Part Two: Settlements & the ‘Apartheid’ Wall

Click here to read Part One: The Imperialist-Zionist Plan and the Palestinian Intifadas

The mother alien continuously lays eggs and its infants use humans as hosts. Can there ever be any coexistence?

The process of the establishment of Israel as a settler-colonial state has continued by the development of settlements in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. Each Israeli settlement uses Palestinian land and resources to grow. The development of settlements is a system of apartheid, in which the indigenous population is allowed to survive in a tiny fraction of its own country, in self-administered ‘Bantustans’, but with Zionist instead of white settlers in total control and dictating everything.

Housing development in the settlements has been pursued as Israeli bulldozers have continued the destruction of Palestinian homes, farmlands and services, building an ever expanding network of security roads linking settlements as well as creating barriers to confine the growing Palestinian population in their shrinking areas. Also, the settlers are fully armed and trained by the state of Israel, and in fact are responsible for a large, but unspecified, number of murders of Palestinians, including many who were lynched and murdered during the second Intifada.

For decades, one of the main reasons in consolidating the occupation has been developing settlements, which serve both the strategic and economic interests of the state of Israel. Strategically, settlements where the population are organised as armed militia as well as being militarily protected, act as the base areas. In these base areas, the political power of the state of Israel is established on strategic locations of the Palestinian’s land. Read the rest of this entry »

Article excerpted from the OutLook Magazine, India.

“No way can firing from below go down a person’s chest and exit like that,” says Azad’s doctor brother.

“If they kill the very man sent to talk with the Maoist leadership, who do we talk with?” asks Swami Agnivesh.

‘Near-Shot. Close-Range. Fired From Less Than 7.5 cm.’

Outlook invited three experts to analyse Azad’s post-mortem report, without revealing his
identity. All three say Azad was shot from a distance equal to, or less than 7.5 cm

Forensic Report on Comrade Azad's Murder. Click on the Image for larger view.

“If there is darkening, blackening and burning around a bullet entry wound, it is caused by the flame, smoke and gunpowder emerging from the firearm. The flame and the gunpowder, due to low mass, cannot travel very far. These residual marks, therefore, strongly suggest a near shot.” —Dr Sudhir Gupta, Associate Professor of Forensic Medicine & Toxicology at AIIMS, New Delhi. Has conducted nearly 30 autopsies of police encounter deaths.

“While the report mentions burning, there is no tattooing. But if the deceased was wearing a shirt, then the tattooing could be on the shirt and only the burning is visible. The presence of burning in an entry wound accompanied by tattooing clearly indicates a shot fired from less than 7.5 cm.” —Dr B. Umadethan, Former head of the department of forensic medicine, and police surgeon, Thiruvananthapuram Medical College. Author, Principles and Practice of Forensic Medicine.

“The oval-shaped wound shows that the bullet was fired at an angle. It is almost certain that the bullet was fired at extremely close range. The weapon used was a handgun and not a rifle like AK-47. My guess is that the bullet that killed this person was fired from a .38” (9 mm) pistol.” — Retired Director of the Central Forensic Sciences Laboratory, Chandigarh, an expert on wound ballistics and the author of several books on ballistics who requested anonymity.

Dead men tell no tales. But when the deceased is Chemkuri Azad Rajkumar, the manner of death can speak volumes. The Maoist leader’s post-mortem report, which Outlook has now accessed, categorically establishes that he died in a fake encounter. Read along with the FIR and inquest reports, it exposes the elaborate set of lies drawn by the Andhra Pradesh police to explain his death. The claimed encounter, a much-touted “gain” in the UPA government’s war against India’s “gravest internal security threat”, was in fact a cold-blooded execution by the state. Azad, a key player in the planned negotiations with the government, was picked up and shot with a handgun from a distance barely more than the size of an outstretched palm. The official version, that the Maoists were atop a hill and fired at the police party and Azad died when the cops retaliated from down below, just doesn’t add up. Read the rest of this entry »

The article below was published on Fight Racism, Fight Imperialism journal, written by Emma Lewis and the video is made available by Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Defence Campaign UK , Contact: free2mumia(at)googlemail.com

Activism is not a part- time activity but a lifetime commitment” Mumia Abu-Jamal addressing a public meeting in London in June from his cell in death row”.

Mumia was born in 1954 and given the slave name Wesley Cook. At 14 with a group of other young men he founded the Philadelphia branch of the Black Panther Party (BPP). Still only a teenager he started writing for the party newspaper. In 1968 when the state assassinated Chicago Panthers Fred Hamilton and Mark Clarke, Mumia wrote about the crime. Gradually the state incarcerated or assassinated a whole generation of political activists.

Mumia eventually resigned from the BPP due to factionalism, fomented by government infiltrators. He became a supporter of the Move Organisation the predominantly black back to nature group led by John Africa which refused to join “the system” Inevitably Move became the focus of police attention and brutality. Its members were arrested hundreds of times on trumped up charges. On August 8th 1978 the police laid siege to a Move house and opened fire. One officer was killed apparently by “friendly fire”.

At the City Hall later that day, as a reporter, Mumia asked the Mayor all the “wrong” questions — “Who has fired the first shot” “Why had the crime scene been destroyed so hastily and so completely?” — until at last the Mayor shouted “They (the people) believe what you write and what you say — and its got to stop.”Nine move members were arrested, tried for conspiracy and third degree murder and sentenced to between 30 and 100 years.

Due to his sympathetic coverage of Move and the investigation of the police Mumia lost his job as a radio journalist. He got a job as a cab driver and on 9th December 1981 had just dropped a client off and was waiting for another when he heard what sounded like a gunshot and saw people running. He recognised one of them as his brother Billy Cook and ran towards him. Read the rest of this entry »

World People’s Resistance Movement (Britain) is publishing a series of articles on Palestine. Below is the first instalment, analysing the origins of the State of Israel and a brief history of its oppression of the Palestinian People. It focuses on the resistance of the Palestinian people and their role as the motive force in this movement for liberation.

Part One: the Imperialist-Zionist Plan and the Palestinian Intifadas

Click here to read Part Two: Settlements & the ‘Apartheid’ Wall

“I fall into a restless sleep at night and dream that an Israeli army unit is chasing after my friends and me. We are somewhere in Gaza and we try to run for our lives, but we are suddenly cornered and the soldiers start shooting at a very close range. The screams and the immense amount of blood force me to wake up. I am sweating and gasping for air. The dreams just don’t stop. I’ve been out of the Palestinian territories for three months and the dreams still haunt me. I know it is going to take a long time – a long time before I’m not jumpy when I hear a helicopter flying ahead. I hear the helicopters in Austin, but they are up there to file weather reports for local TV stations. I am still not convinced that they will not bring death and destruction. It is going to take a long time before I don’t panic at the sound of an ambulance siren. And a very long time before I stop dreaming that the bodies of my friends are being riddled with gunfire”  (Muna Hamzeh, Notes from Dheisheh*, September 2000).

* Dheisheh is the largest of three Palestinian refugee camps in Bethlehem, home to nearly 10,000 refugees who were forced to flee their homes in the 1948 war.

From this ‘nightmare’ of the daily situation in Gaza, and decades of military occupation in general, to the recent Israeli attack on the international aid flotilla on its way to deliver vital goods to the people of Gaza suffering under years of blockade, the Palestinian people’s relentless resistance against the Israeli state and its international backers, mainly the US and Britain, remains a key issue for those interested in liberation and democracy around the world. The need for international support for the Palestinian people’s resistance is indeed greater than ever.

The heart of the matter is the right of the Palestinian nation to self-determination. Many people continually lapse into generalities about self-determination, without clearly asking themselves whether the essence lies in legal definitions or in the experience of the Palestinian national movement. Indeed, if we want to grasp the meaning of self-determination of the Palestinian nation, we need to examine the historic as well as political and economic conditions of the national movement. Read the rest of this entry »

by WPRM (Britain)

Introduction

We are currently going through an important period in the history of class struggle in the world. In Britain, the past eight years have been marked by a rapid polarisation of the society between the ruling class and the people, emerging shortly before and during the occupation of Iraq, causing a palpable loss of ‘credibility’ of the ruling class and politicisation of the working class and the masses, particularly the youth.

Today, the objective situation indicates an accelerating rate of decay in all spheres of life, which is increasingly compelling the masses to seek a way out of  the gradually more unstable living conditions. One example is the intensification of the class struggle in the North of Ireland. Also, the British imperialist state is at war with the oppressed nation of Afghanistan, a war which has become grossly unpopular, and increasingly heading toward a humiliating defeat. It has already been forced to retreat from its occupation of Iraq.

Moreover, the economic crisis is persevering, forcing the state to transfer the crisis to the oppressed countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The war and the economic crisis have compelled the ruling class to tighten the living conditions for the working class as well. The privatisation of the public sector, including the post office and even education, is accelerating. The ruling class is also resorting to more suppressive measures in this country, including facilitating the creation of fascist organisations, such as the English Defence League (EDL).

The parasitic system ruling Britain, particularly its structure of bourgeois democracy as well as its monopoly capitalist economy, has to a palpable extent lost the ‘confidence’ of the people. Evidently, the ruling class politicians and economists are unable to provide any proper solution to reverse this detrimental trend. For a growing number of working class and the masses it is becoming increasingly clear that the existing political system and its ruling politicians have no competency to solve the numerous people’s problems. Read the rest of this entry »

Source: China Study Group

A newly-installed safety net between dormitory buildings to prevent employees from attempting suicide by jumping off the rooftop— can it really help save lives? (photo by SACOM)

Since the beginning of 2010, a startling ten Foxconn employees in Shenzhen tried to end their lives. Eight died, while two survived their injuries. All were between 18 and 25 years old—in the prime of their youth—and their loss should awaken wider society to reflect upon the costs of a development model that sacrifices dignity for economic growth.

On 18 May 2010, nine mainland Chinese and Hong Kong academics¹ issued an open statement calling on Foxconn and the government to do justice for the younger generation of migrant workers. The statement painfully reads:

From the moment they [the new generation of migrant workers] step beyond the doors of their houses, they never think of going back to farming like their parents. In this sense, they see no other options when they enter the city to work. The moment they see there is little possibility of building a home in the city through hard work, the very meaning of their work collapses. The path ahead is blocked, and the road to retreat is closed. Trapped in this situation, the new generation of migrant workers faces serious identity crisis and, in effect, this magnifies psychological and emotional problems. Digging into this deeper level of our societal and structural conditions, we come closer to understanding the ‘no way back’ mentality of these Foxconn employees.

China’s development strategy throughout these 30 years not only accomplished an economic miracle. It deepened regional inequalities, prolonged stagnation of wages, and deprived migrant workers’ citizenship and human rights. In the following, we first outline the pattern of internal labor migration under the widening gaps between rural and urban economies. Second, we review the recent cases of Foxconn suicides to probe into the working lives of those who struggle to live on. Finally, we appeal to the concerned public to nurture a sustainable community that respects workers’ rights. Read the rest of this entry »