PEACE 4 THE PEOPLE – Newsletter of ILPS Commission 4 (Issue 7, August 2020)

PEACE 4 THE PEOPLE

NEWSLETTER OF ILPS COMMISSION 4
Issue 7, Aug. 2020

REMEMBER HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI!
END NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION! RESIST IMPERIALIST AGGRESSION!

In the midst of morning rush hour, the imperialist United States dropped the atomic bomb ‘Little Boy’ on the city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. The nuclear blast immediately killed 80,000 people and wiped out 90% of the city. Three days later, on August 9, a second atomic bomb “Fat Man” was dropped on the city of Nagasaki.

All told, about 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 70,000 people in Nagasaki died through the end of the year due to direct effects of the bombings. In the aftermath, tens of thousands of survivors suffered various atomic bomb-related diseases.

The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are recognized as a crime against humanity perpetrated by US imperialism and its allies. That attack represents the first step in the use of weapons of mass destruction against civilian populations. The use and mass production of nuclear weapons and the first-strike policy of US Imperialism and its allies unleashed a strategy of nuclear terror and strategy of mutually assured destruction (MAD) of the Cold War.

The Role of US Allies in Hiroshima and Beyond

Canada was complicit in the development of the first atomic weapons. Scientists at the Montréal Laboratory were an essential part of the Manhattan Project, and the first atomic bombs were made with uranium shipped from the Northwest Territories. The uranium for the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima was refined at Port Hope, Ontario.

For twenty years after World War II, Canada sold plutonium (from Chalk River) and uranium (from Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and the Mackenzie District) for use in the American and British nuclear weapons programs.”

Billions of dollars annually continue to be sunk into the nuclear-weapon industry since the end of the Cold War. In 2019, the world’s nuclear-armed nations spent a record $73 billion on their weapons, with the US spending almost as much as the eight other states combined. Trump has shown an eagerness to “rebuild” the nuclear arsenal, but this didn’t start in 2016. Presidents Clinton and Obama both made deals to invest billions in the nuclear-weapon complex in exchange for the ratification of treaties that were supposed to limit the testing and deployment of US nuclear weapons.

Trump is now moving towards restarting nuclear testing and building a new generation of nuclear weapons—including so-called “low-yield” weapons that the military hopes could be used in battlefield conflict. Trump has inflamed and destabilized the nuclear situation in the middle east by unilateral withdrawal from the agreement with Iran. Trump’s nuclear vision is terrifying, but it is built on the foundations laid by previous leaders of the United States.

US imperialism remains the most dangerous and destructive imperialist power in the world today – the only country to used atomic bombs against other people.

Support the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons!

Canada has repeatedly refused to support the broader effort by the full UN General Assembly to create a treaty that would outlaw nuclear weapons. In a July 7, 2017 vote at the UN, “122 nations voted in favour of a total ban on nuclear weapons. Despite broad worldwide support, the treaty has no support among the countries that possess nuclear weapons, including the United States and its allies including Canada.” As of July 15, there are 40 signatories, Botswana and Fiji being the latest to sign.

Members of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), including Canada, Germany, France, Spain and the UK support NATO’s nuclear deterrence strategy and first-strike strategies and the nuclear deterrence upon which they are built. They thus cannot support the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, as it would undermine NATO’s strategic doctrine and place them at odds with the alliance. Fundamentally their participation in Imperialist alliances like NATO preclude it from taking rational positions on the question of nuclear weapons.

75th Anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

In commemorating the criminal bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that murdered and maimed hundreds of thousands of unarmed civilians, the ILPS opposes nuclear and other weaponry of mass destruction in all its forms. Indeed, this is a purview of Commission 4. More than that, we condemn past aggressions and oppose the ongoing violence of imperialist powers which flout international law, directly or indirectly trying to take over other states, capture markets, natural resources and impose its system on them.

In that light, the ILPS and its friends and allies together, oppose NATO and other imperialist bodies that are perpetuating the nuclear terror and causing ongoing destruction around the world.

We also condemn US imperialist’s past and present military aggression and militarism, from organizing coups and human rights violations as part of preventing socialism from taking root in Latin America, to meddling and arming itself and terrorists against sovereign nations in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

We strongly oppose the alliance between Japan, the US and South Korea and its supporters in Canada and Europe in their efforts to deprive and destroy North Korean society. We are against the continuing massive nuclear presence and nuclear power expansion in the region. We applaud the ongoing real efforts to resolve the war and reunify Korea.

The monopoly capitalist economy, centralized in and defended by the US, is based on principles of violence against others and it depends on production for war. It is a system that constantly produces violence. Now that it is coming apart at the seams, it is even more violence prone.

The people must continue to organize and rise to fight against this inherently violent system in order to achieve just peace. Conflicts cannot be resolved without properly and truly addressing just social, political and land reform demands.

Negotiations are always preferred, and every legal act of civil society must be attempted, but the armed self defense and opposition to repression and military aggression is often called for.

(adapted from the Anti-Imperialist Alliance, Ottawa of June 15, 2020 statement)

THE URANIUM WAR
By Buffy Sainte-Marie

Aye, ha aye
Ha, yo ho
There was a Cree and a Sioux and a Navajo
An Arapaho and a Hopi hiyo
We were stranded, snowbound, eh–ho I don’t know
Sleeping on the floor like the best of friends
Living on tea and odds and ends ah
Were we lucky?
Well it all depends
There was Cordell and me and Norman Brown
Sittin’ around away from town
And me I’m listening
Hey hey, big mountain guys
Watch the sunrise in your eyes
Taking care of the Elders’ pride
Hey hey, Mother Earth
Hey hey, Father Sky
And me I watched it grow
Corporate greed and a lust for gold and
Coal and oil and hey now uranium
Keep the Indians under your thumb
Pray like hell when your bad times come
Hey rip ’em up
Strip ’em up
Get ’em with a gun
She was a friend of mine Annie Mae in the snows of the wintertime
We…
Source: LyricFind on Google

URANIUM

This song is by The Commodores and appears on the compilation Atomic Platters: Cold War Music From the Golden Age of Homeland Security (2005).

Uranium, uranium, uranium, uranium
I’m gonna dig it some more
Ooby ooby ooby ooby

Oil’s old fashioned and gold don’t glitter no more
Hey oil’s old fashioned and the gold don’t glitter no more
Well, diamonds so common, baby I’ll tell you the score

Hey, packin’ up the burro, I’m going to take a ride
Hey, packin’ up the burro, I’m going to take a hike
Well, going to the mountains and make a uranium strike

I’m going to dig it some more

Going to dig uranium, high on the mountain top
Hey, going to dig uranium, high on the mountain top
Well, the passion for my baby and the love, love, love never stop

Hey, packin’ up the burro, I’m going to take a hike
Hey, I’m packin’ up the burro, I’m going to take a hike
Well, going to the mountains and make a uranium strike

Uranium, uranium, uranium, uranium…

ACTIONS TO OPPOSE NUCLEAR WEAPONS

International Peace Bureau will hold a No More Hiroshimas webinar on Aug. 6 at 06:00 a.m. EDT. All the groups working on the campaign to push the 2017 non-proliferation treaty will participate. http://www.ipb.org/nuclearweapons
-IPB notes that there are currently 1800 active nuclear warheads ready to strike in the world.
-It’s motto for post-COVID is “Build Back Better”. What will be the “peace pillar” of the strategy?

Divestment Campaign targeting companies involved in nuclear weapons/ components production.
Open letter to present and past leaders of “nuclear umbrella states” calling on them to urge the signing of the new Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty of 2017.

Toronto “No More Hiroshimas” Webinar Aug 6, 19h00 EDT by the Hiroshima Day Coalition
“75 years: Canadian Nuclear Weapons and the UN Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty”
(www.icanw.org/canada Register at www.hiroshimadaycoalition.ca)

Russia denies being behind a mysterious radiation leak making its way across ScandinaviabyBill Bostock
Published online by Business Insider on Jun 29, 2020, 2:37 AM (post on Reddit accessed on June 30, 2020)
https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-denies-radiation-leak-scandinavia-isotope-rise-2020-6?r=US&IR=T

On Saturday, Russia denied allegations that it was behind a cloud of radiation seeping into southern Scandinavia.

Last week, energy watchdogs in Finland, Sweden, and Norway reported increased levels of the Ru-103, Cs-134, and Cs-137 radioisotopes in June, according to The Associated Press (AP).

The countries did not accuse Russia directly, but the Netherlands’ National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (NIPHE) said on Friday that an analysis of the data showed that the radiation comes “from the direction of Western Russia.”

The pattern “indicates damage to a fuel element in a nuclear power plant,” the NIPHE said.

The locations of the Kola (top) and Leningrad (bottom) nuclear power plants in western Russia.

In response, a spokesperson for Rosenergoatom Concern, a branch of the centralized Russian nuclear energy company Rosatom, denied that there had been a leak.

Two nuclear powerplants in western Russia, the Leningrad and the Kola, are “working in normal regime,” the spokesperson told state news agency TASS on Saturday.

“There have been no complaints about the equipment’s work,” the representative said. “Radiation levels at both NPPs and surrounding areas remained unchanged in June.”

The Swedish Radiation Safety Authority said last Tuesday it couldn’t pinpoint the exact source of the increased levels.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said it is aware of the reports and has contacted Russia for clarification. Russia has a long and turbulent history with nuclear power, including regular attempts to cover up leaks and explosions.
It was accused of failing to disclose an accident at the Mayak nuclear facility in 2017 and of covering up an accident at a nuclear facility in Nyonoksa in August 2019.

Most famously, Russia attempted to cover up a devastating explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986. The 2019 HBO adaption of the event was derided in the Russian media.

Russia has 36 nuclear power reactors in total, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

View of the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant in August 2019. Peter Kovalev\TASS via Getty Images

COMMISSION 4 ANTI-WAR PROGRAM AUG. 6 – SEPT. 21
EDUCATION AND ACTION
Remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki! (Aug. 6 –9)
Organize for International Peace Day, September 21!

ILPS ACTIVITIES

Resist Panel The Resist US-Led War Movement, a global anti-militarism and just peace network of the ILPS and allies, will be participating in #stillhere: 75 Years of Shared Nuclear Legacy, as worldwide we mark the anniversaries of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Trinity nuclear test. This panel will contribute to the movement to resist US-led war, militarism and aggression including the build-up of nuclear arsenals and other weapons of mass destruction–and ultimately contribute to building the movement for a just and lasting peace.

**Panel speakers hail from India, Pakistan and Kashmir, whose peoples have been directly impacted by the US-driven nuclear arms race and nuclear proliferation. Nearly nineteen years after the US declared its “War on Terror,” we continue to see the impacts of this policy in the region.Layered on this is the intensifying rivalry between the US and China, with the proliferation of nuclear weapons a necessary pillar in the strategy of these great powers vying for geopolitical influence and power. **Tune in for Resist’s panel on August 6.

See the whole schedule of events at https://www.hiroshimanagasaki75.org<https://www.hiroshimanagasaki75.org>

Commission 13 webinarsILPS Commission 13: Science and Technology presents , a webinar series on the role of science andtechnology in imperialist warfare! It will be held in two parts, on August9 and August 16. Part I will cover the role of science and technology in conventionalwarfare, while Part II will talk about how science and tech is used inother forms of warfare around the world.

Register now at bit.ly/researchanddestruction1<https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fbit.ly%2Fresearchanddestruction1%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR0CUMHNfVhOSw_AUfj1LJMgL0G1wve-oNPK26YXcLjqKF7-dyVm1kUCDvw&h=AT3L3v2b8GO-eUMB10lNAYyIuRFcij0Ppql5CMsYt0sVTR52DIsCqIGxxltrAxdFjalf_VeSL6afPzhrum2YYluMX8vZj55YLo1StM1gwYY5FCYWO7e6y3kcGvLC5xDu5TTbBSPqkw&__tn__=-UK*F>!*

August 9, 2020 12 MN UTC; August 16, 2020 12 NN UTCVisit the Facebook page and follow on Twitter @ILPS_Comm13 for updates!

Sept. (tentative)– Commission 4 webinar, Just Peace, Human Rights and US in Asia-Pacific

AFRICA AND PRISON IMPERIALISM
-US military presence and the imposition of its prison system

Published by the Global Alliance for Justice on www.gafj.org on July 17, 2020
by James Patrick Jordan

(The following piece is an updated version of a presentation for the 2020 African Liberation Day radio special by the All-African Peoples Revolutionary Party-(GC) and the Africa Awareness Association)

The United States government has invested considerable resources toward the restructuring of African prison systems. This is an example of what we, at the Alliance for Global Justice, call prison imperialism. Since the year 2000, the United States has aggressively undertaken activities to involve itself in penitentiary systems all over the world, thus spreading its model of mass incarceration. I suspect most listeners today are already aware that U.S. jails are overcrowded and cruel places, and in this time of pandemic, the large populations of prisoners and lack of health care and sanitary facilities has turned prisons into a breeding ground for the novel coronavirus.

We can see that especially during this difficult time, the mass incarceration model constitutes a threat to global public health. The U.S. is involved in the prisons of well over 40 countries, all of them in the Global South except for some projects in the former Yugoslavia.

Prison imperialism is about more than building jails. It is part of the infrastructure of Empire, which includes the economic institutions of global capitalism; militarized borders; military invasions, occupations, and bases; corporate media misinformation and the “manufacture of consent”, as well as other components. The U.S. mass incarceration model is, therefore, a core aspect of expanding and instituting U.S.-NATO hegemony over the world. The spread of the model is intimately linked to the realities of economic and ecological collapse, as well as to the collapse of public health infrastructures. Prisons are being built as a kind of population control to manage the social disruptions that result in millions of displaced persons and all manner of economic, ecological, and political refugees.

They are also built to punish, decimate, and destroy protest and resistance movements. Our studies so far have shown an increase in politically motivated arrests accompanying the U.S. entry into another country’s penitentiary system.

We do not have the comprehensive knowledge we need about the U.S. role in African prisons. Our capacity is limited by our small staff size. This is an area where we need help and we would love to work with other organizations and individuals around this subject. (For more information, send an email to [email protected].) In preparation for today’s event, I spent some time looking into what’s happening on the African continent, and even with just a little a knowledge, it becomes quickly apparent that prison imperialism in Africa is, es expected, tied to U.S. and NATO efforts to consolidate regional control.

Before looking to Africa, we must look to the very European city of Stuttgart, Germany and the U.S. Army Garrison there. Kelley Barracks is the headquarters of the U.S. Africa Command, or AFRICOM. AFRICOM was founded on October 1, 2007. Of course, the U.S. and Europe have been plundering Africa for a long, long time.

Still, we can reference this date as a significant reprioritization and reinvigoration of the hundreds of years old legacy of colonialism. Since the establishment of Africom, there has been a significant increase in U.S. military engagement, although it has not been well publicized. The veil of secrecy was partially ripped open when four U.S. soldiers were killed in Niger in October, 2017. Few in the general public had any idea that U.S. soldiers were actively engaged in Niger. The U.S. actually has more military engagements in Africa than in the Middle East.

Despite its claim of a “light footprint”, the Pentagon has some 29 bases on the continent. Between 2013 and 2017, U.S. Special Forces engaged in combat in 13 African nations. In just 2017, U.S. forces carried out an average of almost 10 operations per day. Over the course of 2019, there was a record number of airstrikes in Somalia, at least one per week.

In my research, every single reference I found to U.S. prison building, and corrections advice, training, and reform in Africa, has been since the establishment of Africom. In fact, most the activities have happened since the 2011 invasion of Libya. Up until then, the previous government of Libya, under the leadership of Muammar Gaddafi, had been one of the strongest proponents of Pan-Africanism, a concept that has played a unifying role in resistance to Western neocolonialism. Africa gives us a stark picture of just to what degree prison imperialism is linked to U.S. and NATO militarism, invasion, and occupation.

The mass incarceration model in Africa has its antecedent in the use of mass incarceration to repress Black people here in the United States. Especially during this time that anti-racist uprisings are occurring across the nation, we must ask exactly what happens when the U.S. inserts itself in the interrelated police, court, and prison systems of other nations? One could argue that racism was the first product of global capitalism. It is certainly at the heart of U.S. prisons, with 40% of inmates being Black, and almost 32% being Latino. By establishing our prison model in countries that are majority people of color, the U.S. is globalizing its systematic racism.

In the midst of the chaos that still continues since the 2011 invasion of Libya, the U.S. State Department’s Bureau for International Narcotics Law and Enforcement, or INL, along with the U.S. Institute for Peace, have been conducting trainings for Libyan prison personnel, including at the International Corrections Management Training Center in Canyon City, Colorado, as well as in Libya, and have been carrying out assessments of and restructuring Libyan prisons. However, U.S. restructuring and training programs have only appeared to reinforce an ongoing humanitarian and human rights disaster. Since the 2011 invasion of Libya, the UN has released various reports on torture in Libyan prisons, describing what has been witnessed as “appalling abuses” and “sheer horror”.

Based on past experience—for instance, the Bureau of Prisons training of torturers at a CIA Black Site prison in Afghanistan—it would be foolish to assume that the training of Libyan personnel is somehow exempt from this kind of “teaching”. Similarly, AfGJ studies have found a correlation between U.S prison involvement and increases in reports of torture and human rights abuses in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Colombia, and Honduras. We consider this to be one of the hallmarks of the legacy of 20 years of U.S. Prison Imperialism efforts.

Burkina Faso experienced a U.S. and French supported overthrow of the popular and socialist leader, Thomas Sankara, in 1987. Today, Burkina Faso is undergoing its own uprisings despite brutal repression. Like Libyan prison officials, Burkina Faso’s correctional personnel have studied at the Training Center in Colorado.

In 2018, Burkina Faso’s government partnered with the INL to initiate the Colorado Network for Penitentiary Emergence in West and North Africa (French acronym RECEPAON), which includes Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, and Senegal. The private Celestar Corporation has since contracted with INL to advise, train, and otherwise assist, legal, and prison personnel in all the aforementioned countries, as well as in Tunisia.

Haiti is a member of the African Union and certainly part of the African diaspora. The U.S., via the John McCain-led International Republican Institute (IRI), initiated and organized the 2004 coup against the elected government of Jean Bertrand Aristide. This was the second time Aristide and Haiti’s legitimate government was overthrown. The IRI provided training, material support, and a base in the Dominican Republic from which the coup was launched. Since then, the building of new prisons in Haiti, and the training and equipping of prison personnel, has gone hand in hand with border militarization and anti-immigrant policies which, as stated by an INL document, include the goal “to maintain public order and reduce the attractiveness of illegal migration….”

It bears mentioning that the first inmates at the Guantanamo Bay were not people from the Middle East and Central Asia, but Haitian refugees fleeing the country following the first overthrow of Aristide in 1991. Due to a combination of these overthrows, neoliberal economics, and the disasters of earthquakes and hurricanes, many Haitians are living as refugees in their own land. The response of the U.S. has been to follow the coup with more electoral interference, border militarization, and prison construction.

In Africa, as in every place where the U.S. brings in its mass incarceration model, officials publicly state that their model will help end overcrowding and human rights abuses. What we have seen has been the opposite. For instance, in Colombia, where prison imperialism first began, in 2000, U.S. involvement led to a spike in arrests of political prisoners, and to the highest rate of overcrowding in the country’s history. We have perceived patterns that include overcrowding, political arrests, prison privatization, neglect of health care, filthy conditions, transportation of prisoners far from their home communities and support networks, increases in reports of torture, extreme isolation, and other abuses, and periods of prisoners being held incognito, without access to legal defense or family.

Of course, all this reflects similar conditions here in the United States where our nation has internalized the oppression of targeted peoples. Here at home, we hold 25% of the entire world’s prison population, with 2.3 million persons behind bars. As already mentioned, U.S. prisons disproportionately lock up people of color, especially African heritage persons. We also know that the novel coronavirus is hitting communities of color harder than the White population. Given that prisons are notorious for their high rates of infection, one could rightly argue that mass incarceration during this time of pandemic is a form of germ warfare against people of color at home and abroad.
Today as we prepare to celebrate African Liberation Day, we know that the struggle for African freedom includes the struggle against Empire and the U.S. model of mass incarceration. The response must be global resistance and renewed commitment to liberation for African peoples, for everyone. From prisons to militarized borders to occupying military bases, all the Empire’s walls must fall.

Days of Resistance on August 7-9, 2020
No annexation of the Jordan Valley! End colonization!
Liberation for Palestine!

Samidoun is looking for organizational endorsements as well, for the call for the Days of Resistance on August 7-9, 2020, continuing the struggle against Israeli annexation and Zionist colonization, and for the liberation of Palestine. The full call is here: https://samidoun.net/2020/07/call-to-action-days-of-resistance-for-palestine-august-7-9-2020/ – will your organization sign on?

“Today, the program of Israeli annexation continues to threaten Palestinians in the West Bank, including the most fertile agricultural land of the Jordan Valley, which is still slated for Israel’s latest land grab. Of course, this is simply the continuation of over 72 years of land theft, dispossession, apartheid and genocide – but it requires continued mobilization and action to confront, alongside the siege on Gaza, the mass imprisonment of Palestinians, the demolition of homes, the denial of Palestinian refugees’ right to return and further war crimes and crimes against humanity….

In this context, we call on all Palestinian communities and those who stand for justice in Palestine to join together to organize the Days of Resistance on August 7, 8 and 9, 2020. We urge all Palestinians inside and outside Palestine, and all of the national forces, popular institutions, youth, student and women’s movements, social justice movements and solidarity organizations to participate actively in “banging on the walls of the tank” – as in Kanafani’s Men in the Sun – to break down the walls of silence. Join in marches, popular activities, demonstrations and remind the world that the Palestinian people will continue to rise and confront all attempts of liquidation and destruction of the cause of Palestine and resist dispossession, exile and genocide – and that all people of conscience stand beside the Palestinian people in this critical moment.”

STATEMENT ILPS COMMISSION 4 AND THE JUST PEACE COMMITTEE IN CANADA

CONDEMN TURKISH COLONIAL EXPANSION, NATO AND US-LED IMPERIALISM IN THE WEST ASIA!

On June 15,2020, the Turkish state began an intensified wave of assaults against the Kurdish, Yazidi, Assyrian, and Arab peoples in southern Turkey, Northern Syria and Northern Iraq. Under the names “Operation Tiger Claw” and “Operation Eagle Claw,” these assaults are carried under the justification of “anti-terrorism” operations against the Kurdistan Workers Party.

In reality, these renewed operations are continuous acts of Turkish colonial aggression and expansionism that have been escalating in the region since the Turkish invasion and occupation of the Aleppo government began in 2016. With support of a coalition of Islamist mercenaries operating under the banner of the “Syrian National Army,” the Turkish state began the ethnic cleansing of numerous Kurds, Assyrians, and Yazidis in a concentrated effort to both stifle the advancement of Kurdish national liberation and expand its political power in Northern Syria.

Now, the eyes of the fascist AKP turn towards the Kurdistan Regional Government in Northern Iraq, hoping to lay siege to the Maxmur refugee camp and assault the Yazidi region of Sinjar which is under the jurisdiction of the Shengal Forces. Within the Turkish borders, such aggression has been carried out with the AKP-MHP’s intensified militarization in the countryside and violent crackdowns on any perceived threats to Turkish colonial expansion. This includes the years-long campaign of harassment and arrests of activists and municipal city councillors of the People’s Demcratic Party(HPG) and the active murder of Turkish revolutionaries such as TKP/ML-TIKKO member Hasan Ataş (Şerzan) in early June.

This intensified aggression does not occur in a vacuum; in fact the Turkey regime is being well utilized as a United States’ attack dog in Syria and Iraq. In the face of failed regime change attempts in Syria and an increasing anti-American resistance in Iraq, the United States’ empire seems to be at its limit in West Asia (aka “the Middle East”) as they are removing their soldiers from the region. However, to maintain their influence, the US is handing over the management of aggression to their allies in the region, which includes Turkey along with Saudi Arabia and Israel. This strategy also explains the American opportunistic approach to the Kurdish national movement, where the US has attempted to ally with them but has never been willing to commit to Kurdish self-determination. Some in support of the Kurds saw this approach as the US “abandoning” the Kurdish forces to the Turkish onslaught. A similar situation occurred with the plight of the Assyrian peoples, as the US pulled support to be given to Assyrian militias in the Nineveh Plains in anti-ISIS operations.

As a member of NATO with its 2nd largest army, Turkey’s aggression is also supported by other NATO allies. As the world’s 5th largest importer of weapons, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and European nations continue to supply Turkey with fighter jets, missiles, and drones. Canada and some European nations have taken an opportunistic approach by which they are attempting to impose restrictions on arms exports to Turkey while still profiting off arms sales to Turkey. For example, in April 2020, Canada announced that arms sales to Turkey were supposed to be suspended indefinitely as a result of their incursion into Syria. However, Canada still allowed the export of military drone optics to Turkey in June 2020, reasoning that they mentioned that exemptions to the ban were allowed on a “case by case” basis. It is clear that Canada and other NATO allies do not want to give up its profits from arms exports to their allies in West Asia such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia, who are inflicting misery and genocide on the people in the region.

With ongoing attacks on the people being done in the name of “anti-terrorism”, a just peace, anti-war movement must demand full removal of military occupation of lands in West Asia and everywhere. We rally all support to the popular movements waging a brave anti-colonial struggle against Turkish colonial occupation against Kurdish, Yazidi, Assyrian, and Arab peoples. We also abhor Turkish state repression against its own workers and activists of any nationality. Finally, we must unite to demand a complete end to all military and political interventions in the region such as arms sales by NATO allies, so that a just peace can be achieved.

Commission 4 and all the ILPS oppose all occupation, colonialism and neo-colonialism (i.e., imperialism). We oppose militarization and reactionary regimes in defending real democracy and just and lasting peace. We condemn the military pacts such as NATO and the arms industry. No deals with Saudi Arabia, Israel, Philippines, Turkey or any other aggressor or repressive state! We stand up to support national liberation struggles and sovereignty of nations up to and including cessation. US and all foreign troops go home! Close the bases! No nukes! Down with wars of aggression and counter-revolution! International solidarity!

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ILPS member Spirit of Eureka participated in anti-imperialist activities for July 4th (US Independence Day) in the fight for Australian independence from US economic, political, military and cultural domination.