left forty-three Venezuelans dead, 800 hurt and a great deal of property damaged in 2014. Dozens more were killed in a new wave of VP backed protests in 2017. At a blockade that year protesters burnt a 21-young Black man, Orlando Jose Figuera, alive in what was viewed as a racist, political, attack.” [Source]

Assimilate that.

The same government the faux left  provided cover for was behind the atrocities in Guarimbas, whose memory they now invoke to serve a dark purpose.

And let us not forget Canada’s involvement in the Lima Group, their support for the Bolivian dictatorship, for Bolsonaro’s fascist and racist government in Brazil, and in the sanctions and economic warfare against Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.

If we are to be completely truthful, numerous valid comparisons can be found between the violent suppression of protests in Canada and those in Bolivia under the Canadian-backed coup dictatorship.

In that same article, the author describes how

“In Israel the Canadian government supports openly racist and fascistic forces. The Canada Revenue Agency subsidizes groups that promote racial/religious purity and that finance those colonizing the West Bank.”

And let this next truth be widely known, in defiance of the faux left gatekeepers shielding empire. In the Canadian Freedom protests there were Christians, Muslims,  Sikhs and Jews, united on the front lines to oppose the fascists in our government that are participating in the oppression of not only our own people, but many others in nations throughout the world. The multitude of incredible examples of unity terrified the Canadian regime. Does this truth in some way also threaten the faux left that they went to such extreme lengths to conceal it?

The author concludes, saying:

“Most Canadians have little idea that in many places their government actively supports groups that are far more fascistic than the People’s Party of Canada.”

If the faux left genuinely want to attack fascists, let them pursue and expose actual fascists and their criminal networks throughout the world.

I encourage people to search the Internationalist 360° website and the archives documenting the destruction of Libya I have constructed over the last 12 years. There are lessons contained therein that will serve us well today. I have always stood with the oppressed in every field of engagement. I have never deviated in my commitment and dedication to exposing Nazis and fascists – and will continue to do so. I am never confused about who the oppressor is in any situation.

The uprising in Canada is not the first time the “left” betrayed humanity.  During the war against Libya, “academics and intellectuals” of the left supported the destruction of the Libyan Jamahiriyah. They deployed the same tactics as have been seen today: ignored “on the ground” reports, citizen fact-finding missions, and the voices of the Libyan people. In their articles, letters and statements, they referred to and promoted propaganda by the same agencies  – mainstream media, human rights organizations aligned with MI6 and the CIA, and political opposition groups that were funded and backed by foreign governments and linked to international terrorism.  At the time this faction came to be known as the “cruise missile left”.  The war against Libya was not the only time they acted in this fashion. Many of the same left repeated this treachery against Syria.  Before that, they were not opposed to the Arab Spring, or the war against Iraq and Afghanistan. Always their position favored empire’s agenda.

Some analysts have pointed to a remarkable lack of humility and capacity for self-criticism and self-reflection in this faction of the “left”. I can only conclude from what I have observed in the past month from social media comments and articles produced about the uprising in Canada, that they are not acting from confusion, as some have suggested. There appears to be a strategic, willful complicity in the oppression of, and class war against the people, in alignment with fascists. And the defamatory statements made against protesters exercising their legitimate right to dissent were egregious incitements to hatred. This is fifth column phenomenon.

 

[Alexandra Valiente is the editor of Internationalist 360. ]

Further Reading:

 

 

 

Ukraine, International Law, and a Left Worth Wanting

Mar 27

2022

0

Uncategorized

Imperialism NATO Russia Ukraine

Ukraine, International Law, and a Left Worth Wanting

Tortilla con Sal

March 10, 2022

By Stephen Sefton

 

 

Most commentary on Western progressive and radical media on events in Ukraine has failed to acknowledge the right to self-defense of the Russian Federation and its allies the Donetsk and Lugansk Popular Republics. This is one more example of the way North American and European progressive and radical movements collaborate with their ruling classes, just as they generally did over their governments’ repressive economic and social measures addressing Covid-19. The very Western movements claiming to be morally superior to both sides in the Ukraine war, by doing so, aid and abet the US government, its NATO allies and their Nazi sympathizer protegés in Ukraine.

The double standard could hardly be more clear. As distinguished international war crimes specialist Christopher Black notes: “When one takes account of all the factors that governed the Russian decision to send its forces into Ukraine it is clear that in law they had the legal right to do so whereas the United States continues its illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq and Syria to this day and the NATO media powers and governments say nothing, because they are all complicit in those invasions.” Now, Ukrainian military documents retrieved by the Russian authorities have demonstrated conclusively that their intervention preempted a large scale assault by Ukrainian armed forces against Donetsk and Lugansk, planned for early March this year.

So President Vladimir Putin was right to argue his government was acting in self defense in Ukraine after eight years of Ukrainian attacks on Donestk and Lugansk, since, as Christopher Black argues, Article 51 of the UN Charter applies, namely “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.”

Which renders entirely specious the argument of many widely respected left wing commentators like, for example, Ignacio Ramonet that Russia’s action in self defense “is barely even a fig leaf, a barebones legal skeleton to explain away an unjustifiable attack on Ukraine”. The role of Ramonet, like so many similar commentators, is to cover the Left flank of their social democrat and liberal support networks in the European Union and the United States, giving cover for otherwise inexcusable EU and US policies. Such commentators played a practically identical role in 2011 making excuses for Nato countries’ destructive aggression against Libya, Syria and Ivory Coast.

 

This explains why Ramonet’s claim that it is “difficult to understand why the United States did not do more to avoid this conflict in Ukraine” is fundamentally dishonest and false. Self-evidently the Western corporate elites have used the governments they own in North America and Europe to weaken and, if possible, destroy not just the independence and autonomy of the Russian Federation, but that of the European Union too. Western corporate elites will make enormous profits rearming Germany and the rest of Europe, and also Japan, and ensuring that Europe depends on US and allied country energy and food supplies. Turning Europe into a heavily militarized US vassal region prevents the US from losing the extremely lucrative, for now, European markets to Russia and China.

Also self-evident is the fact that commentators like Ignacio Ramonet and others assign completely disproportionate meaning to the recent UN General Assembly vote on the war in Ukraine which was so symbolic as to be practically meaningless. Countries representing an enormous majority of the world’s peoples chose to abstain or simply not take part in the vote. Here is the list of abstentions: Algeria, Angola, Armenia, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Burundi, Central African Republic, China, Congo, Cuba, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, India, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Madagascar, Mali, Mongolia, Mozambique, Namibia, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Senegal, South Africa, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Tajikstan, Uganda, Tanzania, Vietnam and Zimbabwe. Not taking part in the vote were: Azerbaijan, Burkina Faso, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Morocco, Togo, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Venezuela.

So it is completely false to claim that the UN vote in any way at all represented a global condemnation of Russia by the majority of the world’s peoples. This is even more the case because, subsequently, Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey, Brazil and Mexico have all made clear they are unwilling to apply illegal coercive economic and other measures against Russia. Nor is it likely that countries in Latin America and the Caribbean will act to damage their countries’s already fragile economies in the context of global efforts to recover from the effects of measures supposedly addressing Covid-19. These are incontrovertible realities that most Western progressives and radicals seem unwilling to acknowledge.

In turn, this means that what they think is practically irrelevant for the majority world. Very serious and committed anti-imperialist, class conscious writers openly discuss whether any kind of Left worth wanting exists any more in North America and Europe, for example Max Blumenthal and Cory Morningstar or the Black Agenda Report collective. These discussions may well be useful eventually for the cultural, social and political well being of Western countries, but in any case the majority world, despite the evil policies of the US and European ruling elites, will continue working successfully to realize their peoples’ right to a decent life, to their human development and to the sovereign independence of their nations.

[Stephen Sefton is a member of the Tortilla con Sal collective based in Nicaragua.]