by Carlos A. Rivera-Jones

Richard Aoki (1938-2009) was a Japanese-American revolutionary.  He grew up in a WW2 internment camp, then became a street hoodlum and was forced to join the military to clear his criminal record. He later became connected with the Communist Party, the Socialist Worker’s Party, before ultimately becoming an influential leader in the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and the Third World Liberation Front. These groups were critical components of the civil rights struggles in the late 1960s in the USA, and in particular the Bay Area of California, a hotbed of radicalism at the time.

Aoki’s military training, access to weapons, ethnic origin, and charisma, were critical components in the development of the practice of the Black Panthers, its views on internationalism, its views on armed struggle, and its approach to ethnic groups other than Black Americans. He helped shaped the Black Panthers into something more than just a black nationalist formation, but rather an anti-imperialist, internationalist formation.

Recently, he has been alleged to have been a long time informant of the FBI.

Aoki was a symbol of uncompromising anti-imperialist internationalism, a political line that remains as valid now as it was then, and remains equally dangerous to the State and to those that defend imperialism and oppose national liberation. On the right, the defense of white supremacy and empire is of importance, and in the left, self-ghettoization and the pacifist liberalism of identity politics find an advantage in the pushing of this myth of Aoki-as-agent. Even on the left that is not identitarian or pacifist there are already sectarian rumbles, full of the wounds of another era, that take advantage of the uncertainty to promote sectarian explanations for Aoki’s move from Trotskyism to a form of Third Worldism – a view that the revolutionary moment was focused on the peoples of the Third World.

To cast him in the light of a snitch shakes the very foundations of one of the most important, successful, and tragic examples of revolutionary organizing in the second half of the 20th century in the USA. It opens wounds of anti-Asian bigotry among Black revolutionaries, questions the internationalist instincts of the BPP, and in general pushes the ever present question of a security culture to the forefront. It also forces us to revisit COINTELPRO (a covert and often illegal program run by the FBI to disrupt radical movements), and its current incarnations as an existing force, rather than a painful memory of a long-gone era.

“Snitch Jacketing” is a classic counter-intelligence practice, in which people who are not informants are named as informants either via “leaks” or other actual informants, in order to de-stabilize the targeted individual or the targeted group. It is historically extremely effective, and hence has been used time and time again. Often the instincts of the movement are wrong: snitching is much less effective than the allergic reaction to its possibility as way to disrupt movements by causing them to self destruct. The presence of snitches is a normal part of revolutionary politics but it must not become the primary preoccupation of a movement over and above the political struggle.

Snitch jacketing, however, has been losing effectiveness because of the information society and also because it generated a culture within certain corners of the revolutionary movement in which the fear of informants is such that the State has no need to deploy it: groups perpetuate a paranoid style of politics and neutralize themselves.

The contemporary State hence has modified the age-old technique into something we can call Snitch Jackecting 2.0. It utilizes existing history to create a climate of panoptical paranoia, where people are scared into passive compliance by the state through the snitch jacketing of historical leaders.  This climate of fear and self-isolation needs to be fed from time to time with fresh kills, to keep the tree of fear and uncertainty watered.

There is good reason to be skeptical of the claims against Aoki. The evidence against him is extremely thin and entirely from FBI sources, which are hardly credible on their own. Also, in spite of ample opportunity to do so, these allegations were never made public while he was alive to defend himself. That is highly suspect in itself – in the context of escalating mass resistances in the greater Bay Area of California, the political scene in which Aoki always stood out as an icon of a certain brand of cross-ethnic internationalism. As white supremacy suffers a demographic challenge with whites becoming a minority, this is of extreme historic importance: divide and conquer is a tool of power much older and powerful than snitch jacketing ever was.

Assange exposed war crimes, Pinochet committed them.

By Santiago Escobar and Camila Uribe Rosales (trans)

The double standard of the so-called “democratic” governments, specifically England, Sweden and U.S. have been unveiled through the recent events surrounding Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks.

In the corporate media, we are constantly told that Assange is wanted in Sweden for charges of sexual assault. Yet, Assange has not been charged, and instead is wanted for questioning. Swedish authorities have refused to question him on British soil and have demanded his extradition to Sweden.

Assange asked the Ecuadorian State for political asylum because he, and many others, believe that the U.S. is pulling strings so that they can extradite him to the U.S., where he could face the death penalty.

One of those people is J. Wagner, an ex-American soldier and writer, who during the Vietnam War was forced by the U.S. Army to torture Vietnamese soldiers. He was later punished for refusing to continue these acts. He recently sent a letter to Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, expressing his concerns that Assange would be another victim of the atrocities committed by the United States, just as he was.

In contrast to Assange’s persecution, in 2000 the English government gladly released, after one year of house arrest, the Chilean former dictator Augusto Pinochet, a man responsible for the death, torture, and disappearance of tens of thousands of people. During Pinochet’s house arrest in London, he was visited by his old friend and ex-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who thanked him for his support during the Falklands conflict and for “restoring democracy” to Chile.

The same English government recently threatened to violate the Vienna Conventions and raid the Ecuadorian embassy in order to extradite Assange.

Over 8,000 signatures were gathered in support of his petition to Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, amongst which were: Noam Chomsky, Naomi Wolf, Hollywood directors Oliver Stone and Michael Moore, actor Danny Glover, comedian Bill Maher, as well as Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked documents related to the USA’s war crimes in Vietnam. Demonstrations of solidarity followed soon after. While our politicians back dictators, we have to rely on the strength of people to fight for a better world.

by Dylan Hamada and Ysh Cabana

Since August 6 and 7, 2012, the Philippines has been battered by a series of flash floods and landslides caused by steady monsoon rainfall. At least 90 people have been confirmed dead, with the majority of casualties occurring in the capital region and nearby provinces. Floods have soaked more than 3 million people, and a state of calamity has been declared in Manila and nearby provinces.

The equivalent of one full month of regular rainfall was dumped on Metro Manila in just 48 hours. The torrential downpour left over 80% of the metropolis submerged in water, in some areas reaching depths of 6 and a half feet. Houses, businesses, and entire livelihoods for hundreds of thousands of people have been completely displaced. Though flood levels has subsided in much of the city, many people are still reluctant to leave their inundated properties and valuables.

The worst hit have been the most impoverished districts of Manila, where thousands of urban poor have settled in shanties along waterways and other flood-prone areas.

#ReliefPH

Relief efforts have been spearheaded by progressive people’s organizations. The patriotic alliance Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN) and progressive party-list groups under the Makabayan Coalition have taken action to assist those severely affected by the rains. Relief goods and food are being distributed to flood victims.Anakbayan, a comprehensive, national democratic mass organization of Filipino youth, has reached communities currently not covered by ongoing relief and rescue operations.

Their efforts to provide immediate emergency help notwithstanding, people’s organizations decried the government’s inadequate response to such disasters. “The vulnerability of the said areas due to decades of environmental destruction have been compounded by the U.S-Aquino regime’s neglect of disaster preparedness and policies that smack of callousness against the people,” Vencer Crisostomo, national chairperson of Anakbayan-Philippines, said in an online statement.

Schools, gyms and other community centres are turned into evacuation centres. These buildings are filled to capacity, with crowds of evacuees huddling in groups outside. At least 400,000 people are currently availing of emergency shelter. Many in the centres do not have enough to eat. In many cases, these shelters are also swamped. Official government rescue operations, including boats, were insufficient to rescue the majority of affected citizens. Neighbourhood camaraderie and the utilization of nearby resources such as commercial tricycles served as many people’s sole method of aid.

Cold Weather of Austerity

President Benigno Aquino III and his retinue ventured out after the deluge, staying dry atop an army truck, smiling and waving to victims, who were standing knee-deep in the murky waters. The entourage visited several evacuation centres and distributed relief packages to flood victims.

With cold weather of austerity as his political agenda, Aquino cancelled a flood control masterplan after he was sworn into office. Dubbed “Post Ondoy and Pepeng Short-Term Infrastructure Rehabilitation Project after the two typhoons ravaged the country in 2010,” the program seems to be denied because it was brought out by the previous administration. Aquino even further refused to build a spillway that is intended to permanently prevent siltation of Laguna de Bay. The construction of a dam on the Marikina river and improvements to the Pasig and Marikina river embankments are considered top-priority projects on the list. Also on the list are improvements to Manila area storm drains. Now all of a sudden, the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) revealed that there is a PhP352 billion budget for flood mitigation set to be completed by 2035.

In conjunction with these propositions is to evict some 125,000 families currently living in Metro Manila and at least 70,000 more in areas surrounding the nearby lake. Recent comments by the president as quoted by the public works minister suggest that when time comes for action, ‘blasting’ people in slums in what they perceive as danger zones would be their call.

Echoing the cruel sentiments of the President, the mainstream Philippine media has become a cacophony of tongue-wagging, attempting to pin the blame for the crisis squarely on the shoulders of the people affected, the vast majority of whom are urban poor and peasants. Accusing the people of being “hard-headed,” “foolish”, and other derogatories for squatting on waterways, these mouthpieces of the Philippine elite refuse to acknowledge the role that their masters have played in exacerbating the conditions leading to this tragedy. Also, it must be noted that the impact of the southwest monsoon reportedly exceeded the amount of precipitationfrom the notorious 2009 tropical storm Ondoy. The weather bureau recorded 687mm rainfall of the latest meteorological events.

But the current reactionary government cannot pull their acts together. For one thing, efforts to forcibly relocate the steadily increasing number of people occupying vulnerable areas have never succeeded in the past. Local authorities tend to limit their social welfare function and breed informal settlers as dependents to secure their vested interests, such as to get votes during election period.

Second, it has failed to deliver a national shelter program, a key framework which the government blindly dismantled in favour of a neo-liberal, market-driven approach since the 90s. As a result, housing sector has met a paltry 26% of the target and fall short at an acute backlog of over one million units.

The government has relentlessly pursued a policy of paving way for condominium and retail development instead. Of the 15 largest malls in the world, three are in the country’s capital region. A culture of consumerism prevails making malling a way of life, mall owners as multibillionaires and developers at the helm of environmental destruction. As how the book on informal settlements, Lunsod Iskwater, puts it: “(Metro Manila) is increasingly defined by a reality of social segregation, economic inequity and political inutility. All of these held precariously together by a crumbling physical framework and the disappearance of a sense of community”.

Finally, with the country’s lack of a true nationalistic industrial character–exporting its citizens to imperialist countries for remittances, failing to equitably distribute arable land which has remained in the hands of a few wealthy families, and allowing foreign multinational corporations to reap immense profits at the expense of regular Filipinos and the environment–the Aquino administration naturally bears the brunt and should be held fully responsible for the recent events that have transpired.

Comparative satellite images (taken 1989 and 2012) of Metropolitan Manila, the most densely populated city in the world, show how much urbanization expanded in almost 25 years, bringing significant problems to the environment.

Big Plans, Not ‘Blasting’

For a country visited by more than 20 storms every year, key measures must be undertaken to avoid tragedies that may arise. Flood control can only do so much. Long-term plans for disaster prevention must be the tenet in urban and regional planning. The practice of destroying forested areas on the outskirts of Manila, especially in the Sierra Madre regions, in order to entice foreign companies in carrying out their mining operations must be put to an end. Natural catchwater basins must instead be re-planted and protected.

Artificial drainage systems, essential to disaster risk reduction, must be routinely cleaned. Dams must lower their water levels in anticipation of monsoon rains, to avoid the spillover from local dams such as the La Mesa, the floodgates of which were only opened at the last minute when it was filled to its brim. The hugely profitable Philippine telecom companies must provide free early-warning text messages to their customers to better prepare for impending calamities.

Decent, proper and adequate housing must be provided for families squatting along waterways or wherever the state deems them to be staying illegally. Demolishing their houses simply feeds a cycle through which they, or new families, occupy other neglected portions of the city. Relocating these families to remote areas without a means of livelihood is cruel and belies the government’s devotion to the socioeconomic well-being of its citizenry.

Plans to evict tens of thousands of families in the city are just the latest in a long-running series of close collaborations between the Aquino administration and real-estate developers. The documentary “Puso ng Lungsod (Heart of the City)” released by Pinoy Media Centre recently captures the struggles of urban poor families living in the face of eviction in Quezon City.

In another pocket demolition in the neighbouring Paranaque city, Silverio Compound turned into a people’s protest in April. The residents refused to give up their homes to Henry Sy, the wealthiest man in the Philippines. Police were deployed against the people, and one youth was shot dead. The proposed development bore the name Benigno S. Aquino III as a sponsor.  All over the Philippines, some 852 communities were burned down according to urban poor group Kadamay.

Dredging the Silt

Mired as the urban poor are in the deadening situation of the country, actions of solidarity to mobilize are needed to rebuild the losses and to assure sustainable deepening of political education. The only way to ensure the safety and livelihoods of the Filipino toiling masses is to advance the struggle for the cause of national democracy. The Philippines must break away from the grip of U.S. imperialism, along with local landlords, big capitalists, and their lapdogs in the corrupt machine of the Philippine government. Only then will a people-oriented development and industrialization be placed above the whims of the wealthy and powerful.

Progressive multisectoral groups in the Philippines have largely advocated for reaching out local communities of workers and urban poor, majority of whom have the most need to be involved in long-term and genuine social change, aside from the commitment to immediately donate.

Anakbayan-Toronto implores all Filipino-Canadians and friends to please give generously to relief efforts during this time of need. The Toronto chapter is also working in coordination with Migrante Canada to collect funds. Donations can be made through the following:

Anakbayan-Philippines paypal account: www.anakbayan.org/donate (click “Donate Now” on the right side of the page).

Account Name: Migrante Ontario
Bank: TD Canada Trust Acc# 06175260423
Email Transfer to: [email protected]
Hotline number: 1-800-559-8092

REFERENCE:
Abon, Catherine. [2012] A Preliminary Analysis on the Impacts of Typhoon Gener and Habagat, Urban Housing and Disaster Response Alcazaren, Paulo, et al. [2011] Lungsod Iskwater: The Evolution of Informality as a Dominant Pattern in Philippine Cities. Manila: Anvil Publishing
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Landsat Missions Gallery, “Manila, Philippines” http://climate.nasa.gov/sof/#Urbangrowth_Philippines.jpg (accessed Aug 18, 2012)

[Editor note: this article was originally posted on venezuelasolidarity.ca. The Spanish version follows.]

by: Juana Cabezas

Over 50 people convened in Toronto’s Trinity Bellwood Park, site of a bust of South American Liberator Simon Bolivar, as an expression of solidarity with the Venezuelan people and with the Bolivarian Revolution.

In a recent meeting in Caracas, Venezuela, a grouping of continental Left parties and movements calledthe Sao Paulo Forum issued a call for international solidarity for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian revolution to take place around the birthday of Simon Bolivar.  The forum also called for more expressions of solidarity and the combatting of a decade-long media campaign against Bolivarian Venezuela that have looked to topple President Chavez and reverse the gains made by Venezuelan people in their political process.

The event included words from Nery Quintero of the Gran Polo Patriotico-Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (GPP-PSUV) in Toronto, as well as greetings from Consul General of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in Toronto, Martha Pardo.  Numerous participants also read short statements of solidarity, with others reading passages and quotes from Simon Bolivar.

Pablo Vivanco, Barrio Nuevo delegate before the ‘Avanzada Bolivariana campaign’ urged participants to join the campaign especially in the lead up to the October 7th Presidential elections in Venezuela.  The Avanzada Bolivariana and PSUV in Toronto will be working to produce materials and other information in order to show the tremendous social, political and economic gains Venezuelans have made and the dangers that are threatening to undo these.

by Smadar Carmon

The small village of Susiya in the Israeli Occupied Territories is about to be demolished yet again. But most Canadians have never even heard about the first, second, third and fourth times. But we should know, because Canada is heavily implicated in these human rights abuses as a result of our unconditional support for Israel.

A few years ago some fellow Israelis introduced me to Susiya and its determined and resolute residents. These Israelis have made it their business to work with and support the Palestinians living in the villages of the South Hebron hills.

The elements are harsh in these hills; the scorching heat envelopes you and all you can see is arid land dotted here and there with patches of green. The only lush areas are next to the illegal but fully water-supplied Israeli settlements; while the Palestinians must import and pay dearly for water arriving by truck. Energy is connected for the Jewish settlements, but Palestinian villages have nothing. Recently, my Israeli friends and the Palestinians came up with a way to get power by installing a few small wind turbines and some solar panels. Now at night the residents can read and even use a refrigerator – quite an achievement in the 21st century!

Susiya was razed in 1985, 1991, 1997, and twice in 2001. An adjacent Jewish West Bank settlement of Susiya was built in 1983. In 1986, the Palestinian Susiya was declared an archaeological site as it sits atop remnants of an early Jewish settlement. Its residents were forced to move onto their farmland, into tents and caves. In 2001, the Israeli army (IDF) and Civil Administration, part of the IDF, violently expelled them, destroying their homes, fields, livestock and water cisterns. This was all under the pretense of responding to the second intifada (Palestinian uprising). Following a campaign and legal battle by Palestinian residents and Israeli leftists, the Israeli High Court of Justice instructed authorities to stop the demolitions. But it did not instruct the Civil Administration to allow the Palestinians to build, giving them no other choice but to reconstruct the village without permits.

Throughout the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, house demolitions are a constant reality for Palestinians. It is estimated that at least 24,813 houses have been demolished since 1967. The Civil Administration routinely discriminates against them by making it their acquisition of building permits almost impossible.  Showing the strength and determination they are so recognized for, Susiya residents boldly erected some tents and hovels, including a school.

In spite of the 2001 High Court ruling disallowing further demolitions and other acts of harassment, Jewish settlers and the IDF subjected Palestinian farmers to ongoing violence and blockades of their land. Finally help came from the organization Rabbis for Human Rights; it, along with the residents, filed a complaint regarding their inability to access their land, and the settlers increasing encroachment on it.

In 2011, something unusual occurred: the military commanding officer declared a large part of the Palestinian residents’ land closed to Israelis; this was an attempt to stop the violence and land encroachment by the settlers. To “remedy” this the settlers used the association Regavim to speed up the demolition orders for Susiya’s few meagre structures Regavim’s petition painted a bizarre picture of the two sides Palestinian residents became “illegal outpost settlers” (despite the fact that they have lived there for centuries), and Jewish settlers emerged as indigenous, oppressed and discriminated-against (!).

Outrageously, throughout the court challenges and the Regavim petition the illegal building of the Jewish Susiya continued. As well, the Civil Administration hurried to fly in the face of Israeli law and demolish as much of the Palestinian Susiya as they could before the High Court intervened. On June 13, 2012 they issued demolition orders for 52 buildings, including a preschool, a clinic and a solar panel system.

Susiya is a microcosm of life for Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. The authorities’ obvious discrimination, especially regarding the provision of services, resembles ethnic cleansing. As of today, Palestinians living in the little village of Susiya and elsewhere are under constant threat of demolition, expulsion and forced relocation. It feels like it will never end.

As Canadians we should implore our government to hold Israel to international standards of human rights and not condone their abuses. Let us not leave it to others, such as the current Avaaz.org petition (http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/Save_My_Village/?brfxdab&v=15503), to halt the pending Susiya demolitions.  We must demand that our government state that this current state of affairs is unacceptable. We should also demand better coverage from our media so that we may learn what is happening in our name.

For more information:

http://villagesgroup.wordpress.com/

http://www.comet-me.org/

http://villagesgroup.wordpress.com/2012/06/19/civil-administration-and-settlers-join-forces-to-destroy-palestinian-susya-did-the-court-wink-and-nod/

http://www.alternativenews.org/english/index.php/component/content/article/2-hebron/4580-aic-video-susiya-a-community-to-be-destroyed.html

http://villagesgroup.wordpress.com/tag/susiya/

The Israeli Siege of Gaza is a War on the Palestinian Masses

A few examples:

Fishing, a key element of the Palestinian economy in Gaza, has been devastated.  Israeli war ships prevent fisher-folk from reaching their traditional fishing grounds and limits them to a thin strip over sandy beach adjacent the coast where the fish are few and small.  Palestinian fishermen who try to get to their deep water fishing grounds are fired upon by the Israelis and face being injured or killed or being imprisoned and having their fishing boats confiscated (stolen).  Thus 70,000 people, some from families who have fished these waters for centuries, are denied access to their basic livelihood by the siege.

Farmers near the unilaterally declared 3 km buffer zone that runs along the ‘border’ with the Palestinian lands occupied in 1948 face a similar attack on their livelihood.  This farmland is important not only to the farmers who work it but for the food security and sovereignty of all Palestinians living in Gaza. All along this strip the Israelis destroyed the Palestinian farms including orchards of citrus and olive trees.  When farmers try to go to their farms they are fired upon and many have been killed. We met with farmers who persistently return to their lands, risking their lives to plant crops that face a high chance of being destroyed by the Israelis before they can be harvested.

Many Palestinians living in Gaza used to work in factories and businesses in the Palestinian lands occupied in 1948.  These Palestinians are now denied the right to cross the ‘border,’ as Israel has pursued a strategy of substituting super-exploited Palestinian labour with super-exploited migrant labour from Asia and North Africa in its dirtiest, worst paid and most dangerous areas of work.  Meanwhile the siege allows the free entry of Israeli products and ‘international brands’ like Pepsi and Coke but prevents import of materials needed to repair factories and production destroyed by the Israeli occupiers and severely restricts exports, limiting the potential for indigenous economic development. As a consequence Palestinian workers in Gaza face chronically high rates of unemployment (as high as 40%) and poverty (mostly living on about $2 per day).

So, even when the bombs are not actively dropping, the war on the Palestinian masses living in Gaza continues.  Organizations like the Union  of Agricultural Committees and the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions and the Union of Women’s Committees who challenge these brutal violations of Palestinian economic rights are part of the broad resistance to Israeli war and occupation including military, political and cultural resistance.

Aiyanas, from Gaza, June 21, 2012

It was exciting and inspiring to meet face to face with these brave and tireless women who continue to dedicate themselves to the struggle against Israeli occupation despite enormous odds and grave challenges.  We analyze that women are at the crux of imperialism, super exploited as both a source of free reproductive labour in the home and in the community, and as cheap labour within the working class.  As Comrade Parvati from the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) so brilliantly explained, women face a three-prong struggle: the struggle for national and social liberation, the inner-party struggle to advance women’s leadership at great odds given the enormity of the chauvinism and male violence women face in society, and the inner struggle against the internalized sexism against which women themselves must struggle.  The stories of both hardship and resistance the delegation heard today highlighted that Palestinian women bravely face this three-prong struggle.

The heart-wrenching stories of women arrested for defending their land, their homes, and their husbands and sons from Israeli aggression are ones I will never forget.  Of women forcefully dragged from their homes and sentenced to serve time in Israeli prisons for resisting displacement and Israeli encroachment into historic Palestinian homeland .  Women separated from their infants, tortured, sexually harassed, fearing for the lives of their children, and enduring long separations from their families.  Women shared how their sons were killed while being tortured or detained.  The women insisted that our delegation decry the lies propagated by the imperialist aggressors and tell the world that Palestinian women love their children!  What choice to they have but to resist when the very existence of the Palestinian people is threatened by Israeli apartheid.  “Why is our resistance illegal?”They ask.  “Who is violating international law?”

Following the incredible stories of the women freedom fighters we met with the leadership of the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees.  The UPWC struggles for women’s political and economic rights and for increasing women’s political participation in electoral politics in society at large and within the progressive movement.  The UWPC is economically independent, raising funds through food production and traditional Palestinian textile arts; at lunch we had the absolute pleasure of sampling their incredible food and perusing their stunningly beautiful crafts.  Through these efforts the Committees have been able to provide cultural, political, economic, and social programming to the most marginalized women in Gaza.

The UPWC works in the community, engaging women in political education in their  homes, recruiting women to participate in political formations led by women, and assisting women to develop economic independence, in particular for those who have absent husbands.  During our discussions UWPC leaders explained that, while they struggle against male violence and women’s oppression in Palestinian society, the greatest source of violence against Palestinian women is Israeli occupation.  Women’s rights to dress freely and participate more fully in society must accompanied by liberation from the extreme violence and deprivation of the Israeli military occupation of Palestinian land and the accompanying economic domination.

Palestinian women resist occupation on all three fronts that Comrade Parvati describes.  Palestinian women face great personal barriers to participating in the national liberation struggle; through the efforts of the UPWC women overcome major social and psychological barriers erected by male supremacy and chauvinistic social norms to their political struggle and participation.  The struggle to liberate their minds and concurrently incite change at the community level goes hand in hand with the national struggle for liberation.  The efforts of the UPWC contributes to the development of leadership within the progressive sectors, raising women’s perspectives and demands at the movement level.  Lastly, Palestinian women participate in the Palestinian liberation movement as armed combatants; in 2009, 10% of armed Palestinian combatants were women.

I have always been inspired by the struggles and leadership of Palestinian women, and today I witnessed first-hand the reasons why Palestinian women should be and are at the forefront of anti-imperialist women’s struggles for liberation across the world!

Martha from Gaza – June 19, 2012

by Eric Ribellarsi (Winter Has Its End)

The following is an interview I was able to conduct with a group of about ten students who are members of the Communist Organization of Greece (KOE). We discussed their backgrounds, experiences, the student movement, KKE, revolutionary strategy, and the role of communists in Greece.

Can you tell me how some of you became communists? How did you come to join KOE?

Danae: I was involved with the anarchist movement. In 2006, I was a part of the student movement against the privatization of education. It was massive, four hundred departments were occupied. I came to see the need for organization and organized struggle, and I decided I would join KOE.

I had realized that in groups of anarchism, there is informal leadership. They informally lead, and it is not controlled. I realized that we needed leaders who were formal and acknowledged.

Eva: Growing up, my father was in Synaspismos, which made me think I didn’t like communists. When I decided to join KOE, he would always lecture me about Stalin and Mao, and joke “the Maoists are going to take you up in the mountains!”

I had attended a week long summer camp of KOE where we would speak all day about different political questions. And yes, we would have to wake at 8AM and work hard, but I thought to myself “I like this. I wish the whole world could be like this.” I decided to join KOE.

So can you tell me a little bit about your work inside the universities?

Christos: We are a part of “Left Unity,” a student coalition related to SYRIZA inside the student union. In Left Unity, there are all the parties of SYRIZA. It is a coalition for organizing inside the universities. It is organizationally independent from SYRIZA, but politically related.

The way our universities work is that all students are members of the student union, but not all students are members of a student coalition in the union (like Left Unity or one of the coalitions of KKE, New Democracy, PASOK, or ANTARSYA).

[Editors note: KKE is the corrupt parliamentary mainstream party called the Communist party of Greece. New Democracy and PASOK are the “mainstream” centre-right and centre-left parties. ANTARSYA is an anti-capitalist coalition of mainly Trotskyists, but also a few other trends].

We in KOE struggle for a common line in Left Unity that fights against the memorandum, and we work to connect the struggle of the Greek society to the students.

Eva: In 2006, Greece had a successful student movement around public universities after attempts to privatize the public universities. The bourgeois parties said they would “raise the value of our degrees”, but in practice they were lowering the quality of the knowledge and skills developed in the universities.

We had mass assemblies and occupations of the universities, and the police could not enter because of the determined resistance and because we have laws that prevent the police from entering the universities. We successfully stopped these privatizations from happening.

Then, in 2008: there was the death of Aleksandros, who was shot by the police. At that time, KOE made an analysis that this was the result of both a social and an economic crisis.

After this point, we decided that the students of KOE would fight for the consciousness of the students to focus on the general political situation, and not on specifically the issues in the universities themselves.

If you wanted to be active, you have to fight against the IMF. If you do not generalize the struggle, you will be isolated and crushed.

Danae: The government tried to divide us into little individual struggles and petty interest groups through the reforms they offered. At this time, the KKE and ANTARSYA chose to attack us for not struggling over the direct student issues.

Meanwhile, PASOK and ND get people to join their student union by having skiing trips, parties, and dinners.

Eva: Unlike the other parties, we were active not just around elections, but around the political, social, and economic struggle of the whole society.

Danae: Before the some of the other parties in the SYRIZA would only be active around the elections, but the situation has forced them to change as well.

You mentioned the general political struggle of the whole society. Could you tell me more about that?

John: We believe there is a general radicalization happening in Greek society. There is a general radical movement that is not necessarily left or communist, they are not conscious of many questions, but they are radicalizing.

Danae: Our first priority is to fight for a new, broad political front, much broader than SYRIZA. SYRIZA has to be in it, but this front must unite all of the struggles of the people.

John: Inside this front, we believe that people must agree on some key political questions. The main question is the overthrow of the special regime and that the Troika must leave. And it is not reducible to the elections. Everywhere we must target the European experiment. We have to win over the people who voted for PASOK when PASOK claimed to oppose the memorandum. This is principal focus of communists today. The youth of ANTARSYA and KKE refuse to acknowledge this.

You must fight in the reality of the Greek people.

Danae: We don’t think this movement will itself produce a socialist revolution, but if you fight against the Troika and the special regime it can create a new situation for revolution.

John: These other parties just try to repeat the revolutions of Russia and the revolution in China. We believe that we must root our revolution in the central political problems of the Greek people. We are in a country that is not independent and that does not produce anything. There are no factories in this country. Consciousness is not yet to the point of communist revolution. But it tends to be very radical.

Eva: In Greece, there is capitalism with special characteristics, the financial occupation and the political dictatorship of the regime over Greece. This is an imperialist dependent country. They are using this policy to pass memorandums in all of the PIIGS countries [editor note: Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain]. Today we fight for the independence, real democracy, and the reconstruction of Greece.

We believe if we can implement these profound changes, we will be in a new situation for revolution. We don’t believe you can bring about communism by merely saying communism and socialism a million times a day. This is what KKE and ANTARSYA do, they say communism and socialism with no analysis of Greek society.

SYRIZA must be made to fight for these three things, if we can do this, there can be a new break with the status quo. We will have a new situation in society, and can go from there.

Can you tell me a bit more about KKE? In America and some other places, people perceive that the KKE is a revolutionary party. Is there any truth to this?

Danae: *Laughing* To everyone in Greece, it is so obvious the KKE is not a revolutionary party. The KKE has a material basis: it has many Greek newspapers and professional bureacrats.

Vassilis: In each of the major upsurges in Greece, the communist party refuses to partake. Since the overthrow of the junta, they have been aligned with the mainstream bourgeois parties. And it believes that all of the initiatives of the people must come from itself, not the actual initiatives of the people. In its program, there is mention of revolution, but in practice they fight against it. They fight against the people’s struggles. In the elections, they are ambivalent to the struggle against the memorandum. They refuse to take part, and as a result they keep people from fighting against the memorandum.

Eva: Their flier for the elections centers around attacking SYRIZA.

Danae: we must understand that they became this by becoming professional bureaucrats whose only purpose is to perpetuate their current condition in the society. Their whole purpose has nothing to do with revolution, but to merely remain a small group in the left wing of the European parliament.

Eva: They have no faith in the people. And for the people it is obvious.

Danae: They are obsessed with purity. Lenin and the Bolsheviks were in the RDSLP with the Mensheviks, and they were in the minority at that time. The Bolsheviks were in the ideological leadership of the RDSLP. KOE tries to be in the ideological leadership of SYRIZA, even though we are not the majority.

Vissilis: And we intend to do this through our reliance on the people and our connection to the people. The KKE has never broken with the 20^th Congress of Communist Party of the Soviet Union which advocated peaceful co-existence between the communists and the capitalists. They imagine a peaceful transition to socialism.

This is why they have never taken part in any conflict or revolt in society. They want to peacefully grow until a future date where they can peacefully take power. This is what their slogan “A Strong KKE” means. We believe you must struggle, fight, and influence the people.

Danae: Dare to struggle, dare to win: This slogan is KKE’s biggest enemy. If SYRIZA were to be destroyed right now, it would decimate the entire communist movement. You have to have the courage to be in it, and fight, and have faith in the people.

Eva: Synaspismos also had this view. But this has changed through the struggles in SYRIZA.

Danae: KKE’s view from the 20^th century, of being vaulted into power through the trade unions, is a fantasy. The economic basis of society has changed.

Earlier you had mentioned KOE’s slogan, “Independence, real democracy, and reconstruction.” Could you explain the reconstruction part of that slogan?

Danae: There are three levels to the reconstruction of Greek society. The three levels which this involves are political, economic, and social.

The first is to take the Troika and all of their Greek political allies, and throw them out of Greece.

The second is the economic, we must stop paying all of the debt. At first, we will declare that all of the debt based on speculation is illegal. And then we will declare the whole of the debt to be illegal. Tactically, first we will start with a legal national committee that will research this debt, which can then play a role in the legalities of the international aspect.

Eva: We must restore the production of Greece. We will free Greece from the reliance on globalized imperialist markets. We must produce what we eat. We import everything at this time and this must stop. A country that produces its own food cannot be forced to obey and borrow from the debt of the imperialists.

Danae: The fight against debt also has two levels. One is production, restoring it will free us of these loans. The second is the political struggle to refuse to pay these loans.

Eva: The third aspect of reconstruction is the social aspect.

Let me give an example. From 1968-1974, we had the Greek dictatorship. After the change of the regime, there were right-wing governments until 1981. There was social turmoil after the fall of the dictatorship. This resulted in the rise of PASOK which had left rhetoric. They tried with every means they had to co-opt every resistance movement of the people.

They represented the rise of the petty bourgeoisie in Greece. This created illusions about the politics and the bourgeois democratic system of representation. The general ideology was individualism and clientelism. Brokers would offer jobs to anyone who could get 50 people to vote for them in the parliament. It resulted in the total corruption of Greek society, and people were forced into these kinds of relationships.

Jobs were not the right of people, but gifts from the parliament. And the KKE and the Eurocommunists did not play the role that was necessary. In the 1950’s the KKE had stopped being a revolutionary party. But it did have groups inside of it that played a different role. There were camps inside it, which the Greek Maoists came out of in the 1960’s. The KKE went through hell and torture during the dictatorship, and then in the 1970’s they became legalized and were immediately coopted. They accepted positions from the PASOK, heralded as heroes of resistance by the PASOK, and they said this was a new epoch. They moved to accept reforms and seats from the PASOK.

The communist movement was ripped apart at this time. It became a movement of the past, not a fighting movement of the people. The values, loyalty, and solidarity of the people to one another were shattered. The communists were corrupt, not role-models in the society. These values were taken apart, and replaced with capitalist individualism.

Today, however, the situation has changed, and these capitalists can’t afford to give these bribes to people.

Danae: KOE believes the people need new values: solidarity over individualism. Dignity against corruption. Emancipation over dependence.

This is a very hard struggle for us. It means the transformation of the people. It is why we take active part in things like giving healthcare to immigrants who are not legal. And we have been part of movements like “The Potato Movement” where the farmers in the north gave free potatoes to people starving in the south. We were facilitators and activists in this. This is solidarity, not charity.

Eva: If we want the people to fight, we must also give them a life. It is a parallel struggle to the struggle in health. We fight in a social system for health, but we also fight for the doctors themselves to give free healthcare.

Danae: Or with the Resistance Festival, we provide a space where people don’t have to pay much, and they can come and be a part of a new type of culture, new music and art, and be a part of engaging different movements that are happening.

Or we have places like this cooperative [editorial note: here, Danae is referring to the café/bar/community space we are sitting in, called @Roof. It is one of many such spaces that KOE has formed throughout the country] where people engage with one another in every way that they can. We have theatre performances, meetings of social movements, coffee and beer, football games, and concerts. Every activity of the culture of the Greek people is welcome here. Our members are a part of football clubs where we bring Palestinian flags to the games against Israel. We have even started football clubs, because we think that there could be a different kind of sports.

There is a Greek song we like, that says: “when we fight amongst ourselves is sports, the world economy is saved.” Struggling around this also helps us to struggle with our own comrades and raise their political level, to train them through the things they are a part of.

KOE is also trying to enter the struggle of women through changes in actual relations between people. In Greece, the academics and the Trotskyists are obsessed with using the male and female versions of every word whenever they say it. These are the people who are also obsessed with pointless activism.

We say we change the interactions of the people, which language reflects. If we change the relations among the people, we can then construct a new language. The Troskyists refused to take part in the 2008 revolt because of the major slogan “Cops are cunts.” Instead they focused on making posters denouncing this slogan instead of being with the people. This is also the problem with people like Lacan, who treat consciousness as words, in my opinion.

Danae: Another major part of reconstruction is stopping the emigration from Greece. The state pays massive amounts of money for the education of people in Greece, and then they are forced to go to countries like Germany, where they produce few doctors and scientists, but hire them away from Greece. It is like a famous paint of Greece as a thousand birds taking flight.

Christine Lagarde claims that this form of oppression is the solution for Greece. That Latvia already had Greece’s problem, and it solved it by 13% of Latvians emigrating away from Latvia.

Eva: In our city, Heraklion, KOE has about 50 representatives inside of the student union, and we are the largest group in the union. We have used this position to host forums on students emigrating from Greece. Meanwhile, New Democracy hosts forums on how you can emigrate away from Greece.

Their posters feature pictures of people traveling away from Greece with the slogan “Let’s go abroad!”

Reconstruction requires convincing the people to stay in Greece and to reject these corrupt offers. It means people will have to sacrifice personal gain to resolve the problems created by this crisis.

Eva: Meanwhile, all our relatives tell us to us to just go away to other countries. It is very hard to convince people to live on exchange economy and volunteer doctors.

Can you tell me about how you see the role of communists in Greece?

John: The lack of strategy among communists causes harm to the people and their ability to fight the political system. It is very important that in movements like Occupy Wall Street there are profound changes in the consciousness and politics of the people. The role of the communists is to bring consciousness and organization to spontaneous mass movements such as this.

This is a basic point about how communists conceive of their actions. We must be in the spontaneous actions of the people, and not only be with ourselves or even in the things that only we believe. The way we will change things in society is acting with the masses, not shouting down at them with the things we personally believe. Things don’t work the way KKE believes.

Eva: I would like to share an example. In 2010, when the IMF came to Greece, many struggles were organized, without real results. However, one year ago, after all these struggles, the people went to the squares, our “Occupy movement.” KKE and ANTARSYA would always say before “you must be active.” But when there was a major upsurge of the people, they refused to join.

Yet for all of their constant activism, they produce no actual new movement or consciousness or changes in society. But the Squares movement brought profound changes in society.

We believe communists should be in the squares, and to raise the political consciousness of the people above their spontaneous basic needs.

Danae: I’ll give another example of KKE in the 1940’s. In the 1940’s, there was the most major political struggle of the history of Greece. The KKE played a major role at this time. They took the basic needs of food and the fight for freedom, and they lent organization and a program to these basic needs. If today a communist says that we must fight for communism and socialism and doesn’t have anything to say about the special regime of Greece, it is like saying people will fight without anything to eat. Our principal political struggle must be against the Troika.

There’s a Greek theorist, Dimitris Glinos, of the 1940’s who said that if we wait for the circumstances that communists want, it is like cooperation with the enemy.

Danae: In 1995, we had a slogan around our decision to form a communist organization. It was: “Transform the society and transform ourselves.”