CANADA: Imperialists Lose Patience as Wet’suwet’en Blockades, Protests Take Economic Toll
By Lois Boite, with contributions from Felix Weber, David Martinez
On Monday, protesters in Vancouver supporting the indigenous Wet’su’weten resistance to the Coastal GasLink pipeline blockaded a vehicle access route to the port while others blocked a bridge on a passenger train line, shutting down service for part of the morning. These actions follow weeks of increasing blockades on railways, bridges, and roads across Canada that have paralyzed passenger and freight train service, exacting major a economic impact that has raised the stakes in the battle against the $4.6 billion pipeline and escalated state repression of protesters.
Nearly every part of the country has seen protests and blockades in support of the struggle against the pipeline. In Halifax, authorities worry that freighters will be permanently diverted as they seek other ports of entry. Passenger rail in provinces like Ontario, Quebec, and others have been halted as a result of the blockades. Each time law enforcement disperses one, others pop up in solidarity. The protests have not only galvanized the fight against the current imperialist resource extraction on and through indigenous lands, but have also given expression to generations of indigenous grievances against the Canadian state.
In a news conference on Friday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced, “The barricades need to come down now.” Trudeau is politically weak after a year of public relations scandals, but this conflict could allow him to reassert himself in the eyes of his imperialist masters. Publicly, he has not issued any concrete orders, but in typical liberal fashion he has passed off responsibility, saying it is a matter for law enforcement and asserting, “the law must be upheld,” signaling that police will have free rein to repress the protesters. On Monday, police led an assault on major blockades, allowing some rails to resume service.
Read the full story @ incendiarynews.com
#canada #GasLinkPipeline #indigenous #resistance
GERMANY: Fascist Murders Nine in Shooting Spree
Photo: Forensics team enters one site of the shooting rampage in Hanau, Germany
By Jakob Stein
On February 19, a fascist named Tobias Rathjen murdered nine people in Hanau (in the German state of Hesse), and injured another five. He deliberately targeted immigrants by attacking two different hookah bars in the area; while some victims did have German citizenship, the majority were immigrants from the Middle East and Eastern Europe.
During the attacks, Rathjen’s vehicle was identified by an eyewitness. When police searched his home, they found both his corpse as well as his mother’s. They also found a far-right confession letter and video, in which the attacker advocated for genocide.
According to revolutionary German news source Dem Volke Dienen (DVD), “a right-wing terrorist cell was also arrested by the police just earlier this week. They planned to create civil war-like conditions in Germany with attacks on mosques and similar targets.” While some have attempted to downplay the fascist nature of the attack by emphasizing Rathjen’s mental health issues, he made his racist beliefs clear in numerous videos posted to his website. He also displayed a tendency to indulge in conspiracy theories popular among fascists and reactionaries.
Read the full story @ incendiarynews.com
#germany #fascism #massshooting #racism #immigration #imperialism
CHILE: Mapuche Political Prisoners Release Statement Against Integrating into Old State
By Nélida Tello
Earlier this month, ten Mapuche political prisoners detained in Angol prison released a statement on their political position regarding the old Chilean state.
Angol prison serves as one of the designated detention centers for indigenous Mapuche political prisoners. For generations, the Mapuche people have continuously faced abuse and repression from both the Spanish colonizers and the old Chilean state. In 1984, fascist dictator Augusto Pinochet implemented the Anti-Terrorist Law particularly aimed at suppressing Mapuche activism and the opening of Mapuche territory to capitalist exploitation, allowing forestry corporations to extract resources from the land.
The Anti-Terrorist Law is still widely utilized today, and disproportionately applied to Mapuche people. The fascist law allows Chilean authorities to detain people without evidence, without bail, and without charges. Defendants can be held in preventative detention for months until charges are investigated, in many cases prisoners remain in preventative detention for years until they are proven innocent or acquitted of charges. Prosecutors are allowed to withhold evidence from defendants, and witnesses are allowed to remain anonymous.
In their statement, the ten political prisoners pay tribute to the Mapuche who have been murdered by the Chilean state: “The struggle of any people who stand up against the state that oppresses them has consequences, and this is jail or death […] these Mapuche have names and last names, it is for them that we are tremendously proud of this fight, because it is made up of brave men and women.” Read the full story @ incendiarynews.com
#chile #mapuche #prisoners #fascism #politicalprisoners
Elite Border Patrol Agents to be Deployed in ‘Sanctuary Cities’
By Henry Perez
President Donald Trump has announced that the Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC), an elite SWAT-style team reserved for special operations, will be patrolling and helping make arrests in so-called sanctuary cities across the US such as Houston, San Francisco, Chicago, and many others.
This authorization is the Trump administration’s reaction to the practice of ‘sanctuary cities’ deliberately limiting information sharing and cooperation between local law enforcement and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. While BORTAC is supposedly reserved for special operations such as stash house raids and militarized apprehensions, including across national borders, the force will also be deployed to working class immigrant communities to stoke fear and increase general apprehension rates. ‘Sanctuary cities’ generally refuse to comply with ICE holds on undocumented immigrants, which would keep immigrants who are arrested at the local level in custody until ICE can apprehend them for unrelated immigration violations.
Regardless of what the state or local governments do to side-step ICE collaboration, the term ‘sanctuary’ has no real meaning or value when federal enforcement supersedes all jurisdictions and ICE can act unilaterally. As seen earlier this month in New York City, itself a ‘sanctuary city,’ a man was shot in the face by plainclothes ICE agents when they attempted to detain his stepfather. With ICE agents already enacting brutal violence on the street, the hyper-militarized BORTAC can only further escalate arrests, resulting in more casualties.
Read the full story @ incendiarynews.com
#Trump #immigration #borderpatrol
AUSTIN: Election Boycott Targets Campaign Signs, DSA Politician Cries Suppression
PHOTO: Photos of campaign signs with Election Boycott Slogans and Hammer and Sickle (Source: @HeidiSloanforTX twitter)
By Robert Madrone
On Thursday, politician Heidi Sloan posted photos on her twitter page of campaign signs that had been painted with election boycott messages, hammers and sickles, and had been torn or slashed. She claimed the actions were an attempt to ‘suppress democracy’ and stated that her own campaign signs had, “been stolen and many other signs were vandalized.” Sloan is the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) Candidate for Texas’s 25th Congressional house district.
Some large signs are seen with the slogan, “Elections, No! Revolution, Yes!” and others were slashed partially or fully in half.
January, Sloan was egged by revolutionaries as part of the 2020 call to boycott the elections, particularly for her protection of fascists at DSA’s anti-war rally on January 6, in which Sloan spoke as fascists from the Texas Nomads stood over her shoulder. Sloan was part of DSA leadership which actively opposed antifascist attempts to agitate the crowd against the Nomads, earning praise from the fascists themselves.
Heidi paints the election boycott as ‘suppression’ because she seeks a position within the democracy of the U.S. imperialist bourgeoisie, and rejects democracy for the working class, which can only come through socialist revolution. The DSA does not stand for socialism nor revolution, and instead peddles false versions of both in order to suppress the people’s rebellion against this system.
The 2020 revolutionary election boycott is but one signal of this rebellion that puts the lapdogs of the bourgeoisie, such as the DSA’s leaders, into a panic.
Read more @ incendiarynews.com
#election2020 #electionboycott #atx #dsa #revolution
