This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
Defend The
Palestinian People!- No U.S. Aid To Israel!- Down With U.S. Imperialism- No
U.S. Aid To Egypt!- End The Blockade Of Gaza!-All Zionist Troops And Settlers Out
Of The West Bank And East Jerusalem!
*********
150,000 protest in London against Israel’s siege of Gaza
by Paul Bond
11 Aug 2014
( from the World Socialist Web Site - 11 August 2014 )
Saturday saw the largest British demonstration to date against the Israeli military siege of Gaza. People from all over Britain joined the march from the BBC’s headquarters to Hyde Park. The media talked of “tens of thousands” of protestors, but the organisers’ estimate of 150,000 was closer to the mark.
The demonstration, called by eight organisations, including Stop the War Coalition and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), was part of a day of protests internationally against Israeli military attacks on Gaza. At least 50,000 protested in Cape Town, South Africa, while thousands marched in Paris, despite another ban imposed by the French authorities. Demonstrations were also held in Spain and Greece, across Australia, and in Bangalore, India. Protests were also held in the cities of Edinburgh, Manchester and the Irish capital Dublin.
The size of the London protest demonstrated the outrage felt by broad sections of the population at the horrific violence unleashed on Gaza. Protesters chanted, “Free Free Palestine,” and “Brick by brick, Wall by wall, Israeli apartheid has to fall.” There was widespread support for the protest along the route as well, with café staff providing protesters with glasses of water in the heat.
An Israeli embassy spokesman told the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) they “don’t have a problem” with the protest, but then identified the march as supporting terrorism. The spokesman stated they opposed “people expressing support for a terror organisation which is designated in the UK [Hamas] and which today is the key obstacle to the prosperity of Gaza.”
Despite a number of Jewish speakers at the rally, the media still tried to whip up fears of “anti-Semitism” in order to divide Arab and Jewish workers.
The speeches before and after the march revealed the bankrupt perspective of those leading the protests, who seek to corral the growing anger behind attempts to change UK governmental foreign policy through the dead-end of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign. While there was acknowledgement of the scale of war crimes committed by Israeli troops, and calls for an end to the selling of military equipment to Israel, much of the final rally was given to political manoeuvring by the major parties ahead of next year’s general election.
The protest assembled outside the BBC’s headquarters in Portland Place in order to draw attention to the broadcaster’s biased coverage in support of Israel and its discrediting of international protests.
Several speakers, predominantly trade union officials, addressed the crowd before the march, clearly setting out the agenda of the organisers. Speakers from the train drivers’ union ASLEF and Unite called for support for BDS.
Chris Nineham of Stop the War, a former leading member of the pseudo-left Socialist Workers Party (SWP), and Jean Butcher of Unison both pointed to the organisers’ main ambition. In their call for the protest Stop the War had said one of their main aims was the recall of parliament from its holiday. As Stop the War indicated last year in relation to the proposed bombardment of Syria, their intention is increasingly to act as advisers to the British ruling class on questions of foreign policy. Butcher insisted: “our own government” needs to “step up to the mark.”
For his part, Nineham said the developing crisis within the British government over support for Israel, including the resignation of one of the government’s leading figures, Baroness Warzi, would not have happened without the protest movement. Nineham made clear that pursuing this line required the exclusion of any mobilisation of the working class against war. This was a broad movement, he said; “the whole of civil society” demonstrating “people power.”
Lindsey German, convenor of the Stop the War Coalition and another former leading figure in the SWP, said, “We are calling for an end to the massacre and the recall of the UK parliament. Our government must be forced to end its support for Israel’s siege of Gaza.”
Her comments were echoed at the closing rally by Sarah Colbourne of the Public and Commercial Services Union, who spoke of the need to “send a message to our government that we’re disgusted.” They had received support, she said, from “people from every party,” citing support from Liberal Democrats and “even Conservative MPs.” The line was echoed by Labour MP Diane Abbott, who said the protest showed “British people of all colours and all political parties” standing in solidarity.
In the speeches there was only the occasional mention of the imperialist-backed war by the Ukraine government against the population in the east of that country, and the recent US bombing of Iraq. Israel’s onslaught against Gaza was treated by the speakers chiefly as a moral question. Liberal Democrats David Ward MP and life peer Baroness Jenny Tonge spoke, with Ward promoting BDS. Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams sent a statement in which he called on the Irish government to end its “shameful silence” on Palestine.
Leader of the Green Party Natalie Bennett called for ending arms exports to Israel and ending further military cooperation. “That,” she said “is achievable,” saying that Green MP Caroline Lucas had already called for it in Parliament. Bennett summed up the position of the organisers when she called simply for “pressure” on Prime Minister David Cameron.
In their call for the protest Stop the War had written enthusiastically of Labour Party leader Ed Miliband having come out “strongly critical” of Cameron, and Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg “calling for a ceasefire.” The rally was attended by a number of Labour Party MPs—Abbott, Rushanara Ali, Yasmin Qureshi—who were given a platform to call for “pressure” on Cameron. Abbott spelled it out most clearly. Referring to Baroness Warsi’s resignation from Cameron’s cabinet last week, Abbott said the task was to “keep up the pressure until David Cameron takes a position that is morally defensible.”
This call for pressure on the British government as the solution was made under conditions, as the speakers themselves noted, of the hypocrisy of Cameron’s boast of having sent NHS medical teams to tend those wounded by arms exported under British government licence.
Many speakers drew parallels between the situation in Palestine and that under apartheid in South Africa. All of them treated the end of apartheid as a revolutionary victory rather than a tactical manoeuvre by a bourgeoisie trying to maintain its position within global capitalism. Labour supporter Owen Jones said that apartheid had seemed strong and asked “But did it fall?”
Apartheid was removed because it provided an obstacle to the South African ruling class, and threatened a social explosion that might lead towards moves to overthrow capitalism. Today the African National Congress itself is responsible for the policing and brutalisation of the South African working class. The mineworkers union, which collaborated in shooting dead striking miners at Marikana in 2012, belongs to the ANC-affiliated trade union body COSATU, which has been at the forefront of the BDS boycott campaign.
The boycott campaign is based on opposition to winning the Israeli working class to a struggle against the government and war. It obstructs and prevents efforts to build a unified struggle of Jewish and Arab workers against their common oppressors. The Israeli government can sustain its militarist outrages and unrelenting repression of Palestinians only because of the absence of a working class leadership armed with an internationalist and socialist program opposed to Zionism.
The aim of those promoting the BDS campaign is to further the “two-state solution” via the creation of an unviable mini-state that could serve only as a prison for the Palestinians.
The unity of the working class, both Arab and Jewish, was at the centre of the campaign by members and supporters of the Socialist Equality Party, who distributed thousands of copies of the World Socialist Web Site statement, The Slaughter in Gaza: A Warning to the International Working Class. SEP campaigners won a warm response for our call to build an international socialist movement to put an end to capitalism and war.
On August 11, Human Rights Council (HRC) President Baudelaire Ndong Ella announced the formation of an "independent, international commission of inquiry" into war crimes committed during Israel's Operation Protective Edge.
International human rights law expert Professor William Schabas was appointed to chair a three-person panel. His special focus is genocide.
Other members include international law, criminal law, human rights and extradition law expert, Amal Alamuddin, and former UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, Doudou Diene.
Note: According to AP, Alamuddin said she's unable to serve. Expect an alternate appointment to replace her.
The HRC "decided to establish the commission of inquiry at its twenty-first special session on 23 July 2014 to investigate all violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, in the context of the military operations conducted since 13 June 2014, whether before, during or after, to establish the facts and circumstances of such violations and of the crimes perpetrated and to identify those responsible, to make recommendations, in particular on accountability measures, all with a view to avoiding and ending impunity and ensuring that those responsible are held accountable, and on ways and means to protect civilians against any further assaults."
Schabas is a well-known Israeli critic. He praised the Goldstone Committee Operation Cast Lead report. More on it below.
Earlier, he called for putting Netanyahu and former Israeli president Shimon Peres in the dock at the International Criminal Court for committing high crimes too serious to ignore.
Israel failed to influence the commission of inquiry's composition. In response to the appointment of Schbas, Alamuddin, and Diene, it called the panel "biased, misconceived and destructive."
Defrocked and reinstated Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman called HRC a "terrorists' rights council." His spokesman Yigal Palmer added:
"If more evidence was needed to show this, the appointment of the commission’s chairman, whose opinions and positions against Israel are known to all, proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Israel cannot expect justice from such a body, and that the report has already been written and remains only to be signed."
In March 2015, the commission will submit its report. According to HRC President Ella, it's mission is also "to establish the facts and circumstances of (human rights) violations and of the crimes perpetrated and to identify those responsible, to make recommendations, in particular on accountability measures, all with a view to avoiding and ending impunity and ensuring that those responsible are held accountable, and on ways and means to protect civilians against any further assaults."
MSM scoundrels reported little or nothing about the commission's appointment and mission. The New York Times covered it in one long paragraph only with little context.
Pro-Israeli bias is longstanding MSM policy. An attempt to downplay the potential importance of the commission's investigation shows in failure to give it the attention it deserves.
Following Israel's 2008-09 Operation Cast Lead, the HRC appointed the Goldstone "fact-finding mission to investigate international human rights and humanitarian law violations related to the recent conflict in the Gaza Strip."
On September 15, 2009, the HRC released the commission's 575-page report, titled "Human Rights in Palestine and Other Occupied Arab Territories: Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict."
An accompanying press release said "there is evidence indicating serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law were committed by Israel during the Gaza conflict, and that Israel committed actions amounting to war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity.”
Examples included Palestinians shot while waving white flags, arbitrary arrests, extrajudicial assassinations and using Palestinians as human shields.
According to the commission:
"While the Israeli Government has sought to portray its operations as essentially a response to rocket attacks in the exercise of its right of self defence, the Mission considers the plan to have been directed, at least in part, at a different target: the people of Gaza as a whole."
Palestinian rocket and mortar attacks were minor incidents compared to Israel's onslaught.
The Palestinian death toll exceeded 1,400. Thousands were injured.
Israeli aggression amounted to strictly prohibited collective punishment against a civilian population.
It lawlessly targeted residential neighborhoods, schools, hospitals, mosques, public buildings, factories and vital infrastructure.
It violated the principles of "distinction" between combatants and military targets v. civilians and non-military ones, as well as "proportionality" prohibiting disproportionate force likely to cause extensive damage and loss of life.
Commission findings included numerous examples of disproportionate Israeli attacks against civilians with lethal outcomes.
It called them war crimes for being unrelated to justifiable military objectives. It cited "a justice crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Territory that warrants action."
It urged referral to the International Criminal Court for further action.
The Goldstone "report conclude(d) that the Israeli military operation was directed at the people of Gaza as a whole, in furtherance of an overall and continuing policy aimed at punishing the Gaza population, and in a deliberate policy of disproportionate force aimed at the civilian population."
"The destruction of food supply installations, water sanitation systems, concrete factories and residential houses was the result of a deliberate and systematic policy which has made the daily process of living, and dignified living, more difficult for the civilian population."
"Repeatedly, the Israel Defense Forces failed to adequately distinguish between combatants and civilians, as the laws of war strictly require."
"Pursuing justice in this case is essential because no state or armed group should be above the law."
Failure to do so “will have a deeply corrosive effect on international justice, and reveal an unacceptable hypocrisy."
"As a service to hundreds of civilians who needlessly died and for the equal application of international justice, the perpetrators of serious violations must be held to account."
On October 19, 2009, the 47-member HRC approved a resolution endorsing Israeli war crimes charges.
The vote was 25 in favor, six against (including Washington), 11 abstentions and five no-shows.
On September 21, 2010, an HRC statement said:
"It was clear to the Committee that the IDF had not distinguished between civilians and civilian objects and military targets."
"Both the loss of life and the damage to property were disproportionate to the harm suffered by Israel or any threatened harm. Israel's actions could not be justified as self-defense."
"The IDF was responsible for the crime of killing, wounding and terrorizing civilians (as well as) wonton(ly) destr(oying) property and that such destruction could not be justified on grounds of military necessity."
The HRC called IDF crimes so grave, "it was compelled to consider whether (genocide) had been committed." Its conclusion was that Israel "committed war crimes, crimes against humanity and, possibly genocide in the course of Operation Cast Lead."
This writer calls Operation Protective Edge Cast Lead on steroids. The 2008-09 war lasted 22 days - from December 27, 2008 until January 18, 2009.
Israel's current aggression began on July 8. It remains ongoing. Shaky ceasefires interrupted hostilities briefly. A current 72-hour one continues during talks in Cairo aimed at ending conflict conditions.
A previous three-day suspension of accomplished nothing. Both sides remain at impasse. Israel wants all its demands met unconditionally.
It offers virtually nothing in return except empty promises certain to be broken. On Tuesday, Reuters quoted an unnamed israeli official saying no progress was made during current talks.
"The gaps between the sides are big, and there is no progress in the negotiations," he said. Hamas had no comment.
According to Maan News, a partial draft on easing Gaza's siege was drafted. Terms include:
1. Letting Gazans fish up to 12 nautical miles from shore.
2. Increasing daily trucks with imported goods to 250.
3. Increasing the number of monthly permits for Gazans to pass through Erez crossing to 500.
4. Permitting money transfers from the West Bank to Gaza via the PA.
5. Opening the Rafah crossing to Egypt.
6. Freeing released prisoners in exchange for Gilad Shalit later rearrested.
7. According to the Israeli Ynet news site, letting construction materials enter Gaza "under close supervision."
8. Prohibiting construction of a seaport to facilitate imports and exports unless Hamas and other resistance groups agreed to demilitarize.
It's unclear how they'll react to this proposal. It's well short of lifting siege conditions and agreeing to other fundamental Palestinian demands.
It bears repeating what previous articles stressed. Israeli agreements aren't worth the paper they're written on.
Willful violations occur with disturbing regularity. Israel invents reasons to justify the unjustifiable. Whatever comes out of Cairo talks, expect the pattern to repeat this time. Expect long sought justice to be denied.
At the same time, Israel violated ceasefire conditions by using live fire against Palestinian fishermen off southern Gaza's coast. No injuries were reported.
On August 11, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights reported 2,008 Palestinians killed. They include 1,670 civilians (83%): 471 were children; 252 were women.
Another 8,150 Palestinians were wounded, many seriously. Thousands of houses were destroyed or damaged.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forcibly displaced. Israel bombed and shelled their homes and neighborhoods to rubble.
It remains unaccountable for crimes of war and against humanity amounting to genocide. Goldstone's Cast Lead report achieved nothing. Expect justice to be denied again this time.
With Western support and US Security Council veto power, Israel is free to commit high crimes against peace whenever it wishes with impunity.
It takes full advantage. Palestinian liberation remains an unfulfilled distant dream. Maybe some day. Not now.
The End of Iraq - And the Beginning of a New Dark Age -
by Cockburn
12 Aug 2014
Mission accomplished.
by PATRICK COCKBURN
Iraq has disintegrated. Little is exchanged between its three great communities – Shia, Sunni and Kurd – except gunfire. The outside world hopes that a more inclusive government will change this but it is probably too late.
The main victor in the new war in Iraq is the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) which wants to kill Shia rather than negotiate with them. Iraq is facing a civil war that could be as bloody as anything that we have seen in Syria and could go on for years.
The crucial date in this renewed conflict is 10 June, 2014 when Isis captured Iraq’s northern capital, Mosul, after three days’ fighting. The Iraqi government had an army with 350,000 soldiers on which $41.6bn (£25bn) had been spent in the three years from 2011, but this force melted away without significant resistance.
Discarded uniforms and equipment were found strewn along the roads leading to Kurdistan and safety. The flight was led by commanding officers, some of whom rapidly changed into civilian clothes as they abandoned their men. Given that Isis may have had as few as 1,300 fighters in its assault on Mosul this was one of the great military debacles in history.
Within two weeks those parts of northern and western Iraq outside Kurdish control were in the hands of Isis. By the end of the month the group had announced a caliphate straddling the Iraq-Syria border.
People in Baghdad are used to shocks after years of war, massacres, occupation and dictatorship, but when Mosul fell they could feel the ground shifting under their feet. Soon Isis fighters were only an hour’s drive north of a capital in which the streets, normally choked with traffic, grew quiet as people stayed at home because they thought it too dangerous to go out.
This was particularly true of Sunni districts such as al-Adhamiyah on the east bank of the Tigris River, where young men rightly believed that if they passed through a checkpoint they were likely to be arrested or worse. People watched television obsessively, nervously channel-hopping as they tried to tease out the truth from competing propaganda claims.
The sense of crisis was made worse by the main government channel broadcasting upbeat accounts of the latest victories, though the claims were seldom backed up by pictures. “Watch enough government television and pretty soon you would decide there is not a single member of Isis in the country,” said one observer.
The political geography of Iraq was changing before its people’s eyes and there were material signs of this everywhere. OR Book Going RougeBaghdadis cook on propane gas because the electricity supply is so unreliable but soon there was a chronic shortage of gas cylinders because they come from Kirkuk and the road from the north had been cut by Isis fighters. To hire a truck to come the 200 miles from the Kurdish capital Erbil to Baghdad now cost $10,000 for a single journey, compared to $500 a month earlier.
There were ominous signs that Iraqis feared a future filled with violence as weapons and ammunition soared in price. The cost of a bullet for an AK47 assault rifle quickly tripled to 3,000 Iraqi dinars, or about $2. Kalashnikovs were almost impossible to buy from arms dealers, though pistols could still be obtained at three times the price of the previous week. Suddenly, almost everybody had guns, including even Baghdad’s paunchy, white-shirted traffic police who began carrying sub-machine guns.
Many of the armed men who started appearing in the streets of Baghdad and other Shia cities were Shia militiamen, some from Asaib Ahl al-Haq, a splinter group from the movement of Shia populist and nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. This organisation is partly controlled by the Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and, it is generally assumed, by the Iranians. It was a measure of the collapse of the state security forces and the national army that the government was relying on a sectarian militia to defend the capital.
Ironically, one of Maliki’s few achievements as prime minister had been to face down the Shia militias in 2008, but now he was encouraging them to return to the streets. Soon dead bodies were being dumped at night. They were stripped of their ID cards but were assumed to be Sunni victims of the militia death squads. Iraq seemed to be slipping over the edge into an abyss in which sectarian massacres and counter-massacres rivalled those during the sectarian civil war between Sunni and Shia in 2006-07.
The renewed sectarian violence was very visible. There was an appalling video of Iraqi military cadets being machine-gunned near Tikrit by a line of Isis gunmen as they stood in front of a shallow open grave. It reminded me of pictures of the SS murdering Jews in Russia and Poland during the Second World War.
Human rights organisations using satellite pictures said they estimated the number of dead to be 170 though it might have been many more. Shia who were from the Turkoman ethnic group living in villages south of Kirkuk were driven from their homes and between 15 and 25 of them were murdered. It may be that the Shia will react in kind, but so far the killings have largely been of Shia by Isis.
Isis described its military strategy as “moving like a serpent between the rocks”, in other words using its forces as shock troops to take easy targets but not getting dragged into prolonged fighting in which its fighters would be tied down and suffer heavy casualties. It picked off government garrisons in Sunni-majority districts, and in the places it captured it did not necessarily leave many of its militants behind but rather relied on local allies. Many in Baghdad and in governments across the world hoped that these allies of Isis – local tribes and local Sunni leaders – could be persuaded to split from Isis because of its violence and primeval social agenda.
In the refinery town of Baiji local people said that Isis had been going from house to house asking for the names of married and unmarried women, sometimes demanding to see ID cards, which in Iraq specify marital status. They explained they were doing this because their unmarried fighters wanted to have wives. No doubt there will be a negative reaction to this sort of activity from the local Sunni communities, but a movement that is well organised and prepared to kill any opponent will not be easy to challenge.
The rise of Isis and its military successes has led to short-sighted euphoria in Sunni countries. People congratulate themselves that it is no longer only the Shia who are on the offensive. But in practice Isis’s seizure of a leadership position in Syria and Iraq’s communities will most likely prove to be a disaster for them. Isis is being used as a vanguard movement that will not allow itself to be easily displaced and, like the fascists in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, will seek to crush anybody who tries.
The Sunnis have ceded a commanding role to a movement that sees itself as divinely inspired and whose agenda involves endless and unwinnable wars against apostates and heretics. Iraq and Syria can be divided up, but they cannot be divided up cleanly and peacefully because too many minorities, like the million or more Sunni in Baghdad, are on the wrong side of any conceivable dividing line. At best, Syria and Iraq face years of intermittent civil war; at worst, the division of these countries will be like the partition of India in 1947 when massacre and fear of massacre established new demographic frontiers.
The fall of Mosul and the Isis-led Sunni revolt marks the end of a distinct period in Iraqi history that began with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein by the US and British invasion of March 2003. There was an attempt by the Iraqi opposition to the old regime and their foreign allies to create a new Iraq in which the three communities shared power in Baghdad. The experiment failed disastrously and it seems it will be impossible to resurrect it because the battle lines between Kurd, Sunni and Shia are now too stark and embittered.
The balance of power inside Iraq is changing. So too are the de facto frontiers of the state, with an expanded and increasingly independent Kurdistan – the Kurds having opportunistically used the crisis to secure territories they have always claimed – and the Iraq-Syrian border having ceased to exist. The impact of these events is being felt across the Middle East as governments take on board that Isis, an al-Qai’da-type group of the greatest ferocity and religious bigotry, has been able to claim the creation of a Sunni caliphate spanning much of Iraq and Syria.
This book focuses on several critical short- and long-term developments in the Middle East that are affecting or will soon affect the rest of the world. The most important of these is the resurgence of the al-Qa’ida-type movements that today rule a vast area in north and west Iraq and eastern and northern Syria. The area under their sway is several hundred times larger than any territory ever controlled by Osama bin Laden, the killing of whom in 2011 was supposed to be a major blow to world terrorism.
In fact, it is since bin Laden’s death that al-Qa’ida affiliates or clones have had their greatest successes, including the capture of Raqqa in the eastern part of Syria, the only provincial capital in that country to fall to the rebels, in March 2013. In January 2014, Isis took over Fallujah just 40 miles west of Baghdad, a city famously besieged and stormed by US marines 10 years earlier. Within a few months they had also captured Mosul and Tikrit.
The battle lines may continue to change, but the overall expansion of their power appears permanent. With their swift and multi-pronged assault across central and northern Iraq in June 2014, the Isis militants had superceded al-Qa’ida as the most powerful and effective jihadi group in the world.
These developments came as a shock to many in the West, including politicians and specialists whose view of what was happening often seemed outpaced by events. One reason for this was that it was too risky for journalists and outside observers to visit the areas where Isis was operating because of the extreme danger of being kidnapped or murdered. “Those who used to protect the foreign media can no longer protect themselves,” one intrepid correspondent told me, explaining why he would not be returning to rebel-held Syria.
The triumph of Isis in Iraq in 2013-14 came as a particular surprise because the western media had largely stopped reporting the country. This lack of coverage had been convenient for the US and other Western governments because it enabled them to play down the extent to which “the war on terror” had failed so catastrophically in the years since 9/11.
This failure is masked by deceptions and self-deceptions on the part of governments. Speaking at West Point on America’s role in the world on 28 May 28 2014, President Barack Obama said that the main threat to the United States no longer came from al-Qa’ida central but from “decentralised al-Qa’ida affiliates and extremists, many with agendas focused on the countries where they operate.” He added that “as the Syrian civil war spills across borders, the capacity of battle-hardened extremist groups to come after us only increases”.
This was true enough, but Obama’s solution to the danger was, as he put it, “to ramp up support for those in the Syrian opposition who offer the best alternative to terrorists.” By June he was asking Congress for $500m to train and equip “appropriately vetted” members of the Syrian opposition. It is here that self-deception reigns, because the Syrian military opposition is dominated by Isis and by Jabhat al-Nusra (JAN), the official al-Qa’ida representative, in addition to other extreme jihadi groups. In reality, there is no dividing wall between them and America’s supposedly moderate opposition allies.
An intelligence officer from a Middle East country neighbouring Syria told me that Isis members “say they are always pleased when sophisticated weapons are sent to anti-Assad groups of any kind because they can always get the arms off them by threats of force or cash payments.” Western support for the Syrian opposition may have failed to overthrow Assad, but it was successfully destabilising Iraq, as Iraqi politicians had long predicted.
The importance of Saudi Arabia in the rise and return of al-Qa’ida is often misunderstood and understated. Saudi Arabia is influential because its oil and vast wealth make it powerful in the Middle East and beyond. But it is not financial resources alone that make it such an important player. Another factor is its propagating of Wahhabism, the fundamentalist 18th-century version of Islam that imposes sharia law, relegates women to second-class citizens, and regards Shia and Sufi Muslims as heretics and apostates to be persecuted along with Christians and Jews.
This religious intolerance and political authoritarianism, which in its readiness to use violence has many similarities with European fascism in the 1930s, is getting worse rather than better. A Saudi who set up a liberal website on which clerics could be criticised was recently sentenced to a thousand lashes and seven years in prison.
. Critics of this new trend in Islam from elsewhere in the Muslim world do not survive long; they are forced to flee or murdered. Denouncing jihadi leaders in Kabul in 2003, an Afghan editor described them as “holy fascists”, who were misusing Islam as “an instrument to take over power”. Unsurprisingly, he was accused of insulting Islam and had to leave the country.
A striking development in the Islamic world in recent decades is the way in which Wahhabism is taking over mainstream Sunni Islam. In one country after another Saudi Arabia is putting up the money for the training of preachers and the building of mosques. A result of this is the spread of sectarian strife between Sunni and Shia. The latter find themselves targeted with unprecedented viciousness from Tunisia to Indonesia. Such sectarianism is not confined to country villages outside Aleppo or in the Punjab, it is poisoning relations between the two sects in every Islamic grouping. A Muslim friend in London told me: “Go through the address books of any Sunni or Shia in Britain and you will find very few names belonging to people outside their own community.”
The resurgence of al-Qa’ida-type groups is not a threat confined to Syria, Iraq, and their near neighbours. What is happening in these countries, combined with the increasing dominance of intolerant and exclusive Wahhabite beliefs within the worldwide Sunni community, means that all 1.6 billion Muslims, almost a quarter of the world’s people, will be increasingly affected. Furthermore, it seems unlikely that non-Muslim populations, including many in the West, will be untouched by the conflict. Today’s resurgent jihadism, which has shifted the political terrain in Iraq and Syria, is already having far-reaching effects on global politics with dire consequences for us all.
In The 74th Anniversary Year Of The Assassination Of Great Russian Revolutionary Leon Trotsky A Tribute- DEFEATED, BUT UNBOWED-THE WRITINGS OF LEON TROTSKY, 1929-1940
LEON TROTSKY AND THE FIGHT TO SAVE THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION, PART I
BOOK REVIEW
THE CHALLENGE OF THE LEFT OPPOSITION (1923-25), LEON TROTSKY, Pathfinder Press, New York, 1975
If you are interested in the history of the International Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the communist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. This book is part of a continuing series of volumes in English of the writings of Leon Trotsky, Russian Bolshevik leader, from the start in 1923 of the Left Opposition in the Russian Communist Party that he led through his various exiles up until his assassination by a Stalinist agent in 1940. These volumes were published by the organization that James P. Cannon, early American Trotskyist leader founded, the Socialist Workers Party, in the 1970’s and 1980’s. (Cannon’s writings in support of Trotsky’s work are reviewed elsewhere in this space) Look in this space for other related reviews of this series of documents on and by this important world communist leader.
Since the volumes in the series cover a long period of time and contain some material that , while of interest, is either historically dated or more fully developed in Trotsky’s other separately published major writings I am going to organize this series of reviews in this way. By way of introduction I will give a brief summary of the events of the time period of each volume. Then I will review what I believe is the central document of each volume. The reader can then decide for him or herself whether my choice was informative or not.
Although there were earlier signs that the Russia revolution was going off course the long illness and death of Lenin in 1924, at the time the only truly authoritative leader the Bolshevik party, set off a power struggle in the leadership of the party. This fight had Trotsky and the ‘pretty boy’ intellectuals of the party on one side and Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev (the so-called triumvirate).backed by the ‘gray boys’ of the emerging bureaucracy on the other. This struggle occurred against the backdrop of the failed revolution in Germany in 1923 and which thereafter heralded the continued isolation, imperialist blockade and economic backwardness of the Soviet Union for the foreseeable future.
While the disputes in the Russian party eventually had international ramifications in the Communist International, they were at this time fought out almost solely with the Russian Party. Trotsky was slow, very slow to take up the battle for power that had become obvious to many elements in the party. He made many mistakes and granted too many concessions to the trio. But he did fight. Although later (in 1935) Trotsky recognized that the 1923 fight represented a fight against the Russian Thermidor (from an analogy with the period of the French Revolution where the radical regime of Robespierre and Saint Just was overthrown by more moderate Jacobins) and thus a decisive turning point for the revolution that was not clear to him (or anyone else on either side) then. Whatever the appropriate analogy might have been Leon Trotsky was in fact fighting a last ditch effort to retard the further degeneration of the revolution. After that defeat, the way the Soviet Union was ruled, who ruled and for what purposes all changed. And not for the better.
The most important document in this volume is clearly and definitely Trotsky’s Lessons of October. Although there are a couple of other documents of interest- The New Course, his program to try to bring the agrarian and the industrial crisis into focus-and The Problems of Civil War- Trotsky’s contribution to the so-called “literary discussion” in the party far outdistances those documents in importance. When this document hit the press there was definitely gnashing of teeth by the ruling trio in the Kremlin- Why? Lessons of October is essentially a polemic against fainted-hearted, opportunist failure to appreciate both the rarity of a revolutionary moment and the necessity to have a sharp combat- tested organization to take advantage of that situation. Moreover, this polemic was a direct attack on Zinoviev and Kamenev for their position against insurrection at the time of revolution and on Stalin’s March, 1917 call for political support to the bourgeois Provisional Government.
George Bernard Shaw once called Trotsky the “Prince of Pamphleteers” and he certainly earns that title in Lessons of October. Alas, those who write the best polemics do not necessarily win the power. Those 200,000 plus politically immature or careerist new party members beholding to the increasingly Stalinist bureaucracy drafted under the “Lenin Levy” saw the writing on the wall differently. That was decisive. Nevertheless, Lessons of October is not just any political document- it is an essential document for the education of today’s militants. It bears reading, re-reading, and reading again. I know I always get something new out of it each time I read it. *********
In Honor Of Leon Trotsky On The 74th Anniversary
Of His Death- For Those Born After-Ivan Smirnov’s Journey
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
Ivan Smirnov came out of old Odessa town, came out of the
Ukraine (not just plain Ukraine like now but “the” then), the good black earth
breadbasket of Russian Empire, well before the turn of the 20th
century (having started life on some Mister’s farm begotten by illiterate but
worthy and hard-working peasant parents who were not sure whether it was 1880
or 1881 and Mister did not keep very good records up in the manor house)
although he was strictly a 20th century man by habits and
inclinations. Fashioned himself a man of the times, as he knew it, by
developing habits favored by those who liked to consider themselves modern. Those
habits included a love of reading, a love of and for the hard-pressed peoples
facing the jack-boot (like his struggling never- get-ahead parents) under the
Czar’s vicious rule, an abiding hatred for that same Czar, a hunger to see the
world or to see something more than wheat fields, and a love of politics, what
little expression that love could take even for a modern man stuck in a
backward country.
Of course Ivan Smirnov, a giant of a man, well over six
feet, more like six, two, well-build, solid, fairly muscular, with the Russian
dark eyes and hair to match, when he came of age also loved good food when he
had the money for such luxuries, loved to drink shots of straight vodka in
competition with his pals, and loved women, and women loved him. It is those
appetites in need of whetting that consumed his young manhood, his time in
Odessa before he signed on to the Czar’s navy to see the world, or at
leastbrush the dust of farmland Ukraine
and provincial Odessa off his shoes as the old saying went. Those loves trumped
for a time his people love (except helping out his parents with his wages), his
love of liberty but as we follow Ivan on his travels we will come to see that
those personal loves collided more and more with those larger loves.
So as we pick up the heart, the coming of age, coming of
political age, Ivan Smirnov story, he was no kid, had been around the block a
few times. Had taken his knocks on the land of his parents (really Mister’s
land once the taxes, rents, and dues were taken out) when he tried to organize,
well, not really organize but just put a petition of grievances, including the
elimination of rack-rents to Mister which was rejected out of hand and which
forced him off the land. Forced him off under threat to his life. He never
forgot that slight, never. Never forgot it was Mister and his kind that took
him away from home, split his family up. So off he went to the city, and from
there to the Black Sea Fleet and adventure, or rather tedium mixed with
adventure and plenty of time to read.
Ivan also learned up close the why and wherefores of modern
warfare, modern naval warfare. Knew too that come some minor confrontation the
Czar’s navy was cooked.As things worked
out Ivan had been in the Russian fleet that got its ass kicked by the Japanese
in 1904 (he never called them “Nips” like lots of his crewmates did not after
that beating they took that did not have to happen if the damn Czar’s naval
officers had been anything but lackeys and anything but overconfident that they
could beat the Johnny-come-lately Japanese in the naval war game). And so Ivan
came of war age and political age all at once.
More importantly after that debacle he applied for, and had
been granted a transfer into in the Baltic fleet, the Czar’s jewel and
defending of citadel Saint Petersburg, headquartered at later famous Kronstadt when the revolution of 1905 came thundering
over their heads and each man, each sailor, each officer had to choice sides. Most
seaman had gone over the rebels or stood on the sidelines, the officers mainly
played possum with the Czar. He had gone wholehearted with rebels and while he
did not face the fate of his comrades on the Potemkin his naval career was over. That was where his love of
reading from an early age came in, came and made him aware of the boiling
kettle of political groupings trying to save Russia or to save what some class
or part of a class had an interest in saving Russia for their own purposes. He
knew, knew from his dismal experience on the land, that Mister fully intended
to keep what was his come hell or high water. He also knew that Mister’s
people, the peasantry like his family would have a very hard time, a very hard
time indeed bucking Mister’s interests and proclaiming their own right to the
land all by themselves. Hadn’t he also been burned, been hunted over a simple
petition.
So Ivan from the first dismissed the Social Revolutionary
factions and gave some thought to joining the Social Democrats. Of course being
Russians who would argue over anything from how many angels could fit on the
head of a needle to theories of capitalist surplus value that party
organization had split into two factions (maybe more when the dust settled).
When word came back from Europe he had sided with the Mensheviks and their more
realistic approach to what was possible for Russia in the early 20th
century. That basic idea of a bourgeois democratic republic was the central
notion that Ivan Smirnov held for a while, a long while, and which he took in
with him once things got hot in Saint Petersburg in January of 1905.
That was why he had
discarded the Social Revolutionaries so quickly when in an earlier generation
he might very well have been a member of People’s Will or some such
organization. No, his intellectual crisis did not come from that quarter but
rather that split in the workers’ party which had happened in 1903 far from
Russia among the émigré intellectuals around who was a party member. He had
sided with the “softs,” the Mensheviks, mainly because he liked their leader,
Julius Martov, better than Lenin. Lenin and his faction seemed more intent
on gaining organizational control, had more hair-splitters which he hated, and
were more [CL1]wary of the peasants
even though both factions swore faith in the democratic republic for Russia and
to the international social democracy. He had sided with the “softs” although
he saw a certain toughness in the Bolshevik cadre that he admired. But that
year, that 1905 year, had started him on a very long search for revolutionary
direction.
The year 1905 had started filled with promise after that first
blast from the Czarist reaction. The masses were able to gather in a Duma that
was at least half responsible to the people, or to the people’s
representatives. At least that is what those people’s representatives claimed.
More importantly in the working class districts, and among his fellow sailors
who more likely than not, unlike himself, were from some strata of the working
class had decided to set up their own representative organs, the workers’
councils, or in the Russian parlance which has come down in thehistory books the soviets. These in 1905,
unlike in 1917, were seen as supplementary to other political organizations. As
the arc of the year curved though there were signs that the Czarist reaction
was gathering steam. Ivan had trouble organizing his fellow sailors to action.
The officers of his ship, The Falcon,
were challenging more decisions. The Potemkin
affair brought things to a head in the fleets. Finally, after the successes of
the Saint Petersburg Soviet under the flaming revolutionary Leon Trotsky that
organ was suppressed and the reaction set in that would last until many years
later, many tough years for political oppositionists of all stripes. Needless
to say that while Ivan was spared the bulk of the reprisals once the Czarist
forces regained control his career in the navy was effectively finished and
when his enlistment was up he left the service.
Just as well Ivan that things worked out as they did he had thought
many times since then because he was then able to come ashore and get work on
the docks through some connections, and think. Think and go about the business
of everyday life like marriage to a woman, non-political but a comfort, whom he
met through one of his fellow workers on the Neva quay and who would share his
home and life although not always understanding that part of his life or him
and his determination to break Russia from the past. In those days after 1905,
the dogs days as everybody agreed, when the Czar’s Okhrana was everywhere and
ready to snatch anyone with any oppositional signs Ivan mostly thought and
read, kept a low profile, did as was found out later after the revolution in
1917, a lot of low-level underground organizing among the dockworkers and
factory workers of the Vyborg district. In other words developing himself and
those around him as cadre for what these few expected would be the great awakening.
But until the break-out Lena River gold-workers strike in 1912 those were
indeed dog days.
And almost as quickly as the dog days of the struggle were
breaking the war clouds over Europe were increasing. Every civilized nation was
arming to the teeth to defend its civilization against the advancing hordes
pitched at the door. Ivan could sense in his still sturdy peasant-bred bones that
that unfinished task from 1905, that fight for the land and the republic, hell
maybe the eight hour day too, was going to come to a head. He knew enough too about
the state of the navy, and more importantly, the army to know that without some
quick decisive military action the monarchy was finished and good riddance. The
hard part, the extremely hard part, was to get those future peasant conscripts
who would provide cannon fodder for the Czar’s ill-thought out land adventures
to listen up for a minute rather than go unknowingly head-long into the Czar’s
arm (the father’s arms for many of them). So there was plenty of work to do.
Ivan just that moment was glad that he was not a kid.Glad he had learned enough to earn a hearing,
to spread the word.
As the war clouds came to a head after the killing of the
archduke in bloody damn Sarajevo in early summer 1914 Ivan Smirnov knew in his
bones that the peasant soldier cannon fodder as always would come flocking to
the Czar like lemmings to the sea the minute war was declared. Any way the deal
was cut the likely line-up of the Czar with the “democracies” of the West,
Britain and France and less likely the United States would immediately give the
Czar cover against the villainies of the Huns, of the Germans who just the other
day were propping up the Czar’s treasury. It could not end well. All Ivan hoped
for was that his party, the real Social-Democrats, locally known as the
Mensheviks from the great split in 1903 with the Bolsheviks and who had
definitely separated from that organization for good in 1912, would not get war
fever just because the damn Czar was lined up with the very democracies that
the party wished to emulate in Russia.
He knew too that the talk among the leadership of the
Bolsheviks (almost all of them in exile and thus far from knowing what was
happening down in the base of society at home) about opposing the Czar to the
bitter end, about fighting in the streets again some said to keep the young
workers and the peasants drifting into the urban areas from the dead-ass farms
from becoming cannon-fodder for a lost cause was crazy, was irresponsible.
Fortunately some of the local Bolshevik committee men in Russia and among their
Duma delegation had cooler heads. Yea this was not time to be a kid, with kid’s
tunnel vision, with great events working in the world.
Jesus, thought Ivan once the Czar declared his allegiance to
the Entente, once he had gotten the Duma to rubber-stamp his war budget (except
for a remnant of the Bolsheviks who were readied for Siberian exile), he could
not believe that Plekhanov, the great Plekhanov, the father of the Marxist
movement in Russia and mentor to the likes of Lenin, Martov, Dan, hell even
flea-bitten free-lancer Trotsky, had declared for the Czar for the duration and
half of Ivan’s own bloody Menshevik party had capitulated (the other half, the
leadership half had been in exile anyway, or out of the country for some
reason) this was going to be hell.
There would be no short war here, no quick victory over the
land hungry Huns, nothing but the stench of death filling the air overcoming
all those mobilization parades and the thrown flowers, the kissed girls, the
shots of vodka to fortify the boys for the run to the front. The Czar’s house,
double eagles and all was a house of cards or rather of sawdust like those
villages old rascal Potemkin put up to fool Catherine in her time. Most of the
peasant boys marching to the front these days would never see Mother Russia
again, never get to smell the good Russian earth. Yes but if he had anything to
say about it those who survived, those who would have to listen if not now ten
sometime, would have their own piece of good Russian earth unlike their fathers
who toiled on the land for Mister’s benefit for nothing. And went to early graves
like his father.
And so in the summer of 1914 as if led by blinders Europe,
along with solid phalanxes of its farm boys and factory workers, went to bloody
stalemated war.
Went without Ivan just that minute declared too old to fight
and relegated to the home guard. There would come a day, a day not too long in
the future when the “recruiting sergeants” would be gobbling up the “too old to
fights,” like Ivan the lame and the halt, any man breathing to fill the
depleted trenches on the Eastern front. By then though Ivan would have already
clamored to get into the ranks, get in to spread the new wave message about the
meaningless of the fight for the workingman and the peasant and that the fight
was at home not out in the trenches. But that was for the future, the music of
the future. Ironically Ivan’s unit wound up guarding the Peter Paul Fortress
for the Czar. The same place that would
see plenty of action when the time for action came.
The home guard was a loose operation, especially in Saint
Petersburg, which entailed not much more than showing up for guard duty when
the rotation called your turn and an occasion drill or assembly. The rest of
the time, or most of it, Ivan spent reading, reading clandestinely the sporadic
anti-war materials that were being smuggled in from various point in Europe by
whatever still free exiles groups had enough gall and funds to put together
those first crude sheets proclaiming the new dispensation. Ivan had time to
think too during those first eighteen months or so of war. Thought about how
right he had been that this “glorious little war” would not be over soon, would
devour the flower of the European youth and if enough lived long enough chance
the face of half-monarchial Europe. Thought about how, when, and where street organizers
like him (he admitted long ago that he was not a “theory man” would get an
opening to speak to the troops in order to end the mounting slaughter and the
daily casualty lists.
Ivan through all of early 1916 thought too that things
within his own Menshevik organization needed serious upgrading, needed to be
readied if the nation was to turn from semi-feudal monarchy to the modern
republic which would provide the jumping off point to agitate for the social
republic of the organization’s theory, and of his youthful dreams. Although he
was no theory man he was beginning to see that the way the bourgeoisie, native
and foreign, lined up it was as likely as not that they would not follow
through, would act even worse than in 1905 when they went hat in hand with the
Czar for the puny no account Duma and a few reforms that in the end only
benefitted them to the exclusion of the masses. He began to see Lenin’s point,
if it was Lenin’s and not some Okhrana forgery, that the new parties, the
parties that had not counted before, the peasant and worker parties, would have
to lead the way. There was no other way. And no, no thank you he was not a
Trotsky man, a wild man who believed that things had changed some much in the
20th century that the social republic for Russia was on the agenda
right away. No, he could not wrap his head around that idea, not in poor, not
in now wounded and fiercely bleeding and benighted Mother Russia. Beside
Trotsky was living off his reputation in the 1905 revolution, was known to be
mightier with the pen than the sword and a guy whom the main leadership of the
Mensheviks thought was a literary dilettante (strange characterization though
in an organization with plenty of odd-ball characters who could not find a home
with the Bolsheviks and were frightened to death of working with the mass
peasant parties being mostly city folk).
He thought too about the noises, and they were only noises
just then, exile noises mostly that the Bolsheviks had had a point in opposing
the war budget in the Duma, those who had not deserted the party for the Czar
in the patriotic build-up, and who had been sent to Siberia for their
opposition. He admired such men and knew slightly one of the deportees who had
represented one of the Vyborg worker districts in the capital the Duma. Now
word had come back from Europe that a small congress held in some no-name
village in the Alps (Zimmerwald in Switzerland as he later found out) had
declared for international peace among the workers and oppressed of all nations
and that it was time to stop the fighting and bleeding. More ominously Lenin
and his henchmen had come out for waging a civil war against one’s own
government to stop the damn thing, and to start working on that task now. Worse
Lenin was calling for a new international socialist organization to replace the
battered Socialist International.To
Ivan’s practical mind this was sheer madness and he told whatever Bolshevik
committeemen he could buttonhole (in deepest privacy since the Czarist
censorship and his snitches were plentiful).In Ivan’s mind they were still the wild boys, seemingly on principle,
and he vigorously argued with their committeemen to keep their outlandish anti-war
positions quiet for now while the pro-war hysteria was still in play. But deep
down he was getting to see where maybe the Bolsheviks, maybe Lenin, hell maybe
even goof Trotsky were right-this war would be the mother of invention for the
next revolutionary phase.
The Czar has abdicated, the Czar has abdicated, the new
republic is proclaimed! The whirl of early 1917 dashed through Ivan Smirnov’s
head. A simple demonstration and strike by women in the capital after the
bloodletting of over two years of war, after the defeats of 1905 and later
showed the monarchy, the now laughable double-eagle monarchy that held the
masses in thrall for centuries was shown to be a house of cards, no, less, a
house of sawdust blown away with the wind. While Ivan had not caught the early
drift of the agitation and aggravation out in the worker neighborhoods he had
played an honorable part in the early going. And the reason that Ivan had
missed some of the early action was for the simple reason that Ivan’s home
guard unit, the 27th Regiment, had been mobilized for the Silesian
front in early 1917 and had been awaiting orders to move out when all hell
broke loose.
This is where the honorable part came in. The 27th
Regiment had been fortified to a division with remnants of other front-line
divisions whose casualty levels were so high that they were no longer
effectively fighting units. As the units meshed and the action in the capital
got intense two quick decisions needed to be made by the 27th –would
the unit go to the front as ordered by the General Staff and subsequently would
the unit still stationed in Saint Petersburg defend the Czarist monarchy then
in peril. Now this new unit, this of necessity haphazard and un-centered unit,
was made up of the likes of Ivan (although none so political or known to be
political) and of disillusioned and bedraggled peasant boys back from the front
who just wanted to go home and farm the land of their fathers, for Mister or
for themselves it did not matter. And that is where Ivan Smirnov, of peasant
parents born, came center stage and made his mark. Ivan when it came time to
speak about whether they would go to the front argued that going to the front
meant in all probability that if they went that they would farm no land,
Mister’s or their own since they would be dead. And some other peasant boy
would come along to farm the ancient family lands. Ivan did not need to evoke
the outlandish theories of Lenin and Trotsky about civil war and the social
republic but just say that simple statement and the unit voted almost
unanimously to stay in the capital (those who did not go along as always in
such times kept quiet and did not vote to move out). Of course as always at
such times as well Ivan’s good and well-earned reputation among the home guard
members for prudent but forceful actions when the time was right helped carry
the day. That reputation, borne of many years of street organizing and other
work, also came in handy when the 27th was ordered to defend the
Czar in the streets. Again Ivan hammered home the point that there would be no
land, no end of the bloody war, no end of dying in some forsaken trenches if
the Czar stayed. The 27th would not defend the Czar to the death
(again the doubters and Czarist agents kept mum).
And for Ivan’s honorable service, for his honorable past,
when it came time to send delegates to the soviet, or the soldiers’ section of
the soviet (the other two sections being the workers and the peasants with
everybody else who adhered to the soviet concept filling in one of those three
sections) Ivan was unanimously elected to represent the 27 Regiment. Now this
soviet idea (really just Russian for council, workers councils mainly) was
nothing new, had been created in the heat of the 1905 revolution and had been
in the end the key governmental form of the opposition then. Now with the Czar
gone (and as our story moves on the government is in non-Czarist agents hands)
there were two centers of power- the bourgeois ministry (including representatives
of some worker and peasant parties) and the soviets acting as watchdogs and
pressure groups over the ministry. As Russian spring turned to summer Ivan from
his post in the Soviet saw some things that disturbed him, saw that “pretty boy”
Trotsky (who had just gotten back from American exile as had Lenin a bit earlier)
and now damn Lenin had begun to proclaim the need for the social republic right
then. Not in some few years future but then. But he was also disturbed by the
vacuous actions of his Mensheviks on the land question and on social legislation.
As the summer heat came Ivan began to see that defending the people’s
revolution was tough business and that some hard twists and turns were just
waiting ahead for him.
Free Chelsea Manning - President Obama Pardon Chelsea Manning Now!
July 30, 2014 by the Chelsea Manning Support Network
One year after Chelsea Manning’s conviction, Amnesty International is still calling on the US government to grant her clemency. Amnesty demands that Chelsea be freed immediately, and for the US government to, “implement a thorough and impartial investigation into the crimes she uncovered.” Read the full statement from Amnesty International below or click here to view it on amnesty.org:
Exactly one year after Chelsea Manning was convicted of leaking classified government material, Amnesty International is renewing its call on the US authorities to grant her clemency, release her immediately, and to urgently investigate the potential human rights violations exposed by the leaks.
Chelsea Manning has spent the last year as a convicted criminal after exposing information which included evidence of potential human rights violations and breaches of international law. By disseminating classified information via Wikileaks she revealed to the world abuses perpetrated by the US army, military contractors and Iraqi and Afghan troops operating alongside US forces.
“It is an absolute outrage that Chelsea Manning is currently languishing behind bars whilst those she helped to expose, who are potentially guilty of human rights violations, enjoy impunity,” said Erika Guevara Rosas, Americas Director Amnesty International.
“The US government must grant Chelsea Manning clemency, order her immediate release, and implement a thorough and impartial investigation into the crimes she uncovered.”
After being convicted of 20 separate charges Chelsea Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison, much longer than other members of the military convicted of charges such as murder, rape and war crimes.
Before her conviction, Chelsea Manning had already been held for three years in pre-trial detention, including 11 months in conditions which the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture described as cruel and inhumane.
Chelsea Manning has always maintained that her motivation for releasing the documents to Wikileaks was out of concern for the public and to foster a meaningful debate on the costs of war and the conduct of the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Notable amongst the information revealed by Private Manning was previously unseen footage of journalists and other civilians being killed in US helicopter attacks.
“The US government appears to have its priorities warped. It is sending a worrying message through its harsh punishment of Chelsea Manning that whistleblowers will not be tolerated. On the other hand, its failure to investigate allegations that arose from Chelsea Manning’s disclosures means that those potentially responsible for crimes under international law, including torture and enforced disappearances, may get away scot-free,” said Erika Guevara.
“One year after the conviction of Chelsea Manning we are still calling on the US government to grant her clemency in recognition of her motives for acting as she did, and the time she has already served in prison.”
Amnesty International has previously expressed concern that a sentence of 35 years in jail was excessive and should have been commuted to time served. The organization believes that Chelsea Manning was overcharged using antiquated legislation aimed at dealing with treason, and denied the opportunity to use a public interest defence at her trial.
In addition, there is little protection in US law for genuine whistleblowers, and this case underlines the need for the US to strengthen protections for those who reveal information that the public has the right to know.
It is crucial that the US government stops using the Espionage Act to prosecute whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning.
No New U.S. War In Iraq- Immediate Withdrawal Of All U.S. Troops And Mercenaries!Stop The Bombing!
Workers and the oppressed have no interest in a victory by one combatant or the other in the reactionary Sunni-Shi’ite civil war. However, the international working class definitely has a side in opposing imperialist intervention in Iraq and demanding the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops and mercenaries. It is U.S. imperialism that constitutes the greatest danger to the world’s working people and downtrodden.
