Yes You !

Bhagat Singh

 

Bhagat Singh (28 September 1907 – 23 March 1931) was one of the most influential Indian revolutionaries. He came from a Sikh family which had been involved in revolutionary activities against the Raj. 

While studying he was influenced by both anarchist and Marxist ideology and became involved in many revolutionary organizations. He quickly rose through the ranks of the Hindustan Republican Association (HRA) and became one of its main leaders, eventually changing its name to the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) in 1928.

Seeking revenge for the death of Lala Lajpat Rai, an author and politician, remembered as a leader in the Indian fight for independence, at the hands of the police, he was involved in the assassination of a British police officer John Saunders. He managed to evade arrest and along with another freedom fighter was successful in a mission to throw two bombs and leaflets into the Central Legislative Assembly while shouting 'Inquilab Zindabad'.

Subsequently they volunteered to surrender and arrest. Held on this charge they widespread national support. He fasted for 116 days in jail, demanding equal rights for British and Indian political prisoners.

Sadly there was enough evidence against him for a conviction for the assassination and after a trial by a Special Tribunal and appeal at the Privy Council in England. He was convicted and subsequently hanged for his participation in the murder. He was 23 at the time and his example motivated the youth to begin fighting for India’s independence.

Tuareg Man Of The Libyan Sahara

(http://twcnomad.blogspot.com/2008/05/tuarag-of-libyan-sahara.html)

The Son of Africa claims a continent’s crown jewels

On 14 October, President Barack Obama announced he was sending United States special forces troops to Uganda to join the civil war there. In the next few months, US combat troops will be sent to South Sudan, Congo and Central African Republic. They will only "engage" for "self-defence", says Obama, satirically. With Libya secured, an American invasion of the African continent is under way.

Obama's decision is described in the press as "highly unusual" and "surprising", even "weird". It is none of these things. It is the logic of American foreign policy since 1945. Take Vietnam. The priority was to halt the influence of China, an imperial rival, and "protect" Indonesia, which President Nixon called "the region's richest hoard of natural resources... the greatest prize". Vietnam merely got in the way; and the slaughter of more than three million Vietnamese and the devastation and poisoning of their land was the price of America achieving its goal.  Like all America's subsequent invasions, a trail of blood from Latin America to Afghanistan and Iraq, the rationale was usually "self defence" or "humanitarian", words long  emptied of their dictionary meaning.

In Africa, says Obama, the "humanitarian mission" is to assist the government of Uganda defeat the Lord's resistance Army (LRA), which "has murdered, raped and kidnapped tens of thousands of men, women and children in central Africa". This is an accurate description of the LRA, evoking multiple atrocities administered by the United States, such as the bloodbath in the 1960s following the CIA-arranged murder of Patrice Lumumba, the Congolese independence leader and first legally elected prime minister, and the CIA coup that installed Mobutu Sese Seko, regarded as Africa's most venal tyrant.

Obama's other justification also invites satire. This is the "national security of the United States". The LRA has been doing its nasty work for 24 years, of minimal interest to the United States. Today, it has few than 400 fighters and has never been weaker. However, US "national security" usually means buying a corrupt and thuggish regime that has something Washington wants. Uganda's "president-for-life" Yoweri Museveni already receives the larger part of $45 million in US military "aid" - including Obama's favourite drones. This is his bribe to fight a proxy war against America's latest phantom Islamic enemy, the rag-tag al Shabaab group based in Somalia. The RTA will play a public relations role, distracting western journalists with its perennial horror stories.

However, the main reason the US is invading Africa is no different from that which ignited the Vietnam war. It is China. In the world of self-serving, institutionalised paranoia that justifies what General David Petraeus, the former US commander and now CIA director, implies is a state of perpetual war, China is replacing al-Qaeda as the official American "threat". When I interviewed Bryan Whitman, an assistant secretary of defence at the Pentagon last year, I asked him to describe the current danger to America. Struggling visibly, he repeated, "Asymmetric threats ... asymmetric threats". These justify the money-laundering state-sponsored arms conglomerates and the biggest military and war budget in history. With Osama bin Laden airbrushed, China takes the mantle.

Africa is China's success story. Where the Americans bring drones and destabilisation, the Chinese bring roads, bridges and dams. What they want is resources, especially fossil fuels. With Africa's greatest oil reserves, Libya under Muammar Gaddafi was one of China's most important sources of fuel. When the civil war broke out and Nato backed the "rebels" with a fabricated story about Gaddafi planning "genocide" in Benghazi, China evacuated its 30,000 workers in Libya. The subsequent UN security council resolution that allowed the west's "humanitarian intervention" was explained succinctly in a proposal to the French government by the "rebel" National Transitional Council, disclosed last month in the newspaper Liberation, in which France was offered 35 per cent of Libya's gross national oil production "in exchange" (the term used) for "total and permanent" French support for the NTC. Running up the Stars and Stripes in "liberated" Tripoli last month, US ambassador Gene Cretz blurted out: "We know that oil is the jewel in the crown of Libyan natural resources!"

The de facto conquest of Libya by the US and its imperial partners heralds a modern version of the "scramble for Africa" at the end of the 19th century.
Like the "victory" in Iraq, journalists have played a critical role in dividing Libyans into worthy and unworthy victims. A recent Guardian front page carried a photograph of a terrified "pro-Gaddafi" fighter and his wild-eyed captors who, says the caption, "celebrate". According to General Petraeus, there is now a war "of perception... conducted continuously through the news media".

For more than a decade the US has tried to establish a command on the continent of Africa, AFRICOM, but has been rebuffed by governments, fearful of the regional tensions this would cause. Libya, and now Uganda, South Sudan and Congo,  provide the main chance. As WikiLeaks cables and the US National Strategy for Counter-terrorism reveal, American plans for Africa are part of a global design in which 60,000 special forces, including death squads, already operate in 75 countries, soon to be 120. As Dick Cheney pointed out in his 1990s "defence strategy" plan, America simply wishes to rule the world.

That this is now the gift of Barack Obama, the  "Son of Africa", is supremely ironic. Or is it? As Frantz Fanon explained in 'Black Skin, White Masks', what matters is not so much the colour of your skin as the power you serve and the millions you betray.

John Pilger ( 20 October 2011)

How To Pick Movies...

Leila Khaled ...

“Occupation is terrorism, to be a refugee is hell.
Having your homeland taken is a crime.
To be a freedom fighter is liberation.”
– Leila Khaled

I walked around the corner of a Palestinian refugee camp and came face to face with a prominent graffiti image I was familiar with but could not instantly identify. My Palestinian friend replied to my question: “That is Leila Khaled”. I was on my way to meet the host family where I would be staying during my visit to Palestine. A huge grin appeared on my face when I realised Leila was in fact the entrance to the home of my new family.

For me it has been hard to fully imagine a young girl aged only four, along with her family, being forcibly driven from their home due to events that were completely out of their control. Leila’s story started in Haifa as part of the creation of Israel in 1948 during the Nakba. She was part of a family that had nowhere to flee but Lebanon, along with thousands of other families – mainly women and children as the men were either sent to concentration camps, to labour or killed.

The story of the Nakba is never taught in history lessons except in Palestine; that is if a school is fortunate enough to exist and function. The Nakba was ethnic cleansing at its best and a catastrophic event. To this very day it remains denied by many. Even though the premeditated plan of 1948 had a single goal to remove, oppress and silence a race of people – a goal that remains to this day. It is only the method of doing so that has changed.

Leila Khaled uncovered her pre-1948 history of Palestine principally from books but thereafter she has known the history of her people through the bitterness of her own experience. Her birthday was celebrated as a day of national mourning. During her young years she did not celebrate a single birthday, making a pledge not to do so until she returned to her homeland. After they were forcibly removed from Haifa, the Khaled family home and business were seized and they were denied Lebanese citizenship, forced to remain in a state of exile. For the remaining eighteen years until his death, Leila’s father dreamed of returning to Palestine. Ever since, his daughter has attempted everything in her power to realise that dream, vowing not to fail her father or her nation.

In a sense, Leila was what some would label fortunate to grow up educated and without having to live within the confines of the refugee camps of Lebanon. She explains in her autobiography that these aspects shaped and developed her growing mind to lead her to where she is today. She acquired the necessary ideology to understand why class society must be abolished and replaced with socialism; she understood that her people’s fight against the Israelis is foremost an anti-imperialist one. Leila’s realisation of the need for revolution coincided with her developing understanding of feminism as she fought against oppression and for the role of women in a largely male dominated movement. She describes during one instance that the self-righteous reactionaries looked upon her as a “tradition-trampling” and “sex-enticing” individual. Leila called it a travesty of womanhood.

At the age of nineteen Khaled decided that she had no further prospects within Lebanon so departed for Kuwait in 1963. Not long afterwards the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) was created. As the PLO became more bureaucratic and upper class more Palestinians rallied behind Fatah. A new movement was ignited and armed struggle was seen as the only way to salvation, liberation and self-respect.

Leila became an icon for the Palestinian struggle in 1969 when at 24, she was an operative in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the dramatic hijacking of a Boeing 707 plane. It was the first in a series of high-profile actions intended to put the Palestinian revolutionary struggle on the political map. Leila was part of a group that hijacked a Trans World Airline (TWA) flight from Rome to Athens.  The plane was flown over Palestine where Leila saw her homeland for the first time since her exile. She saluted and thanked the Captain for his co-operation after the plane was landed in Syria but as he looked in astonishment, it was the co-pilot who replied, “You’re most welcome!” No one was injured throughout the hijacking (this was not part of the plan) but the plane was blown up afterwards. Khaled was able to make a speech afterwards telling the world about the crimes inflicted upon her people.

After the first hijack she was elected to the central committee of the Popular Front with increased obligations and was trained to commandeer an EL-AL flight. The following year the second hijack was attempted but the outcome was very different. Leila was caught and handed over to British police after the flight from Amsterdam to New York was diverted to London. Her comrade Patrick Arguello was martyred. They were both overpowered and beaten and trampled on until they were too weak to resist. Leila is convinced she only escaped death as she was needed for display purposes. She recalls her thoughts on that day as she stepped onto the Israeli plane and into the lion’s den but felt for the first time since 1948 that she would be going home again and felt proud of being a member of the Popular Front.

Today, 64 years after the Nakba, the Palestinian struggle remains a leading anti-imperialist struggle and Palestinian women play a huge part in the struggle to free themselves, their families, their communities, and their nation from imperialism.  In an interview in 2009 from her home in Amman, Leila said, “Where there is occupation, there is always resistance. This resistance every time has its own shape and its own means. I think this situation (of calm) will not last. Our people have a very long experience of struggle and cannot accept that this situation will go on. One day it will break out again. In what way, I cannot say. But it will come.”

During the ‘Palestinian Revolutionaries on International Womens Day’ in 2010 Leila expressed how fundamental the women of Palestine are to uniting all Palestinians and how important they are to defending the hundreds of Palestinian women in Israeli prisons. She portrays them as the physical evidence of the torture and oppression of the occupation and conversely as the examples of courage, strength and hope from those women who give their life to Palestine.

Leila’s final message that day was aimed at the important role of Palestinian women who are adversely affected by the divisions and factions in the West Bank and Gaza. The justification for this is on the recognition that unity will strengthen the fight against the horror of this occupation. In this political moment the most important issue is that of unifying people to face the terrors of this occupation, and the main basis of unity must be fighting the occupation.  It is important to understand the role of the masses in achieving this unity by putting pressure through democratic and civil means on the Palestinian factions.

By Gail MacKenzie (International Socialist Group)

Published 14th May, 2012

http://internationalsocialist.org.uk/index.php/2012/05/women-on-the-left-leila-khaled

A Ballet Class In Gaza

Palestinian girls watch their teacher during a ballet class at Gaza college in Gaza City September 3, 2012 by Mohammed Salem / Reuters

(http://photoblog.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/03/13641751-a-ballet-class-in-gaza?lite)

Cause Of Death ...

Just like in Avatar... The Dongria Kondh

(Jason Taylor)

The Dongria Kondha are indigenous Indian tribes who live in parts of the state of Orissa. They speak a Dravidian language called Kui which is written in the Oriya script. Primarily they are forest dwellers but modernisation has drastically altered their traditional way of life. 

Their religion combines animism and Hinduism and they worship Niyam Raja whose seat is at the top of Niyam Dongar Hill or the 'Mountain of Law', in the Niyamgiri Hills. They practice a unique dormitory system (Daa Sala) where adolescents sleep as part of their enculturation and education process and are taught social taboos, myths, legends, stories, riddles and proverbs through all night singing and dancing. Females are inducted into the way of the sacred feminine. 

They are admirers of aesthetic romanticism and their adornments are unique, with each male and female member using hair clips, ear rings neck rings, hand rings made up of brass, iron and Hyndalium prepared by themselves as well as purchased from local markets and body tattooing is practiced by both sexes.

The 'Mountain of Law' is under threat because the UK based mining company, Vedanta Resources is planning to mine the $2billion deposit of Bauxite(an aluminium ore) and the area around it. 

In 2010 India's environment ministry ordered Vedanta Resources to halt a sixfold expansion of an aluminium refinery in Orissa. Vedanta has appealed against the ministerial decision, but the tribal leaders have promised to continue their struggle whatever the decision in a key hearing before India's Supreme Court earlier this year.

^{Please watch : www.survivalinternational.org/films/mine}