OVER 35,000 PEOPLE RALLY FOR PALESTINE IN DC

By Nadia B. Ahmad and Faisal R. Khan, Mondoweiss

June 1, 2021




https://popularresistance.org/over-35000-people-rally-for-palestine-in-dc/



‘The Landscape Is Shifting’

Over 35,000 protestors converged in Washington DC this Memorial Day weekend for The National March for Palestine, the largest protest against U.S. foreign policy in the nation’s capital in decades.

Standing atop the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Nuha Maharoof peered over the crowd at the National March for Palestine on Saturday. To her left, she saw a man on the ledge set off red and green smoke grenades, signifying the colors of the Palestinian flag. She described the cinematic moment “like a scene from a movie, every head in the crowd turned to the sky to watch the colors dissipate.” She pulled out her phone and captured the iconic moment, saying her heart filled with hope for Palestine. The image has since gone viral. She had learned of the protest the day before from social media posts and decided to go with her friends. We tracked her down through a Google image search.

The scene at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC was a sharp contrast to the one six months ago when Trump supporters stormed Capitol Hill in an attempted insurrection. Vexed by white supremacy at home and settler colonial foreign policy abroad, Muslim, Palestinian, and progressive groups launched a wide coalition of support in solidarity with Palestine.

Over 35,000 protestors converged in Washington DC this Memorial Day weekend for The National March for Palestine, the largest nationwide protest against U.S. foreign policy in decades. More than 100 buses arrived at the Lincoln Memorial from as far away as Minneapolis, Minnesota and Dallas, Texas. Organized in less than one week, the event unfurled the potential for Muslim American and Palestinian activists to lead antiwar mobilizations. The program was spearheaded by American Muslims for Palestine and the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations. The groups urged sanctions on Israel in the wake of its recent 11 day bombing campaign in Gaza where over 66 children were killed, including 11 who were recovering from trauma of previous Israeli government attacks.

This unprecedented gathering on Saturday at the Lincoln Memorial was a clear sign to President Joe Biden, his administration, and to Israel that public opinion in the United States is shifting, and people of conscience demand a tangible solution for Palestinians who have endured decades of dehumanization, marginalization, and subjugation.

The rally and march were a collective condemnation of two weeks of Israeli indiscriminate bombing of Palestinian civilians including children and destruction of infrastructure including homes, schools and clinics. The storming and attacking of Masjid Al-Aqsa, the third holiest site for Muslims, during the holy month of Ramadan, and expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem was the catalyst that awakened a sleeping giant worldwide demanding President Biden take bold steps which he failed to deliver.

People from all demographics and professions came together to show support to the Palestinian diaspora in the U.S. and their families who have experienced colonial annexation of their land and racism. Partners of the National March for Palestine included the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), Muslim American Society (MAS), ICNA Council for Social Jusice, Muslim Ummah of North America (MUNA), Majlis Ash-Shura: Islamic Leadership Council of New York, Turkish American National Steering Committee (TASC) and Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM). Jewish Voice for Peace, Veterans for Peace, MPower Change, United National Antiwar Coalition, Progressive Democrats of America, Our Revolution National, National Lawyers Guild, and Honor the Earth, and endorsed along with over 130 organizations.




The U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations and American Muslims for Palestine have demanded the placement of an arms embargo on Israel, the cancellation of the US-Israel free trade agreement, a shut down of ‘charitable’ organizations supporting Israeli war crimes, and a ban on the import of products from Israel’s illegal colonies. The groups also sought to end weapons transfer to Israel, objecting to gross violations of human rights with US weapons and violations of the Foreign Assistance Act and Arms Export Control Act.

The National March for Palestine was the culmination of weeks of organizing protests in solidarity with Palestine, building on the 73 year resistance campaign to the Nakba. While Israel’s bombing campaigns and military strikes are not new, the wave of Palestinian solidarity has ignited a tsunami wave of youth activism, fresh from the surge of Black Lives Matter and climate mobilizations. As members of the National March for Palestine organizing committee, we sensed the urgency of a nationwide grassroots mobilization stemming from campaigns in support of Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah and Gaza.

Jinan Deena, who led organizing for more than 100 march volunteers and is the National Organizer at American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) said, “There’s a lot of behind the scenes work that people don’t see. But the renewed energy I get is from seeing all those faces out in the crowd. People want to help. They want to be there and shout for Palestine. It brings tears to my eyes and it makes me know that the work I do is not in vain. And so that is why I wake up the next day, sore and tired, and get up and do it again. Because the work doesn’t stop. Not until we achieve full liberation.”




Overwhelming majority of attendees on Saturday came to show support for Palestinians and to uphold the universal principles of justice and human rights. The crowd was very disciplined and it was obvious that they were deeply disappointed and infuriated by the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians sanctioned by the U.S. and other allies. People of all religious and non-religious background were present, and it was impressive to see that there were no symbols, signs and slogans of hate or antisemitism. The main focus was on Palestine and its right to exist in peace and dignity. There were many small group gatherings in the rally that spoke out on the killings of 67 Palestinian children including three Israeli children.

Secretary General of the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations, Oussama Jammal said, “The clear diversity of the many thousands who participated in last Saturday’s march sends a strong message that Al-Aqsa Mosque goes beyond Palestine, it belongs to all Muslims around the world. It was obvious this time around in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that Israel could not play the usual innocent victim. Major news agencies are breaking the silence and reporting the ugly reality of a long deceiving Israeli propaganda. More importantly, the young generations of Muslims and non-Muslims, Palestinians and non-Palestinians are in the forefront of activism for Palestine.”

Anthony Lorenzo Green, who is core organizer for Black Lives Matter DC, riveted the crowd, saying “I’m not just an ally. I am a comrade. Our struggles are connected.” He recognized past solidarity of Palestinian activists at Black Lives Matter speeches in years past.




Altaf Husain, who is a long time supporter of Palestinian rights and an academic focusing on immigrant and refugee rights recognized what he saw as, “a clear and growing intersection between the folks organizing around the world saying Black Lives Matter and those who are organizing around the world saying Palestine will be free.”

“Beyond respecting both movements, there are people who are now showing up saying they are genuinely part of both movements. And within the U.S. and Europe, these people increasingly represent a greater majority of young, non-Palestinians and non-Blacks, who a.) understand that our government is complicit in the continued persecution of Blacks in America and of Palestinians in the Occupied territories, and b.) who are demanding that our government do better. That’s heartening,” Husain said.

The National March for Palestine was built on years of coalition work and increased civic engagement within the activist scene. Ismahan Abdullahi, who served on the organizing committee for the march and is the director of the Muslim American Society-Public Affairs and Civic Engagement (MAS-PAC) noted how the conversation is shifting.

“People’s eyes are wide open. We, as a community, are demanding more from those in positions of power. You can no longer be ‘Progressive except Palestine.’ You can no longer claim to be against systemic racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, antisemitism, etc. without standing against the injustice faced by Palestinians. The landscape is shifting. Those who stand on the right side of history will be known,” Abdullahi said.

Dr. Osama Abuirshaid, Executive Director of American Muslims for Palestine, said in a statement, ”Millions of Americans around the country are joining to say that there must be an end to this ugly, immoral, and illegal status quo. We are here to assert that we cannot live another day under the status quo, which is one of apartheid, ethnic cleansing, occupation, violations of international law and the Palestinian people’s fundamental, inalienable rights to life of dignity, freedom, justice, and equality. It is unconscionable that the administration licensed a $735 million weapons sale to Israel last week despite the historic Congressional opposition in the aftermath of Israel’s cruel and deadly attack on civilians in the Gaza Strip.”

Speakers on Saturday’s rally included Haris Ansari, Hatem Bazian, Amani Barakat, Oussama Jammal, Halil Mutlu, Zeina Ashrawi Hutchinson, Mohammed Khader, Kayla Kelly, Harun Rashid, Mohamed Mohamed, Lisbeth Melendez Rivera, Maher Masisis, Fuad Foty, Tahani Saleh, Josh Ruebner, Anthony Lorenzo Green, Amer Zahr, Dana Abushanab, Laura Albast, Lina Shahid, Raya Hudhud, Nihad Awad, Phyllis Bennis, Mohsin Ansari, Ayman Hammous, Nouf Bazaz, Raja Abdulhaq, Lamis Deek, Osama Abu-Irshad, and Omar Suleiman.

Using the hashtag of #March4Palestine, short form content creator and Palestinian activist Mo Mustafa of Gen Z for Change catalyzed scores of protestors from his one million TikTok followers.




Maharoof, the student who captured the iconic shot of the protest, said she was “incredibly inspired” by the protest.

“We channeled the weight of our heavy hearts into our voices as we marched through the streets of Washington DC,” she added. “As I returned home from Saturday’s protest, I felt hopeful for the future of the Palestinian people – although there’s still so much to be done to ensure change is made, the energy of the thousands of protestors gave me hope that one day Palestine will be free.”

URGENT SITUATION DEVELOPING AT OIL FIELD IN PUTAMAYO, COLOMBIA

By Brent Patterson, Peace Brigades International - Canada.

June 1, 2021




https://popularresistance.org/urgent-situation-developing-at-oil-field-in-putamayo-colombia/



An Urgent Situation Appears To Be Developing At The Costayaco Oil Field In Putumayo, Colombia Operated By Calgary-Based Gran Tierra Energy.

Corporación Viso Mutop has just tweeted this video noting: “This is the situation inside the oil well of the Canadian multinational Gran Tierra. Peasants, tired of waiting for the attention of the final government, entered that Well in Villagarzón #Putumayo.”

Pueblerina en Paro has also tweeted: “In PUTUMAYO SOS, the Anti-narcotics police and the National Army shoot firearms at protesters. One seriously injured. Costayaco well of Gran Tierra. Villagarzon PUTUMAYO.”

This video tweeted by the National Organization of the Indigenous Peoples of the Colombian Amazon (OPIAC) includes the text: “Public force attacks with shots against indigenous peoples in Villagarzon-Putumayo.”

The Association of Indigenous Councils of the Municipality of Villagarzón Putumayo (ACIMVIP) has also just stated: “We ask the Ministry of Defense, National Army, National Police and ESMAD to respect the standards of Human Rights and IHL, regarding their actions within the framework of our legitimate right to social protest; this bearing in mind that we are NOT armed actors and under no circumstances should we be treated as such.”

And Telesur reports: “The Regional Strike Committee in the Colombian department of Putumayo denounced on Monday [May 31] police aggression against demonstrators, who legitimately took Costayaco Oil Well 10 from the Canadian transnational Gran Tierra.” The Committee’s statement further notes there were “uniformed members of the National Army who were guarding the well.”
May 27 Statement

A May 27 statement by the Sub-regional Strike Committee of the Villagarzón Resistance Point included these excerpts:

“Since last May 16, the social protest moved to the Costayaco Field of GTE, demanding the immediate suspension of oil operations due to the historical environmental liabilities generated by this multinational, and in the meantime agreements are established with the national and departmental government regarding points that support our protest exercise.

Despite the fact that the Gran Tierra Energy company agreed to suspend its operations, understanding that there are substantive reasons in our claims and agreed to allow the entry of a verification commission that will ensure the effective operational suspension, so far GTE has not kept its word, since in three spaces they have refused to verify alleging alleged technical difficulties in the facilities.

We call on the directors of the company Gran Tierra Energy to comply with the agreements to suspend operations and allow the entry of the verification commission of the regional strike committee. Likewise, we make a call to the municipal, departmental and national control entities that make follow-up to our mobilization process, so that they monitor the actions of the company and provide guarantees to protesters in the area.”
May 31 Statement

There is also this May 31 statement shared by the National Indigenous Organizations of Colombia (ONIC):


May 17 Statement From Gran Tierra

On May 17, Gran Tierra posted this statement on the impact of the ongoing national strike in Colombia on its operations: “As of May 16, 2021, the Costayaco field continues to produce approximately 5,100 bopd [barrels of oil per day].”

It also noted: “The Company has successfully finished its 2021 development drilling campaign of 3 new oil wells, prior to any impact from the national protests. Currently, none of these 3 wells are on production, but Gran Tierra expects to bring them all on-line by the end of the second quarter of 2021.”

And while Gran Tierra does reference the blockades in Putumayo in their statement, they noted “these blockades are not directed at Gran Tierra.”

Gran Tierra has a Beyond Compliance policy and its Human Rights Policy includes the International Labour Organization (ILO) conventions. A key ILO convention is the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (No. 169). The company has indicated that it is committed to Prior Consultation with Indigenous Groups.

Gran Tierra Energy does not appear to have publicly commented yet on the situation that has developed today in Villagarzón.
Updates:

May 31, 5:38 pm – Indigenous Nasa defender Feliciano Valencia tweeted: “Jordany Estrella, a young peasant from the la Castellana village, who participated in the demonstrations in Villagarzón, Putumayo, was assassinated. The State was cruel to the youth of the country. Enough already!”

TORTURE SITES AND MASS GRAVES REPORTED IN COLOMBIA

By Dominic Gustavo, WSWS.

June 1, 2021




https://popularresistance.org/torture-sites-and-mass-graves-reported-in-colombia/



Repression Intensifies Against Mass Protests.

A May 23 report prepared by the human rights organization Justicia y Paz stated that fascistic paramilitary groups, which operate in concert with the far-right and US-backed regime of Colombian President Ivan Duque, have created torture sites and mass graves in an attempt to suppress protests in the city of Cali, which has been the epicenter of continuing countrywide demonstrations.

The report described “chop houses” in Ciudad Jardín, a neighborhood of Cali, where protesters kidnapped by fascists were tortured and dismembered. Residents, the document asserts, were generally too frightened to denounce these chilling crimes, for they knew that they had the sanction of the police and the state.

The report went on to describe mass graves, “where the bodies of many young people were taken,” in the cities of Yumbo and Buga. It noted: “The people who have shared their testimony indicated that the youths were detained, some of them have been reported missing by their friends or families, and in Guacari, in Buga, 45 minutes from Cali, they were executed. Some of the survivors of the executions were found with gunshot wounds in health centers and today are terrified and in hiding.”

Thousands of people involved in protests have been arbitrarily detained and often subjected to brutal treatment, sometimes including torture. Of these, hundreds have been “disappeared.” The Ombudsman’s Office of Colombia had reported 548 missing persons as of May 7. In Cali alone, human rights groups reported 206 missing persons as of May 20.

The corpses of murdered protesters have begun to turn up in rivers, some showing signs of torture, others dismembered. In one particularly grisly instance, the severed head of a missing protester was found in a plastic bag. Other bodies have been found alongside abandoned roadways. Among those murdered was Beatriz Moreno Mosquera, a Buenaventura teacher and syndicalist, whose body was found bearing signs of torture.

Even as it employs such gruesome and outright fascistic methods against the predominantly peaceful protests, the Duque administration is escalating state repression. Duque announced on May 28, which marks a month since the demonstrations began, a “maximum deployment” of the military and police in the western province of Valle del Cauca and its capital Cali. Thirteen demonstrators were killed on that day alone in Cali.

In employing the military and paramilitary forces, including for kidnappings and murder, the Colombian oligarchy is adopting the tactics of the decades-long US-backed counterinsurgency war during which hundreds of thousands of mostly peasants were killed and “disappeared.”

These methods of brute force and terror mark an escalation in the efforts to suppress protests involving millions of youths and workers against social inequality and the homicidal response of the government to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has claimed over 88,000 lives in the country, according to official figures.

Protests began on April 28, triggered by a proposed tax reform which would shift the burden of the pandemic onto poor and working-class Colombians while protecting the wealth of the country’s oligarchy, who form the main constituency of the Duque regime.

Although the tax reform was ultimately withdrawn in the face of the growing unrest, the demonstrations quickly escalated into a generalized outpouring of anger against corruption, police brutality and the government’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic, among other longstanding social grievances. The protests grew to massive proportions, with as many as 15 million Colombians out of a population of 50 million taking part in demonstrations in one form or another.

According to Human Rights Watch, there have been 63 “credible” reports of deaths since the start of the protests, which is higher than the 45 deaths reported by the Colombian Ministry of Defense. The majority of the dead have been gunned down with live ammunition by the National Police, the Mobile Anti-Disturbance Squadron (ESMAD) and fascistic paramilitary forces who work in concert with the security forces.

Many thousands have been injured. One favored tactic of the security forces has been aiming “nonlethal” projectiles at the faces of protesters, often causing severe injuries, including blindness*.* The NGO Temblores reports at least 46 protesters with eye mutilations as of May 20.

In addition, at least 22 women have reported being sexually assaulted at the hands of the police. In the city of Popayán, a 17-year-old girl committed suicide after she denounced the ESMAD officials, who had detained her, of sexual assault. This triggered angry protests and the burning down of the local police jail.

The bourgeois press in Colombia has imposed an unofficial blackout on the protests to cover up the crimes of the state. The government has also taken to cutting off power and internet access to targeted areas, allowing their forces to move in and commit atrocities under cover of darkness.

The bloody details of the repression have nevertheless been captured on hundreds of cellphone videos that have been uploaded to social media. One video uploaded to Twitter shows a block of working-class homes going up in flames, apparently after police fired tear gas canisters into the buildings. In another instance, police fired tear gas into a hospital.

The ruling capitalist oligarchy is seeking to defend its wealth and privileges at any cost. The vicious repression meted out by the state, on the one hand, and the desperate anger fueling the protests, on the other, reflect the enormous social tensions that exist within this deeply unequal country, in which 42.5 percent of the population live below the poverty line.

VICE interviewed a doctor who runs a makeshift clinic in Cali that provides medical aid to protesters wounded by police. In reference to the Cali youths who have formed defensive groups to confront the police, known as the Front Line, he said, “The people putting themselves on the line are the people who have nothing. They feel that since they already have nothing, there’s nothing they can take away from them.”

One of these Front Line youths told VICE, “We’re young people who removed our blindfolds and can now see the truth. We’re sick of the lack of opportunity, of the inequality, of this society of rich people that sees us as delinquents because we rebelled and decided to act against this situation.”

The heroic determination of the Colombian workers and youth in the face of deadly state repression stands in stark contrast to the duplicity and cowardice of those claiming to represent them. The major trade unions and the pseudo-left organizations, organized in a “National Strike Committee,” have been involved in talks with the Duque regime in an effort to bring an end to the protests. The Catholic Church and the UN are also involved.

The National Strike Committee’s demands have focused on reformist measures such as the dismantling of the ESMAD, greater opportunities for students and a basic income. This promotion of illusions in half-measures is meant to distract workers from the irreconcilable class conflict that lies at the heart of Colombian capitalism. The Committee has also carefully avoided mobilizing workers in key industries, thereby deliberately isolating the protest movement.

By their actions, the trade unions and the pseudo-left—representing sections of the affluent middle class—whatever their rhetoric, demonstrate that they serve as auxiliaries of the Colombian state in protecting the interests of the oligarchy and its US imperialist sponsors.

KAMLOOPS DISCOVERY PROMPTS CALL FOR FRAMEWORK TO INVESTIGATE MASS GRAVES

By Simon Little, GlobalNews.ca

June 1, 2021




https://popularresistance.org/kamloops-discovery-prompts-call-for-formal-framework-to-investigate-mass-graves/




The discovery of a mass grave at a former Kamloops residential school highlights the need for a formal, legal and human rights framework to investigate similar sites in Canada, says a B.C. legal scholar and advocate.

Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond heads the University of British Columbia’s Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre, and formerly served as the province’s advocate for children and youth.


“A mass grave is a crime scene, it is not a historic site or a heritage site,” Turpel-Lafond told Global News.

“It is well and past the time that Canada and provinces, they need to stop treating the finding of human remains of Indigenous people as sort of a heritage issue.”

The Kamloops Indian Residential School is but one of many where Turpel-Lafond says Indigenous people have reported children disappearing, but have been given little or no state support to investigate.

That has left First Nations to spearhead the work themselves, potentially with the support of a few academics and intermittent grants.

“The United Nations has a framework to deal with mass unmarked graves in such situations like Rwanda and other places around the world,” she said.

“We may have to turn to some of those international principles so that we can make sure we do the right thing here.”

Turpel-Lafond is calling on the federal government to immediately appoint a special rapporteur to bring international standards to the issue in Canada.

Legislation and funding to create a framework that will ensure investigations happen, are done correctly, and are done in a way that incorporates Indigenous leadership while respecting cultural safety and protocols, are also needed, she said.

“There are fundamental human rights issues here that we have to consider — the right to life, were these children’s right to life appropriately respected? I mean, every indication points to it that they were not,” she said.

“What about the disappearance? How can you just disappear like this? What kind of last rites and dignified treatment was given to these children? Their parents and families maybe were not notified, probably were not. And they’ve just simply been missing.

“Indigenous people have to have a right to a proper investigation, a remedy and reparation, respect culture and beliefs here. But fundamentally, what we’re talking about is the importance of the right to truth.”

State support, she added, would mean Indigenous peoples and survivors of the residential school system would not be forced to shoulder the burden of an inevitably re-traumatizing investigation, she added.

The Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc said Thursday that ground-penetrating radar had confirmed the remains of at least 215 children at the site of the former residential school.

The band is now laying the groundwork for what will likely be a multi-year process of identifying, repatriating and telling the stories of the children. That effort could involve the B.C. Coroners service, the Royal B.C. Museum and forensics experts.

The Kamloops residential school operated between 1890 and 1969. The federal government took over the facility’s operation from the Catholic Church and ran it as a day school until it closed in 1978.

The National Truth and Reconciliation Commission has records of at least 51 children dying at the school between 1915 and 1963.

RAILROAD BLOCKADED IN SOLIDARITY WITH PALESTINE

By It's Going Down.

June 1, 2021




https://popularresistance.org/railroad-blockaded-in-solidarity-with-palestine/



Coastal Cities Vow To ‘Block The Boat.’

For several hours on Sunday, May 30th, hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists blockaded the Lisgar GO railway, located in so-called Mississauga, Ontario. The GO train system serves millions of commuters between different hubs throughout Canada. Activists were protesting to demand that the Canadian government stop supplying arms to the State of Israel.







One activist on social media posted following the demonstration:


After a three-hour shutdown of the railway, surrounded by police, with trains stopped dead in their tracks, we’ve dispersed with our heads held high. Thanks to all those who stood in solidarity with us. We will continue to fight for our families in Palestine. #StopArmingIsrael

This is not the first time anti-colonial movements have utilized train blockades as a tactic in struggle across so-called Canada. In the Spring of 2020, #ShutDownCanada demonstrators and Native warriors shutdown GO trains throughout Canada in protest against attacks on Wet’suwet’en sovereignty by the state of Canada and extraction industries.




The recent rail blockades are only the latest in a series of mass demonstrations in solidarity with Palestine, not only in the Mississauga area, but across the world. It would also seem as if the tactics of blockading are spreading, as multiple cities on various coasts have signaled they are ready to “Block the Boat,” in an effort to blockade Israeli goods from being imported into the US. Already in Oakland, California, where mass demonstrations in 2014 blocked a similar boat, just the threat of repeat blockades has prevented the “Israeli-operated ZIM cargo ship from docking” for 10 days. Port workers with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) have also issued statements in solidarity with “Palestine and Palestinian communities across the world.”

‘DYING FOR AN IPHONE’

By Chris Hedges, ScheerPost.

June 1, 2021




https://popularresistance.org/dying-for-an-iphone/



The Suffering Of The Working Class, Within And Outside The United States, Is Ignored By Our Corporatized Media.

And yet, it is one of the most important human rights issues of our era.


NOTE: Hedges mentions the “genocide” of the Uyghurs without stating that this is a myth promoted by the United States to demonize China. He also quotes Kristof from the New York Times without giving more context for his remarks. For more information about the Uyghurs, read the articles here. For more information about China, visit the Qiao Collective. – MF

Global capitalists have turned back the clock to the early days of the Industrial Revolution. The working class is increasingly bereft of rights, blocked from forming unions, paid starvation wages, subject to wage theft, under constant surveillance, fired for minor infractions, exposed to dangerous carcinogens, forced to work overtime, given punishing quotas and abandoned when they are sick and old. Workers have become, here and abroad, disposable cogs to corporate oligarchs, who wallow in obscene personal wealth that dwarfs the worst excesses of the Robber Barons.

In fashionable liberal circles there are, as Noam Chomsky notes, worthy and unworthy victims. Nancy Pelosi has called on global leaders not to attend the Winter Olympics, scheduled to be held in Beijing in February, because of what she called a “genocide” being carried out by the Chinese government against the Uyghur minority. New York Times columnist Nick Kristof in a column rattled off a list of human rights violations overseen by China’s leader Xi Jinping, writing “[Xi] eviscerates Hong Kong freedoms, jails lawyers and journalists, seizes Canadian hostages, threatens Taiwan and, most horrifying, presides over crimes against humanity in the far western region of Xinjiang that is home to several Muslim minorities.”

Not a word about the millions of workers in China who are treated little better than serfs. They live separated from their families, including their children, and housed in overcrowded company dormitories, which sees rent deducted from their paychecks, next to factories that have round-the-clock production, often making products for U.S. corporations. Workers are abused, underpaid and sickened from exposure to chemicals and toxins such as aluminum dust.

The suffering of the working class, within and outside the United States, is as ignored by our corporatized media as the suffering of the Palestinians. And yet, I would argue, it is one of the most important human rights issues of our era, since once workers are empowered, they can fend off other human rights violations. Unless workers can organize, here and in countries such as China, and achieve basic rights and living wages, it will cement into place a global serfdom that will leave workers trapped in the appalling conditions described by Friedrich Engels in his 1845 book “The Conditions of the Working Class in England” or Émile Zola‘s 1885 masterpiece “Germinal.”

As long as China can pay slave wages it will be impossible to raise wages anywhere else. Any trade agreement has to include the right of workers to organize, otherwise all the promises by Joe Biden to rebuild the American middle class is a lie. Between 2001-2011, 2.7 million jobs were lost to China with 2.1 million in manufacturing. None are coming back if workers in China and other countries that allow corporations to exploit labor and skirt basic environmental and labor regulations are locked in corporate servitude. And while we can chastise China for its labor policies, the United States has crushed its own union movement, allowed its corporations to move manufacturing overseas to profit from the Chinese manufacturing models, suppressed wages, passed anti-labor right-to-work laws, and demolished regulations that once protected workers. The war on workers is not a Chinese phenomenon. It is a global one. And U.S. corporations are complicit. Apple has 46 percent of its suppliers in China. Walmart has 80 percent of its suppliers in China. Amazon has 63 percent of its suppliers in China.

The largest U.S. corporations are full partners in the exploitation of Chinese labor, and the abandonment and impoverishment of the American working class. U.S. corporations and Chinese manufacturers kept millions of Chinese workers crammed into factories at the height of a global pandemic. Their health was of no concern. Apple’s profits more than doubled to $23.6 billion in the most recent quarter. Its revenues rose by 54 percent to $89.6 billion, which meant Apple sold more than $1 billion on average each day. Until these corporations are held accountable, which the Biden administration will not do, nothing will change for workers here or in China. Economic justice is global or it does not exist.

Workers in Chinese industrial centers—self-contained company cities with up to a half million people—drive the huge profits of two of the world’s most powerful companies, Foxconn, ****the world’s largest provider of electronics manufacturing services, and Apple, with $ 2 trillion dollars in market value. Foxconn’s largest customer is Apple, but it also produces products for Alphabet (formerly Google), Amazon, which owns more than 400 private-label brands, BlackBerry, Cisco, Dell, Fujitsu, GE, HP, IBM, Intel, LG, Microsoft, Nintendo, Panasonic, Philips, Samsung, Sony, and Toshiba, as well as leading Chinese firms including Lenovo, Huawei, ZTE, and Xiaomi. Foxconn assembles iPhones, iPads, iPods, Macs, TVs, Xboxes, PlayStations, Wii U’s, Kindles, printers, as well as numerous digital devices.

Jenny Chan, Mark Selden, and Pun Ngai spent a decade conducting undercover research at Foxconn’s major manufacturing sites in the Chinese cities of Shenzhen, Shanghai, Kunshan, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Tianjin, Langfang, Taiyuan, and Wuhan for their book “Dying for an iPhone: Apple, Foxconn, and The Lives of China’s Workers”. What they describe is an Orwellian dystopia, one where global corporations have perfected the techniques for a disempowered work force. These vast worker cities are little more than labor penal colonies. Yes, it is possible to leave, but to incur the ire of the bosses, especially by speaking out or attempting to organize, is to be blacklisted for life throughout China’s archipelago of industrial centers and cast to the margins of society or often prison.

Workers live under constant surveillance. They are policed by company security units. They sleep in segregated male and female dormitories with eight or more people to a room. The multi-story dormitories have bars on the windows and nets below, put up to halt the spate of worker suicides that afflicted these factory cities a few years ago.

“The workplace and living space are compressed to facilitate high-speed, round-the-clock production,” the authors write. “The dormitory warehouses a massive migrant labor force without the care and love of family. Whether single or married, the worker is assigned a bunk space for one person. The ‘private space’ consists simply of one’s own bed behind a self-made curtain with little common living space.”

Workers, who earn about $2 an hour and an average of $390 a month, are paid in wage debit cards, an updated version of company scrip. The bank card allows a worker to deposit, withdraw, and transfer money from 24-hour ATM machines that are accessible at Foxconn facilities.

Managers, foremen, and line leaders prohibit conversation on the assembly floor that operates on a 24-hour cycle of 10- or 12-hour shifts. Workers are reprimanded if they work “too slowly” on the line. They are punished for turning out defective products. Workers are often forced to remain behind after a shift if a worker committed an infraction. The worker who violated the rules is required to stand before his or her co-workers and read a statement of self-criticism. Any worker issued a “D” grade in their review for “unsatisfactory performance” is fired. The workers receive one day off every second week, or two rest days a month. They can be summarily shifted between the night and day shifts.

The authors describe the daily routine of a worker entering a Foxconn factory at 7 a.m. with hundreds of thousands of other Foxconn employees. Each person, prohibited from entering the factory complex with electronic devices, is checked by facial recognition systems to confirm his or her identity.


The human flow continues for more than an hour. Night-shift workers cross the footbridge and pour into the shopping malls and street markets that have sprung up around the factory. Day-shift workers cross the same footbridge, in the opposite direction, heading to work. From the moment they enter the factory gate, workers are monitored by a security system more intrusive than any that we found in the neighboring smaller electronics-processing factories. “Foxconn has its own security force, just as a country has an army,” a stern faced, broad-shouldered security officer stated as a matter of fact. Workers pass through successive electronic gates and Special Security Zones before arriving at their workshops to start work.

Once inside, the authors write, workers endure a familiar ritual:


As workers prepare to begin a shift, managers call out: “How are you?” Workers must respond by shouting in unison, “Good! Very good! Very, very good!” This drill is said to foster disciplined workers. A laser-soldering worker reported, “Before shift-time, a whistle sounds three times. At the first whistle we must rise and put our stools in order. At the second whistle we prepare to work and put on special gloves or equipment. At the third whistle we sit and work. “No talking, no laughing, no eating, no sleeping” during work hours is the number one factory rule. Any behavior that violates discipline is penalized. “Going to the toilet for more than ten minutes incurs an oral warning, and chatting during work time incurs a written warning,” a line leader explained.

The work is exhausting, stressful and repetitive. An iPhone has more than one hundred parts. “Every worker,” the authors write, “specializes in one task and performs repetitive motions at high speed, hourly, daily, ten hours or more on many working days, for months on end.”

A woman interviewed in the book described her life on the assembly line:


I am a cog in the visual inspection workstation, which is part of the static electricity assembly line. As the adjacent soldering oven delivers smartphone motherboards, both my hands extend to take the motherboard, then my head starts shifting from left to right, my eyes move from the left side of the motherboard to the right side, then stare from the top to the bottom, without interruption, and when something is off, I call out, and another human part similar to myself will run over, ask about the cause of the error, and fix it. I repeat the same task thousands of times a day. My brain rusts.

The work can also be hazardous. The polishing machine emits aluminum dust as it grinds the casings. This dust gets into the eyes and causes irritation and tiny tears. Workers suffer from respiratory problems, sore throats and chronic coughs. “Microscopic aluminum dust coats workers’ faces and clothes,” the authors write. “A worker described the situation this way: ‘I’m breathing aluminum dust at Foxconn like a vacuum cleaner. With the workshop windows tightly shut, workers felt that they were suffocating.’”

The aluminum dust can also cause fires, such as one on May 20, 2011 when an accumulation of aluminum dust in the air duct on the third floor at Foxconn Chengdu Building A5 was ignited by a spark from an electric switch. Four workers died. Dozens were injured. It was not the only explosion, which Foxconn managed to largely hide by imposing a near total media blackout. “Seven months after the Foxconn tragedy, on December 17, 2011, combustible aluminum dust fueled another blast, this time at iPhone maker Pegatron in Shanghai, injuring sixty-one workers. In the blast, young men and women suffered severe burns and shattered bones, leaving many permanently disabled,” the authors write.

Workers are required to clean one thousand iPhone touchscreens per shift. They were cleaned for years with the chemical n-hexane, which evaporates faster than industrial alcohol. Prolonged exposure to n-hexane damages peripheral nerves, leading to painful muscle cramps, headaches, uncontrollable shaking, blurred vision and difficulties walking. It should only be applied in well ventilated areas by workers wearing respirators. Thousands of Foxconn workers applied n-hexane in sealed rooms without ventilators and were sickened, finally leading to its ban.

These vast industrial complexes also discharge huge amounts of heavy metals and wastewater into the rivers and ground water. Rivers near plants run black with sewage and are filled with plastic waste. Workers complain that the drinking water is discolored and smells.

The United States cast its workers aside in the 1990s with de-industrialization. China did the same by dismantling socialism in favor of state-controlled capitalism. State and collective sector jobs in China fell from 76 percent in 1995 to 27 percent in 2005. Tens of millions of laid off workers were left to compete for jobs run by corporations such as Foxconn. But even these jobs are now under threat, partly from automation, with workers on assembly lines replaced by robotic automatons that can spray, weld, press, polish, do quality testing and assemble printed circuit boards. Foxconn has installed over 40,000 industrial robots in its factories, along with hundreds of thousands of other automated machines.

But over the past decade, the authors note, “the major changes inside Foxconn were not the replacement of workers with robots but the replacement of full-time employees with growing numbers of student interns and contingent subcontracted laborers.”

These workers, part of the gig economy familiar in the United States, have even less job stability and security than full time employees. As many as 150,000 high-school age vocational students are employed in Foxconn plants. They are paid the minimum wage, but are not entitled to the 400-yuan-per-month skills subsidy, even if they pass the probationary period. Foxconn is also not required to enroll them in social security.

Those who lead these corporate behemoths often replicate the behavior of despots, not only exerting total control over every aspect of their workers lives but dispensing folksy wisdom to the masses. They are often treated by a fawning media as gurus, asked to opine–as Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos do–on a range of social, economic, political and cultural issues. Their immense fortunes confer to them in our Mammon-worshipping society a sage-like status.

Terry Gou, the founder and CEO of Foxconn, has published a list of slogans and aphorisms that adorn the walls of his factories, along with his portraits. Workers are required to write out passages from “Gou’s Quotations.” While Mao Zedong called for class struggle and rebellion, Gou calls for conformity and blind obedience. “Growth thy name is suffering,” reads one of his quotes. The Wall Street Journal reporter Jason Dean, in a 2007 interview with Gou, characterized Gao as a “warlord,” and noted that “he wears a beaded bracelet he got from a temple dedicated to Genghis Khan, the thirteenth-century Mongolian conqueror whom he calls a personal hero.”

“A harsh environment is a good thing,” one of Gou’s quotes reads. “Achieve goals or the sun will no longer rise. Value efficiency every minute, every second. Execution is the integration of speed, accuracy, and precision.”

His more than one million employees, as is true at Amazon and other large corporations, are subjected to mandatory company meetings where they are taught to obey company rules, pay fealty to the interests of the corporation and, as the authors note, strive for “the individualistic model of success.” Those who heed the rules, workers are told, are rewarded. Those who do not, are punished or banished.

Workers in these global sweatshops are organizing underground and protesting. There were 8,700 incidents of labor unrest in China in 1993, the first year for which official data is available, to 32,000 in 1999, the authors write. “The number ‘continued to increase at more than 20 percent a year’ between 2000 and 2003. In 2005, the official record noted 87,000 cases, rising to 127,000 in 2008 during the world recession–the last time the Chinese Ministry of Public Security released figures.”

In Hubei’s East Lake High-Tech Development Zone, the authors note, known as Optics Valley, on January 3, 2012, 150 Foxconn workers threatened to jump from the roof of the factory and commit mass suicide if the managers refused to address their demands, which included protests over forced transfers to other factories’ cities and a wage dispute.

Strikes, protests and work stoppages that take place now are state secrets, but the past statistics seem to indicate that they are growing. Strikes are usually swiftly and brutally broken by company security and police, with strike leaders being fired and often imprisoned.

We will not save ourselves through the perverted individualism, sold to us by our corporate masters and a compliant mass media, which encourages our advancement at the expense of others. We will save ourselves by working in solidarity with workers inside and outside the United States. This collective power is our only hope. Amazon workers from the Hulu Garment factory in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and Global Garments factory in Chittagong, Bangladesh, recently led a global day of action to make Amazon pay all its workers, no matter where they live, fair wages. This has to be our model. Otherwise, workers in one country will be pitted against workers in another country. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels got it right. Workers of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains.

In this confrontation with apartheid Israel, the Palestinians won

The unity which Palestinians demonstrated in the past few weeks marks the rise of a new national consciousness.






Haidar Eid
Haidar Eid is an associate Professor at Al-Aqsa University in Gaza.
31 May 2021


https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/5/31/palestinian-victory




After the latest genocidal onslaught by apartheid Israel, some serious questions have been raised, once again, about the usefulness of resistance and whether the outcome of the war can, or cannot, be considered a victory for the Palestinian people. Those same questions were raised in 2009, 2012, and 2014, when Israel launched massive attacks against Gaza, and even during the non-violent 2018 Great March of Return, when Palestinians marched towards the fence around the Strip and were shot and killed by Israeli snipers.

Some “liberals” resorted to the usual proclamations, blaming the “two sides of the conflict” – ie, the coloniser and the colonised, and concluding that Palestinians must stop launching rockets from Gaza.

Once again, we were being challenged by those same “neutral” voices about the very definition of resistance. They fail to see, for ideological reasons, that resistance, broadly speaking, is not only the ability to fight back against a militarily more powerful oppressor, but also the ability to creatively resist the colonisation of one’s land. They fail to understand peoples’ power, in our case, “sumud” (steadfastness), or even to see that it exists.

In other words, they accept Israel’s narrative, where there are “two sides of the conflict” with equal military power and moral standing. They reject the reality that this is a Western-backed settler colonialist and apartheid project which the Palestinian people are resisting. They also ignore all our moral “weapons”: that we are the natives of the land, that we have international law supporting our claims, that we have the moral high ground, and increasingly the support of international civil society, and others.

Edward Said once said that the intellectual is supposed to be, “someone who cannot easily be co-opted by governments or corporations, and whose raison d’etre is to represent all those people and issues that are routinely forgotten or swept under the rug.”

Those “liberal” voices that have been condemning Palestinian “violence” in the latest confrontation with apartheid Israel are anti-intellectual. They refuse to see that Palestinians are able to be agents of change in their present and future. They are ideologically unable to acknowledge Palestinian agency because they refuse to respect the will of the people as expressed in the popular support given to resistance in its various forms – in Gaza, the West Bank and the areas Israel occupied during its creation in 1948.

They are also unable to see the Palestinian victory over apartheid Israel in the recent events. They side with the Israeli fascist, ruling class who believe they “won” because they killed a huge number of “terrorists”: 253 Palestinians, including 66 children, 39 women, and 17 elderly.

Yet, none of the so-called “objectives” of the Israeli war on Gaza – putting an end to the rocket fire from Gaza and destroying the tunnels used by the resistance fighters and obfuscating any form of unity between Jerusalem and Gaza – has been achieved. Rockets are still being launched and the resistance movement proved to be strong enough to respond to the call to action by the Jerusalemites of Sheikh Jarrah who are facing imminent ethnically cleansing by Israel.

As one frustrated Israeli pilot, who bombed Gaza, said in an interview for the Israeli Channel 12: “I went on a mission to carry out air strikes with a feeling that destroying the towers is a way to vent frustration over what is happening to us and over the success of the groups in Gaza in kicking us… We failed to stop the rocket fire and to harm the leadership of these groups, so we destroyed the towers.”

But more importantly, Gaza 2021 bust the carefully constructed and zealously defended myths that Israel has been promoting for decades: that it has the “most moral” army in the world; that its Iron Dome is invincible; and that the Palestinians are just “Arabs” that have no common identity and would give up their claim to the land once the old generations die out.

It is obvious that those “neutral voices” that blame “both sides” are under the “spell” of these myths and that is why they see Palestinian resistance as “unjustified violence” and “terrorism”. But as Brazilian philosopher Paulo Freire wrote in his book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed:


“With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence? … There would be no oppressed had there been no prior situation of violence to establish their subjugation. Violence is initiated by those who oppress, who exploit, who fail to recognize others as persons -not by those who are oppressed, exploited, and unrecognized.”

It is apparent to all but the Western liberals and the Israeli elite they support that the Palestinians have emerged from protests across historic Palestine and the onslaught in Gaza victorious.

These events put an end to the infamous “deal of the century” by re-affirming that Palestinians will not give up their claim on Jerusalem, put another nail in the coffin of the fictional two-state solution, and brought liberation and the rights of third-class Palestinian citizens of Israel and five million refugees back to the top of the international community’s agenda. They have also brought to the fore a new Palestinian consciousness that defies the ossified hegemony of the 1993 Oslo Accords.

The new consciousness formed by Palestinian sumud and resistance is clearly characterised by a rejection of the conditions imposed by apartheid Israel on the three components of the Palestinian people, residents of Gaza and the West Bank, the Palestinians in the territories Israel occupied in 1948, and refugees living in camps and in the diaspora. Even more crucially, this is a rejection of the crumbs that are offered as a reward for good behaviour to a select minority of Palestinians.

We have been told to accept Israeli occupation in its ugliest form – the apartheid wall, the colonies, the checkpoints, the segregated roads, the colour-coded number plates, the forced evictions and house demolitions, the “security coordination”, the arrests, torture and imprisonment – or have a medieval blockade imposed on us and be periodically bombed into death and oblivion.

But the answer from Gaza, Jerusalem, Lydda, Haifa and the rest of historic Palestine this spring was very clear: the Palestinian people will not be reduced to only those living in the 1967 occupied territories. We are witnessing a paradigm shift from separatism, as represented by the two-state solution – which aims to establish a Palestinian Bantustan and deny the rights of millions to their land – to full Palestinian unity.

True, the Palestinian victory was very costly, but it was a decisive one. The Palestinian people prevailed over an armed-to-the-teeth apartheid regime and its American-made Iron Dome by breaking through their own “Mental Dome”. Palestine after Gaza 2021 will not be like Palestine before. The Palestinians have begun to decolonise their minds away from the “peace process” and racist two-state solution and with their sumud, they have brought the arrogant Zionist regime in Palestine to its knees.