Neither do we condone the bombings
and murder of journalists at their
headquarters, however much we are
repulsed by their racist, chauvinist
and hateful Islamophobic caricatures
of oppressed people. Neither do we
condone the subsequent murders at the
Paris Kosher supermarket.
Yes, we are for free speech, freedom of
expression and democratic rights for
all, including the Muslim and antiwar
activists who were banned by the French
government from street protests in
solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, or
the Muslim women who are banned from
wearing the veil. We are for freedom
of expression and the right to exist of
Muslim Americans, 700,000 of whom
have been investigated or interrogated
in the U.S. for being Muslim, or the
1.5 million Latino immigrants in the
U.S. who are imprisoned, detained
and deported, or the
entire world’s people
who are victims of the
all-pervasive high-
tech surveillance
of everyone’s
personal means of
communication by
the U.S., France and
all other so-called
democratic nations.
We will NOT join
the Paris parades
orchestrated by
imperialist French
President Francois
Holland and the heads
of state of the world’s
“great powers;” nor will
we applaud their call for
the worldwide “Anti-
terrorist Conference” that President
Holland has set for
Paris. We are saddened
at the participation
of French working
people in these
state-sponsored
mobilizations,
whose objectives
are to further war
in the Middle East
and Africa and to
restrict democracy for
Muslim communities
in France and around
the world. Those who
participate believing
that they can advance
freedom of expression,
peace and solidarity
are being used for opposite ends.
The war proclaimed by French Prime
Minister Manuel Valls as “... a war against
terrorism. Against jihadism. Against
radical Islam, against everything that is
aimed at breaking fraternity, freedom and
solidarity" is, in fact, a war to reestablish
and strengthen French economic
hegemony in her former colonies. As
Americans we heard this language from
President George Bush when he declared
his own “war on terror,” shredded the U.S.
Constitution, imprisoned the innocent en
masse and went to war in Iraq based on
the now-exposed false flag lie that the
Hussein government possessed “weapons
of mass destruction.”
We don't march with "leaders
"--
including the
government of the United
States and
versee and direct mass murder and
torture. Need we mention the recent U.S.
Senate Intelligence Committee Report
revealing the extent of U.S.-sponsored
torture?
The heads of state of the world’s past and
present colonial conquerors today murder
with impunity on every continent.
President Obama is the headmaster of
terrorist wars, with six to his credit since
his 2008 election. Need we mention the
U.S. drone terror bombings and overt
wars in Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan,
Syria, Somalia and Iraq? Every public
poll demonstrates massive majority
opposition. Yet the wars continue and
expand everywhere.
France’s largest party, the neo-fascist
National Front of Marine Le Pen, revels
in the government-promoted hate-
mongering, thinking its time has come.
In the past few days some 50 Muslim
mosques in France have been hit by
bullets and explosives and/or tagged with
racist graffiti. In Corsica, a severed pig’s
head was mounted on a Muslim prayer
hall. In Sweden a Muslim mosque was
firebombed. Racist mobilizations in
Germany denounce the “Islamization of
Europe.”
As in the U.S., where Latinos flee
Latin America to escape poverty and
persecution stemming from the policies
of U.S.-backed corrupt and murderous
regimes, Muslim immigrants flee their
homelands that have been ravaged by the
wars and exploitation of foreign powers.
We hear no imperialist voices denouncing
French troops in Mali. No corporate
media voices recalling France’s Vietnam
in Algeria a decade earlier, where one
million were slaughtered until that
nation’s war for independence was won.
Imperialism’s memory is short, as with
the four million Vietnamese murdered
in that ten-year U.S. colonial war. As
social justice and antiwar activists our
memory is long. We are not deceived by
yet another imperialist campaign
to justify the perpetration of new
horrors on the world’s people.
Neither do we support the
renewed calls for stepped up
repressive measures, including
billions more for police and
military repression and new laws
further restricting civil liberties
and democratic rights.
As U.S. social and political activists, we are
witness to the horror of institutionalized
racism, where Ferguson-type police
murder is the norm for most every city –
where mass incarceration of the oppressed
ranks first in the world – where repeated
police murder of unarmed Blacks goes
unpunished. We march for the victims in
Ferguson and in every city, not for their
murderers.
We note the racist parallels between
France and the U.S. The great majority
who are locked in U.S. prisons are Black
and Latino. In France up to 60 percent of
the prison population are Muslims.
France, England, the U.S. and their
associates have no standing among
human beings who seek justice, peace,
civil and democratic rights and an end
to imperialist wars across the globe. We
stand without equivocation with the
millions who mobilize against them.
We refused to hail their slaughter, as with
their “humanitarian war” against Libya
that was perversely promoted by their kept
media. Tens of thousands of Libyans were
murdered while the corporate “free press”
remained silent. The imperialist air and
naval forces that pulverized Libya were
employed with impunity, while on the
ground imperialism’s paid jihadists were
called into service to “liberate” Tripoli on
the bombed ruins of that nation. They
remain today, grotesquely fighting each
other over Libya’s oil and for scraps of
“aid” from the various imperialist-backed
oil corporations who are the real “victors.”
Today’s modern-day crusaders continue
to join in the catastrophic destruction
of Iraq. Twenty-four years of saturation
bombings, mass murder, starvation
sanctions and U.S.-installed dictators
were and continue to be employed in
the name of a war against non-existent
“weapons of mass destruction.” One and a
half million Iraqis have been slaughtered
by imperialist weapons. The slaughter
continues – a classic colonial-era oil war
for control of the very fossil fuel resource
whose continued use spells doom for
humankind. And yesterday’s U.S. allies
in this venture are today’s “enemies” – at
least for now!
The United States, with French support,
has brought about the death and
immiseration of hundreds of thousands
of Syrians through its backing, covert
and otherwise, of “moderate” and
fundamentalist combatants, the latter
mustered with the aid of the allied Gulf
States. The current U.S. bombing of
Syrian sites continues the slaughter of
civilians.
We heard no cry of outrage from the
imperialist nations when Mubarak’s
military heirs in Egypt, financed, to the
tune of $1.1 billion annually, slaughtered
tens of thousands of Muslims in a U.S.-
backed coup that overthrew the elected
Mohamed Morsi government. The 30-
year Mubarak dictatorship was always a
U.S. favorite, as are his successors today
– democratic elections notwithstanding!
We heard no cry of outrage last year
when racist, Zionist Israel once again
slaughtered over 2000 Palestinians in
Gaza. Indeed, the U.S. and its imperialist
allies remain Israeli’s chief supporters,
granting it the largest “aid” package of any
nation to maintain its world-repudiated
historic occupation.
We stand in solidarity with all victims of
imperialist oppression and exploitation
everywhere on earth – for free speech,
the right to assembly, democratic rights
and the right to be free from intervention
and occupation.
Never with their oppressors!
Never with their oil wars!
Never with their police state measures!
Never with their ceaseless racist “wars on
terror!”
Never with their endless drone wars,
privatized army wars, overt and covert
wars, mass detention and torture wars,
embargo, blockade and sanction wars!
End all imperialist wars, occupations, and
interventions!
Self-determination for the world’s
oppressed people and nations!
U.S. and all imperialist powers Out Now!
Statement from the United National
Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) in the
United States
www.unacpeace.org
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