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WarriorPublications.com Statement on RBC Arson Attack

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Banner displayed during anti-olympic rally on May 2009
Banner displayed during anti-olympic rally on May 2009

Original Peoples, →Agriculture, →Environment

May 21, 2010

Occupied Coast Salish Territory

[Vancouver, Canada]

The May 18, 2010, arson attack on the Royal Bank of Canada in Ottawa was clearly an anti-colonial and anti-capitalist action. It has had a strong impact across the country and invoked the wrath of the state. As both sabotage and propaganda, the attack was highly successful: the bank was almost totally destroyed while the RBC's funding of the genocidal Tar Sands was once again highlighted.

The attack appears to be by non-Native militants acting, in part, in solidarity with Native peoples in both BC (the 2010 Olympics and its aftermath) and northern Alberta (Tar Sands), both of which the RBC has been a main funder for.

The action and communique from the FFFC-Ottawa speaks for itself. In the days following, others (besides the government, corporations and pigs) have also taken the opportunity to speak; not against the RBC or genocide of Indigenous peoples, but against those who carried out the action.

Some have done so by invoking the struggle of Indigenous peoples itself as a way of condemning the attack. Some Native reformists and bureaucrats have attempted to impose themselves as some kind of 'leadership' over Indigenous peoples and resistance. One jet-setting actorvist has stated that those who support the struggle against the Tar Sands must abide by the 'leadership' of those on the 'front lines,' including nonviolence (although the only 'front line' he's familiar with is that at the airport check-in).

I personally know Dene from the Fort McMurray area who rejoiced at the news that an RBC had been fire-bombed as an act of anti-colonial solidarity. They are the real people—they have seen, and are seeing, family members die of cancers, their land and water toxified, their traditional way of life destroyed, as a result of the Tar Sands and RBC's financial support.

Not every Dene, or Indigenous person, will agree with the attack. Nor will every 'actorvist.' But then, not everyone agrees with flying around the world attending conferences or rallies. Or walking around in circles with flimsy placards. Yet, we know, or should know, that all these activities are necessary at times to build awareness, consciousness, solidarity, action, and to achieve our objective(s). That is why the principle of respect for a diversity of tactics is promoted.

It is ironic that in this year of 2010, the 20th anniversary of the 'Oka Crisis', when armed warriors confronted Canadian soldiers in the Kanienkehaka communities of Kanehsatake and Kahnawake, there are Indigenous 'defenders' now attempting to impose codes of 'nonviolence.'

Our peoples have engaged in over 500 years of resistance to colonization using a diversity of tactics, including armed resistance, blockades, occupations, protests, land reclamations, etc. Yes, people have died and many more have been injured, property destroyed, etc.—but colonialism is by its very nature violent.

Indigenous peoples in Canada suffer many casualties today. Suicides, drugs and alchohol, disease, toxic water, prisons, police violence, thousands of missing or murdered Native women. These are not the result of anti-colonial resistance, but that of colonial genocide. Yet, neither Canada nor the corporations involved in destroying land and life are ever described as 'violent.' It is only when there is a militant attack against them that there is a moralizing cry of violence.

To support the institutionalized violence of colonialism, or the state's monopoly on the use of violence, while condemning those who resist such violence, is nothing less than hypocrisy.

Yes, there is violence in resistance, there is love and joy, there is heartache, there is bitterness and hatred as well as hope and passion. Sounds like life, doesn't it? And those who risk their freedom in this life and death struggle should be respected for their courage and committment, not condemned.

 

In the Spirit of Total Resistance—Smash Capitalism!

Long Live the Class Warrior!

Originally published on Warrior Publications

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Comments

respect for a diversity of tactics?

your comments here are far less respectful of a diversity of tactics than the statements of those you criticize.

Sigh

Gord Hill's usual personal invective. Predictable and unconvincing. Your argument would be stronger without attacking everyone who disagrees with you as an "actorvist".

Keep your sighs and predictions to yourself

fuck you vancouver anonymous, who is this vancouver anonymous who writes more often than not, comments meant to negate the previous opinion, viewpoint, direct experience?

and this time, sigh, like the world is so unamusing to you these days, and you know so well what to expect of each moment and the future.  bourgeois goof

I dare you to write three paragraphs at least, let's see your 'style', and the stregnth of your thoughts, not just your pronouncements, arrogant hater fuck.  I hate you.

I liked the way the article was expressed, and the reality of the words on violence.  Succinct and direct.  It's amazing though how people can be distracted by their personal feelings of being attacked.  So much that they look past real words and and the experience of many, being expressed elogantly, if also biting at the same time.

It is interesting how most people won't denonce the state and it's violences very articulately, if at all.  Though individuals who measure out violence, intentionally, are denigrated with many adjectives and hopes for state reprisal against them, and for their suffering.     You are the colonizer.  You are l'Agent Provocateur.

Being against colonialisation, and not being convinced of the violence involved, or the necesity of violent attack on the state by peoples around the world(oh but yes, just not these people here against this state) starts me generalizing in my thoughts about the writer(anonymous).  But these generalities might not be that interesting or accurate, I admit, and I have little want to confuse you any more with your own defensiveness or introspection(are you introspective?)

Solidarity with fighters and poets.

Gord, thanks for saying so

Gord, thanks for saying so well what so many of us are thinking and many others are learning with every new act of resistance.  People could take a lesson or two here in what solidarity means.

I like that the defense of

I like that the defense of Kanesatake (Oka) is raised in this statement because I think it underlines a significant difference between that defense and clandestine actions like the arson.

The most significant difference is that the "warriors" that defended Kanesatake were under direct civilan control by the women of the community that they were defending. The armed men were directly accountable to that community and took up and laid down thier arms on the orders of civilain community members that were also defending the land.

That is a huge difference with the clandestine arsonists who as far as anyone can tell are a self-appointed, unaccountable small cell operating without any civilain or community control.

 

Let the Glass break and the Mollies fly!

"by any means necessary"

FREEDOM!

Right

Man, if you're going to bash Clayton in such an obvious way you might as well just say his name.

It's pretty rich to call anyone who doesn't agree with blowing shit up a "reformist." But more to the point, the IEN statement wasn't bashing anybody. It was simply an acknowledgement of the work that they have been doing and a suggestion for those (particularly non-Indigenous individuals) who invoke the call for respect of Indigenous rights to COMMUNICATE  with and listen to the Indigenous communities that their "actions" will invariably affect.

Solidarity? Respect? We're all in this fight together.

UNITED NATIONS – Palestinian

UNITED NATIONS – Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Saturday there will be no peace deal with Israel unless the Jewish state stops settlement construction in areas the Palestinians claim for their future state. "Israel must choose between peace and the continuation of settlements," Abbas said in his address to the U.N. General Assembly's annual ministerial meeting. Direct peace talks between Isエルメス 財布;エルメス ベルト;エルメス その他;エルメス 真レザー;エルメス アクセサリー bag-brand ルイヴィトンバッグrael and the Palestinians stalled only three weeks after starting in Washington in early September over the impending end of a 10-month freeze on new Israeli settlement construction on land claimed by the Palestinians. Abbas reaffirmed the Palestinian commitment to try to reach a peace deal. "We have decided to enter into final status negotiations. We will continue to exert every effort to reach an agreement for Palestinian-Israeli peace within one year in accordance with resolutions of international legitimacy ... and the vision of the two-state solution," AbbIWCクラシックパイロット;IWCポートフィノ;ロレックスデイトジャスト 020bagss.com エルメスコピー エルメス バーキン;エルメス ケリーas told ministers and diplomats. But with a Sunday deadline looming for Israel to resume the contested building, the Palestinians are waiting for U.S. efforts to break the impasse. President Barack Obama has increasingly IWCスピットファイアー;IWCポルトギーゼ ;;|ルイヴィトンバッグ バッグ|ルイヴィトンバッグ 財布 モノグラム;ダミエ;ダミエ・アズールofficials said Saturday a deal was far from certain. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said U.S. special Mideast peace envoy George Mitchell met with Abbas for about half an hour on Saturday. "We remain engaged with both sides," he said. Earlier, Crowley said, "We are doing everything we can to keep the parties in direct talks." In his U.N. speech, Abbas said, "Our demands for the cessation of settlement activities, the lifting of the siege (of Gaza) and an end to all other illegal Israel policies and practices do not constitute arbitrary preconditions in the peace process." These are past obligations that Israel is required to implement, he said, and Israel's implementation "will lead to the creation of the necessary environment for the success of the negotiations." He said the Palestinians and the wider Middle East are continuously pushed into "the corner of violence and conflict" as a result of Israel's "mentality of expansion and domiブランド腕時計;ロレックス時計;オメガ時計;IWC腕時計 ロレックスデイトナ;ロレックスエクスプローラー;ロレックスGMTマスターIInation." The Palestinian president demanded an end to Israel's repeated flouting of U.N. resolutions, its destruction of the historical identity of Jerusalem, and its blockade of the Gaza Strip which he said has created massive suffering for the people living there and prevented reconstruction. On the settlement dispute, some in Israel have proposed, for example, that limited building will resume but not the relatively unfettered construction that prevailed before the Israeli moratorium. Palestinians say it is essential that Israel leave tマルチカラー;モノグラム・デニム;モノグラム・ダンテェル;ダミエ・ジェアン;スティーブン・スプラウスコレクションhe restrictions on settlement construction in place. Abbas has repeatedly warned that he will be forced to walk away from the direct negotiations if construction resumes. The Palestinians claim all of the West Bank, home to 300,000 Jewish settlers, as part of a future state, and say that by expanding settlements, Israel is imposing facts on the ground that make it increasingly difficult to establish a viable country. At the same time, Israeli Prime Minister ロレックスサブマリーナ;ロレックスヨットマスター;ロレックスターノグラフ ロレックスミルガウス;オメガコンステレーションBenjamin Netanyahu faces heavy pressure within his pro-settler governing coalition to resume construction. Hardline elements in the coalition could try to bring down the government if Netanyahu extends the settlement slowdown. Pro-settler activists hauled bulldozers, cement mixers and other construction equipment into the Revava settlement in the northern West Bank on Saturday. Dモノグラム・ミロワール;スハリ・ライン;マヒナ;モノグラム・ダンテェル;ダミエ・ジェアン;スティーブン・スプラウスコレクション anny Danon, a pro-settler lawmaker in Netanyahu's Likud Party, said activists would lay the cornerstone for a new neighborhood on Sunday, the last day of the slowdown, and planned additional construction Monday after the restrictions formally end. In his U.N. address earlier this week, Obama called on Israel to extend the moratorium, sayingモノグラム;ダミエ;ダミエ・アズール;ダミエ-グラフィット;ヴェルニ;エピ;モノグラム・ミニ・ラン;タイガ;マルチカラー; it "has made a difference on the ground and improved the atmosphere for talks." The Quartet of Mideast peacemakers — the U.S., U.N., European Union and Russia — made a similar plea to extend the moratorium. "Restoring the credibility of the peace process requires compelling the government oロレックスエアキング;ロレックスパーペチュアルデイト ロレックスチェリーニ チェリニウム;ロレックスデイデイト;ロレックスプリンス f Israel to comply with its obligations and commitments," Abbas said, "particularly to cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, especially in and around East Jerusalem, as well as the dismantling of the annexation apartheid wall." The Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state. They also object to the separation barrier built by Israelis between the West Bank and Israel to prevent deadly suicide bombings. Some parts of the barrier cuts into Palestinian territory, leaving almost 10 percent of the West Bank on the Israeli side. The Palestinians themモノグラム・ミニ・ランクロワゼット;モノグラム・デニム;モノグラム・ミニ・ランクロワゼット;モノグラム・ミロワール;スハリ・ライン;マヒナ;selves are bitterly divided between Abbas' Fatah movement, which governs the West Bank, and the Hamas rulers of Gaza, a coastal strip seized by the Islamic militant group three years ago. Hamas doesn't recognize Israel and has denounced the U.S.-backed peace talks as illegitimate. ___ Associated Press Writer Matthew Lee contributed to this report from Washington. 

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