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OBJECT! DESERT! MUTINY! STRIKE! REVOLT!

Anonyme, Friday, March 19, 2004 - 16:56

NEFAC

This is a call to all those who oppose -- let us re-consider our strategy, with a view to more direct action against war as business as usual.

This is a shout out from the Northeastern Federation of
Anarcho-Communists (NEFAC).

Throughout this bloody, endless war on terror, we in north America have seen widespread, but often symbolic opposition. This is a call to all those who oppose -- let us re-consider our strategy, with a view to more direct action against war as business as usual.

OBJECT! DESERT! MUTINY! STRIKE! REVOLT!

The invasions and subjugation in Afghanistan and Iraq has been aimed at securing contracts, investments --basically, control over human and natural resources. After the bombs have dropped, trade explodes. Profiteers line their pockets as borders are tightened and movement isrestricted. This is the discipline of labour. This is repression by fear. This is not a scene played out only "over there". Attacks on immigrants and refugees here are attacks on all working people.

We oppose the mass deportations and new reporting centres and detention areas that are springing up across North America. Schemes like National ID cards, and the massive increase in racist profiling and surveillance, are not just about border "security", but affect all working people's daily lives, in seeking employment and housing, even walking down the street. These forces of social control only give bosses and landlords a better position to exploit our labour, and drive down the wages and working conditions of other workers abroad.

Militarism is the iron fist inside the velvet glove of corporate
globalization. But who carries the guns? Whose lives are at risk? Who does the dirty work, that which is demeaning or dangerous? Who is underpaid, over-worked, pissed off and precarious?

OBJECT! DESERT!

Now is exactly the most urgent time for radicals and anti-capitalists to make solidarity links with the rank-n-file of the military. It has always been the poor who are the first to die, those who enlisted to escape unemployment, or to earn an education. Dissatisfaction, alienation, futility and trauma are widespread amongst the troops. Support the soldiers, bring them home.

The war in Vietnam could only be stopped when it was brought home. When the body bags arrived, when the streets erupted, when the determination of the Vietnamese people made a mockery of the Pentagon, only then did heads of state and industry decide to pull out of Southeast Asia.The generals and officer corps of the "coalition" forces who now control the borders of Iraq have proven themselves just as corrupt as the Baath regime. As a dock worker in Umm Qasr recently put it, "Bremer and Saddam, two sides of the same coin."

So, this goes out to all the draft dodgers and work resisters. To the
monkeywrenchers spooning sugar into the gas tanks of the military machine. To all those who decide to desert. To the underpaid, be you soldiers or service-workers: defy your generals, your bosses; their orders are not moral.

MUTINY! STRIKE!

The tools available to working people in times of war and occupation are the same as in capitalist "peace time" -- strikes, mutiny & sabotage being a few of the most effective. Even sit-downs, slow-downs, or sick-ins have the power to threaten capital and the state. Our power comes from our participation in production and threat of withdrawing our participation by going on strike. Recently, some of the most successful work refusals have been on train tracks, at airports and on the shipping docks which directly supply the war machine. But it is all of industry which needs our blood, sweat and toil. For instance, just to keep the oil flowing, they need miners, machinists, refinery workers, dockers,sailors, truck drivers, storage and distribution point workers, gas station attendants.

Now is the time the general strike can become the most powerful weapon in the class war. Mass protests that walk around in circles or sit in the civic square are part of a "citizenship politics", which assumes that leaders will respond to public grievances. Unfortunately, they're based upon a withdrawal of consent, or "public opinion" rather than a material withdrawal of productive capacity. As a result, they give the appearance that a government is "open" and "democratic" without actually interfering with work/war mobilizations. Instead of functioning to simply "blow off steam", a strike gives working people confidence in their real collective strength, unifying and mobilizing entire communities. Poor and working people have little to lose, and a world to gain by organizing together to strike against the capitalist work/war machine.

REVOLT!
Elections seem to be the time we get to choose the sauce with which we will be eaten.

There is thin hope of Democrats bringing peace and justice to the kitchen tables of the poor in America, never mind the rest of the world. Bloody occupations for years in the Congo, now backing the coup of the rich in Haiti, and billions poured into the Israeli Defence Forces and the paramilitaries of Colombia --- this is the existing reality of US foreign policy, no matter which party is in power. With all the invasions, bailouts for dictators, "security" / torture training, and the market cornered on weapons of mass destruction, most of the planet has had enough of exported American democracy.

As for upcoming Canadian elections, well, it's clear that Canadians have no business teaching "anti-corruption seminars" in Africa, Afghanistan and Iraq. Both the front-runners for leadership (the Liberal's Martin and the Conservatives' Stronach) inherited massive fortunes from their parents, spent decades at the head of anti-union multinational corporations, and now hope to convince us that they hold some fresh perspective on ending cronyism, nepotism and political paybacks.

And let us never forget that we are all still haunted by the tragedies
that stem from the 500-years of bloody occupation of native territories on this Turtle Island.

The parties of power have all shown a willingness to conform to dictates of capital. It is this very lack of any real choices, or participatory
democracy, that has led to record-breaking low turnouts out at the voting polls. Enough!

No more abuse, no more austerity measures, no more star wars -- our education, health and social safety has suffered too much already. We call for revolt. Direct action. Now is the time to build active resistance, we call on all peace-loving people to get organized. It is again the time for organized labour to build underground railways, to assist refugees, war resisters, wildcat strikers.

We have had enough of living in fear and perpetual war. We want a borderless world without bosses, governments, jails, apartheid walls, private & state police, detention centers, professional militaries, and all other oppressors of the international working class. We want a world that workers run, for ourselves and our children, where we all enjoy full freedom of movement, and a genuine lasting peace, the kind that comes with justice & solidarity.

North Eastern Federation of Anarcho-Communists.
Organize! No war between nations, no peace between classes!

our website
www.nefac.net


CMAQ: Vie associative


Quebec City collective: no longer exist.

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