CodePink & MoveOn.org & A Statement of the New Anti-Capitalist Party (France) – 2015-11-17 01:26:13
Special to Environmentalists Against War
Send Condolences to Lebanon, France, Iraq and Syria
CODEPINK
At the end of last week, we witnessed horrific attacks that left scores dead and hundreds wounded in Beirut, Baghdad and Paris.
These brutal and unconscionable strikes against civilians have been attributed to members of The Islamic State (ISIL), or Daesh (Da’ish). People in Syria are also being slaughtered every day by Daesh and the murderous Assad regime.
Daesh did not arise out of a vacuum. We in the West must look to our own imperial state violence, including the disastrous, immoral, and illegal U.S. invasion of Iraq, as having created the chaos that allowed the spread of these “non-state†actors who now threaten indiscriminate violence from the Middle East to Europe.
When we mourn the terrible loss of life in Baghdad, Beirut and Paris, we must also mourn the deaths of those killed by the U.S. attack on a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, a Saudi-led coalition missile strike on a Yemeni wedding party, drone attacks that incinerate innocent victims as part of “collateral damage,†or a month-long Israeli assault, using US weapons and funded by US tax dollars, on trapped civilians in Gaza. All lives are precious.
Calls for increased US military intervention are misguided. Endless US military involvement in the Middle East has brought only destruction and sectarian division. The solutions will come from the people of the region — not the foreign militaries that created the chaos to begin with.
Let the people of France, Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria know that you are thinking of them.
And please commit to working with us to stop US-funded wars, and to promote diplomacy and negotiation.
As Massa Mufti, our Syrian friend living in Beirut, wrote to us, “The world, in its fury, believes that it can eradicate ISIS by retaliating? Seriously? Can’t the world think of eradicating the source of it? The injustice, despair, radicalism that led to its nurturing and spreading? More than ever, we need people like you — people who fight using peace and human rights as their weapons.”
In peace,
Alli, Ariel, Chelsea, Janet, Janna, Jodie, Lisa, Medea, Michaela, Michelle, Nancy and Tighe
A Message to Le Monde
MoveOn.org
(November 16, 2015) — Some are calling the horrific attacks in Paris “France’s 9/11.” (1) The senseless massacres in Paris — and the bombings in Beirut the day before — have sent the world into mourning.
The killings triggered a flood of solidarity, compassion, and calls for accountability — but also the risk of an unreasoned backlash that will compound the tragedy. Hate cannot defeat hate.
We’ll join with a global coalition to put our message in a full-page ad in the French newspaper Le Monde — and we’ll also display the signatures online.
The draft open letter says:
We are shocked, saddened, and in deep mourning after the terrorist attacks in Paris. We stand in solidarity with the victims’ families, friends, and loved ones.
We express the same solidarity to all of the victims of ISIS across the world, including those in Ankara, Beirut, Syria, and Iraq, and to all of the refugees forced to flee their homes to escape the very terror that hit Paris.
Today, we stand together for peace. We stand together for liberte, egalite, fraternite.
After 9/11, Le Monde famously ran an editorial with the headline, “Nous sommes tous Americains” (“We are all Americans”).
Click here to add your name to our open letter in Le Monde — and help make sure that the victims’ families, and the impacted communities — feel the kind of compassion Americans experienced after 9/11.
Paris is, tragically, not alone in suffering. A double suicide bombing in Beirut, Lebanon on Thursday killed at least 43 people. (2) Turkey, Iraq, Kenya, and other countries around the globe have experienced similar horrors this year. Every one of those victims deserves to be mourned.
And now, there’s reason to fear that Paris will become a kind of tipping point — that these latest attacks will push the global community further into mutual suspicion and perpetual retaliation.
Those responsible for these violent acts must be held accountable. But we can’t forget how 9/11 was used to justify the war in Iraq, and that ISIS’s own origins trace to a US-run Iraqi prison. (3) It is precisely in moments like this one that we must be on guard against a rush to war.
France has already initiated military action against targets in Syria, with US help. (4) Anti-Muslim, anti-refugee rhetoric is flaring up in the US and around the world. And we’re already seeing right-wing hawks and neoconservatives in the United States — including those who pushed us to war after 9/11 — pushing for reckless military action and taking an even more cruel line towards desperate Syrian refugee families.
MoveOn will need to be a voice for justice, and against vengeance and xenophobia. Our first act is to join together and send all the victims’ communities a message of love and compassion during this difficult time.
Sources
1. “Editorial: Nightmare in Paris,” Boston Herald, November 13, 2015
2. “Your Monday Briefing: Paris Attacks, Syria, New England Patriots,” The New York Times, November 16, 2015 

3. “ISIS: The Inside Story,” The Guardian, December 11, 2014 

“How the Islamic State Evolved in an American Prison,” The Washington Post, November 4 2014 

4. “France Strikes ISIS Targets in Syria in Retaliation for Attacks,” The New York Times, November 15, 2015 

The Cruelty of Imperialist Wars
Results in the Cruelty of Terrorism
Statement of the New Anti-Capitalist Party (France)
MONTREUIL, France (November 14, 2015) — The NPA issued this statement on the 14 November 2015, after the attacks in Paris of the evening of 13 November (it was updated at 20.45 on the 14th.)
The horrible attacks which took place in Paris on Friday evening, killing more than 120 people, causing dozens of casualties, this blind violence, provokes revolt and indignation. The NPA shares these feelings and expresses its solidarity with the victims and their close relations. This tragedy is even worse in that it has hit innocent victims, the murderous attacks were aimed at the population.
This contemptible cruelty in central Paris is an answer to the equally blind and even more fatal violence of the bombings perpetrated by French warplanes in Syria following the decisions of François Hollande and his government.
These strikes supposed to fight the Islamic State, the terrorist Jihadists, with the Russian intervention and bombings, in fact protect the regime responsible for the martyrdom of the Syrian people, the dictator Assad.
And there too the civil populations are the first victims, condemned to live under terror or to flee at the risk of their lives. Imperialist cruelty and Islamist cruelty feed each other. And do so to control oil supplies.
In a pitiful intervention, Holland broke down and stammered some words about the Republic. He, as a warmonger, carries an enormous responsibility in this new tragedy asking for “trust.” He has decreed a state of emergency throughout France, considering that the answer was to trample on fundamental freedoms. He has immediately been supported by Sarkozy. Thus, from now on, the political authorities can ban public meetings and control the press.
Once again, those responsible for this surge of barbarian violence are calling for national unity. They are trying to turn the dramatic situation to their advantage in order to choke off indignation and revolt. They have a ready-made scapegoat, Muslims.
We reject any national unity with those responsible for wars, the bourgeoisie, Hollande, Sarkozy and Le Pen. We denounce the racism that the State vehicles in the name of alleged “values of the republic” when at the same time, in the guise of fight against terrorism, democratic rights are threatened. We demand the state of emergency be lifted.
The only response to wars and terrorism is the unity of workers and people, over and above their origins, their skin colour, their religions, across the borders, to fight together against those who want to silence them, to dominate them, and to do away with this capitalist system which generates cruelty.
To put an end to terrorism, it is necessary to put an end to the imperialist wars that aim to perpetuate the plundering of the wealth of peoples dominated by multinationals, to force the withdrawal of French troops from all countries where they are present, in particular in Syria, in Iraq, in Africa.
Posted in accordance with Title 17, Section 107, US Code, for noncommercial, educational purposes.
