On Friday April 22nd, organizers from Filipino groups such as Anakbayan, Migrante and the International Coalition for Human Rights held a silent protest inside the office of the Philippine Consulate General of Toronto, condemning the killings of peasant farmers demanding food relief in the Kidapawan Massacre at the hands of soldiers of the Armed Forces of the Philippines.

Their shirts read “BIGAS HINDI BALA” – “RICE NOT BULLETS”, calling on the Filipino diaspora to pay attention to deaths of two farmers, Enrico Fabligar and Darwin Magyao, as well as the injury, starvation, and detainment of many more, including pregnant women and the elderly. This action was the third in a series of actions that have taken place over the month of April, all with the aim of informing the public about the violent undermining of basic human rights and exploitation of peasants in the Philippines.

The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) had announced as early as September 30, 2015 that a ‘strong’ El Niño would disproportionately affect the Philippines. By January 20th, North Cotabato, a province on the island of Mindanao, had declared a state of calamity under which the Provincial Government is supposed to allocate at least 5% of its internal revenue as calamity funds to be given to those most affected by the drought. The Filipino state gave many declarations but no provisions for the starving farmers. Currently, no funds from the Calamity Fund have reached the farmers.

By the end of March 2016, 40% of the country had experienced the drought; by the end of April, it would be 85%. The Peasant Movement of the Philippines, Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP), which is part of a larger network of organizations known as Bayan, mobilized its chapters in Mindanao to compel the state to address the drought. From March 28th to March 29th, 6,000 farmers and their families from different towns protested near the National Food Authority Office and the Spottswood Methodist Center in Kidapawan City, North Cotabato.

The farmers called upon the government for the release of 15,000 sacks of rice to respond to the drought; the subsidy of rice, seedlings, fertilizers, and pesticides until the drought ends; an increase in farmgate prices of agricultural products; the pullout of military troops in their communities; and the investigation and disbandment of the Bagani paramilitary group being formed by Rep. Nancy Catamco, who are used to terrorize and control the farmers.

Instead of providing them with rice and seedlings, the Philippine National Police and SWAT personnel violently forced the peasants to leave the area by gunning them down, hitting them with batons, throwing stones and blasting them with water cannons from their fire trucks. After the compound was cleared, it was surrounded by some 200 police and the 39th Infantry Battalion of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP).

The drought and violent treatment of farmers is connected to a pattern of reactionary state violence from the Filipino government, who depends on exploiting farmers at home with the aid of rich Western governments. Petronida Cleto, one of the organizers of the protest, connects the treatment of Filipino farmers to those who migrate to countries like Canada: “The system in the Philippines is very export-oriented. They facilitate the movement of people by forcing peasants to sell their possessions to pay multiple fees, forced to sell land to go abroad. And for what? To get Permanent Residency after two years of slavery?!”

Rich Western nations like Canada go to the Third World to extract the resources and labour power of countries like the Philippines. Due to the conditions in their country caused by this resource extraction, Filipino people are forced to leave their homes and families behind in search for work in order to survive. Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program is one way this exploitation takes place because it enables the Canadian State to exploit the labour of Filipino migrants, while at the same time stealing land from peasants, all for its own economic gains.

Organizers aim to raise awareness about the oppressive political climate of the Philippines, where “farmers are not allowed to own their own land, and are killed when they try to stand up and defend it,” said Jesson, one of the main organizers of Friday’s action in Toronto. “This action was about showing that the Filipino community condemns this State-sponsored terrorism and the stealing of land from peasants.”

According to the final report of the National Fact-Finding and Humanitarian Mission (NFHM) of Kidapawan City, it is estimated that 1% of the population in the country own 20% of the total 13.34 million hectares of agricultural lands. Farmers toil day in and day out to produce crops only to have them taken away by huge multinational corporations like Del Monte. They are unable to sustain themselves and are then killed when they ask for what is rightfully theirs to begin with. These are the types of inequalities that the private ownership of land and goods results in, where a small portion of the population profits from the exploitation of the majority who are farmers and peasants.

The state steals and sells the labour of the people to western multinational companies, but the Filipino people do not stand unorganized. The NFHM was conducted within a matter of days after the massacre. Bayan and the KMP mobilizes the peasants based on the fact that they are the farmers of the land. A third of the Philippines’ population is made up of agricultural workers – revolutionary organizations awaken the power of the masses, who already have the skills to maintain their own survival.

When the government watched their people starve, organizations within Bayan like the KMP mobilized 6,000 people to rise and demand that the state open up its stolen resources to the rest of the population. When Gov. Taliño-Mendoza refused to meet the farmers’ demands, offering only three kilos of rice per family once every three months, the peasant leaders unified to reject this offer. The peasants are not asking for charity or handouts; they are demanding the resources they produced from their own land and labour.

Landlords, just like the state, did not miss the opportunity to watch peasants starve. Some have even gone so far as to hoard tonnes of rice in order to drive up prices and increase their profits. The government of the Philippines has done nothing to address this issue, but the New People’s Army (NPA) has taken direct action to reclaim the rice that had been produced by the peasants who are now purposefully being starved by the government and shot at by its army.

The NPA strategically targeted Helen Bernal, who was hoarding more than a tonne of rice. They stormed her warehouse and confiscated 1,384 sacks of rice, along with CCTV monitors, sanding tools, and other electronic equipment in Valencia City, Bukidnon in the country’s southern region. The NPA then redistributed the stolen possessions directly to the places that were most affected by the drought, giving farmers the much needed rice that they had been demanding from the government but were denied, having been served bullets instead.

The deeply organized peasant class, in cities such as Kidapawan and Valencia, along with their comrades in Canada, have the power to hold the corrupt Filipino state accountable. This confrontation clearly shows that organizing and collectivist action is the only way for the peasants to survive and empower themselves during disasters, both “natural” and government-inflicted. The people, when united, will never be defeated. They will only grow stronger.

Photos by Nooria Alam

Yesterday Palestine solidarity activists in Vancouver fasted for 24 hours and set up an info table at a busy transit hub to inform people of the situation of Palestinian prisoners and gather support for the campaign to boycott and divest from British security firm G4S.

Five activists joined the fast and raised over $500 in pledges and donations to support Palestinian prisoners in the action organized by Samidoun Palestinian Prisoners Solidarity Network with support from BDS Vancouver – Coast Salish Territories, Canada Palestine Association and Alliance for People’s Health.

The information table highlighted the cases of Muhammad Allan, Khalida Jarrar, Shireen Issawi and Ahmad Sa’adat, but focused on the fact that the mass incarceration of Palestinian activists and political leaders is a tactic of the Israeli occupation to attack Palestinian resistance to the occupation and the whole Palestinian people.  There are currently over 5400 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, including 400 who are in ‘administrative detention’ meaning that they face no formal charge, are denied even the unfair process of Israeli military courts and do not get to see the evidence against them.

Muhammad Allan, who has been on hunger strike for 66 days, has been detained for more than 10 months on such an administrative detention.The information table also carried information about the campaign against G4S in Canada, newly launched by BDS Vancouver – Coast Salish Territories, and dozens of people signed on to support the campaign.  In addition to contracts with the Israeli Prison Authority, G4$ runs immigration detention centres in Ontario and provides security for Tar Sands oil developments and pipeline projects in Canada.

(Photo Credit: Aiyanas Ormond)

* * *

John Paul Wootton in custody of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (Paul Faith/Press Association)

By Julian Ichim

On August 8th, 2015 people across the world will be joining in actions demanding the release of the Craigavon Two, Irish Republican prisoners unjustly imprisoned for the murder of a RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary in Northern Ireland) police officer. In Kitchener and Toronto local organizers are planning demonstrations and a public event around internment in the Occupied Six Counties.

Packy Carty of the Justice For The Craigavon Two Committee in Ireland stated that “the case of the Craigavon Two is a clear case of a miscarriage of justice and targeting of Irish Republicans. The case against the Craigavon Two centred around four strands of so-called evidence: the brown jacket DNA, the brown jacket residue, Witness M and a British Army MI5 tracking device.”

He continued, “When Brendan McConville and John Paul Wootton were taken for interrogation by the PSNI, they seized Wootton’s car, and in the car they found a brown jacket with a number of DNA profiles, one of which belonged to Brendan McConville; also on the jacket was a firearms type residue. It was proved beyond doubt that the residue did not come from an AK 47, which was the weapon used in the shooting. The amount of DNA on the brown jacket could have been innocently placed by a sneeze or a slight touch. Brendan McConville and John Paul Wootton were friends and Brendan had been in the car before. Yet the crown prosecution were trying to say that the coat belonged to McConville and was used in the shooting, even though the forensics disproved  this theory.”

In terms of Witness M, a secret Witness giving testimony, Carty asserts that “his testimony was discredited in court, as he could not have seen the shooting of the police officer. He needed glasses, which he was not wearing that night, and there are other inconsistencies in his testimony.”

“After Wootton and McConville had become well-known in the newspapers and media, a man known only as witness M phoned the PSNI in the middle of the night while drunk and said he could identify those involved in the shooting. Despite being a questionable witness this man became the key part of the prosecution case. He said he had seen McConville near the scene of the shooting that night; it later transpired in court that his eyewitness testimony was clinically impossible, as he was severely short sighted and lied openly in court about his eyesight” stated Carty.

Carty also brought up the fact that Witness M’s own father, who is on the court record as “Witness Z”, came forward to call his son a liar in court.

On the issue of the tracking device, Carty points out that “it emerged that on the night of the shooting the British Army, most probably at the behest of MI5, were tracking Wootton’s car using a covert device. When the device was examined after Wootton’s car was seized, half of the data was purposely deleted, yet despite this destruction of evidence the device was accepted as evidence in the court.”

Despite all these inconsistencies and nothing linking Wootton or McConnville to the scene of the crime, they were both convicted and given life sentences. An appeal was carried out, yet the conviction was upheld despite the fact that according to Carty the prosecutor admitted that they cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that either McConville or Wootton was involved in the shooting or supporting the shooters with logistics, etc. in the aftermath. At that point in time, a Supreme Court hearing was scheduled to hear the case yet this was cancelled with no explanation.

Due to the lack of justice seen in Ireland surrounding this case, international organizers have concluded that justice can only be served by people across the world taking action. Here in Kitchener, organizer Terry Helm said, “The case of the Craigavon Two is not just about these two people but about the injustice of the British occupational forces in Ireland criminalizing people, not because of acts that they can prove but rather for their political convictions.”

He continued, “If this hearing was carried out in a regular court this decision would be different, but when you have special laws, secret evidence, no right to confront your accusers and the presumption of guilt before innocence, what do you expect?”

He finished by comparing the treatment of the Craigavon Two with possible treatment of Canadian activists in the future: “With Bill C-51 becoming law, this case has more serious implications here for those who are engaged in activism, as the legal system that condemned them will become law here.”

He looks straight into the broken night sky and whispers almost silently “there are prophets on every corner. They come alive when flares light up the night. There are prophets in every suburb. They find their voice when police hurl death sentences into megaphones. There are prophets in every tragedy. They present themselves at the exact place where the guns of white power empty themselves into the darkness.”

And god knows on nights like these, there is no sleep to be found amidst the chaos of a young boy’s mind. But he holds himself pure, he has been here before, seen this cycle on cynical repeat for far too many lifetimes. He wanders out into the summer night and curls up beneath an oak tree in his backyard. He presses the palms of his feet and hands into the burnt summer grass, asking for any reminder that life still lives here. He feels the roots dig into his back. Images of Malcolm and Barack and the Unnamed Ever-present Face of Whiteness fall through his mind, all men, all with a cold gaze fixed on their face. Their appearance is punctuated by the steady rhythm of 7 bullets. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7. They play on constant loop in his mind, like a sinister track that he could never quite get out of his vision even if his life depended on it. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7. These explosions set the pace for a crooked dance to which amerikkka marches onward, forever. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7. Forever, at least in their eyes, as the conquest is never finished. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7. Nevermind, in another world these bullets could be nothing else but seven pristine wake up calls, clear reminders of the places we were never supposed to go. But not here, not in this world, not in these suburbs, these rude interruptions serve no such clarifying purpose. Young boy, wide eyes, searching in the dark, he knows that bullets like these will fall as silently as toxic snow on the pale sleeping ears where old money rests, just down the street.

The young boy drifts into a temporary sleep, the type where nothing is reconciled but at least his mind is permitted some freedom to roam outside of this physical world. He awakens just as the morning begins to show its first signs of itself. He jumps, forever cautious of the light. He remembers that the ways in which the bright artificial rays will come to reveal his body have nothing to do with neither justice nor consent. He pulls himself up from the ground, moving with the precision of a soldier and intention of a god. His gaze cuts through the known, insisting that those who meet his eyes are ready to dive into a different world. He feels larger than life, fleetingly ready to take on a people that seemed so intent on his own extermination. And finally, he lets the shots of 1-2-3-4-5-6-7 fade from his mind as he turns out onto the main intersection in front of his house.

Before him there is a peculiar silence that speaks like muffled screams. He is here, at the uneasy resting place that occurs between battles. However, there is nothing to signify an end to the war. The world stretches out in front of him, kept warm by the towering streetlights. The police are gone and the protesters have taken refuge in the early morning.

He stares straight past the concrete, and whispers almost silently “there are prophets on every corner. They come alive when flares light up the night. There are prophets in every suburb. They find their voice when police hurl death sentences into megaphones. There are prophets in every tragedy. They present themselves at the exact place where the guns of white power empty themselves into the darkness.”

Jeff Tanaka is a writer, spoken word artist and storyteller and works for the Asian Arts Freedom School in Toronto.

A rising wave of antiwar and anti-conscription protest is taking place in cities and towns across western Ukraine. The protests are prompted by the announcement of Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko ten days ago that a “third” military mobilization is now required for the war that his governing regime began waging against the population of eastern Ukraine three months ago. Kyiv calls the war an “anti-terrorist operation.”

The protests are paralleled by a rise in Ukraine army desertions and refusals of men and women to heed conscription orders.

Poroshenko’s mobilization proposal was approved by the Ukraine Rada on July 22. The measure means that more people will be conscripted into military service and that more reserve army units will be thrown into the battle theatre.

Since the crash of Malyasia Airlines Flight 17, Kyiv has embarked on a frenzied military push into southeast Ukraine to try and defeat a pro-autonomy rebellion there. It is blocking access by investigators to the MH17 crash site and the forward line of its military push consists of intense and random bombardments of towns and cities amounting to war crimes on a massive scale.

This video of shelling of an apartment block in the city of Donetsk on July 29 is an example of what is occurring. Buzzfeed reports, “Tuesday’s attack was the first time that shelling hit central Donetsk, a hitherto tranquil rebel stronghold. It left three people dead and wounded 15. The nearby city of Horlivka declared three days of mourning after heavy fire killed 17 overnight and wounded several dozen others. At least four more people died in shelling in the Donetsk suburb of Yasynuvata.”

Kyiv is in a race to defeat the rebellion before the crippling cost of it all as well as rising antiwar protests and army desertions bring its offensive to a halt. It also has to worry about anticipated revolts by the Ukraine population as a whole once the harsh consequences of the economic association agreement that Kyiv signed with the European Union on June 30 bite deeper and deeper.

Protests on the rise

Although the propaganda websites of the Kyiv government boast of the successes of its now three-month long “anti-terrorist operation” in eastern Ukraine (which it dubs its “ATO”), the special mobilization measure approved last week shows its war is in trouble. More fighting units are needed, the national treasury is effectively bankrupted by it all and there are rising numbers of desertions from the army and growing protests by mothers, wives, friends and neighbours of conscript soldiers. ICTV reports that the advisor to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Anton Gerashenko, has announced that anyone in Ukraine who agitates on social media against the regime’s war will be arrested.

The expanding protests have multiple messages. Some oppose the war outright. Others are specifically addressing the harsh and dangerous conditions that soldiers are facing in the east.

One of the most dramatic of the many protests since the “third mobilization” measure was announced has been in the port and shipbuilding city of Mykolaiv (also spelled Nikolaev), on the Black Sea, east of Odessa. Mothers and wives of soldiers repeatedly blocked the Varvarovsky Bridge over the Bug River for three days beginning July 25. They demanded a return of their sons or husbands from lengthy tours of duty in the 79th Paratroop Regiment. The tours have been extended and the regiment has suffered intense combat.

The women went on foot to the bridge carrying placards reading “Save our boys!” and used a pedestrian crossing to block traffic. Tussles with police and militia took place. (See dramatic video footage here from July 25.)

On the first day of the protest, the women drafted a letter to President Poroshenko which the mayor of the city and regional governor agreed to deliver. The women said their action would not end until they received a satisfactory reply. They didn’t receive that. A police mobilization ended the blockade on July 27. Some protesters were arrested.

The websites Hronika.info and ZIK.ua report that in the town of Bohorodchany in Ivano-Frankivsk oblast (region) [1], in southwest Ukraine bordering the Carpathia region, angry people attacked the military registration office and the premises of other local organs of power on July 22. They burned conscription documents. (Ukraine language report here.)

It’s a rural region and protesters sounded a theme that is common to many of the anti-conscription protests: they say their menfolk lack proper training and equipment and therefore face “certain death” when sent to the east.

“Certain death” faced by soldiers is not a sign of a war going well. It also suggests that the most recent report of the Office United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights reporting “at least” 1,129 killed by the war in Ukraine is seriously understated. It’s a fact that the report’s claim of “100,000” people made refugee by the war is laughingly low — Russia says more than 500,000 refugees have crossed its border since the war began in April and Ukraine admits to nearly 100,000 internal refugees.

Russia has condemned this latest report by the OUNCHR, saying, “Its key message is that the government of Ukraine is permitted to legitimately use force to restore law and order in the east of the country.”

Also on July 22, residents of the village of Skobychivka linked arms and formed a human chain to block the road from Ivano-Frankivsk to Bohorodchany, causing a kilometre-long traffic jam. The protesters held placards reading: “No Afghanistan in Ukraine!” “Send call-up notices to the children of the higher-ups!” “Return our children to us,” and “Stop the bloodshed.” A common slogan in the protests is “Refuse!”

A separate report in Vesti quoted the relatives of soldiers saying their sons were being used as “cannon fodder.” The report said people were also protesting in Yaremcha, in the same region, and in Sambor, Lviv region.

Not far from that area, in Bukovina region, residents in seven villages blocked roads on July 28. That region is southwest Ukraine includes a significant population of Romanian descent.

A video published by 112.UA shows soldiers’ relatives blocking a road in Obukhivs’kyi district, near Kyiv on July 24 demanding a return of soldiers from lengthy duty.

Protesters in the Odessa region blocked the Black Sea coastal highway for hours on July 28.

Residents of six villages in Sokyryanskyi region (Chernivtsi oblast) — Bilousivka, Lomachyntsi, Mykhalkove, Serbychany, Korman and Romankivtsi — blocked the highway between Chernivtsi and Novodnistrovsk on the morning of July 25, demanding that their menfolk not be sent to war.

Protests have gripped the entire region of Chernivtsi in southwest Ukraine. A video recording showed people saying, “We don’t war — we want peace” and “We did not raise our children for war. We will not give them our children.”

This video (screen below) shows a group of people, mostly women, from Chernivtsi who gather to confront a local military recruitment officer. They are carrying their sons or husbands’ conscription orders.

“Go fight your own war,” they tell the conscription officer, who tells locals to “go to the Internet” if they want to find out why the new mobilization is happening. He is referring to the Kyiv regime’s intensely propagandistic websites devoted to all things “ATO.” But the protesters are having none of that. They gather dozens of blue-coloured conscription orders into a pile and burn them.

As they stand around watching the flames, they’re all voicing their opinions. One mother says, “[Kyiv authorities] are fleeing like rats from a sinking ship, but they come here to take our sons and send them to death. They made the mess and now they need us to clean it up.” The conscription officer stands by helplessly. What can he do? He is following orders.

In the settlement of Marshintsi in the Novoselytskyy region of Chernivtsi, protesters blocked the entry of soldiers and police. Residents brought tyres and barricaded the road leading into the village. Many wrote letters of refusal, describing the events in the south-east as a “slaughter”.

On July 20, the Kyiv-Chop highway was blocked by local residents, mainly women, in the vicinity of the village of Hamaliivka near Lviv. A protest last month also blocked the highway. The same highway was blocked on July 28, in the villages of Rakoshyno and Znyatsevo, near the border of Slovakia and Hungary.

Here is one of the latest videos to be published on YouTube, of a protest in the town of Town of Novoselytsya in Chernivtsi oblast on July 30.

Many protests are voicing a “No Afghanistan in Ukraine” demand. This harkens back to the ten-year war that the Soviet Union fought against the people of Afghanistan, beginning in 1980. Altogether, 14,500 soldiers of the Soviet Union’s army died, 54,000 were wounded and many, many more Afghans died. The war was a major factor in the collapse of the Soviet Union, which happened not long after it withdrew from Afghanistan in ignominious defeat in 1988.

Post-Soviet, independent Ukraine later joined the U.S.-led occupation and war in Afghanistan. A small force still participates.

The well-known Ukrainian television journalist and commentator Ostap Drozdov has called for a boycott of the latest mobilization decree. The website Russkaya Vesna reports him saying: “My program yesterday (on the regional television channel ZIK) can be considered the start of an informal campaign to boycott the mobilisation. I state my intention to give my utmost support to this initiative, which goes by the provisional name “Mobilisation Equals Genocide.'”

He said, “It is very important that people who speak out against the mobilisation of the civilian population should see that they are not isolated. There are a great many of them.”

Army in trouble

Exact numbers of army desertions are not known and are the subject of considerable debate and counter-debate. This website report, for example, publishes a purported Ukraine army report saying that close to 3,500 soldiers deserted in the third week of July and that 1,600 soldiers died and 4,700 were wounded in that same time. Sources in Russia say the documents it cites are not authentic.

Here is a brief news report in which several Ukraine soldiers speak of their decision to take asylum in Russia. (Many videos of the fighting in eastern Ukraine are posted here on the “Anti-Maidan YouTube Channel.”)

This video records a protest in Kyiv of relatives of the 72nd Army Brigade that suffered heavy losses from a rocket attack some days ago. The protesters chant “Help the heroes”. A poster reads: “Send [Rada] deputies and generals to the battlefield!” They pray, and sing the Ukraine national anthem.

The Brigade was caught in a grisly cauldron in southeast Ukraine with many killed and injured and some survivors taking refuge in Russia. In this video, soldiers of the brigade speak for 13 minutes of their difficult and disturbing combat experience.

The pro-Kyiv, Interfax news service reports on 18 Ukraine soldiers who took refuge in Russia and received medical treatment.

Russia Today reported several days ago of this group of 40 soldiers who entered Russia and requested asylum.

Recasted fascist introduces conscription bill

Andriy Parubiy introduced the “third” mobilization bill to the Rada. He is Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, a key advisory body to the President and the Parliament on military matters. He says the measure will mobilize 15 more army combat units and 44 combat support units.

Parabuiy is a renowned fascist in Ukraine who has modified his image in the past year and risen to prominence in the Kyiv regime that seized power in February of this year. Last year, he joined the Fatherland party of former Ukraine prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko and was elected to the Rada. Fatherland is a neo-conservative coalition/party.

U.S. journalist Robert Parry wrote of Paruiby earlier this year, “Parubiy is himself a well-known neo-Nazi, who founded the Social-National Party of Ukraine in 1991. The party blended radical Ukrainian nationalism with neo-Nazi symbols.

“Parubiy also formed a paramilitary spinoff, the Patriots of Ukraine, and defended the awarding [in 2007] of the title ‘Hero of Ukraine’ to World War Two Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera, whose own paramilitary forces exterminated thousands of Jews and Poles in pursuit of a racially pure Ukraine.”

The United States is boosting its military aid and training to Ukraine. The announcement came from U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt on July 25. The U.S. already committed to $23 million in equipment; that will now rise to $33 million. It is also intervening in the countries it dominates in the region to boost the training and equipping of their armed forces, including Moldova and Romania on Ukraine’s southwest frontier and Poland on the northwest.

Kyiv’s ruthless shelling and bombing of towns and cities is running out of time due to the war’s huge financial cost. Describing Ukraine’s economy, the Washington Post wrote on July 26:

“The IMF forecasts that Ukraine’s annual GDP will drop by 6.5% this year, while the government deficit is projected at 10.1% of GDP. This week, the government announced that it would need at least 800 million dollars to continue its counterinsurgency operation and asked the parliament to further increase taxes and cut public spending. The deputies’ refusal to appropriate needed funds yesterday triggered Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s resignation as he recognized that soldiers would receive no pay next month. The reconstruction of Donbas is even more uncertain as the government promised to turn to foreign donors for funds in the coming fall.”

In a remarkable admission last week, Ukraine’s ambassador to Canada, Vadym Prystaiko, told the Globe and Mail, “We are pouring all the money in our budget… into the anti-terrorism campaign.”

The war is scandalously riding roughshod over the international investigation into the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. Investigators were blocked from reaching the site on July 27 and in the days following by the relentless shellings and other bombings by the Ukraine army in the region.

A woman stands in her home destroyed in the Ukrainian troops’ shelling of the Golubovka village near Slavyansk on June 27, 2014. (RIA Novosti / Andrey Stenin).

As reported by international media, inspectors are lodged in hotels in Donetsk each night and the passed easily through self defense lines surrounding the city to get to the site. But as the days wore on, the international media reported the blockage as due to “fighting” and “clashes.”

On July 30, Kyiv propaganda began saying that rebel fighters had placed mines on the crash site and were shelling it. That story evaporated the following day when, in circumstances unexplained, inspectors finally reached the site.

The grim reality of Kyiv’s military campaign in eastern Ukraine has been airbrushed out of mainstream news reporting. Little or no visual presentation of bombardments or other war crimes is allowed to pass through editorial filters. The war and its consequences are explained away in the vacuous language of “fighting” or “clashes” taking place. The Toronto Star‘s Tanya Talaga began a front-page article on July 30 with, “The European Union and western nations joined on [July 29] to try to force Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop his military aggression in Ukraine…” (Inside the same edition, the Star published a factual account of the bombardments of cities and towns.)

The European Union is matching the Ukraine army offensive by upping its economic sanctions on Russia. The sanctions are punishment for Russia’s refusal to obey U.S. and European demands that it police the pro-autonomy movements in eastern Ukraine and pressure them to surrender. They are also part of the long-standing drive by the member countries of the NATO military alliance to weaken and isolate Russia.

The rising antiwar movement in Ukraine has profound consequences for the future of the country. Will protests stop Kyiv’s war before southeast Ukraine is reduced to ruin? Will Ukrainian as well as international protests give pause to the military planners at NATO who are increasingly training their sites on Russia?

Ukraine’s economic elite has made a sharp turn to embrace austerity Europe. The kind of austerity consequences that have ravaged Greece and other countries of southern Europe await the Ukrainian people. How will the antiwar protesters and other ordinary Ukrainians react as the government deepens unpopular cuts to social programs and subsidies that reduce the cost of essential items?

Protests around the world are needed to stay the hands of the warmakers in southeast Ukraine. Solidarity actions can stop the killings. They can also help Ukrainians to chart a different path of economic and social development. That would be fitting because anti-austerity sentiment was at the heart of the rebellion in eastern Ukraine in the first place.

A new, 80-minute video compilation, Ukraine Crisis, has been produced that provides a powerful record of the war in eastern Ukraine during the past month. A warning, there are some scenes of death and destruction caused by the Kyiv government’s shelling that are disturbing, particularly in the four to six minute section, inclusively. The testimony of the woman who speaks for five minutes at the 1’17″30 mark is especially insightful and heartrending. She has lost her son to the war, not knowing since March if he is dead or alive. She asks, “What has become of this Ukraine nation?”

This article draws in part from a July 28, 2014 article from the Russian website Rabkor (“Worker Correspondent”) which was  translated into English by Renfrey Clarke. 

Notes:

[1] Ukraine is subdivided into 25 regions: 24 oblasts (regions, or provinces) and one city with special status, Kyiv. Two former oblasts — Donetsk and Luhansk — voted in May for autonomy. The ferocity of Kyiv’s war is driving those two regions to a de facto secession.

Shelling of Luhansk, July 18, 2014

I learned of the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 when my plane landed in Montreal the same day, July 17, on my way home from Moscow. The Moscow-Munich leg of my flight departed one hour before the (delayed) departure of Flight MH17 from Amsterdam at 12:30 pm local time. I reckon the respective flight paths crossed each other somewhere just west of Ukraine.

The flight went down over territory controlled by self defense forces of the autonomous regions of southeast Ukraine, near the village of Grabovo (Hrabove), halfway between Donetsk and Luhansk cities, 50 km north and 100 km west of the Russian border. There are 298 reported victims. Here is the fateful flight’s route map.

A typical western media headline graced the front page of the Vancouver Sun the day after. It read, ‘Malaysian plane shot down by rebels’. Case closed. Guilty as charged.

Paul Koring of the Globe and Mail writes, “What brought down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 is already known. A Soviet-era surface-to-air missile fired from separatist held territory in eastern Ukraine tore the Boeing 777 apart as it cruised more than 10 kilometers above the Donetsk region.”

The Guardian headlines a July 19 story with, ‘MH17: rebels block access to part of site of crash as evidence against them grows’. But the article doesn’t contain a word of the claimed evidence.

Toronto Star columnist Mitch Potter blames what he calls “nihilistic rebels” and “Putin’s monster” in eastern Ukraine, then proceeds to acknowledge that evidence they downed the aircraft is “circumstantial”. He cites a Washington Post writer who says the disaster is all a result of “Putin’s messy disaster he created in Ukraine”.

In an editorial today, Toronto Star editors cite Stephen Harper in fixing blame: “Russia’s military aggression and illegal occupation of Ukraine (sic) . . . is at the root of the ongoing conflict in the region.” Russian President Vladimir Putin, say the editors, should “shackle his dogs of war”.

CBC radio and television reporters have rushed to the scene for yet another stint of fly in, fly out disaster reporting à la the 2010 Haiti earthquake and the 2013 Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) that struck the Philippines. They already know the story. Their questions are not, ‘Who shot down the plane and why?’, but, “How did Russia provide the rebels in eastern Ukraine with the know-how to shoot down the plane, and why would it do that?”

British tabloids are universal is blaring on their front pages that ‘Putin’ or his hirelings in Ukraine are mass murderers

Ukraine’s president knows. Within hours of the disaster, he declared, “Today, terrorists killed three hundred people with one shot. Among them innocent children, people of many countries of the world.” When the Kyiv regime speaks of eastern Ukraine, the term “terrorists” is synonymous with “the people who live there”.

Luhansk shelling in July 2014 leaves carnage in the streets.

Airplane disaster as pretext for war

Never mind that assertions of what happened to Flight MH17 are speculative and an investigation has hardly begun. The post-crash political assessment is all about something entirely different than finding truth—it is being seized as an opening for a political witch-hunt and more violent war against the people of eastern Ukraine. For months, they have been refusing and resisting a brutal, economic austerity turn to Europe and accompanying military violence by the governing regime in Kyiv and its NATO backers. Kyiv’s ground war against them has stalled because its foot soldiers are unconvinced of the cause or ill-prepared for what is required of them.

In the two days since the crash, the regime’s violence has reached new heights of brutality. Artillery and mortars are raining death and destruction upon people and communities throughout the rebellious region. In Luhansk, a city of 425,000, at least 20 people died from shelling on the day of the crash. The shells have cut electricity and water supply. Much of communication is also cut.

The press service of the Luhansk People’s Republic said on July 18, “The shells are bombarding practically all the residential districts of the city, including its centre. The number of killed and wounded is not immediately known.” (See videos here and here of the aftermaths of inner city shelling on July 18–warning, shocking images.)

The Lisichansk oil refinery in the city, owned by Russia’s Rosneft conglomerate, has been targeted and is burning fiercely (videos here and here).

Already on July 16, an observer with the Sepcial Monitoring Mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) reported that one third of the buildings in the center of Luhansk were damaged by shelling and the proportions of damage are higher on the city outskirts (ten minute video interview here). A July 18 bulletin of the monitoring mission cites reports from local doctors that in June and July, 250 civilians in the Luhansk region were killed by bombings and shellings and 850 are injured.

The site of a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 plane crash in the settlement of Grabovo in the Donetsk region, July 17, 2014. (Credit: Reuters/Maxim Zmeyev)

Investigation needed

The accusations against self-defense fighters in eastern Ukraine are not only unproven, they are circumstantial. Did rebels in southeastern Ukraine capture at some time a battery of the advanced missile system alleged to have shot down the plane? We do not know. If they did, analysts say, they lacked the very sophisticated training required to operate it.

From where was the missile fired? We don’t know. The lengthy debris field of the crash (six kilometers long, according to one report) and its west-to-east direction may raise doubts about the claims of a missile hit from the east (ie from Russia or its border region).

Flight MH17 was hundreds of kilometers north of its normal course. Why did flight controllers in Ukraine direct the plane there, across a war zone over which many warplanes have been shot down by self-defense forces (at much lower altitudes) in the past several months and which airlines have been avoiding? Way back in April, for example, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration prohibited U.S. airlines from flying where Flight 17 went down. Its directive said, “Due to the potential for conflicting air traffic control instructions from Ukrainian and Russian authorities and for the related potential misidentification of civil aircraft, United States flight operations are prohibited until further notice in the airspace over Crimea, the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov”.

Answers are needed as to who in the chaotic command structure of the Ukraine armed forces possesses the authority to fire missiles and how tightly this is controlled. What role and access to missiles might commanders of fascist and rightist militias have? The militias are playing leading roles in the murderous shellings and attempted ground assaults in the east of the country.

Self-defense forces deny firing a missile at the plane. This article in Vox details the internet hoax by which the rebels were said to have made such an admission. Lazy or biased news editors in mainstream media have widely reported the hoax, and U.S. government officials are repeating it as good coin, including U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power before the UN Security Council on July 18.

Self-defense forces are cooperating in bringing an investigative team of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to the site. Local residents, including coal miners, are taking part in the search for wreckage and bodies.

Both the Ukraine government in Kyiv and the Russian government deny that their forces fired missiles. U.S. Professor Stephen Cohen told Democracy Now in a June 18 interview, “There’s the possibility that the Russians aided and abetted them [self-defense forces], possibly from Russian territory, but I rule that out because, in the end, when you don’t know who has committed a crime, the first question a professional investigator asks is, “Did anybody have a motive?” and the Russians certainly had no motive here.”

Cohen calls the people who died in the plane, “the first victims of the new Cold War”, referring to the longstanding military threats against Russia by NATO countries that have escalated since last year over Ukraine. He has written frequently about the escalation, including in this June 30 article, ‘The silence of American hawks about Kiev’s atrocities’.

Maybe, just maybe, an official investigation will reveal the truth, or enough of the truth to make decision makers in NATO pause before upping their military intervention. But there are serious reasons to doubt that. The stakes for NATO countries in the war being prosecuted in eastern Ukraine by the government and its allied, fascist militias are just too high to let an inconvenient investigation get in the way.

The degree to which Canadian and international mainstream media are ignoring the rampaging and war of the Kyiv regime and militias in eastern Ukraine is scandalous. It gets little more than brief mention as undefined “fighting”. The Guardian has 14 articles on its Ukraine news page today dealing with the aftermath of the air disaster; not a single one reports on the shellings by the Ukraine army. A member of the self-defense forces tells the BBC at the crash site, “You are only here because foreigners are dead”.

Ominously, while the media broadcasts tears for the victims of the crash, it has none for the victims of shelling and bombing. Indeed, it seems even more war is required because “something” must apparently be done to save defenseless air travelers from the likes of “Putin” and unkempt self defense fighters in eastern Ukraine.

It all sets the stage for an escalation of the military intervention that NATO is already providing to Kyiv. It is so scripted that it tempts the observer to believe that people in Washington and Brussels pushed buttons to unleash it all. But no, that would be speculation, and that’s the last thing needed right now.

Here are some additional excerpts from the July 18 interview with Professor Stephen Cohen on Democracy Now:

By the way, the Ukrainian government shot down a Russian passenger jet, I think in 2001 [Siberia Airlines Flight 1812, Oct 4, 2001, 76 dead]. It was flying from Tel Aviv to Siberia [actually, Siberia to Tel Aviv]. It was an accident. Competence is always a factor when you have these weapons…

Another possibility is that the rebels—we call them separatists, but they weren’t separatists in the beginning, they just wanted home rule in Ukraine—had the capability. But there’s a debate, because this plane was flying at commercial levels, normally beyond the reach of what they can carry on their shoulders.

Let me mention, because I think it’s relevant to what you’re covering here, your very, very powerful segments before I came on today about what’s going on in Gaza, the pounding of these cities, the defenselessness of ordinary people. The same thing has been happening in East Ukrainian cities—bombing, shelling, mortaring by the Kiev government—whatever we think of that government. But that government is backed 150 percent by the White House.

The statement issued by the antiwar conference held in Yalta, Crimea earlier this month makes a nine-point call for an end to Kyiv’s war in eastern Ukraine. One of the points is “For an international inquiry headed by jurists and human rights advocates into the human rights violations and war crimes that have been committed in the course of this war”. Campaigns and solidarity mobilizations around these points are now more urgent than ever.

Roger Annis recently returned to Canada from a two-week visit to Crimea and Moscow. He attended the antiwar conference that took place in Yalta, Crimea on July 6, 7. He can be reached at [email protected]. You can sign onto the conference statement at this online petition website.

by Tascha Shahriari-Parsa and Alon Lapid

A child examining the vestiges of a house obliterated by an Israeli airstrike in the Al Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in Gaza City on July 11, 2014 (via activestills.org)

Last weekend, 17-year-old Anas Youssef Kandil of Gaza made the Facebook comment “I’m too tired, shell our home so I can get some sleep.” Not too long after, his home was in fact shelled, and he slept forever, as have over 40 other children and teenagers killed in Gaza since the operation began.

After ten days of continuous deadly military strikes on Gaza, the total death toll of Operation Protective Edge—the brutal campaign of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) that commenced on Tuesday, July 8th—has risen to well over 250 according to the Gaza Health Ministry,77% of which are civilians: a grave number compared to the deaths of one Israeli soldier and one Israeli civilian. Over 1,400 have been wounded including around 400 children; over 17,000 have been displaced into UNRWA schools; over 1,200 homes have been destroyed; over 2,000 have been made homeless; and 600,000 are at risk of losing access to water supply.

When tragedy is so grand, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by such numbers and forget the pains that each family has suffered: not only those who have died, not only their loved ones, not only those injured or made homeless, but also every single Palestinian in Gaza who must live each day and night in fear—the inexpressible trepidation that they, like Anas, may not wake up the next morning.

One family in front of a bomb that, due to sheer luck, failed to detonate.

All of Israel’s strikes on Gaza are certainly classified as war crimes, extrajudicial killings and acts of collective punishment. With thousands of air raids taking place in the span of a mere week, the Gaza strip has endured an average of one air raid every 4 minutes. These air raids have targeted everything: civilian homes (including those of an economics professor, a former health minister, and the General Director of Shifa Hospital), farms, police stations, mosques, schools, random streets, beaches, and even hospitals, water facilities, electricity lines and disability centers.

Three Minute Race with Death

Israel claims that these air raids are preceded by “roof knocking”: gentle mortars hitting homes to warn them of an incoming missile strike. The fact that such a thing would be used to justify the bombing of civilian homes is absurd in itself—in what universe is it acceptable to destroy people’s homes and force them into homelessness so long as they are notified 3 minutes in advance? The roof knocking strategy is merely used by Israel in order to avoid legal prosecution, so that Israel can proclaim how humanitarian it is for bombing civilian homes in such a compassionate manner. That being said, even the legitimacy of Israel’s claim that they consistently warn civilians whom they are about to bomb is under question too, as one video recorded a time of only 57 seconds between the warning strike and the missile that blew up a home. In other cases, family members who were not home have received warning calls on their cell phones, while their families—lacking the possession of a phone—were obliterated without warning. Moreover, it is not even clear whether Israel routinely warns its victims before striking them.

These children buried 18 members of their family, the Batsh family.

Click here for Part II of this five-part series on Palestine and Israel’s ‘Operation Protective Edge.’

by Tascha Shahriari-Parsa and Alon Lapid

Disability Centers, Water Facilities, Electricity Lines and Hospitals

One of the most outrageous Israeli airstrikes in Gaza was committed against a home for the disabled in Beit Lahiya, killing Ali Nabil Basal and Suha Abu Saade, who suffered from multiple disabilities. “How many of the people killed so far are civilians?” cries Youssef, Suha’s brother. “Even those they call terrorists, they are not terrorists; they are resistance.”

Another unconscionable strike hit a rehabilitation center for the disabled in Jabilaya, killing three patients and a nurse.

Thirty percent of his body was burned in an airstrike on a charity home for the disabled and 3 of his disabled friends got killed” says Belal, a Palestinian doctor living in Gaza.

A major water line and sewage plant, west of Gaza City, was also bombed a few days ago, a facility that provides more than 70,000 people with water and constitutes the principal water line for the al-Shati refugee camp in the Northern Gaza Strip, the third largest refugee camp in Palestine. “Israeli aircraft targeted a sewage plant west of the city, which serves the areas of al-Shati Camp, Tel al-Hawa neighborhood, Sheikh Ajlin, and the western areas of Gaza City,” stated the director of the Water Department in the Municipality of Gaza, Saad Eddin Al-Atbash. “[The sewage plant] pumps 25,000 cubic meters of wastewater daily to the public treatment plant.”

Israeli warplanes have also targeted two water wells and five water-lines, all located in vital areas where tens of thousands of people rely on them. A water crisis has been ongoing in Gaza since the beginning of the summer: the Gaza strip requires 180 million cubic meters of water per year, yet renewable sources fail to manage even half of that. “While the city is working on improving the water supply systems for the citizens in Gaza,”says Al-Atbash, “Israeli forces are working on the destruction of water wells in order to increase the suffering of the citizens during the summer.”

On Friday July 11, 75% of Gaza City was left without electricity after heavy Israeli strikes in the area, damaged two out of the city’s three electricity lines. Many lines throughout Gaza have been frequently damaged, repaired, and damaged again, including an electricity line from Rafah to Cairo that was damaged three times in the span of two days, at one point working for 30 minutes before being damaged again.

To add to the list of outrageous strikes, on July 17 at around 8pm, Israel repeatedly bombed the el-Wafa rehabilitation hospital, the only rehabilitation center in the Gaza strip. Patients and doctors were forced to evacuate after the hospital was targeted by airstrikes and artillery shells. “It’s already destroyed,” said Basman Alashi, director of el-Wafa. “I don’t know how much is left of it, but we have evacuated all of our patients. We lost power, there was a fire in the building.”

The UN fact-finding mission to Gaza has determined that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) practice a “deliberate policy of disproportionate force,” aimed at the “supporting infrastructure” of the enemy. After attacks on hospitals, centers for people with disabilities, and facilities that provide tens of thousands of people with water and electricity access, Israel has some serious questions to answer about their real motives behind this operation.

Palestinians Forced to Flee Northern Gaza

Thousands of Palestinians fled Northern Gaza on Sunday after Israel issued a warning to those in the region to leave their homes “for [their] own safety”, in anticipation of further airstrikes and what was then the potential threat of a ground invasion. Israel began by mobilizing 33,000 soldiers for a ground assault.

“They threatened us that if we do not leave our homes, they will destroy them with us in them,” said one fleeing Palestinian woman. “We were scared because they would do that and they can’t be trusted. They are unjust. They have no mercy. They do not differentiate between a child and a grown up.”

Thousands have sought refuge in schools run by the United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), now transformed into temporary shelters for fleeing families. These schools, however, are severely overcrowded, and obviously not suited to the task of serving as impromptu refugee shelters for thousands of people. Gazans are justified in feeling afraid of the inhuman face of the Israeli war machine—a machine that robs families of their homes and ignores UN calls to avoid a ground invasion.

“We are here because of the attacks,” said a Palestinian man seeking refuge in a UNRWA school. “The aircrafts attack us every night. We can’t differentiate night from morning. The attacks are non stop with no mercy.”

The Ground Invasion Becomes Official

On Thursday, July 17, Israel’s ground invasion became official. The IDF began operating north near Beit Lahiya, and some were positioned in the east. “Our forces,” said Israel’s chief military spokesman Brig. Gen. Motti Almoz, “large ground forces accompanied by massive air force support, naval forces and intelligence, are taking over targets in Gaza.” Since then, heavy tank shelling has been reported. On Friday morning, Israel called in another 18,000 reservist troops to join the invasion.

The entire logic behind Israel’s “warning” to civilians is absurd. They warn Gazans that they’re going to invade, that they will be under fire; yet can Palestinians in the region even run away? Where are they supposed to go when the only borders around them are water, the closed border of Egypt, and the border of a country that they are not allowed to cross even though that country is occupying their land? There is no other way to describe it: Palestinians are trapped in a giant, lethal prison in the hands of Israel.

Mass Arrests

Since June 12th, the beginning of Israel’s mass campaign of arbitrary arrests, 1079 palestinians have been detained. This campaign was mainly resumed and expanded on July 14, when another 57 Palestinians were arrested, including Abdul-Sattar Qassem, an academic, and 11 members of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC)—reaching a total of 35 imprisoned PLC members.

Sammer Issawi is one of the many arbitrarily imprisoned Palestinians. A hunger striker, he has now been imprisoned twice, and so has his sister and lawyer Shireen Issawi. Disturbingly, what relates all of these prisoners to each other is the fact that they are being imprisoned without charge or trial.

The Ongoing Illegal Blockade of Gaza

Despite the fact that the Oslo Accord of 1993 guarantees Palestinians the right to freely travel and trade goods between Gaza and the West Bank, Israel has continued to prevent this legal reality from turning into an actual one. On occasion, such as between 2007 and 2010, Israel has allowed only certain goods into the territory that it deemed to be “vital for the survival of the civilian population”. Arbitrary restrictions have been placed on such unnecessary items as shoes, paper, and even coffee and tea, which were banned from being imported into and exported out of the Gaza strip.

‘The Facade of Ceasefire Talks,’ Part III of this five-part series on Palestine and Israel’s ‘Operation Protective Edge’ is available here.