Voice of Revolution

Katrina, Jena, Iraq Show Necessity

Reject U.S. Racism and War on Terrorism! Support and Demand Anti-War Candidates!

Enough is enough! People are rejecting the brutal and dangerous direction of the U.S., its path of complete impunity, of racism, fascism and war. The state is giving itself the right to abandon all norms and standards, all principles established by humanity. It is doing this both inside and outside the country. Torture, pre-emptive war, massacres, legal lynchings and genocide here at home — through mass incarceration, abandoning Katrina survivors and more — are all examples. This is not what the American people need or want!

The broad sentiment across the country is for a government that is anti-war, one that upholds principles and stands against aggressive war and impunity. This is what people need and want, this is what the U.S. government cannot deliver. Thus the necessity is for the people themselves to support and become anti-war candidates, as part of the on-going work to build the mechanisms necessary to build the politics of empowerment.

The U.S. continues to show that it is a failed state, whether in its aggressive war against Iraq, in its crimes against Katrina survivors, in its state-organized racism in Jena and nationwide — on all fronts, it is a failed state. Broad impunity with greater crimes at all levels is the necessary result. As a failed state, the U.S. cannot reproduce the arrangements of the past, based on the Constitution. It cannot maintain the norms and standards for relations internationally, or between the government and people at home. This failure includes its inability to hold elections with any semblance of legitimacy. And now even illusions that the Democrats can somehow save the day cannot be reproduced. These illusions are instead daily being smashed. Repeatedly, the Democrats cannot deliver on ending the war, cannot even deliver on blocking funds.

Enough is Enough! Now is the time to use the 2008 elections as an arena for the struggle people are waging to empower themselves and create conditions to be able to govern and decide. Now is the time to utilize the unity in action expressed at the many demonstrations and struggles to advance anti-war candidates from among the people.

There is great pressure by the ruling circles and their parties to push the movements of the people for their rights backward and use the elections as a mechanism for this. We are supposed to abandon our experience and again have hope in the hopeless Democrats. We are to accept that anti-war candidates do not have a chance. Why not? They represent the majority — so elect them as representatives. Why should we accept election machinery that blocks the majority and keeps them out of power? Why should we accept a situation where the demand to end the war has no chance of being implemented?! This is what Congress and the president have repeatedly made clear. They have equally made clear that the broad impunity and crimes of the government will increase. More government spying without warrants has been approved, prisoners indefinitely detained again denied any recourse to the courts, no action taken to stop the blatant racism and injustice seen in Jena and taking place nationwide. Taking away peoples lives “at the stroke of a pen,” by government officials at all levels is to be made the norm. Policing agencies from local police on up are being turned into secret police to spy on people the police themselves admit have committed no crime and are just “ordinary people.” Crimes are no longer the issue. Instead the target is the “potential” of individuals to become criminals, based on their “radical ideas.”

Given today’s reality, the question is not do anti-war candidates have a chance — the question is, how can we not fight to change the government? And for change to be brought about, the people themselves have to bring it about. This is the concrete experience everywhere — only by relying on themselves, on their own efforts to be political and build their organized resistance is a path for progress opened. The electoral front is no different. The broad unity in action seen all across the country, whether at the International Tribunal on Katrina, the anti-war actions during September and into October, the Jena actions, this same unity in action can be utilized to provide the support and organizing needed in the electoral arena. We say everyone has had enough of the rotten government and their rotten parties. Let’s being in the new!

Support and Demand Anti-War Candidates!

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Blackwater Massacre

The Real Story of Baghdad’s Bloody Sunday

Kim Sengupta, The Independent, Britain

Six days ago, at least 28 civilians died in a shooting incident involving the U.S. security company Blackwater. But what actually happened?

The eruption of gunfire was sudden and ferocious, round after round mowing down terrified men women and children, slamming into cars as they collided and overturned with drivers frantically trying to escape. Some vehicles were set alight by exploding petrol tanks. A mother and her infant child died in one of them, trapped in the flames.

The shooting on Sunday, by the guards of the American private security company Blackwater, has sparked one of the most bitter and public disputes between the Iraqi government and its American patrons, and brings into sharp focus the often violent conduct of the Western private armies operating in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, immune from scrutiny or prosecution.

Blackwater’s security men are accused of going on an unprovoked killing spree. Hassan Jabar Salman, a lawyer, was shot four times in the back, his car riddled with eight more bullets, as he attempted to get away from their convoy. Yesterday, sitting swathed in bandages at Baghdad’s Yarmukh Hospital, he recalled scenes of horror. “I saw women and children jump out of their cars and start to crawl on the road to escape being shot,” said Mr. Salman. “But still the firing kept coming and many of them were killed. I saw a boy of about 10 leaping in fear from a minibus, he was shot in the head. His mother was crying out for him, she jumped out after him, and she was killed. People were afraid.”

At the end of the prolonged hail of bullets Nisoor Square was a scene of carnage with bodies strewn around smoldering wreckage. Ambulances trying to pick up the wounded found their path blocked by crowds fleeing the gunfire.

Yesterday, the death toll from the incident, according to Iraqi authorities, stood at 28. And it could rise higher, say doctors, as some of the injured, hit by high-velocity bullets at close quarter, are unlikely to survive.

With public anger among Iraqis showing no sign of abating, the US administration has suspended all land movement by officials outside the heavily fortified Green Zone.

The Iraqi government has revoked Blackwater’s license to operate but it still remains employed by the U.S. government. The Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, has, however, promised a “transparent” inquiry into what happened.

Blackwater and the U.S. State Department maintain that the guards opened fire in self-defense as they reacted to a bomb blast and then sniper fire. Amid continuing accusations and recriminations, The Independent has tried to piece together events on that day.

The reports we got from members of the public, Iraqi security personnel and government officials, as well as our own research, leads to a markedly different scenario than the American version. There was a bomb blast. But it was too far away to pose any danger to the Blackwater guards, and their State Department charges. We have found no Iraqi present at the scene who saw or heard sniper fire.

Witnesses say the first victims of the shootings were a couple with their child, the mother and infant meeting horrific deaths, their bodies fused together by heat after their car caught fire. The contractors, according to this account, also shot Iraqi soldiers and police and Blackwater then called in an attack helicopter from its private air force that inflicted further casualties.

Blackwater disputes most of this. In a statement the company declared that those killed were “armed insurgents and our personnel acted lawfully and appropriately in a war zone protecting American lives.”

The day after the killings, Mirenbe Nantongo, a spokeswoman for the U.S. embassy, said the Blackwater team had ” reacted to a car bombing”. The embassy’s information officer, Johann Schmonsees, stressed ” the car bomb was in proximity to the place where State Department personnel were meeting, and that was the reason why Blackwater responded to the incident.”

Those on the receiving end tell another story. Mr. Salman said he had turned into Nisoor Square behind the Blackwater convoy when the shooting began. He recalled: “There were eight foreigners in four utility vehicles, I heard an explosion in the distance and then the foreigners started shouting and signaling for us to go back. I turned the car around and must have driven about a hundred feet when they started shooting. My car was hit with 12 bullets it turned over. Four bullets hit me in the back and another in the arm. Why they opened fire? I do not know. No one, I repeat no one, had fired at them. The foreigners had asked us to go back and I was going back in my car, so there was no reason for them to shoot.”

Muhammed Hussein, whose brother was killed in the shooting, said: “My brother was driving and we saw a black convoy ahead of us. Then I saw my brother suddenly slump in the car. I dragged him out of the car and saw he had been shot in the chest. I tried to hide us both from the firing, but then I realized he was already dead.”

Jawad Karim Ali was on his way to pick up his aunt from Yarmukh Hospital when shooting started and the windscreen exploded cutting his face. ” Then I was hit on my left shoulder by bullets, two of them another one went past my face. Now my aunt is out of hospital and I am sitting here. There was a big bang further away but no shots before the security people fired, and they just kept firing.”

Baghdad’s “Bloody Sunday” has become a test of sovereignty between the powers of the Iraqi government and the US. The Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, said: “We will not tolerate the killing of our citizens in cold blood.” The shooting was, he said, the seventh of its kind involving Blackwater.

The company, which has its headquarters in North Carolina, is one of the largest beneficiaries of the lucrative occupation dividend, holding the contract to provide security for top-level American officials.

Its reputation in Iraq is particularly controversial. It was the killing of four of the company’s employees in 2004 that led to the bloody confrontation in Fallujah. The men’s bodies were set on fire, dragged through the streets and then hung from a bridge. Blackwater personnel are recognizable from their “uniform” of wraparound sunglasses and body armor over dark colored sweatshirts and helmets. Employees are thought to earn about $600 (£300) per day.

Sunday’s shooting happened at Mansour, once one of the most fashionable districts of Baghdad, with roads flanked by shops selling expensive goods, restaurants and art galleries. In the height of the sectarian bloodletting between Shias and Sunnis earlier this year dead bodies would be regularly strewn in the streets. A semblance of safety has returned since, and Mansour was held up as an example of how the U.S. military “surge” was cutting the violence.

We were in Mansour on Sunday when we heard the sound of a deafening explosion just after midday. Black plumes of smoke rose from a half-blasted National Guard (army) post near a mosque. Five or six minutes afterwards there was the sound of prolonged shooting towards the south.

Police Captain Ali Ibrahim, who was on duty near Nisoor Square, said: ” We heard the bomb go off, it was very loud, but it wasn’t at the square. The police were, in fact, trying to clear the way for the contractors when they became agitated, they opened fire. No one was shooting at them.”

Asked about the witness accounts, Ali al-Dabbagh, an Iraqi government spokesman, confirmed: “The traffic policemen were trying to open the road for them. It was a crowded square and one small car did not stop, it was moving very slowly. They started shooting randomly, there was a couple and their child inside the car and they were hit.”

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America’s Mercenary Police

Why Aren’t We Banning Blackwater in the U.S.?

Dave Lindorff, Counterpunch

Let’s give the Iraqi puppet government some credit: At least they have the sense to de-license and order out of the country the Blackwater mercenary outfit. The real question is why we allow them here in the U.S. Recall that FEMA and Homeland Security used heavily armed Blackwater troops in the aftermath of the Katrina disaster in New Orleans. They were seen wandering around in flak jackets and helmets, with no identifying tags, carrying heavy weapons and M-16s. It is not clear how many people they may have killed or injured in those terrible days. Worse yet, there is word that Homeland Security has standing contracts with Blackwater and other private mercenary firms for other “national emergency” situations in the U.S.

This whole concept is an affront to democracy and a grave threat to the survival of our democratic freedoms. The law requires police in the U.S. to identify themselves with badges that show their number clearly, so that if they abuse their power, people know how to file a complaint or a lawsuit, which is the only recourse they have for illegal behavior by police forces.

Police are also supposed to be trained in things like Miranda rights, civil liberties and so on. While many officers go on and act like laws unto themselves anyway, particularly in poor and minority communities, there is a presumption that they will behave in a law-abiding manner, and when they do not it is possible to challenge them.

Not so private mercenary “police.”

Such forces have no place in any democratic society, and they have no place in ours. Nor do they have any place in American military actions overseas. Bear in mind that the British use of Hessian (German) mercenaries during colonial times was one of the main grievances that fired up American revolutionaries (although in fairness to the German soldiers-of-fortune, many of them eventually went AWOL and became Americans).

Why isn’t it being decried as a scandal that today America is increasingly turning over its military and its police to mercenary forces, many of whom are not even Americans? Blackwater, DynCorp and other such firms are hiring Israeli veterans, former South African police, and Latin American graduates of the notorious School of the Americas (Torture U) to fill out their ranks, along with veterans of such U.S. outfits as Delta Force, Navy Seals and the Green Berets.

The Iraqis have seen close up the inhumanity and ruthlessness of these mercenary outfits, and are starting to take steps to rein them in or toss them out. Americans should demand the same here at home.

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NYPD and Federal Police Agencies Work to Establish Police-State Measures on College Campuses

Only a month after the release of its 90-page report on “Homegrown Terrorism” the New York Police Department (NYPD) is focusing efforts on policing college campuses. It is promoting the use of its method of profiling individuals at a point where police “believe the potential terrorist or group of terrorists begin and progress through a radicalization process.” The NYPD admits this occurs at a point where no crime has been committed, or planned, and when in fact the individuals are “unremarkable” from the point of view of law enforcement.

On September 19, 2007, New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly organized a daylong conference at police headquarters. College “security officials” from some of the city’s dozens of colleges listened to presentations given by NYPD on what police identify as “militant Islamic groups.” Law enforcement officials from the 1999 Columbine shootings and from the 2006 Amish elementary school in West Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania also spoke, as did Former Homeland Security czar Tom Ridge. Ridge served on the committee that reviewed the recent killings at Virginia Tech.

To further pressure education institutions to line up behind broad government and police impunity, conference organizers and presenters emphasized the need for more “sharing of information,” and increased profiling based on targeting “radical ideas” and “potential.” Disinformation about terrorist threats in NYC, such as “terrorist plots” that have been police instigated through use of informants or that never become specific, was also used to pressure people. The NYPD and federal forces are essential calling for the same “threat assessments” used for terrorists to be used against the youth, in the name of “preventing shootings.” All of these measures rely on profiling of youth, with the main emphasis now being to do it “long before” there are even signs of any criminal activity and targeting a “radicalization process.” It is impunity to impose thought control and to unleash police against the growing resistance among the youth.

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NYPD’s Terrorism Operations

There are nearly 38,000 police officers in the New York Police Department, larger than the standing armies of 84 countries. One thousand of these officers have been assigned to the intelligence division. This division, along with the “terrorism” squads, are being utilized to turn police departments, or at least sections of them, into spies and instigators of terrorism. In an unprecedented move, the NYPD has even stationed its own forces overseas as part of its “early warning system.” This is a city police department with no jurisdiction whatsoever outside of New York City, let alone abroad. There are now New York City police officers stationed in London working with New Scotland Yard; in Lyons at the headquarters of Interpol; and in Hamburg, Tel Aviv, and Toronto. There are also officers on assignment at FBI headquarters in Washington, and New York detectives have traveled to Afghanistan, Egypt, Yemen, Pakistan, and the military’s concentration camp at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba to conduct “interrogations.” Members of the department’s command staff have also attended sessions at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. Not only do NYPD officers routinely appear at the site of “terror attacks” around the world, law-enforcement officials from around the U.S. and overseas regularly come to the NYPD to “learn” how to better profile and spy on the public.

Reflecting conflicts within the ruling circles, where police forces at all levels fiercely compete and line up with various factions of the rich, the NYPD maintains that it alone — not the military, the FBI, or the CIA — will take responsibility for the New York City. S ix years after 9/11 the city remains on a high state of alert. In that time the NYPD has established many new police-state arrangements.

According to a March 2006 CBS news report, “One common sight in the city’s fight against terror is a counter-terrorism operation called ‘a surge.’ About 100 police cars [with 200 police officers] from all over the city swarm into an area like Times Square. These happen unannounced all over the city. It begins with an officer briefing, not only on their specific assignments, but on a subject you might not expect — terrorist developments thousands of miles away.” Such “operations” are said to be conducted every day, seven days a week. Their aim, much like the measures taken at airports and in high schools, is to terrorize and humiliate the public and make this terrorizing normal. Many people report feeling intimidated and frightened by these measures.

Also routine and in NYC is the continual presence of teams of heavily armed police who show up unannounced at train stations, office buildings, and other “potential targets” throughout the city. “Security checks” and bag searches on the city’s subways and trains are routine as well. In addition, every day the Harbor Unit patrols landmarks from the Statue of Liberty to the Staten Island Ferry, police divers check the base of the Brooklyn Bridge for explosives, and helicopters with high-tech cameras monitor the city, looking for anything “out of the ordinary”— every day.

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6th Anniversary of 9/11

No to the War on Terror and Rule by Exception!

Repeal the Anti-Terrorism Act and Abolish Security Certificates!

Defend the Rights of All!

TML Daily, Canada

On the occasion of the sixth anniversary of the tragic events of 9/11, TML unequivocally condemns the brutal and vengeful “war on terror” unleashed by the U.S. imperialists and their allies on the world’s peoples and their struggles for justice and national liberation. TML salutes the peoples’ fighting forces who have not submitted to the imperialists’ dictate and are working hard to keep their bearings in a complex and difficult situation.

The call of history is beckoning all of humanity to move on. Yet the imperialists who will not accept that their time has passed are responding with darkest reaction, promising to inflict further war and genocide. This reaction is being met with resistance and great sacrifice on the part of the world’s peoples to ensure that further tragedies do not come to pass, especially the peoples of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine who are in a fight to the death against imperialist occupation. It is this resistance that has been and will continue to be decisive in providing security and a bright future for humanity.

Reality is telling the world that the crisis-ridden missions in Iraq and Afghanistan cannot succeed, yet the imperialists try and float further schemes in order to win the “hearts and minds” of the people in the hope of gaining approval for the heinous crimes against humanity they are committing. This is the case with the Canadian government’s public relations campaign to build support for the criminal occupation of Afghanistan and Canada’s leading role there. Most recently, this has included the hiring by the Canadian government of the very same British academic who counseled Tony Blair that the Iraq war was legal despite all other legal opinions. He was hired to prepare a legal opinion that the Canadian military has no obligation to accord Afghan detainees “Canadian-style” legal rights. Another aspect of these schemes is to destroy all vestiges of rule of law and due process for purposes of seeking justice by “legalizing” rule by exception.

In the six years since the events of September 11, 2001, U.S. imperialism and its allies have sought to institute rule by exception. In the hands of the reactionary ruling class, rule by exception means that under exceptional circumstances, i.e. the threat of terrorism, the state reserves the right to abandon all norms and principles of conduct established by human society. It is this self-serving rule by exception that underlies the profound denigration of humanity by the imperialists, which includes: “pre-emptive strikes” on Iraq and Afghanistan (a euphemistic term for aggressive war); might makes right; U.S. renditions to torture in secret prisons; the justification of torture; the designation of “unlawful combatant” status to evade Geneva Convention obligations to prisoners of war; attacks on fundamental legal principles of guilty-until-proven-innocent and habeas corpus; the wanton killing of millions of civilians, and so on.

In Canada, this legalization of rule by exception is manifested in part by the Anti-Terrorist Act and security certificate procedure. The Harper government has announced its intentions to renew portions of the Anti-Terrorism Act that expired on March 1 of this year, as well as to modify provisions of the security certificate procedure struck down by the Supreme Court on February 23. The government says its changes will conform to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and thus be considered “legal,” which is what it claimed when the security certificates were first challenged -- that the procedure was “Charter-proof.” Through these laws, the state is seeking to codify exceptional measures and in the process split the polity by attacking vulnerable members of society on the basis that civil rights can be denied to certain members and that this is an acceptable price to pay in order to establish a “balance” between individual rights and security. It must not pass! The security certificate procedure must be abolished and the Anti-Terrorism Act repealed.

The direct experience of working class and people is that an attack against one is an attack against all. Basing themselves on this experience they have refused to be split on a racist or any other basis. Rights belong collectively to all members of society and are not a matter of balance; they are either recognized and affirmed or negated. It is only through the recognition of the rights of all that the rights and security of the individual can be provided with a guarantee.

In the coming period where the imperialists in their desperation will resort to further reaction and untold crimes against humanity, TML calls on the Canadian working class, women and youth to remain active and vigilant and continue discussing and organizing their collectives to defend their interests and that of the society.

No to the War on Terror and Rule by Exception!

Repeal the Anti-Terrorism Act

and Abolish Security Certificates!

Defend the Rights of All!

TML Daily is the On-Line newspaper of the Communist Party of Canada (-Marxist-Leninist), cpcml.ca

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Chile

Remembering the Atrocities of 9/11

Chileans Pay Tribute to Salvador Allende Under Cloud of State Repression

On Sunday, September 9, thousands of Chileans came out in the capital Santiago to attend a demonstration in memory of former Chilean President Salvador Allende, 34 years after his assassination on September 11, 1973 in the U.S.-organized military coup that installed Augusto Pinochet.

Intending to march to La Moneda Presidential Palace, the participants gathered in a neighborhood three blocks from the site. In a disconcerting echo from the past, the demonstration was blocked from marching to the presidential palace by the deployment of thousands of police on foot and horseback, who took up positions with metal barriers, water cannons and tear gas. After a brief dialogue with the ranking officer who denied them permission to march along La Alameda Avenue, the demonstrators opted to march to Santiago’s main cemetery to hold their memorial, described as “the first September 11 without Pinochet.”

The march was headed by the -Assembly of Human Rights and relatives of abducted/missing persons, who, holding photos of their loved ones, demanded justice. Leaders of the Chilean Communist Party and other popular movements also attended.

More than 100 people were arrested in the one confrontation between police and protestors that occurred before midday, AFP reported. Allende, the democratically elected socialist President of Chile was overthrown and died when La Moneda Presidential Palace in Santiago was bombed by the Chilean military. The military coup d’etat that assassinated Allende was extremely violent from the very beginning. The military surrounded La Moneda with tanks and infantry troops and bombed it with Hawker Hunter fighter jets. The president and some of his aides were besieged in the palace. Allende refused to surrender, and addressed the nation for a last time in a potent farewell speech (see below).

The worst violence occurred in the first few months after the coup, with the number of suspected leftists killed or “disappeared” soon reaching into the thousands. In the days immediately following the coup, the National Stadium was used as a concentration camp holding 40,000 prisoners. Some of the most famous cases of “desaparecidos” are Charles Horman, a U.S. citizen who was tortured and killed during the coup itself; Chilean songwriter Victor Jara, murdered while held prisoner at the National Stadium immediately after the coup, and the October 1973 Caravan of Death (Caravana de la Muerte) where at least 70 persons were killed. Approximately 130,000 individuals were arrested in a three-year period, with the number of dead and “disappeared” reaching into the thousands within the first few months. Most of the people targeted had been supporters of Allende and many still remain unaccounted for.

It is with no sense of shame or irony that 34 years later the Chilean state, led by President Michelle Bachelet, intervened to criminalize a demonstration memorializing a great tragedy that is part of living history for the Chilean people. Bachelet herself is a victim of this U.S.-sponsored coup and criminal dictatorship. Her father, Air Force Brigadier General Alberto Bachelet Martínez was in charge of the Food Distribution Office under Allende. Following the coup, General Bachelet refused exile and was detained under charges of treason. Following months of daily torture, on March 12, 1974, he suffered a cardiac arrest that resulted in his death. Bachelet and her mother were also detained and tortured before going into exile in 1975, to return only in 1979.

The Chilean state’s repression of this demonstration comes at time when the criminal role of the U.S. imperialists, the CIA and then U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger are still coming to light and Kissinger and others responsible have yet to be brought to justice for their crimes. Rather than rectifying past injustices and moving into the future on a new basis, the Bachelet government has chosen to act in a manner that can only be seen as harkening back to the dark past of the U.S.-puppet Pinochet dictatorship which if unchecked will not bode well for the future of Chile.

Salvador Allende’s Last Speech

My friends,

Surely this will be the last opportunity for me to address you. The Air Force has bombed the antennas of Radio Magallanes.

My words do not have bitterness but disappointment. May they be a moral punishment for those who have betrayed their oath: soldiers of Chile, titular commanders in chief, Admiral Merino, who has designated himself Commander of the Navy, and Mr. Mendoza, the despicable general who only yesterday pledged his fidelity and loyalty to the Government, and who also has appointed himself Chief of the Carabineros [paramilitary police].

Given these facts, the only thing left for me is to say to workers: I am not going to resign! Placed in a historic transition, I will pay for loyalty to the people with my life. And I say to them that I am certain that the seeds which we have planted in the good conscience of thousands and thousands of Chileans will not be shriveled forever.

They have force and will be able to dominate us, but social processes can be arrested by neither crime nor force. History is ours, and people make history.

Workers of my country: I want to thank you for the loyalty that you always had, the confidence that you deposited in a man who was only an interpreter of great yearnings for justice, who gave his word that he would respect the Constitution and the law and did just that. At this definitive moment, the last moment when I can address you, I wish you to take advantage of the lesson: foreign capital, imperialism, together with the reaction, created the climate in which the Armed Forces broke their tradition, the tradition taught by General Schneider and reaffirmed by Commander Araya, victims of the same social sector who today are hoping, with foreign assistance, to re-conquer the power to continue defending their profits and their privileges.

I address you, above all, the modest woman of our land, the campesina who believed in us, the mother who knew our concern for children. I address -professionals of Chile, patriotic professionals who continued working against the sedition that was supported by professional associations, classist associations that also defended the advantages of capitalist society. I address the youth, those who sang and gave us their joy and their spirit of struggle. I address the man of Chile, the worker, the farmer, the intellectual, those who will be persecuted, because in our country fascism has been already present for many hours — in terrorist attacks, blowing up the bridges, cutting the railroad tracks, destroying the oil and gas pipelines, in the face of the silence of those who had the obligation to act. They were committed. History will judge them.

Surely Radio Magallanes will be silenced, and the calm metal instrument of my voice will no longer reach you. It does not matter. You will continue hearing it. I will always be next to you. At least my memory will be that of a man of dignity who was loyal to his country.

The people must defend themselves, but they must not sacrifice themselves. The people must not let themselves be destroyed or riddled with bullets, but they cannot be humiliated either.

Workers of my country, I have faith in Chile and its destiny. Other men will overcome this dark and bitter moment when treason seeks to prevail. Go forward knowing that, sooner rather than later, the great avenues will open again and free men will walk through them to construct a better society.

Long Live Chile! Long live the people! Long live the workers!

These are my last words, and I am certain that my sacrifice will not be in vain. I am certain that, at the very least, it will be a moral lesson that will punish felony, cowardice, and treason .

Santiago de Chile

September 11, 1973

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Katrina, Jena, Iraq Show Necessity • Reject U.S. Racism and War on Terrorism! Support and Demand Anti-War Candidates!

Katrina, Jena, Iraq Show Necessity
• Reject U.S. Racism and War on Terrorism! Support and Demand Anti-War Candidates!