Archive for March 2nd, 2008
US Workers Union to Shut Down West Coast Ports May 1 Demanding End to War in Iraq, Afghanistan
US Workers Union to Shut Down West Coast Ports
May 1 Demanding End to War in Iraq, Afghanistan
In a major step for the U.S. labor movement, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) has announced that it will shut down West Coast ports on May 1, to demand an immediate end to the war and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Middle East.
This is the first time in decades that an American union has decided to undertake industrial action against a U.S. war. The action announced by the powerful West Coast dock workers union, to stop work to stop the war, should be taken up by unions and labor organizations throughout the United States and internationally. And the purpose of such actions should be not to beg the bourgeois politicians whose hands are covered with blood, having voted for every war budget for six and a half years, but a show of strength of the working people who make this country run, and who can shut it down!
ILWU to Shut Down West Coast Ports May 1 Demanding End to War in Iraq, Afghanistan
In a major step for the U.S. labor movement, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) has announced that it will shut down West Coast ports on May 1, to demand an immediate end to the war and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Middle East. In a February 22 letter to AFL-CIO president John Sweeney, ILWU International president Robert McEllrath reported that at a recent coast-wide union meeting, “One of the resolutions adopted by caucus delegates called on longshore workers to stop work during the day shift on May 1, 2008 to express their opposition to the war in Iraq.”
This is the first time in decades that an American union has decided to undertake industrial action against a U.S. war. It is doubly important that this mobilization of labor’s power is to take place on May Day, the international workers day, which is not honored in the U.S. Moreover, the resolution voted by the ILWU delegates opposes not only the hugely unpopular war in Iraq, but also the war and occupation of Afghanistan (which Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and Republican John McCain all want to expand). The motion to shut down the ports also demands the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the entire region, including the oil sheikdoms of the strategically important Persian/Arab Gulf.
The Internationalist Group has fought from the moment U.S. troops invaded Afghanistan in September 2002 for American unions to strike against the war. Despite the fact that millions have marched in the streets of Europe and the United States against the war in Iraq, the war goes on. Neither of the twin war parties of U.S. imperialism – Democrats and Republicans – and none of the capitalist candidates will stop this horrendous slaughter that has already killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. The only way to stop the Pentagon killing machine is by mobilizing the power of a greater force – that of the international working class.
The action announced by the powerful West Coast dock workers union, to stop work to stop the war, should be taken up by unions and labor organizations throughout the United States and internationally. The ILWU should be commended for courageously taking the first step, and it is up to working people everywhere to back them up. Wherever support is strong enough, on May 1 there should be mass walkouts, sick-outs, labor marches, plant-gate meetings, lunch-time rallies, teach-ins. And the purpose of such actions should be not to beg the bourgeois politicians whose hands are covered with blood, having voted for every war budget for six and a half years, but a show of strength of the working people who make this country run, and who can shut it down!
Now is the time for bold class action. Opposition to the war is even greater in the U.S. working class than in the population as a whole, more than two-thirds of which wants to stop the war but is stymied by the capitalist political system. In his letter to Sweeney, the ILWU president asked “if other AFL-CIO affiliates are planning to participate in similar events.” Labor militants should make sure the answer to that question is a resounding “yes!”
There should be no illusions that this will be easy. No doubt the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) bosses will try to get the courts to rule the stop-work action illegal. The ILWU leadership could get cold feet, since this motion was passed because of overwhelming support from the delegates despite attempts to stop it or, failing that, to water it down or limit the action. And the U.S. government could try to ban it on the grounds of “national security,” just as Bush & Co. slapped a Taft-Hartley injunction on the docks during contract negotiations in the fall of 2002, saying that any work stoppage was a threat to the “war effort,” and threatened to occupy the ports with troops!
The answer to every attempt to sabotage or undercut this first labor action against this war, and against Washington’s broader “war on terror” which is intended to terrorize the world into submission must be to redouble efforts to bring out workers’ power independent of the capitalist parties and politicians. If the ILWU work stoppage is successful, it will only be a small, but very important, beginning that must be generalized and deepened. It will take industrial-strength labor action to defeat the imperialist war abroad and the bosses’ war on immigrants, oppressed minorities, poor and working people “at home.”
ILWU in the Forefront of Labor Action Against the War
Workers strike action against imperialist war isn’t new – it just hasn’t happened here for a long, long time. During World War I there were huge mass strikes in Germany against the battlefield carnage, culminating in the downfall of the kaiser in November 1918. A year earlier in Russia, working-class opposition to the war led to the overthrow of the tsar and the October Revolution led by Lenin and Trotsky’s Bolsheviks. The Internationalist Group and League for the Fourth International call today for transport workers to “hot cargo” (refuse to handle) war shipments. In the early 1920s, Communist-led French dock workers did exactly that, boycotting ships carrying war materiel to suppress a colonial rebellion in the Rif region of Morocco, as they also did during France’s war in Indochina in the 1950s.
In the U.S., the ILWU struck in 1948 amid Cold War hysteria and in defiance of the “slave labor” Taft-Hartley Act to defend its union hiring hall against the bosses and government screaming about “reds” in the union leadership. In 1953, at the height of McCarthyite witch-hunting, the ILWU called a four-day general strike in Hawaii of sugar, pineapple and dock workers over the jailing of seven union members for being communists. During the Vietnam War, socialist historian Isaac Deutscher said that he would trade all the peace marches for a single dock strike. The ILWU was the first U.S. union to oppose the Vietnam war, but during war and especially during the 1971 strike union leader Harry Bridges refused to stop the movement of military cargo. (Ship owners made use of this by falsely labeling cargo as “military” to evade picket lines and undermine the strike.) This betrayal went hand in hand with a “mechanization and modernization” contract that slashed union jobs.
As the U.S.-led imperialist invasion of Iraq was looming, in January 2003 train drivers in Scotland refused to move a freight train carrying munitions to a NATO military base. The next month, Italian railroad unionists and antiwar activists blocked NATO war trains by occupying the rails. In the United States, ILWU dock workers were a target of “anti-terrorist” government repression, as police fired supposedly “less than lethal” munitions point blank at an antiwar protest on the Oakland, California docks, injuring six longshore workers and arresting 25 people (who eventually won their legal case against the police). And every year since the war started, the San Francisco/Oakland ILWU Local 10 has voted for motions for labor action against the war. Usually they were voted down at caucuses and conventions of the ILWU, but not this time.
Last May, Local 10 longshoremen and Local 34 ships clerks refused to cross picket lines set up by the Oakland Teachers Association and antiwar activists, defying arbitrators’ orders by refusing to work ships of the notorious antiunion outfit, Stevedoring Services of America (see “Oakland Dock Workers Honor Picket, Shut Down War Cargo Shipper,” The Internationalist No. 26, July 2007). In the aftermath of that action, the union issued a call for a Labor Conference to Stop the War that would “plan workplace rallies, labor mobilizations in the streets and strike action against the war.” The Call to Action stated:
“ILWU Local 10 has repeatedly warned that the so-called ‘war on terror’ is really a war on working people and democratic rights. Around the country, hundreds of unions and labor councils have passed motions condemning the war, but that has not stopped the war. We need to use labor’s muscle to stop the war by mobilizing union power in the streets, at the plant gates and on the docks to force the immediate and total withdrawal of all U. S. troops from Afghanistan and Iraq.”
As the conference date approached, the union was the target of several police attacks, including a vicious cop assault on two black dock workers from San Francisco working in the port of Sacramento. Some 250 demonstrators from every ILWU local in Northern California rallied in their defense outside the courthouse. Their trial to be set march 18 at a hearing will encounter even larger demonstrations.
The Internationalist Group and its union supporters helped build and attended the October 20 conference, along with some 150 labor and socialist activists from the Bay Area, elsewhere in California and across the country. At the meeting, a particular focus was resistance to the Transportation Workers Identification Card (TWIC), which threatens minority workers and the union hiring hall, and which the Democratic Party in particular has been pushing in order to carry out a purge of dock workers in the name of the “war on terror.” Not long after that conference, a federal judge ordered Local 10 elections canceled and replaced by a Labor Department-run vote, on the eve of 2008 contract bargaining. Federal agents even invaded the union hall to enforce their order. This action is a threat to the independence of all unions.
This set the stage for the recent longshore-warehouse caucus, which voted a motion for a 24-hour “No Peace, No Work Holiday” against the war. The resolution was introduced in Local 10 by Jack Heyman, who also presented the motion for the 24 April 1999 coast-wide port shutdown demanding freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal, the former Black Panther and renowned radical journalist who has been on Pennsylvania’s death row for the last quarter century. Although the union tops maneuvered to prevent Heyman from being elected as a delegate to the Coast Caucus, the motion passed in Local 10. At the Caucus, the delegate from Local 34 referred to the October Labor Conference to Stop the War as the origin of the motion.
At the close of the Caucus on February 8, there was a vigorous debate on the resolution. The union tops tried to stop it, to no avail. They kept asking, “are you sure you want to do this action.” The delegates overwhelmingly said “yes.” Even conservative trade unionists, including veterans of the Vietnam War, were getting up saying the government is lying to us, we’ve had it with this war, we’ve got to put a stop to it now. So instead the bureaucrats tried to gut the motion, which was cut down from 24 hours to 8, and changed into a “stop-work” meeting (covered by a contract clause) instead of a straight-out shutdown, thinking that this would lessen opposition from the employers. In the end there was a voice vote and only three delegates out of 100 voted against.
The efforts to undercut the motion continue, as is to be expected from a leadership which, like the rest of the pro-capitalist labor bureaucracy, seeks “labor peace” with the bosses. In his letter to Sweeney, ILWU International president tried to present the action as an effort to “express support for the troops by bringing them home safely,” although the motion voted by the delegates says nothing of the sort. Playing the “support our troops” game is an effort to swear loyalty to the broader aims of U.S. imperialism. It aids the warmongers, when what’s needed is independent working-class action against the system that produces endless imperialist war. Yet despite the efforts to water it down and distort it, the May 1 action voted for by the ILWU delegates is a call to use labor’s muscle to put an end to the war.
Mobilize Labor’s Power to Defeat the Bosses’ War!
For the West Coast dock workers union to shut down the ports against the war means a big step forward in the class struggle. The Internationalist Group has uniquely fought for workers strikes against the war, when all the popular-front “peace” coalitions dismissed this and even some shamefaced ex-Trotskyists refused to call for it, saying it had “no resonance” among the workers (see our October 20007 Special Supplement to The Internationalist, “Why We Fight For Workers Strikes Against the War and the Opportunists Don’t”). With signs, banners and propaganda we have sought to drive home the central lesson that it is necessary to defeat the imperialist war abroad and the bosses’ war “at home” by mobilizing the power of the workers movement independent of and against the capitalist parties.
That means fighting the war mobilization down the line. First and foremost, this means actively joining the struggle for immigrant rights as the government turns undocumented working people into “the enemy within.” Class-conscious workers should demand full citizenship rights for all immigrants. Last year, San Francisco Local 10 voted to stop work and join marches for immigrant rights on May 1, but this was opposed by the employers PMA and sabotaged at the last minute by the union tops. Shamefully, Local 13 in Los Angeles, a majority Mexican American port, made no protest when police attacked immigrant rights protesters that same day. Today, as the ICE immigration police stage Gestapo-style raids across the country, organized labor should take the lead in organizing rapid response networks to come into the streets to block the raids. Despite the campaign by the capitalist media and politicians to whip up anti-immigrant hysteria, there is widespread disgust among American working people toward the jackbooted storm troopers who are terrorizing immigrant communities.
At the same time, the unions should use the power to put a halt to the attacks on civil liberties which are part of the home front of the imperialist war. Driver’s licenses with biometric data, TWIC identification cards with “background checks,” warrantless spying and phone tapping, setting up special military tribunals for “trials” in which defendants are denied the right of habeas corpus, to know the “evidence” or even the charges against them – all these are part of a drive that is in high gear pushing the United States toward a full-fledged police state. There have been scores, perhaps hundreds of resolutions by unions and city, county and state labor bodies against the U.S.A. PATRIOT Act, showing that labor activists are well aware of the danger. But just as is the case with the countless union antiwar resolutions, there has been no labor action. It is commonplace in the labor movement to bemoan the lack of real action when Reagan broke the 1981 PATCO air traffic controllers’ strike, paving the way for massive union-busting, takeaways and racist attacks all down the line. Let’s not let the labor bureaucrats bury the vital struggles of today.
Now is the time to turn words into deeds, to speak to the capitalist rulers in the only language they understand. The imperialist war parties must be defeated by a class mobilization of the working people at the head of all the oppressed. The ILWU motion to stop work on May Day to put a stop to the war can provide working people everywhere with the opening to turn from impotent protest to a struggle for power. For that the key is to build a class-struggle workers party fighting for a workers government, for socialist revolution here and around the world, that will put an end once and for all to the system of endless war, poverty and racism.
‘9/11 attacks made up, ‘ says French best actress Oscar-winner
‘9/11 attacks made up, ‘ says French best actress Oscar-winner
By: PETER ALLEN
on: 02.03.2008
Oscar-winner Marion Cotillard has accused America of fabricating the 9/11 attacks
Actress Marion Cotillard sparked a political row yesterday after accusing America of fabricating the 9/11 attacks.
The 32-year-old French actress, who received an Oscar last month for her performance as singer Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose, openly questioned the truth behind the terrorist atrocity in an interview broadcast on a French website.
“I think we’re lied to about a number of things,” Cotillard said, singling out the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center as an example of the US making up horror stories for political ends.
Referring to the two passenger jets being flown into the Twin Towers, Cotillard said:
“We see other towers of the same kind being hit by planes. Are they burned? They sic was a tower, I believe it was in Spain, which burnt for 24 hours. It never collapsed. None of these towers collapsed. And there in New York, in a few minutes, the whole thing collapsed.”
She added that the towers, planned in the early Sixties, were an outdated “money-sucker” that would have cost more to modernise than to rebuild altogether, which is why they were destroyed.
She said: “It was a money-sucker because they were finished, it seems to me, by 1973, and to re-cable all that, to bring up-to-date all the technology and everything, it was a lot more expensive, that work, than destroying them.”
Cotillard’s stardom and increased earning power looked assured following her Oscar win.
But after her outburst, in which she also queried the 1969 Moon landings, a successful future in Hollywood appears to be in jeopardy.
She said: “Did a man really walk on the Moon? I saw plenty of documentaries on it, and I really wondered. And in any case I don’t believe all they tell me, that’s for sure.”
Cotillard, who was born and brought up in Paris, made the comments on Paris Première – Paris Dernière, a programme broadcast a year ago.
Stars in their eyes: Elton John and partner David Furnish cosy up to the hottest new actress in Hollywood
Celebration: Marion celebrated her win with Hollywood’s A-listers – including Sharon Stone – at Elton John’s party in Hollywood
At the time her remarks were largely ignored, but their appearance yesterday on the French magazine website Marianne2 comes at a time when Cotillard’s profile is sky-high.
She is shortly due to fly to Chicago to star alongside Johnny Depp in Public Enemies, a gangster movie expected to be her first big money-spinner.
Cotillard’s film career began in Luc Besson’s 1998 film Taxi – a huge hit in France but less so around the world.
She is slowly becoming a household name in France, in a list most recently topped by her close friend Audrey Tautou and previously by women such as Catherine Deneuve and Brigitte Bardot.
‘I think we’re lied to about a number of things’ Cotillard said, singling out the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center as an example of the US making up horror stories for political ends
But Cotillard, who lives with actor and director Guillaume Canet, frequently tells interviewers she has no interest in money or prestige.
Denying that she had any kind of “Anglo-Saxon ambition”, she said she prefers to “choose roles which suit me”.
Despite her low-key image, Cotillard is an environmental activist who once worked as a spokesman for Greenpeace.
News of her anti-Americanism comes as Franco-American relations appear to be thawing, following Paris’s refusal to show support for the invasion of Iraq.
President Nicolas Sarkozy insists he is pro-American, even supporting so-called “Anglo-Saxon” economic reforms.
Oil money is coming – and there is little the west can do about it
Oil money is coming – and there is little the west can do about it
March 01 2008.
Energy producing countries are buying global power after decades of subjugation
Larry Elliott,
Larry Summers was in full flow. Addressing a packed meeting on sovereign wealth funds at the Davos gathering of the World Economic Forum in January, the former US treasury secretary told the investment arms of foreign governments they should sign up to a code of conduct and be more transparent.
In a telling sign of the shift in the balance of global economic power, the sovereign wealth funds told Summers to get lost.
The Saudis accused him of double standards: hedge funds were not being regulated despite causing mayhem in the financial markets, so why pick on SWFs? The Russians – revelling in Washington’s discomfort – said American attempts to restrict investment were “not helpful”.
This week the fears resurfaced. José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, said Brussels could not allow non-European funds “to be run in an opaque manner or used as an implement of geopolitical strategy”.
Barroso’s main worry is that Russia – which set up an official SWF last month – is planning to relaunch the cold war, only this time with oil and gas receipts rather than with the Red Army.
Some western governments are suspicious about the motives of sovereign funds that have been buying up assets in developed countries.
Washington, which has launched talks with funds in Abu Dhabi and Singapore, has concerns over Russia’s one-time rival communist superpower China, which has grown weary of stockpiling US Treasury bonds and has started to size up physical assets in the west.
However, the EU and the US are in a weak position. They would like all such funds to follow the example of Norway, which has banked its North Sea receipts from the past 30 years in a £300bn-plus long-term investment fund, and the International Monetary Fund is finalising a voluntary code of practice.
This will be revealed in the coming weeks, but if the SWFs choose not to abide by it, there is little Brussels and Washington can do. The fivefold increase in the price of crude oil to more than $100 a barrel has provided a windfall for the coffers of oil and gas producing countries, while the nations of east Asia have amassed huge holdings as a result of export-led growth. Britain, as a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers pointed out this week, could have built up a £450bn sovereign wealth fund had it not spent its North Sea bonanza on politically expedient tax cuts and higher public spending.
Elsewhere, sovereign funds are rich, they are growing in size and they have been bailing out the west’s tottering banks after ill-advised speculation saw their assets slashed in value by the American sub-prime mortgage crisis. The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority – the world’s biggest SWF – has taken a $7.5bn (£3.8bn) stake in Citigroup; one of Singapore’s funds has injected $11bn into the Swiss bank UBS, the other has invested $5bn into Morgan Stanley. China has ploughed $5bn into Merrill Lynch.
Train wreck
A study by one of the biggest banks, HSBC, noted: “The owners of emerging SWFs look unlikely just to roll over. They are enjoying the boot being on the other foot after an awfully long time. The train wreck that was the 1990s, when they had to go cap-in-hand to the developed world, was bad enough.
“Going back further, western jibes about state capitalism would, perhaps, have more power had they themselves not ruled many of these countries for years via state-licensed companies.”
Gerard Lyons, chief economist at Standard Chartered, said: “Sovereign wealth funds have existed since 1953 and are here to stay. Their size and influence is set to grow. Already valued at $2.2tn, on current trends they could reach $13.4tn in a decade.
“There is a serious likelihood of western governments and SWFs clashing over what they can buy and where. A protectionist backlash against strategic investments is real and threatens global trade.”
The growing tension erupted in 2006 when the US prevented Dubai Ports from taking control of six American ports on grounds of national security. Lyons believes that western governments will seek to protect national champions and strategic sectors, but that SWFs are also likely to take a tough line. “Many governments will argue that it is their money and why should they be so transparent when other areas of the financial markets are not,” he said.
“Western countries may need to accept the rise of SWFs as a further sign of a shift in the world economy and should seize this opportunity to work with emerging economies such as China and Russia and others to find common ground rules and a code of practice.”
There are few signs that SWFs are being used as an instrument of foreign policy, although Brussels clearly has misgivings about the Kremlin’s intentions. Equally, there is evidence that the governments behind the SWFs are enjoying the clout their wealth has given them. And with no immediate end in sight to the credit crunch, their bargaining position is strong and getting stronger.
Tequila crisis
“From the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s, through the Tequila crisis of 1994-5, the Asian crisis of 1997, Russia’s default and Argentina’s even larger one in 2001, the emerging world always with its finances in a parlous state, rocked from one crisis to another,” HSBC said.
“Now, huge quantities of money from the emerging world – some $60bn at the last count – are injecting a measure of stability into the developed world’s arteries: some of its biggest, boldest and brashest banks, brought low, in their turn, by investments and finances that were themselves, it now transpires, an awful lot less stable than they or most others had assumed.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/mar/01/oil.globaleconomy1
Saudis urged to leave Lebanon
Saudis urged to leave Lebanon
Lebanon’s prime minister denies asking the US for the warship’s deployment. The Saudi Arabian embassy in Beirut has called on its nationals to leave Lebanon a day after a US warship was positioned off the country’s coast.
The embassy on Saturday sent SMS messages to Saudis living in Lebanon urging them to leave the country as soon as possible, Al Jazeera’s correspondent said.
Saudi Arabia issued an advisory last month urging its citizens not to travel to Lebanon because of deteriorating political and security conditions.
Kuwait and Bahrain followed with similar calls.
Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia is a major supporter of the Sunni-led government in Lebanon which has been locked in a 15-month-old political standoff with an opposition led by Iranian-and-Syrian backed Hezbollah.
‘Conflict’ fear
Fouad Siniora, the Lebanese prime minister, has denied asking the US to deploy the warship USS Cole and two support ships amid the country’s continuing political deadlock.
Siniora reportedly summoned the US ambassador on Friday for an explanation.
Siniora said: “We did not request any warships from any party.”
He also stressed the importance of Lebanon’s independence and sovereignty “so that it will not become an arena for the conflicts of regional and international powers”.
Siniora said there are no warships in Lebanese territorial waters, except Lebanon’s small navy – made up of patrol boats – and the 12 warships belonging to a UN peacekeeping force.
US position
According to Gordon Johndroe, a White House spokesman, Washington has had “regular consultations” with Siniora and other US allies in the region.
“There’s constant communications at various levels,” he said.
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The US declined to say whether the decision to deploy the USS Cole was a show of force aimed at Syria, which it has accused of interfering in Lebanon.
Lebanon’s governing coalition and the Hezbollah-led opposition have failed to reach a deal over the election of a new president.
A senior US official said Washington was “very concerned” about the situation in Lebanon and called the move “support for regional stability”.
“The United States believes a show of support is important for regional stability,” the official said.
Gaza link
Nabih Berri, the parliament speaker, who is aligned with the opposition, has linked the deployment of the warships to Israel’s raids in the Gaza Strip.
“The target of US warships is Gaza. It is aimed to allow what must happen in Gaza to happen without anyone moving to support the Palestinians,” he said.
“This is a real threat, not merely a muscle-flexing.”
Berri also said that the US military move was designed to focus attention on Lebanon “in order to cover up the massacres being committed in Gaza”.
“This US fleet comes to back Israel so that it can complete its plan,” he said.
‘Gun boat diplomacy’
Earlier, Richard Murphy, a former US ambassador to Syria, told Al Jazeera that the move was a sign that the US did not know what to do about Lebanon.
“It is gunboat diplomacy. I think it would be more useful for the US to find a way to engage with the conflicting parties in Lebanon.
“We have no dialogue with Syria and this is a moment for dialogue.”
Seventeen US sailors were killed in October 2000 when the USS Cole was attacked off the coast of Yemen by al-Qaeda fighters.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/24F4810C-61CB-4284-AB2B-CCA786434016.htm
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Imperial West war is on the way for March the month of war , the target is the Arab world, the agenda, to redraw the Middle East map, the “Greater Middle East. Israel will solve palestinian problem by deporting them.
Targets : Soudan, Lebanon, Syria, all Arabian Peninsula, Egyptia, Iran, Pakistan,
dib
“Hegemony is as old as Mankind…”
Zbigniew Brzezinski, former U.S. National Security Advisor
“New Middle East” was introduced to the world in June 2006 in Tel Aviv by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (who was credited by the Western media for coining the term) in replacement of the older and more imposing term, the “Greater Middle East.”
Gaza raids met by loud silence from the Arab world
Gaza raids met by loud silence from the Arab world
By Zvi Bar’el, Haaretz Correspondent
As the death toll in Israel Defense Forces raids against miltiants firing rockets from Gaza climbed to more than 60 on Saturday, Palestinian Information Minister Riad al-Malki responded by saying: “Hamas gave Israel an excuse to start a war in Gaza.”
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas also responded along these lines by saying that the “operation in Gaza is not just a reaction to the rocket barrage.” Both comments can be interpreted as Palestinian backing of the Israel Defense Forces ground incursion in the Strip.
Moreover, the very mild Egyptian reaction and the conspicuous absence of a convicting Arab voice also indicate that the IDF raid is perceived by the Arab world to be first and foremost a war against Hamas, not the “real Holocaust” of the Palestinian people – as Khaled Meshal claimed on Saturday.
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The fact that Al Jazeera devoted a whole episode of a popular debate show to the question “Why are the Palestinians keeping silent about the situation in Gaza?” also serves to prove this point.
Hamas will therefore have to concentrate its efforts not only on the Israeli offensive or on getting the support of the Arab countries, but mainly on shattering the Israeli definition of this war – from one directed against a terrorist organization to a full-fledged war on the entire Palestinian people.
Hamas succeeded in doing this once in late January, when its people breached the Gaza-Egypt border and the media portrayed Hamas as the savior of the Palestinians from the Israeli siege.
Back then, the Egyptian government had to show its support of the breached border fence and allow thousands of Palestinians to swarm into Egypt. Hamas also managed to set the issue of the Rafah crossing and the need for inter-Palestinian reconciliation as top priority of the political agenda.
This time, however, a different effort is required: In order to portray the Palestinian people as a victim of Israeli aggression, exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshal and his representatives both in Gaza and in the West Bank will have to muster the support of the public in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, as well as bring about a resolute commitment from the Palestinian Authority that it would join the active struggle against Israel.
Meshal’s ultimate goal is to pull elements within Fatah and other Palestinian organizations to the armed struggle, even at the cost of starting a third intifada.
So far, Meshal was unsuccessful in his attempts to garner pan-Palestinian support for Hamas’ repeated use of Qassam rockets against Israel. Senior Palestinian and Arab officials voiced serious doubts concerning the rockets’ efficacy, including several officials who condemned the use of Qassams as detrimental to the Palestinian cause.
This is a new situation in which the IDF operates in a wide scope, the television footage is extremely hard to watch, the number of dead Palestinians since Wednesday is close to 90 and the physical damage inflicted is enormous.
All these factors make it easier for Hamas to swerve public opinion its way and direct it towards a large-scale operation in the West Bank that would run deeper than a quiet protest. Arab leaders could soon find the situation to be out of their control.
The problem facing Israel at the moment is how to confine the incursion within the limits of Israel’s struggle against Hamas and the rocket barrage, and not turn it into a war that seems to be directed against all Palestinians.
The line between these two stages is tricky and dangerous. Therefore the Israeli government should not give up on trying to get Egypt and the rest of the Arab countries to initiate a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.
Canada : les libéraux et les conservateurs s’entendent sur la prolongation de l’opération militaire canadienne en Afghanistan
Canada : les libéraux et les conservateurs s’entendent sur la prolongation de l’opération militaire canadienne en Afghanistan
Par Guy Charron
1er mars 2008
En arrivant à un accord sur la prolongation de la mission canadienne en Afghanistan, le gouvernement canadien minoritaire formé par le Parti conservateur de Stephen Harper et le parti formant l’opposition officielle, le Parti libéral de Stéphane Dion, ont répondu aux demandes répétées des élites canadiennes de cesser les disputes sur cet enjeu « d’intérêt national », mais qui est massivement opposé par la population.
« Je suis d’accord avec le premier ministre, nous n’avons plus une motion conservatrice ou une motion libérale devant nous, mais une motion canadienne » a déclaré Stéphane Dion lors des discours suivant le dépôt de la motion devant la Chambre des communes, comme Stephen Harper quelques jours auparavant.
Avec cette motion, l’opération de contre-insurrection de l’armée canadienne dans la province de Kandahar sera prolongée au-delà de l’engagement précédent de février 2009 jusqu’en juillet 2011. Adoptant les recommandations du rapport Manley, le Parlement canadien pose comme condition à la prolongation du déploiement des troupes canadiennes à Kandahar l’envoi de renforts supplémentaires de 1000 soldats de l’OTAN dans cette province et le déploiement d’hélicoptères et de drones par l’armée canadienne.
La province de Kandahar au sud de l’Afghanistan est un château fort des talibans et le front de la lutte contre-insurrectionnelle. Le contingent de 2500 soldats canadiens appuyés par une quinzaine de chars d’assaut Léopard qui est basé dans cette province depuis 2005 a subi plus de 60 morts et 650 blessés. Proportionnellement au nombre de soldats engagés, ce nombre est significativement plus élevé que celui des morts et blessés de l’armée américaine en Irak et représente une part substantielle des victimes au sein de la force d’occupation de l’OTAN en Afghanistan qui compte 60 000 soldats.
En acceptant la prolongation de la mission, Dion a répudié la ligne qu’il avançait depuis le début de 2007, peu de temps après son élection à la tête du Parti libéral, demandant que le rôle que jouent les troupes canadiennes dans la guerre de contre-insurrection au sud de l’Afghanistan soit donné à une autre puissance de l’OTAN après février 2009 et que l’armée canadienne limite ses activités à la reconstruction, l’entraînement des forces de sécurité afghanes et à la diplomatie. (Une équipe d’une vingtaine de personnes, presque toutes des officiers de l’armée canadienne, conseille directement le gouvernement fantoche d’Hamid Karzaï.)
Malgré l’appui que donne la classe politique à la mission de l’armée canadienne en Afghanistan et le soutien inconditionnel que lui donnent les principaux organes de presse par et pour la grande entreprise, tous les sondages indiquent que plus de 60 pour cent de la population canadienne s’opposent aux opérations canadiennes en Afghanistan.
Avec sa demande du retrait des troupes canadiennes du front de Kandahar, le Parti libéral tentait de façon hypocrite de se distinguer du très à droite Parti conservateur sur la question de l’Afghanistan et de développer une base électorale.
Cette distinction entre les libéraux et les conservateurs sur la question de la guerre a toujours été plus verbale que fondamentale. La mission canadienne en Afghanistan avait été amorcée par le gouvernement libéral de Jean Chrétien et le transfert des troupes canadiennes vers Kandahar décidé par le gouvernement libéral de Paul Martin. Et les libéraux n’ont jamais demandé rien de plus qu’une rotation des nations sur le front de Kandahar, pas la fin de la guerre en Afghanistan qu’ils appuient inconditionnellement. Les conservateurs ont décidé de faire de la question de leur appui à l’occupation de l’Afghanistan une question politique centrale, alors que les libéraux préféraient ne pas trop attirer l’attention sur l’opération militaire canadienne.
Harper ayant fait de la question de la prolongation de la mission canadienne en Afghanistan une question de confiance du Parlement en son gouvernement minoritaire, la position des libéraux signifiait que sans compromis de leur part, le gouvernement Harper tombait. Au grand dam des représentants des élites canadiennes, cela aurait signifié une élection où la question afghane aurait été centrale, une situation que la bourgeoisie a jugé politiquement dangereuse à cause de la grande opposition des masses des travailleurs.
Les éditoriaux des quotidiens du pays ont été remplis d’appels aux libéraux pour qu’ils changent leur position, ce à quoi ils ont rapidement acquiescé. (Voir : Les libéraux se rallient à la prolongation de la mission de l’armée canadienne en Afghanistan)
Les libéraux ont présenté leur propre motion de prolongation de la mission militaire canadienne en Afghanistan en disant que l’entraînement devait être sa principale activité. Dion a expliqué que l’entraînement comprenait les combats aux côtés des forces afghanes.
Les conservateurs ont accepté de déposer devant la Chambre des communes une version de la motion qui était essentiellement celle proposée par les libéraux qui peuvent ainsi déclarer que le gouvernement conservateur s’est rendu à leurs arguments. Mais à part le fait que la motion indique que la mission canadienne prendra fin en 2011, les conservateurs n’ont fait aucune concession réelle aux libéraux. Rien n’empêchera les militaires canadiens de continuer à combattre contre les talibans et quant à la question de la fin de la mission, comme un éditorial du Globe and Mail l’a écrit, « rien n’empêche qu’un futur gouvernement demande au Parlement une autre prolongation ».
En annonçant que les conservateurs acceptaient les grandes lignes de la motion libérale, Harper a exposé les véritables objectifs impérialistes de l’intervention canadienne en Afghanistan.
« … nous avons besoin d’une armée forte, à plusieurs facettes, qui a le soutien de la volonté politique pour se déployer, a-t-il déclaré. Les pays que ne peuvent pas faire de contributions réelles à la sécurité mondiale, ou qui ne le font pas, ne seront pas considérés comme des joueurs importants. Ils seront peut-être aimés de tous. Ils peuvent être reconnus plaisamment par tous. Mais quand les décisions difficiles sont prises, ils seront ignorés de tous. »
Le Globe and Mail, le principal quotidien au Canada et porte-parole de Bay Street où se concentre à Toronto les grandes institutions financières du Canada, a salué l’accord comme un tournant de l’histoire canadienne.
« Conciliant n’est habituellement pas un terme que l’on peut accoler au nom de Stephen Harper, mais cette semaine, la description lui sied », a écrit le Globe and Mail soulagé. « C’est un moment important pour le Canada au niveau international et par sa mission vitale en Afghanistan », a-t-il continué.
« Une défaite de la motion gouvernementale aurait pu transformer une mission de sécurité vitale en une sale bataille politique, ce qui serait allé à l’encontre des troupes sur le terrain. Une motion bipartisane permettra à M. Harper de donner un ultimatum sans équivoque lors du sommet de l’OTAN en avril : le Canada retirera ses troupes de l’Afghanistan l’an prochain à moins que d’autres nations fournissent 1000 soldats supplémentaires et plus d’équipement militaire. »
Avec cet accord, comme le souligne le Globe and Mail, non seulement les libéraux et les conservateurs défendent-ils les intérêts géostratégiques des élites canadiennes face à l’opposition des larges masses des travailleurs au Canada même, mais contribuent à l’intensification de l’offensive en Afghanistan en forçant la main des puissances européennes qui confrontent elles aussi une large opposition à la guerre afghane.
Pour tenter de contrer l’augmentation de l’offensive des opposants afghans à l’occupation étrangère, les dirigeants de l’opération militaire en Afghanistan veulent mettre de l’avant la même stratégie qu’en Irak, soit l’envoi de plus de troupes et l’intensification des attaques militaires.
Les États-Unis ont accusé les puissances européennes de ne pas être assez combatives en Afghanistan et la demande pour plus de troupes à Kandahar telle qu’énoncée dans l’accord est utilisée pour faire pression sur elles.
La France envisage l’envoi des plus de 1000 soldats en renfort dans les provinces afghanes frontalières avec le Pakistan, préférant combattre aux côtés des Américains là-bas, ce qui libérerait le même nombre de soldats américains pour venir combattre avec les troupes canadiennes à Kandahar. Les États-Unis ont déjà annoncé qu’ils déploieront 3200 soldats supplémentaires en Afghanistan au cours des prochaines semaines, dont 2200 au sud. Ces soldats seront appuyés par une quarantaine d’aéronefs tels hélicoptères, Harrier AV-83 et drones. Le déploiement américain pourrait être considéré comme suffisant par le gouvernement Harper pour satisfaire les conditions de la prolongation de la mission canadienne en Afghanistan.
Le chef d’état-major canadien, le général Rick Hillier, a exigé que le Parlement donne un soutien « écrasant » à la prolongation de la mission canadienne en Afghanistan, laissant entendre que les députés votant contre la prolongation de la mission incitaient les talibans à commettre des attentats à la bombe contre les convois militaires canadiens.
Depuis plusieurs années, les officiers de l’état-major de l’armée et des forces de sécurité canadiennes interviennent dans le débat public pour terroriser la population ou faire pression sur les dirigeants politiques pour augmenter le financement de l’armée et des forces de sécurité et pour augmenter les pouvoirs policiers.
En général, ces interventions sont accueillies favorablement par les médias qui les présentent en première page ou en entrée de bulletin de nouvelles à la télévision et à la radio. En octobre dernier, Hillier a dit devant l’Association canadienne des diffuseurs que « d’une certaine façon, je suis autant à leur service [NdT : les soldats] qu’à celui du gouvernement du Canada et au service des Canadiens et du Canada lui-même ». Son discours fut accueilli par une ovation debout par les représentants des grands médias électroniques au Canada.
Cette fois, parce que les deux principaux partis de la grande entreprise au Parlement se sont entendus pour défendre les intérêts fondamentaux du Capital canadien, le Globe and Mail s’est permis de gentiment rappeler Hillier à l’ordre. Après avoir encensé Hillier pour ces nombreuses défenses de la mission canadienne, le Globe and Mail a écrit qu’« il est décourageant de savoir que nos soldats sont si douillets qu’ils ont besoin du soutien explicite de chacun des députés du Bloc québécois et du Nouveau Parti démocratique pour faire leur travail ».
Gilles Duceppe, le chef du parti séparatiste au niveau fédéral, le Bloc québécois, a annoncé qu’il voterait contre la motion des libéraux et des conservateurs parce que « ça fait deux fois qu’il y a des dates fermes qui sont remises, reportées. Nous, c’est février 2009, point à la ligne. » Comme les libéraux, les bloquistes tentent hypocritement de se positionner pour s’accaparer une partie du vote anti-guerre. Mais tout comme les libéraux avant leur accord avec les conservateurs, Duceppe ne demande pas la fin de la guerre en Afghanistan, mais seulement que le Canada se retire du front de Kandahar. Dans un long discours qu’il a donné en 2007 expliquant la position du Bloc québécois sur l’Afghanistan, il a insisté que l’occupation de l’Afghanistan constituait « une noble cause ». Si le Bloc peut se permettre de voter contre la motion, c’est en grande partie parce qu’il sait que son parti n’étant basé que dans une seule province, il lui est impossible de jamais prendre le pouvoir, ce qui lui laisse une grande marge de manœuvre pour prendre des positions démagogiques.
Le Nouveau Parti démocratique (NPD), après avoir soutenu l’intervention canadienne de 2002 à la fin de 2006, demande aujourd’hui le retrait des troupes canadiennes pour leur permettre d’intervenir dans d’autres endroits dans le monde comme le Liban, Haïti ou le Darfour. Pour l’Afghanistan lui-même, le NPD demande que la responsabilité de la mission passe de l’OTAN à l’ONU comme si cette organisation dominée par les Etats-Unis et les grandes puissances européennes pouvait jouer un rôle différent de celui de l’OTAN à qui elle a donné le mandat de réaliser l’occupation de l’Afghanistan en son nom.
