Workers Resistance

Author: Fight Back

  • U.S., Japan make threats against China

    Minneapolis, MN – U.S. and Japanese authorities are making threats against People’s China in the wake of China’s Nov. 23 establishment of the East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone.

    Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Yang Yujun states that China created the Identification Zone with “the aim of safeguarding state sovereignty, territorial land and air security and maintaining flight order. This is a necessary measure taken by China in exercising its self-defense right.”

    Inside the newly created Identification Zone are the Japan-occupied Diaoyu Islands. Historically a part of China, Japan maintains physical control over the Diaoyu Islands and the islands have become a flashpoint in Chinese-Japanese relations in recent years.

    Japan’s current Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe – a right winger who defends Japan’s brutal imperial past – is up in arms about the decision to establish the Identification Zone.

    A Nov. 24 report in The Guardian states, “Japan has denounced the zone set up by China on Saturday as ‘totally unacceptable’ and indicated that aircraft from its self-defence force would ignore Beijing’s attempt to oblige aeroplanes to obtain its permission before entering.”

    On Nov. 23 U.S Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel stated, “This announcement by the People’s Republic of China will not in any way change how the U.S. conducts military operations in the region.”

    Referring to the Diaoyu Islands as the ‘Senkaku Islands’, which is the name used by the Japanese authorities, Hegel affirmed the U.S. was ready to join a military conflict with China, stating, “We remain steadfast in our commitments to our allies and partners. The U.S. reaffirms its longstanding policy that Article V of the U.S.-Japan Mutual Defense Treaty applies to the Senkaku Islands.”

  • Filipino Communists extend ceasefire in areas devastated by Typhoon

    Fight Back News Service is circulating the following Nov. 23 statement from the Communist Party of the Philippines

    Extension of ceasefire in Yolanda – devastated areas

    The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines hereby announces a one-month extension of the earlier ceasefire declaration issued to commands of the New People’s Army (NPA) and units of the people’s militias operating in the areas devastated by the 8 November super typhoon Yolanda (international name Haiyan). The ceasefire declaration, which practically commenced on 8 November 2013, and was originally set to expire on 2359 hours of 24 November, will now remain in effect up to 2359 hours of 24 December.

    This ceasefire declaration covers the following regional commands of the NPA:

    Eastern Visayas Regional Command
    Panay Regional Command
    Central Visayas Regional Command
    Negros Island Command

    The ceasefire declaration is being extended by another month in view of the extent and gravity of the devastation of the super typhoon that has been made worse by the gross negligence and inutility of the ruling Aquino regime. This will allow all committees of the people’s democratic government, respective commands of the NPA and units of the people’s militias in the devastated areas to continue with rehabilitation efforts.

    Revolutionary forces in the area are currently busy in facilitating the distribution of relief supply from various people’s organizations and media outfits. They are engaged in the reconstruction of homes, as well as in the mobilization of people in efforts to resume production and wage mass struggles. Disaster victims are being organized in order to assert their demand for reforms to address their urgent needs. The demand of the peasant masses for land reform and of the fisherfolk for fisheries reform have become particularly urgent in the devastated areas.

    Revolutionary forces in Luzon and Mindanao have carried out efforts to generate funds and supplies for the victims of the recent disaster. They are in close coordination with media and people’s organizations which are busy extending assistance to the devastated areas.

    Respective units of the NPA and the people’s militias shall remain in active defense mode within the period of effectivity of this declaration. They shall exert all-out effort to assist the masses but will exercise great caution to remain invisible to the enemy and avoid vulnerabilities. They should maintain a heightened sense of alertness against the hostile acts and encroachments of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) in areas within the scope of authority of the people’s democratic government.

    This is in view of the fact that despite the widespread sufferings and hardships brought about by the recent disaster, the Aquino regime and the AFP have refused to relent in their offensive military operations and campaigns of suppression being carried out under the Oplan Bayanihan war against the people. The AFP has deployed several specialized units for transportation into Eastern Visayas. This is, however, a token effort considering the fact that it has 10,000 soldiers under the command of the 8th Infantry Division which remain focused on carrying out “counterinsurgency” operations within the region and continue to be on an offensive rampage. The Aquino regime has virtually garrisoned Tacloban City and placed it under military rule.

    In Panay and Negros, the 3rd Infantry Division adamantly carries out offensive military operations in complete disregard for the recent devastation. As a result of the relentless offensive operations of the forces of the 3rd ID, two successive armed encounters erupted between a local NPA unit carrying out rehabilitation efforts and a platoon of the 47th IB on offensive operations in Barangay Magbalyo, Kabankalan City last 16 November, resulting in the wounding of an AFP soldier.

    While maintaining a high degree of alertness against the offensive operations of the AFP, the NPA and the organized peasant masses must heighten efforts to wage revolutionary mass struggles to advance the democratic cause of the people in the face of the disaster and grave economic hardships.

    The CPP leadership rejects the Malacañang proposal for a nationwide ceasefire of indefinite duration. The CPP ceasefire declaration is localized and has a definite period of effectivity with the aim of addressing the urgent need of extending emergency services to the people and carrying out rehabilitation efforts.

    A ceasefire of longer duration and nationwide scope can be carried out only on the basis of fundamental socio-economic and political reforms. Otherwise, such a ceasefire will be of no benefit to the people and will only be taken advantage of by the most reactionary and fascist elements to push for the pacification and surrender of the people’s revolutionary forces.

    If Malacañang is really serious in its proposal, then it should immediately end its unilateral suspension of peace negotiations and resume talks with the duly authorized panel of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines and forge agreements on the basis, parameters and mechanics of such a ceasefire.

    Ceasefire declaration to concentrate on rehabilitation work in Yolanda devastated areas

  • Jesus Huerta: Youth killed in Durham police custody

    Durham, NC – Another Durham resident has now died in a controversial encounter with the Durham Police Department. This time it was teenager and local Riverside High School student, Jesus Huerta. An official response from Durham Police Chief Jose Lopez claims that 17-year-old Jesus Huerta died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound while under arrest in the back seat of a police squad car. After Durham police officer Samuel Duncan arrested Huerta, reports state that Officer Duncan heard a loud noise from the vehicle’s rear seat and jumped out of his moving patrol cruiser. Duncan’s squad car then slammed into a parked van, leaving Huerta shot and killed in the process. This incident occurred right outside of the Durham Police Department headquarters parking lot.

    Personally, I don’t believe one word of what the Durham Police Department has stated. It seems to me, and many others throughout the city, Durham police officers are simply covering their tracks with a concocted story that makes no physical or logical sense whatsoever. Judging from the city’s buzz of conversations, many residents believe Officer Duncan was directly responsible for Huerta’s death. It is also quite disturbing how the first thing Durham police chose to highlight in this controversy was Huerta’s past juvenile offenses. Trespassing and misdemeanor possession of cannabis was not the cause of Jesus Huerta’s death. Such sheer lack of accountability on behalf of the Durham Police Department is not only disrespectful, it’s outright despicable. Entertaining such ploy is merely a distraction from gathering the truth of what actually happened here. Maybe someone should pull up the Durham Police Department’s criminal record. Fact is, a 17-year-old boy who was allegedly handcuffed, mysteriously died in police custody. Many residents are pointing to police brutality and excessive use of force.

    Unfortunately, Jesus Huerta became the third Durham resident killed by or in Durham police custody over the last five months. 33-year-old Jose Ocampo was killed July 27, shot four times in the chest for possessing a knife. 26-year-old Derek Deandre Walker was executed Sept. 17 by a Durham police sniper for publicly threatening to commit suicide.

    Personally, I’m not worried about the ‘Bloods and Crips’ in Durham. I’m worried about our local thugs in pressed blue uniforms. I’m worried about gang members who carry badges, Tasers, steel batons and handguns, ‘law enforcers’ who are paid with public tax money to terrorize people. Jesus Huerta deserves more than blanket apologies from city officials. Phony condolences are of no use, here. Huerta’s family members deserve justice; local Durham residents deserve the truth. A young man has been killed and we need answers. We need answers and Officer Samuel Duncan arrested. Now!

    Lamont Lilly is a contributing editor with the Triangle Free Press, Human Rights Delegate with Witness for Peace and organizer with Workers World Party. He resides in Durham, NC.

  • Two paths ahead for the immigrant rights movement

    San José, CA – On Nov. 19, President Obama stated in an interview at the Wall Street Journal CEO Council that he was willing to go along with the piecemeal approach to immigration reform advocated by Republicans in the House of Representatives. Obama said that he wanted all the parts put forward by the Senate bill, which include legalization, more militarization of the border, expansion of temporary worker programs, expansion of workplace enforcement and shifting legal immigration from family reunification to employment and education-based visas to meet the needs of business.

    But the reality is that the Republicans will block any legalization bill, while business interests will push the passage of expanding temporary worker and employment based visas. In the meantime immigrants are facing a wave of repression, with the Obama administration having deported a record 2 million undocumented people. So the piecemeal approach is most likely to end up being more of the same for the undocumented: more deportations, no legalization and a temporary reprieve for undocumented who came as children and qualify under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

    So why is Obama retreating in the face of Republican opposition to immigration reform? One reason may be a partisan consideration. By making this concession, Obama is trying to keep the immigration issue in the media, hoping to benefit in next year’s election by looking ‘reasonable’ in the face of Republican opposition to immigration reform, even if this means doing little to nothing to advance any immigration reform. But another factor is that many of Obama’s policies are, in fact, moderate Republican ones. Take a look at his Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). Two of the most controversial parts of the ACA, the insurance exchanges and the individual mandate, were both Republican ideas that were embodied in the Massachusetts health care reform under Republican governor Mitt Romney.

    Fundamentally, this reflects the fact that both the Democratic and the Republican parties represent the 1%, the tiny minority who own half the total wealth in the U.S. and control the large corporations that dominate the economy. While the two parties have their differences, with the Republicans wanting more repression of immigrants with militarization at the border, and the Democrats are more interested in meeting the needs of business through expanding temporary and guest worker programs, they serve the same interests.

    Up to now, there have been three views of immigration reform. On the one hand, there were advocates for the undocumented, family reunification and workers, who supported legalization and stopping deportations. They also opposed more militarization of the border, more workplace enforcement, more temporary and guest workers, cuts in family reunification and diversity visas and criminalization of the undocumented and expansion of using local police and sheriffs to crack down on immigrants. More and more of these forces are uniting behind a demand that the president issue a ‘Deferred Action For All’ that expands the DACA program to all the undocumented. This would allow the undocumented to come out of the shadows and be able to work and drive legally, while laying the basis for a stronger push for legalization in the future.

    Then there were the right-wing Republicans in the House of Representatives, who opposed legalization, and wanted more militarization, more workplace enforcement, more temporary, guest and employment visas and supported criminalization of the undocumented and expansion of ICE-local police programs, as seen in the SAFE act that passed a House committee on a straight party line vote. The House Republicans also support a piecemeal approach so that they can pass what they want (more repression of immigrants) and block what they don’t want (legalization).

    In between was the “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” or CIR approach, as seen in the Senate immigration reform bill. CIR tried to combine the other two opposing views on immigration reform, as a way of getting Republican support. But with the overall atmosphere of repression, the Senate bill got steadily worse, with a lot more militarization of the border. The House bipartisan bill was widely known to be even worse, but it never got off the ground as the House Republicans pulled support for any bill with legalization and rallied around a piecemeal approach in opposition to CIR. With Obama’s concession to the House Republicans, the CIR approach is basically dead for now.

    Backers of the CIR approach have two choices: they can go along with the President’s approach, either openly or trying to hide behind the fiction that CIR is still possible in the House. This will end up with some pro-business changes, such as more temporary worker and employment-based visas, but no legalization and the continuing deportation of record numbers of the undocumented. Or they can join with advocates of legalization and stopping the deportations by backing the Deferred Action For All or DAFA, which would both benefit the undocumented and put pressure on the House to deal with legalization.

    Masao Suzuki is a supporter of the Legalization for All network and a regular contributor to Fight Back! newspaper on the economy and the immigrant rights movement.

  • U.S. makes plans to keep thousands of troops in Afghanistan

    Minneapolis, MN – On Nov. 20 the U.S. and Afghan governments announced that final language had been agreed to for a Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) that would have U.S. troops staying in Afghanistan until at least 2024.

    This agreement will lay the basis for continuing the U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan.

    Plans are being made to leave 10,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan after 2014, when the Obama administration had said all U.S. troops would be out of Afghanistan. There will also be several thousand NATO forces left in Afghanistan along with the U.S. troops. There likely will be thousands of “contractors” as well.

    There is growing opposition in Afghanistan to the agreement.

    Tasnim news agency reported that there was a protest in Kabul, Nov. 18, against the agreement. Tasnim reported, “During the demonstration on Monday, the protesters once again expressed opposition to the so-called Bilateral Security Agreement. The participants also called for the immediate withdrawal of the U.S. forces from the country.”

    Tasnim reported, “Our Kabul correspondent Fayez Khorshid says public anger is boiling up in Afghanistan over the security pact as people continue to come out in protest of the deal.”

    In the city of Jalalabad there was a demonstration on Nov. 17 involving many students against the BSA pact.

    NBC News reported, “While many Americans have been led to believe the war in Afghanistan will soon be over, a draft of a key U.S.-Afghan security deal obtained by NBC News shows the U.S. is prepared to maintain military outposts in Afghanistan for many years to come and to pay to support hundreds of thousands of Afghan security forces.”

    NBC reported, “The document appears to be the start of a new, open-ended military commitment in Afghanistan…”

    After 12 years of war in Afghanistan, the U.S. has been unable to secure its war aims. The massive opposition to the war in the U.S. and the resistance of the Afghan people to more war and occupation is forcing the U.S. to try and maintain its role in Afghanistan in such a way that the opposition can be lessened.

    As Time magazine reported in an online article this week, “…there’s always the chance that delaying the departure of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan will simply delay the inevitable.”

    The opposition in Afghanistan to the continued presence of foreign forces is so high that the Karzai regime has had negotiations with the U.S. to make an appearance of standing up for Afghan independence.

    The Karzai government made a show of insisting that U.S. troops could be prosecuted under Afghan law and saying that U.S. troops could not raid Afghan homes.

    A flurry of phone calls between Karzai and U.S. Secretary of State Kerry John Kerry in the last few days has seemingly come up with language that gives everyone political cover.

    The Karzai government has also called for the holding of a Loya Jirga, a Grand Assembly, that is a traditional Afghan gathering of social leaders to discuss issues of national impotence. Karzai has said that the Loya Jirga will discuss the BSA agreement and decide whether to enact it.

    The Wall Street Journal reported, “The Loya Jirga, most of whose delegates were selected by provincial authorities, and whose membership list was approved” by Karzai, “is highly unlikely to do anything against the wishes of the Afghan president.”

    The students demonstrating against the BSA agreement in Jalalabad were clear in statements they gave to a reporter from Agence France-Presse about their view of the Loya Jirga called by Karzai: “The people of Afghanistan should not sign this agreement,” Shafiullah, a student who uses only one name, said as demonstrators chanted “Death to the U.S.” 

Another student, Habib-Ul Rahman Arab, accused the delegates, most of them hand-picked by President Hamid Karzai’s administration, of being government supporters. 

“They are not our representatives. They are not representatives of the Afghan people,” he said.

    U.S. Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA) issued a statement Nov. 20 on the announcement of the BSA language agreement. Lee said in her statement, “This revelation is outrageous. The possibility of a military presence into 2024 is unacceptable. After 13 years and more than $778 billion invested” in Afghanistan and “the corrupt Karzai government, it is time to bring our troops and tax dollars home.”

    Alan Dale, a member of the Minnesota Peace Action Coalition, said, “All opposed to the war should speak out against this plan to keep thousands of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. As long as U.S. troops are in Afghanistan the war will continue. The people of Afghanistan must be free to determine their own future.”

  • Philippines: Police, armed thugs attack peasants during typhoon tragedy

    Fight Back News Service is circulating the following Nov. 19 statement from the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP)

    Condemn destruction of farms, attacks against peasants in Luisita during height of Yolanda tragedy — CPP

    The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) today denounced the Aquino regime and the Aquino-Cojuangco landlord clan for destroying several hectares of land planted with fruit trees and vegetables in the collective farms being cultivated by peasant masses in Hacienda Luisita.

    “The Aquino-Cojuangco clan, through the Tarlac Development Corporation (Tadeco) and Hacienda Luisita Inc., with the support and protection of the police forces of the Aquino regime, had the bungkalan areas destroyed using bulldozers manned by armed guards on 12 November, at the height of the tragedy wrought by supertyphoon Yolanda in the Visayas” said the CPP, citing field reports.

    “While all of the Filipino people’s attention was geared towards extending assistance to the victims of the Yolanda tragedy, the Aquino-Cojuangcos were insidiously carrying out their plan to drive away the several hundred peasant workers from the land they have long been cultivating,” said the CPP.

    “According to reports of local residents, the Aquino-Cojuangco clan ordered the uprooting of trees and crops in the 880-hectare land within the scope of Barangay Balete and Barangay Cutcut,” said the CPP. Tadeco has also filed trumped-up charges of trespassing against at least 80 peasant workers in the area.

    “The day after, at least 60 armed goons of Tadeco demolished the homes and other structures built by the peasant masses in the area, causing injuries to peasant leader Florida Sibayan, her siblings and their 76-year old mother, when they were violently shoved by the armed goons,” pointed out the CPP. “Aquino’s national police force were behind the Tadeco armed goons all the while they were attacking the peasant workers.”

    The peasants of Hacienda Luisita have long been asserting ownership of the 4,500-hectare sugar estate. In 2005, members of the Alyansa ng mga Mabubukid sa Asyenda Luisita (Ambala or Peasant Alliance in Hacienda Luisita) started to collectively cultivate several hundred hectares of land to grow fruit trees and vegetables for their own consumption and to supply the market.

    Despite successive land reform laws, Hacienda Luisita has largely remained under the control of the Aquino-Cojuangco landlord clan. The current Philippine reactionary president, Benigno Aquino III, is a scion of the Aquino-Cojuangcos.

  • Anti-drone summit energizes the fight against Boeing warmakers

    Washington, DC – 400 people gathered at an international summit in Washington D.C. to oppose the use of drones by the U.S. government. The summit was hosted by Code Pink and featured Medea Benjamin, activist and author of Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control. Many activists and organizers came to hear experts and share experiences in building the movement against U.S. drone warfare. Many were excited to hear academic and author Cornel West.

    People came from as far away as Pakistan and Afghanistan to attend. One panel “View From Yemen” featured an attorney, a politician and a family member whose relatives were killed by a U.S. drone strike in Yemen.

    Kait McIntyre, a member of the Anti-War Committee-Chicago, presented on their campaign, “No Killer Drone for Boeing,” an effort to stop the Boeing corporation from obtaining the U.S. Navy’s killer drone contract. In the workshop titled “Activism: From Boardrooms to Bases,” McIntyre relayed lessons from the campaign and the Sept. 28-29 Midwest Action Against Drones, the largest U.S. demonstration against drones, that took place outside Boeing headquarters in Chicago.

    Holly Kent-Payne, another Anti-War Committee-Chicago member and attendee, was glad to discuss the Anti-War Committee’s campaign and is looking forward to applying what she’s learned to upcoming protests against the Boeing Corporation. “We must continue connecting people’s concerns about school closings, lack of employment and other social issues with demands to end U.S. war.”

    Members of the Minnesota-based Anti-War Committee also attended the summit.

  • Indict Philippines President for criminal incompetence in wake of super typhoon

    Fight Back News Service is circulating the following Nov. 15 statement from the Communist Party of the Philippines

    Indict Aquino for criminal incompetence and demand justice

    The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) calls on the Filipino people, especially the millions of victims of the recent disaster to rise up, protest and indict Benigno Aquino III for the criminal incompetence of his government which has resulted in the deaths of thousands last 8 November when supertyphoon Yolanda barrelled through the Philippines, and caused widespread devastation. The Filipino people demand justice.

    They must protest the Aquino regime’s failure to provide and extend emergency relief and services resulting in the grave suffering of hundreds of thousands who continue to seek food, water and emergency supply, a full week hence.

    The Aquino regime has been displaying such gross and criminal incompetence in the face of the terrible calamity which has resulted in an unnecessarily large number of deaths and injuries. There was no government presence in Tacloban City more than 48 hours after the supertyphoon struck and completely devastated the city. The local government was completely wiped out. It was apparent that the national government did not bother to look into the situation in the typhoon struck towns despite the fact that communication lines were completely cut off in these areas. It only started to take measures after local and foreign journalists fed images on primetime television of the widespread devastation in Leyte 36 hours after the typhoon.

    Chaos began to erupt on the second day of the calamity as a result of the lack of food and water. Instead of rushing in emergency supply, the Aquino government deployed thousands of armed soldiers and police personnel in an effort to quell the mass discontent. Immediately, the Aquino regime’s incompetence reared its ugly head.

    Aquino’s security and military officials irresponsibly engaged in spreading false information. A press release of the Armed Forces of the Philippines claimed that a military truck supposedly carrying Red Cross supplies in Sorsogon was ambushed by the New People’s Army. They have also circulated rumors that NPA members are involved in the armed looting around Tacloban city and are indiscriminately firing their weapons in Palo, Abucay, and other places, in order to justify the setting up of checkpoints and establishing outright military rule.

    Clearly, the AFP is more interested in projecting power and imposing its armed authority rather than ensuring the provision of food, other basic commodities and emergency supply to the people.

    Aquino has gone berserk in his blaming spree and PR campaign to downplay the tragedy and devastation. Speaking to international media, Aquino insisted that the number of deaths will not go beyond 2,500 instead of the earlier estimates of 10,000. Aquino will be rebuked a couple of days later, when the United Nations revealed its independent estimate of deaths at 4,460. In an utterly tasteless twist, Aquino’s tourism officials declared that the Philippines “is still fun” to visit even as the entire world continue to watch desperately as the poeple in Tacloban beg for help amidst the grossly incompetent response of the Aquino government.

    A week into the tragedy, thousands of people still have no access to emergency medical care. Food and drinking water remain scarce. Government has yet to provide emergency shelter to several thousand homeless people. Despite the outpouring of local and international support for the calamity victims, hundreds of thousands of victims have yet to be reached by emergency supply. The United Nations, international relief workers, and the media are utterly dismayed that the help they have already extended to the Philippines has yet to reach the disaster victims almost a week into the tragedy.

    Aquino only declared a “state of national calamity” FOUR days after the widespread devastation. It took him and his officials FIVE days to realize that the transportation of emergency supplies to Tacloban and elsewhere will be the “largest logistical effort” yet to be undertaken by the government. Still, the Aquino regime has failed to effect the massive mobilization of ships and other sea transport despite the fact that the Tacloban port is only a few hours away from the central commercial port of Cebu and less than 24 hours from Metro Manila. Ormoc City, which is one hour away from Tacloban by land, is a mere two hours away from Cebu via high-speed ships. The Aquino regime has also failed to foresee the need to supplement the roll-on-roll-off transport ships in the Matnog port in Sorsogon resulting in a long queue of trucks and other land vehicles carrying emergency food and medical supply and personnel from Metro Manila.

    The government’s failed response is so blatant, leading some people to think that Aquino is deliberately displaying incompetence in order to make the US military forces look like the heroes, and thus justify the presence of a giant US nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, at least six other warships, nearly 10,000 troops, and Osprey helicopters in various parts of the Philippines, and allow these to take over facilities and the transport and distribution of emergency supply.

    Tacloban City, as well as other cities, have become practically uninhabitable, and will remain to be so for the next few weeks or months. Yet government has made no effort to bring people en masse to other places where they can be provided electricity, health care, shelter, food and temporary livelihood.

    The Filipino people must take the Aquino regime to account for its failure to carry out emergency evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people who were at the path of the supertyphoon. In its “Typhoon Haiyan Brief Technical Report” issued a day before Typhoon Yolanda made landfall, the Manila Observatory stated that “Massive evacuation of residential areas on low ground within 8 to 16 km of the shoreline may be required.”

    Despite such warnings, the Aquino government made no significant effort to mobilize enough resources to carry out such required evacuation. Instead, Aquino found it sufficient to go on primetime television on the eve of Yolanda’s landfall and issue a weather forecast. In comparison, the government of Vietnam mobilized all resources to evacuate 600,000 at least two days before Typhoon Haiyan reached Vietnam’s coasts. The population of Tacloban City, in contrast, is around 200,000.

    The Filipino people should rise up in mass protest against the gross incompetence of the Aquino regime. They must cast aside the appeals by Aquino’s loyalists to stop blaming the Aquino government and instead unite. Indeed, they must indict Benigno Aquino III for the deaths of thousands resulting from his personal and his government’s criminal incompetence.

    The Filipino people must demand justice for the plight of hundreds of thousands of disaster victims. They must make the Aquino regime pay for the grave tragedy that has befallen them that is a result not so much of the supertyphoon, but of the gross failure of the Aquino regime to carry-out appropriate preventive action and post-calamity emergency relief.

    They must also indict Aquino for the failure of his government to secure the people against the destruction of their property. They must demand that the Aquino regime provide immediate emergency relief fund (not loans!) to resume their livelihood, emergency employment and pensions, reparation, and the cancellation of all debts to government agencies.

    They must denounce the Aquino regime for allocating a measly P7 billion to the calamity budget, resulting in its inability to build the necessary infrastructure for emergency response. Aquino is content to allocate money from his unprogrammed funds in order to justify bloating the President’s Social Fund and the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP).

    On the other hand, the Aquino regime is not keen on carrying out a massive environmental regeneration program to desilt the rivers and other critical water systems and undertake massive reforestation, and instead is bent on bringing in foreign mining companies to continue plundering the environment.

  • Rasmea Odeh Petitions Delivered to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder

    Washington D.C. – Delegates from several community and non-profit organizations delivered a petition in support of Rasmea Odeh to the home of Attorney General Eric Holder on Thursday, November 14, 2013.

    Signed by more than three thousand people, the petition calls for charges against Odeh to be dropped. The petition delivery follows a coordinated day of action on Wednesday, November 13, coinciding with Odeh’s court arraignment on charges of immigration fraud. More than a hundred supporters gathered outside the Detroit court where Odeh submitted her not-guilty plea. Actions were also held in Chicago, Oakland, Philadelphia, Gainesville, Tampa, Salt Lake City, Minneapolis, and Milwaukee.

    “It is very clear that Rasmea is being targeted for her activism,” says Hatem Abudayyeh of the US Palestinian Community Network. “These charges are the latest example of a U.S. government policy that seeks to repress prominent Arab American community members and people working for the rights of Palestinians.”

    On October 22 Odeh was arrested at her Chicago home by agents of the Department of Homeland Security who charged her with lying on her immigration application in 1994 for failing to mention an arrest and conviction in an Israeli military court over 40 years ago. Her arrest comes three years after 23 anti-war and Palestinian rights activists were subpoenaed to testify before a Grand Jury. Several of these activists also had their homes raided by the FBI and no indictments have been filed against them to date, though US Attorneys continue to claim the “investigation is ongoing”.

    According to Palestine Solidarity Legal Support, during the past year alone there have been more than 75 documented cases of intimidation and legal bullying against Palestinian-Americans and supporters.

  • Tucson Rallies Support for Rasmea Odeh

    Tucson, AZ – On Wednesday evening a dozen activists protested outside the Federal Building and Tucson City Hall to demand the charges against 65 year-old Palestinian activist Rasmea Odeh be dropped.

    As part of a November 13 national day of action in support of Odeh, signs reading “Stop FBI Attacks on Activists”, “I Support Palestine, Women, and Rasmea”, and “Free Rasmea Now!” were held high and passersby greeted the protest with honks and fists raised in solidarity.

    In an effort to spread the urgency of solidarity to everyone possible, organizers handed out leaflets explaining the outrageous arrest and prosecution of Odeh. The leaflets also praise the veteran leader’s life long dedication to equality and liberation. Pedestrians and passing drivers stopped for the fliers that also lay out an action plan for mobilizing against the charges and asking people to sign a petition, with more info at www.StopFBI.net.

    Having been arrested on October 22, 2013 and currently facing a ten-year prison sentence or deportation for supposed “immigration fraud,” Odeh is the latest target of U.S. government political repression of pro-Palestinian activists. Starting in 2001, thousands of Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim men were rounded up and deported by the Bush administration. More recent are the widely reported FBI raids of 23 anti-war activists’ houses and workplaces on September 24, 2010, under President Obama, with an investigation still “ongoing”.

    Associate director of the Arab American Action Network and the leader of its Arab Women’s Committee, Odeh is a renowned defender of immigrant and women’s rights whose arrest and trial has caught the attention of progressives across the country. Tucson activists proudly showed up to do their part and encourage others to join the struggle to free Rasmea. Organizers vowed to return for a bigger rally on the first day of Rasmea Odeh’s trial in Detroit.