Three Articles from Socialists in Afghanistan

Socialist Action / Ligue pour l’Action socialiste in the Canadian state is pleased to share the following trio of recent articles from the Left Radical of Afghanistan party. We have been in touch with that party for a number of years, and welcome its trenchant account of the political scene, on the ground.  While the LR of A party, which evolved decades ago from Maoism and towards Revolutionary Marxism, does not, in the articles below, specifically project the fight for a workers' government and the need for a revolutionary international, we do appreciate its intransigent opposition to the imperialist intervention/occupation of the past twenty years.  The LR of A party is a revolutionary socialist organization that is operating under extremely difficult circumstances.  SA/LAS is pleased to be in direct contact with this organization of militants, to which we send our fervent revolutionary greetings and solidarity.  (We have taken the liberty to lightly edit the somewhat rough original translated text.) - BW

Action socialiste sur les élections fédérales du 20 septembre 2021: Votez NPD, mais luttez pour un gouvernement ouvrier

Le 20 septembre, les électeurs se rendront aux urnes dans lecadre de l'une des campagnes électorales fédérales les pluscourtes de l'histoire du Canada. Alors que l'écart se resserreentre les libéraux et les conservateurs, les médias grand publicspéculent que Justin Trudeau…

CE À QUOI RESSEMBLERAIT UNE PLATEFORMEÉLECTORALE SOCIALISTE DU NPD

L'élection fédérale ne devrait pas porter sur la popularité personnelle de Trudeau,O'Toole, Singh et Paul ; elle devrait se concentrer sur la calamité à laquelle font faceles travailleurs, et sur la cause première de cette calamité : le système capitaliste. Lecapitalisme…

Greater Toronto for Boycott Divestment and Sanctions picketed a public appearance by Liberal Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland at a Toronto mid-town hotel on September 9 to protest her government’s complicity with Israeli Apartheid

Members of Greater Toronto for Boycott Divestment and Sanctions picketed a public appearance by Liberal Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland at a Toronto mid-town hotel on September 9 to protest her government's complicity with Israeli Apartheid.  Inside the plush Yorkville establishment, Freeland spoke to a $1,600 a plate Liberal Party fundraising dinner.  Outside, protesters chanted "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" and distributed GT4BDS flyers to passersby urging an end to trade and investment in businesses that profit from the illegal occupation of the West Bank and the brutal siege of Gaza.  Many thanks to Nety M. for the photos posted below.  Please post and share this message.

SA Labour Day Rally on September 6, 2021

On September 6, over one hundred people rallied to mark Labour Day in Toronto at Christie Pits Park.  Chair of the event, Elizabeth Byce, welcomed them with these words:  "The real Workers’ Day, International Workers’ Day is on May First, but we intend to seize this occasion to advance a Workers’ Agenda. Labour makes the country run. Labour should run the country.  In the midst of the current federal election campaign, we urge a critical vote for the only mass labour party in North America, the New Democratic Party. At the same time we strive for a Workers’ Government to expropriate Capital and establish a cooperative commonwealth, in harmony with nature."

“No Canadian Dollars for Israeli Apartheid” say protesters outside Canada Pension Plan office in Toronto on August 28

Members of Greater Toronto for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (GT4BDS) rallied on August 28 outside the head office of the Canada Pension Plan to demand an end to CPP investment in Israeli Apartheid.
The CPP Investment Board manages over $328.2 billion in investment assets for CPP on behalf of 20 million Canadians.  That includes millions of dollars in at least ten companies named by the 2021 United Nations Human Rights Report as complicit in Israel's war crimes against Palestinians. While most of those companies named were Israeli Banks, which finance Israel's illegal settlements as well as Israeli weapons and surveillance industries, complicit American companies include:

  • Motorola, which provides the Israeli military with surveillance, biometric identification and checkpoint infrastructure used against Palestinian civilians;
  • Expedia, Booking Holdings, and
  • Air BNB, whose businesses use and serve the illegal settlement infrastructure.

Afghanistan: The Defeat of U.S. Imperialism and the Road Ahead

After 20 years of untold U.S. government-inflicted barbaric horrors on the people of Afghanistan the world’s greatest military power, along with its NATO allies, stands humiliated, demoralized and defeated, forced to abandon their claimed nation-building project in the face of irreversible Taliban victories over the past year and longer. With the panicked assistance of some 6,000 U.S. troops flown in to oversee the evacuation, imperialism’s entourage of U.S. and NATO embassy officials, security forces, Afghan warlords, mafia drug dealers and thousands of Afghan collaborators are desperately awaiting evacuation at the Kabul Airport. Scenes there are reminiscent of Saigon, Vietnam in 1975 when U.S. helicopters barely evacuated the U.S. Embassy, marking the definitive defeat of the world’s most powerful army that over ten years had slaughtered four million Vietnamese while losing 57,000 U.S. soldiers – the vast majority bitterly opposed to the genocidal saturation and napalm bombing they were ordered to inflict. 

Canada’s failure in Afghanistan

With the Taliban quickly retaking control of Afghanistan we should be asking: what was the point of all that bloodletting?

More than 200,000 Afghan civilians and combatants have been killed since the United States, Canadian and British invasion two decades ago. A few thousand Canadian, US, and British troops (among others) also died in the fighting.

Canada’s biggest military deployment since the Second World War, more than 40,000 Canadian troops fought in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2014. Canada also spent $20 billion on military operations and the related aid mission in the country. And while the stated rationale of the war was to neutralize al-Qaeda members and topple the Taliban regime, the latter has now regained control of the country and the influence of jihadist groups will likely intensify.

Leaked report accuses Canada of covering for mining companies in war-torn Ethiopia

A Canadian government program claiming to introduce feminist principles to Ethiopia’s mining sector has created opportunities for several Canadian mining companies in the country’s war-torn Tigray region, a government-funded agency report obtained by The Breach reveals.

The report indicates that new investments by Canadian mining companies in Tigray have increased as the region has been plunged into a major humanitarian crisis from military attacks by the Ethiopian and Eritrean government, whom the United Nations has accused of deliberately “starving Tigrayans.”

Statement on Afghanistan by UNAC-USA

Perhaps we were not prepared for the rapid fall of the US supported Afghan government and forces because we have not been told the truth throughout the 20-year occupation and war. The US supposedly went into Afghanistan to capture Osama Bin Laden who they held responsible for the attacks on 9/11. The Taliban government said they would turn him over to an international court if shown proof of his involvement, but rather than do that, the US attacked and occupied the country and turned the government over to a group of war lords from the Northern Alliance. That was supposed to bring democracy to Afghanistan. Twenty years later the Taliban has returned stronger than ever.

Protest against Trudeau/Freeland government foreign policy on May 25

Over 20 people responded to the call of the Greater Toronto for BDS Coalition on May 25 to protest the complicity of the Canadian government with the Israeli Apartheid state and its oppression of the Palestinian people. The information picket occurred in front of the building that houses the constituency office of University-Rosedale MP Chrystia Freeland, the Liberal Deputy Prime Minister and government Finance Minister.

Socialist Action at mass rally and march in solidarity with the people of Palestine, Saturday, May 22, starting at Dundas Square in Toronto

Following a brief rain shower, thousands gathered at Toronto's Dundas Square to demonstrate solidarity with the Palestinian people.  This was just hours after the Zionist war machine announced a cease-fire in the bombardment of Gaza, reflecting the global political isolation of the Israeli Apartheid state.  Palestinians are united in their resolve to fight for freedom, for an end to the Occupation and other miseries inflicted on them daily, for generations, since the Nakba 73 years ago.

Palestine-Israel: The Missing Link… The Solution to the Nakba (Catastrophe)

In great detail the unfolding Palestinian freedom struggle against the racist, Zionist, colonial, apartheid settler capitalist state of Israel has captured headlines worldwide and won the solidarity of humanity’s finest democratic and human rights fighters. That apartheid Israel receives $3.8 billion annually in U.S. military aid – exceeding all other countries – has been roundly condemned as has Israel’s role as the U.S. gendarme/imperial enforcer in the Middle East. I use the five adjectives – racist, Zionist, colonial, apartheid and settler – capitalist state advisedly, that is, to accurately describe the reality of Israel, yesterday and today. The horror of that reality, coupled with the heroic resistance to it by the beleaguered Palestinian people, has inspired tens and hundreds of thousands to mobilize in solidarity demonstrations around the world today. Several major U.S. cities have witnessed mobilizations of 10,000 or more, including New York and Los Angeles, with similar numbers in the streets in San Francisco, Chicago and elsewhere. 10,000 mobilized in Toronto; 20,000 in Montreal and thousands more across Canada. The mass protests in solidarity with the Palestinian people are not dissimilar to last summer’s anti-racist, anti-police brutality Black Lives Matter mobilizations. They have been markedly multi-racial and youthful. 100,000 took to the streets in London.

Report, photos and videos from the Palestine solidarity rally in Toronto on Saturday, May 15

On Saturday, May 15, the Greater Toronto BDS Coalition hosted a cross-country online Day of Action for Palestine rally.  It was initiated by Socialist Action, in partnership with many allies.  So far, over 435 people have watched the online rally, either live, or subsequently on the SA YouTube channel. Saturday evening, against a backdrop of protests around the world against the Zionist campaign of terror and murder, close to 10,000 people rallied at Toronto City Hall Square to demand Freedom for Palestine.

“The Most Unkindest Cut of All”: A rejoinder to “Syria and the ‘anti-imperialism’ of fools”

In the face of the ongoing, ten-year U.S./NATO-orchestrated war against Syria in collaboration with Turkey and the Gulf State monarchies – a war has taken the lives of some 500,000 Syrians and driven half the population into internal or external exile – the statement, signed by 300 Syrian expatriate writers, artists, academics and supporters from 34 countries, asserts against its opponents that, “America is not central to what has happened in Syria, despite what these people claim.” [Emphasis added.]