Call to Action: Oppose Israel's Imperialist Bombings of Gaza and Murder of Palestinian Civilians

Via By Any Means Necessary and Danger Room

This past weekend the fragile and short lived cease fire between Hamas and the Israeli government ended after rocket attacks were launched into Israeli from Gaza killing a grand total of ONE PERSON. In retribution Israel unleashed it's American-funded arsenal of missiles into Gaza, killing more than 200 people and injuring hundreds more, mostly civilians, including school children. This comes after months of a crippling/suffocating embargo on Gaza by the Israelis, which have left the Palestinian people without food, fuel and all the other essentials of life.

I denounce this massacre of civilians by the forces of Zionism and U.S.-backed Imperialism and call upon all of the world's forces of resistance and rebellion do the same and oppose the action in their own ways. InI received several communications from the Zapatistas this weekend about these events. Cruise missiles are the most cowardly of weapons as their use carries no risk for the user, especially if they are fired from UAVs. If the IDF does launch a ground war into Gaza, it will face a well organized Hamas who has modeled itself after Hezbollah using lessons learned from their war with Israeli in 2006. This is an unlikely course of action as IDF loves to send missiles to kill and hates to send troops to die. If they do invade using ground forces, they will have to deal with large stockpile of rockets, mortars, and anti-tank weapons capable of targeting helicopters in the hands of trained insurgents fighting from an extensive network of defensive bunkers, tunnels and booby traps. In other words, they will face a shit show.



Below is a call to action issued from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine:

Over 270 killed in Gaza and hundreds have been wounded in a series of massacres and crimes committed by the Zionist occupier against the Palestinian people in Gaza on December 27, 2008. The occupier shot dozens of missiles from Apache helicopters and F-16 planes at dozens of Gaza government buildings, directly in the middle of heavily populated residential neighborhoods and simultaneously with teachers and students returning to school.

Demonstrations have broken out throughout the West Bank and the Arab world in protest and outrage at the brutality and the nature of these massive crimes.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine issued a statement calling for the broadest resistance to meet and confront this aggression against the Palestinian people and to respond to these massacres, and for the unity of the resistance, and the unity of the Palestinian people, to greet the occupier with resistance, strength and steadfastness despite his brutal crimes. The statement stressed the urgent need for national unity immediately to confront the crimes against our people and to greet the occupier and its brutality with tremendous and unified resistance that is capable of shaking its foundations.

The PFLP statement further called upon all resistance forces to come together now and establish unified resistance front to coordinate and take up the challenge of these attacks against our people. It pointed to the responsibility of the United States for these attacks, as a strategic partner of the occupier, working hand in hand with its massacres and crimes against the Palestinian people, and as the source of the arms used by the occupier against our people. It also pointed to the complicity of the Arab regimes in these crimes, particularly the Egyptian regime, for its ongoing and active participation in the blockade and siege of the Palestinian people in Gaza and its meetings and discussions with the occupier about its plans for Gaza. These massacres are taking place because of Arab and international silence and active complicity.

The PFLP further called for the immediate end to any and all negotiations with this brutal occupier who plans massacres against our people and stated that if he will not end the negotiations immediately, Abu Mazen must resign now. The nature of the Zionist enemy and its dedication to the eradication of the Palestinian people is laid bare and clear by this series of attacks, calculated to cause maximum damage and human cost. For the past sixty years, there is an unbroken history of massacres and crimes against our people and this massacre today is yet one more expression of the nature of the illegitimate colonial state that has implanted itself on Palestinian land and continues to live on U.S. support through massacres and crimes against the Palestinian people.

The statement concluded by calling upon all of its fighters and military branches to take the strongest actions and to resist the occupation and its massacres by all methods and forms of action and resistance, and by calling for the broadest solidarity on Arab and international levels, for people to come into the streets, demonstrate, march, and take action to declare that these massacres and crimes are unacceptable, that the Arab people and the world are with Palestine and the Palestinian people, and that they will not allow these crimes to continue nor for the Arab regimes and international regimes to be silently complicity or actively involved in the occupation's crimes.

The Palestinian people will greet these massacres with steadfastness, strength, unity and resistance and all of the crimes, massacres, targeting of civilians, residential neighborhoods, and schoolchildren and teachers will do nothing to crush the resistance of our people, the statement said, it will only ensure Palestinian unity in the face of this brutality which makes clear the true face of the occupier to the world.

Tip of the Day: Befriend A Soldier

On this blog I have frequently repeated the old tenet of guerrilla warfare that your enemy is also your source of supplies during the initial stages of an insurgency. Normally this means launching raids or taking guns, ammo, food, equipment, etc. from the corpses of your fallen enemies. But there are other means of stealing from the enemy.

Recently Sahiem and I, paid a visit to a friend of friend who recently returned serving in Afghanistan with the armed forces. This friend was moving and trying to consolidate his belongings to facilitate the process. He had literally a closet full of gear acquired throughout his career with the military, much of which was old, analog camo gear that he discontinued wearing after the U.S. military made the transition to digital camo. Naturally we felt obligated to help a friend in need and took some gear off his hands. Between us we walked away with a rear peep sight for an AR-15 (complete with authentic Afghan dirt and battle wear), three rounds of 5.56 M855, woodland camo knee and elbow pads, a full set of ACUs minus the hat, a copy of the Ranger Handbook(.pdf) and an old patten Camelpack. We could have walked away with a bunch of other gear, like a pair of black(obsolete) Army boots that didn't fit either of us. He also had a ballistic helmet and body armor, but he wanted to hold onto those. In addition to these gifts, this friend has (unknowingly) provided us with valuable intel and lessons learned from his training and battlefield experience.


We both felt that it was a pretty good haul and that's why it is the Tip of the Day. Soldiers are always hard up for cash as the Army pays them very poorly and they have access to materials not easily available to civilians. Plus they have received thousands of dollars in training

The Crimes of Capitalist Dictators Will Never Be Forgotten

Via Harper's Weekly and World War 4 Report

At the site of a former Dirty War detention center near Buenos Aires, ten thousand human bone fragments were found in a mass grave beneath a wall with two hundred bullet marks in it. The bodies had been doused in fuel and burned together with tires to mask the smell.

This topic is close to my heart as a scholar of Latin American Studies. For those of my reader who are not familiar with the Dirty War and of the many, many other crimes of U.S.-backed dictatorship and military juntas throughout South and Central America during the Cold War, I suggest that you look into it. The World War 4 report talks about the Mothers and Grandmother of the Plaza de Mayo in Bueno Aires, who have marched every week for decades demanding the truth about their "disappeared" children and those responsible for torture or mass executions be held accountable.

The oppression and persecution found in the West cannot compare to the experiences of students, trade unionists, Marxists, Anarchists, etc. in countries like Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Mexico. Atrocious events where police open fire on peaceful demonstrators, such as Kent State were common place during the same period of time just south of America's borders, but not beyond the reach of Yankee imperialism.

So I would just like to take time to time to honor the struggles of groups like the Mother and Grandmother of the Plaza de Mayo and H.I.J.O.S. who have not forgotten their fallen comrades and who continue their fight to this day. And also, and I am sure that this goes without saying but we must never forget crimes against humanity, no matter how far removed we are from that reality. The U.S. was/is complicit with and/or directly involved in the systematic brutalization of entire population and we must never forget that. In the U.S. groups like School of The Americas Watch are actively working to shut down the apparatus of oppression funded by our tax dollars. An easy way to support the movement is sign their petition, demanding that President-Elect Obama close the School of the Americas through executive order.

Hasta Siempre

Some Food for Thoughts that Illuminate the Condition of Workers in the United States

Over at By Any Means Necessary, Comrade Rowland Keshena posted the text from a IWW pamphlet arguing for a four hour work day or at the very least a shorter work week. It is a fascinating read and gives a lot of good insight into how the conditions of workers in this country haven't progressed as far as we think they have. Here are some choice, thought provoking excerpts, although I hope you read the article in it's entirety.



Automation and other innovations result in our productivity (output per work hour) doubling every 25 years or so. We now produce about three times as much in an hour of work as we did in 1947, but are we living three times as well or working a third as much? Far from living better, average wages (adjusted for inflation) are only slightly higher than they were 25 years ago. And we're not putting any fewer hours in on the job either, in fact we're working longer and harder - somebody's benefiting from the fact that our work is producing more; but it's not us.[6]

The machines that eliminate workers from payrolls are built by workers. They're paid for out of profits created by our labor. So why should we bear the costs, while the bosses reap the profits? And, for that matter, why should the decisions about whether to introduce this robot or that new chemical process be made by the bosses, instead of by us? After all, we're the ones who'll be working with the damn things.

....

It's absurd, but the typical U.S. worker puts in about as many hours a year today as British urban workers put in in the latter half of the 16th century. (They worked longer work days, but had many more days off.)[9] If you add in the increase in commuting time and such, our work week is about as long as what workers put in in 1850.[10] Productivity has skyrocketed in the intervening period, as have our living standards. But our living standards have not come close to keeping up with our increased productivity. Instead much of our productivity has gone to hire a host of supervisors and other non-productive workers, and to soaring profits.

Increasingly employment is concentrated in the so-called service sector, and in prisons and military production. Huge numbers of workers are employed - often at miserable wages - to keep track of and facilitate the flow of profits. Other service workers are engaged in providing vital human services, such as health care or education, and so are paid even less. But many, perhaps most, of our fellow workers are engaged in activity that is at best non-productive, and often actually counter-productive from the standpoint of meeting human needs.

...

Not only is the work week not being cut, over the last 50 years it has grown substantially longer for millions of workers. This retreat on the shorter hours front follows more than a century of battles for a shorter work week. Yet a shorter work week is practical even within the constraints of a capitalist society. (Indeed, workers already put in far fewer working hours per year than we do in the United States in most industrialized countries; usually in the form of longer vacations.) If we move beyond the constraints imposed by capitalism, deep cuts in the work week are quite feasible. German economists concluded many years ago that a 20-hour week would suffice to meet socially necessary production given an egalitarian division of labor and the abolition of unproductive activity. This is, to say the least, a conservative estimate; in 1932 engineers at Columbia University demonstrated that workers could live extremely comfortably on four hours of work a day, if industry was properly arranged. And a study by the Goodman brothers published in the mid-1960s argued that "our present-day capabilities, intelligently used, could enable each one of us to work fewer than 10 hours a week" to meet our needs. More recently, Harvard economist Juliet Schor has demonstrated that a four-hour day could have been implemented in the United States a decade ago without any decline in living standards.[15]

I hope that was eye-opening and motivating for my fellow workers.

Spread the Revolution

I always encourage my readers to disseminate the knowledge and resources contained within the pages of The Revolution Script as the struggle that lies ahead is going to require as many well-trained comrades in as many areas of the world as possible. Now sharing this blog is easier than ever as I have just added a widget at the bottom of each post which allows the reader to share the post through Facebook, Reddit, etc. I am sure that you all have seen this feature before on (every)other webpage, so I don't know what took me so long to add it here.

Also I apologize for my lack of posting since my move to Hawai'i. Gun laws are very restrictive in this state and gun ranges are outrageously priced ($60 for 52 rds of .22 lr!) so I have not been training with firearms for the last two months. Also I am separated from my armorer and co-blogger Sahiem Al-Azad, with whom I was always about to talk about guns and related matters. I am making an effort to write new posts, including one detailing the various configurations of the Kalashnikov platform, as well as to update and edit old articles such as my list of gun stores in VT, NH, MA, CT, and HI. So bare with me and keep reading!

How NOT to Shoot a Gun

via Abu Muqawama

Remember my post featuring Lebanese government forces dumping AKs from the hip while Hezabollah fighters held the rifles properly and shot them from conventional shooting positions? Well check out this photo of a member of India's security forces showcasing a great way to waste ammo and not hit anything during last week's terrorist attacks in Mumbai.



Seriously WTF don't people understand about holding the buttstock to your shoulder and looking down the sights? No wonder ten guys were able to kill almost 200 people before the police and army finally took them out. I just wish American cops and soldiers were this poorly trained, it would make any revolution in this country a whole lot easier, not that I conspire to start one here or am in any way trying to overthrow the "democratically" elected government of the U.S.