Diary of a Walking Butterfly
End the New Jim Crow! Action NetworkStatement Against the U.S.-Israeli War on Gaza
14 November 2012
Read on 15 and 16 November 2012, at screenings of Hip Hop Is Bigger Than The Occupation, in Poughkeepsie, New York
(AUDIO)
As we meet today the state of Israel, funded to the tune of $3 billion U.S. tax dollars worth of military equipment and aid per year, is engaging in a military assault on Gaza City, Palestine, a civilian city with almost a million residents. At the time we penned this statement, at least 15 people had been killed as a result of the assault, including a one-month old toddler and a seven-year-old girl, and over a 100 people had been wounded. The number of dead and wounded is expected to rise if this war is allowed to continue.
Like the racist system of mass incarceration here in the United States, the U.S.-Israeli war on the Palestinian city of Gaza is an example of the gross contradiction between the priorities of the vast majority of humanity who want to live peaceful, dignified lives and the misuse of societal resources by elites that should be used to meet human needs but are instead used for war, bank bailouts, police brutality, and mass incarceration.
The End the New Jim Crow! Action Network (E.N.J.A.N) stands with the Palestinian people in their struggle against war and occupation, and makes the connection between the struggle of the people in Gaza – which M.I.T. professor Noam Chomsky called the “world’s largest open air prison” during his recent trip there – and the struggle of people in the United States fighting the world’s largest prison system.
The U.S. system of mass incarceration directly restricts the movement and liberty of over 2 million people, including over a million African Americans, just as Israel’s occupation restricts the movement and liberty of all Palestinians. It is the same racist system that harasses people of color on the streets of U.S. cities, and whose police and racist vigilantes murdered at least 120 Black people in the first six months of this year. As a network we oppose all forms of racism, including anti-Black racism, Islamophobia, and anti-Semitism, and we make common cause with all those around the world who do the same.
As an organization we demand societal resources be shifted towards jobs, housing, healthcare, and education, both at home and abroad, and away from prisons, war, and occupation.
End the U.S.-Israeli War on Gaza!
Free Palestine!
And End the New Jim Crow Now!
The End the New Jim Crow! Action Network (E.N.J.A.N.)
Campaign Against Mass Incarceration
http://endthenewjimcrow.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/enjanpok
845-475-8781 | enjanhv@gmail.com
Meetings are on the 2nd and 4th Wednesday of the month at the Sadie Peterson Delaney African Roots Library, on the second floor, in the Family Partnership Center, 29 North Hamilton St, Suite 218, Poughkeepsie, New York 12601
“For Marxists the concrete analysis of the concrete situation is not the opposite of ‘pure’ theory; on the contrary, it is the culmination of all genuine theory, its consummation, the point where it breaks into practice.” - György Lukács, Lenin, A Study on the Unity of His Thought
(Source: Wikipedia; click to view full size image)
Here is a picture of the charred remains of the residents of Tokyo after the U.S.’s firebombing campaign of 9-10 March 1945, which killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians and left millions injured and homeless.
Last year in the United States a mere 20 Muslims and Arabs were accused of involvement in terrorist plots or association with terrorists, with few actual plots attempted, with many instances of government entrapment and frame-ups reported in recent years (which must be put in the context of a well-funded government war on Arabs and Muslims, including FBI spying and illegal CIA anti-Muslim programs run in conjunction with local police). Aside from the fact that we can’t trust the racist courts of the 1% in these matters, individual plots – - mostly done out of desperate frustration and retaliation against the most violent and racist imperial power the world has ever seen, and sometimes done at that government’s prompting – - are defined by the ruling class as “terrorism”, yet the incendiary- and atomic-bombing of Japan are praised as bringing “peace”. The interested reader can look to Glenn Greenwald’s excellent writings to better understand how meaningless the term “terrorism” is, and how hypocritical its usage.
Someone recently commented that while the attack on Pearl Harbor (a military target) is mourned and remembered, the U.S. government’s mass murder of millions of Japanese civilians, supposedly to bring about “peace”, are ignored – and when they aren’t ignored, they are praised. Mass murder, racist imperialism, and the promotion of fear through atomic and incendiary firestorms are aren’t called “terrorism”, but rather “peace”. Well, look here. This is capitalist ‘peace’!
“The three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.” – Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor
Some images from Iran. This is the country, like all the countries before it, that the U.S. and its allies want to raze to the ground (click image to go to video page):
A very excellent interview with Tariq Ali, interviewed by David Barsamian, on imperialism, the Arab Spring, and the on-going economic crisis. It will be in the print addition of the International Socialist Review, Issue 81, Jan/Feb 2012. It was posted on International Viewpoint, another excellent Marxist publication comrades should follow if they don’t already.
“So the choice is not whether the proletariat will or will not struggle, but in whose interest it should struggle: its own or that of the bourgeoisie. The question history places before the proletariat is not to choose between war and peace, but between imperialist war and war against this war: civil war. [...]
“With the correct instinct of a habitual ruling class, conscious that the real social basis of its authority narrows as the extent of its rule grows and its power apparatus increases, the bourgeoisie makes the most energetic efforts both to broaden this basis (alignment of the middle class behind it, corruption of the labour aristocracy, etc.), and to defeat its chief enemies decisively before they have organised for real resistance. Thus, it is everywhere the bourgeoisie abolishes ‘peaceful’ means of conducting the class struggle, on the temporary, if highly problematic functioning of which the whole theory of Revisionism was based, and which prefers ‘more energetic’ weapons (one only needs to consider the situation in America). The bourgeoisie increasingly seizes control of the state apparatus, in identifying itself so completely with it that even demands of the working class which appear only to be economic are increasingly blocked by it. Thus, if only to prevent the deterioration of their economic condition, the workers are compelled to take up the struggle against state power (in other words, though unconsciously, the struggle for state power). This forces the proletariat into using the tactics of the mass strike, in the course of which, for fear of revolution, the opportunists are always intent on giving up positions already gained rather than on drawing the revolutionary conclusions from the situation. But the mass strike is by its very nature an objectively revolutionary weapon. Every mass strike creates a revolutionary situation in which the bourgeoisie, supported by its state apparatus, takes the necessary steps against it wherever possible. The proletariat is powerless against such measures. The weapon of the mass strike is also bound to fail against them if the proletariat, faced with the aims of the bourgeoisie, does not also take to arms. This means that it must try to equip itself, disorganise the army of the bourgeoisie – which of course consists mainly of workers and peasants – and turn the weapons of the bourgeoisie against the bourgeoisie. (The 1905 [Russian] Revolution offered many examples of correct class instinct, but only of instinct, in this respect.)
“Imperialist war means the sharpening of this situation to its utmost extremity. The bourgeoisie confronts the proletariat with the choice: either to kill its class comrades in other countries for the monopolistic interests of the bourgeoisie and die for these interests, or to overthrow the rule of the bourgeoisie by force. All other methods of struggle against this wholesale assault are powerless; all without exception would smash themselves against the military apparatus of the imperialist states. If the proletariat wants to escape this ultimate onslaught, it must therefore itself take up arms against this apparatus, undermine it from within, turn the weapons which the bourgeoisie was forced to give the people against the bourgeoisie itself, and use them to destroy imperialism.
“So here too there is nothing theoretically in the least unprecedented. On the contrary, the core of the situation lies in the class relationship between bourgeoisie and proletariat. War is, as Clausewitz defined it, only the continuation of politics; but it is so in all respects. In other words, it is not only in foreign affairs that war is merely the ultimate and most active culmination of a policy which a country has hitherto followed ‘peacefully’. For the internal class relations of a country as well (and of the whole world), it only only marks the intensification and ultimate climax of those tendencies which were already at work within society in ‘peacetime’. Therefore war by no means creates a totally new situation, either for the country or for the class within a nation. What is new about it is merely that the unprecedented quantitative intensification of all problems involves a qualitative change and for this – and only this – reason creates a new situation.” – György Lukács, “Imperialism: World War and Civil War” in Lenin: A Study on the Unity of His Thought.
No, the occupation of Iraq is not over. There are still thousands of private mercenaries, CIA agents, State Department thugs, corporations, etc., in Iraq. Once public utilities are now owned by corporations. There is an embassy in Baghdad that’s the size of Vatican City with nearly 20,000 people in it, including armed agents of the United States. Its good the U.S. couldn’t keep military soldiers in Iraq. But the occupation isn’t over, and won’t be until the mercenaries and armed thugs of imperialism leave Iraq too. That hasn’t happened yet, despite the (3rd? 4th? 5th?) attempt to convince the American public that the war is over.
Ron Paul supports a wide array of horrendously reactionary policies. He is for eliminating birth-right citizenship – an extreme rightwing position which would make it so that children born in the United States to immigrant parents would be denied citizenship. He is for eliminating all social programs and government departments – like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, food stamps, and many other programs which protect working class people, especially racially oppressed groups, from the horrors of unrestrained market capitalism. He is for overturning Roe v. Wade, which would force women to get abortions in back alley chop shops, where many would die, bleed out, and suffer infections, permanent sterility, and extreme pain and agony. He is for deporting all immigrants, including expanding attacks on immigrant Muslims living in the United States. He’s against gay marriage and thinks its immoral. He says states should have the “right” to deny people in love the right to marry. He has had many Neo-Nazis donate to his campaign, and has refused to return donations when this has been exposed. His newsletter has had many white supremacist, racist, sexist, and homophobic comments. He is no friend of working and oppressed people. Ron Paul is a rightwing extremist.
The social function of ideologues like Ron Paul within the capitalist system is to divide working people. If people weren’t divided in United States by ideologues like Paul, Bush, Obama, and institutions like the media, schools, etc. – if we actually talked to each other, discussed, debated, weren’t segregated by race – then there would be no way that the imperialists could get us to support war and oppression. That’s why they divide us, segregate us, teach us to hate each other over petty reasons, instead of recognising our common humanity: because unity is dangerous to the rich who benefit from all of our suffering. There are so many of us and so few of them – and they are scared of that.
Ron Paul’s supposed “anti-imperialism” is just a distraction from his *material support* for imperialism and terror by his efforts to divide and confuse people. He will never be president. But as a Congressperson and rightwing ideologue he is able to promote and vote for all the other policies which divide working people, support imperialism, and further oppression and exploitation.
Rachel Maddow calls for the assassination of Libyan journalists!
“Every day that war went on they were compelled to act in contradiction to the ideals which motivated many of them. Therefore, “victory” was predestined to be a hollow farce, putting an end to killing that never should have been begun, but entrenching white imperialism as the tyrant of the Pacific, and contributing unemployment, slums, and the class hatred to the United States. The American people won half the world and lost their souls.” – Dave Dellinger
“Strike against all ordinances and laws and institutions that continue the slaughter of peace and the butcheries of war. Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought. Strike against manufacturing shrapnel and gas bombs and all other tools of murder. Strike against preparedness that means death and misery to millions of human beings. Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction. Be heroes in an army of construction.” – Hellen Keller, “Strike Against War”, a speech delivered to the Women’s Peace Party in New York, New York, 5 January 1916
“There are things that happen in the world that are bad, and that you want to do something about, and so you have a just cause there. But our culture is so war prone that we immediately rush and make this logical jump from ‘oh this is a good cause, therefore it deserves a war.’ No. You have to be very, very careful in making that jump from ‘oh this is a good cause’ to ‘oh therefore we have to make war to do something about it’.” – Howard Zinn
“It’s not right to respond to terrorism by terrorizing other people. And furthermore, it’s not going to help. Then you might say, ‘Yes, it’s terrorizing people, but it’s worth doing because it will end terrorism.’ But how much common sense does it take to know that you cannot end terrorism by indiscriminately dropping bombs?”
“With the indiscriminate nature of modern military technology (no such thing as a “smart bomb,” it turns out) all wars are wars against civilians, and are therefore inherently immoral. This is true even when a war is considered “just,” because it is fought against a tyrant, against an aggressor, to correct a stolen boundary.” - Howard Zinn (24 August 1922 – 27 January 2010)
“Never again will I whisper in the shadows of intimidation. I am but a symbol of my people’s struggle and a servant to their cause. And if I were to be killed for what I believe in, then let my blood be the beacon for emancipation and my words a revolutionary paradigm for generations to come.”
“Paris, spring of 1937: Pablo Picasso wakes up and reads.
He reads the newspaper while having breakfast in his studio.
His coffee grows cold in the cup.
German planes have razed the city of Guernica. For three hours the Nazi air force chased and machine-gunned people fleeing the burning city.
General Franco insists that Guernica has been set aflame by Asturian dynamiters and Basque pyromaniacs from the ranks of the Communists.
Two years later in Madrid, Wolfram von Richthofen, commander of the German forces in Spain, sits beside Franco at the victory parade: killing Spaniards was Hitler’s rehearsal for his impending world war.
Many years later in New York, Colin Powell makes a speech at the United Nations to announce the imminent annihilation of Iraq.
While he speaks, the back of the room is hidden from view, Guernica is hidden from view. The reproduction of Picasso’s painting, which hangs there, is concealed behind an enormous blue cloth.
UN officials decided it was not the most appropriate backdrop for the proclamation of a new round of butchery.” – Eduardo Galeano, from Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone
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