All those years guarding Western Europe against the Red Army was just a warm-up for NATO. Now it has to face the enraged activists of the Chicago Teachers Union.
The city of Chicago is hosting a NATO summit next month, and protests have been planned for more than a year. FightBack!News (“News and views from the people’s struggle”) is reporting that last week CTU’s House of Delegates approved a resolution in support of the protests. I haven’t been able to obtain any confirmation about the vote, but the text of the resolution is available on the CTU web site. It begins:
Whereas, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) exists for the purpose of making war against nations and groups that the 1% deems at odds with its interests, and has been directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians in the ongoing war in Afghanistan;
There’s more in this vein, but it’s actually sugar-coated compared with the diatribe from Bruce A. Dixon of Black Agenda Radio, posted on the CTU blog:
NATO is now the multinational cloak for US intervention in Afghanistan, and in the Middle East and Africa as well. It is the armed and predatory white West arrayed against the rest of the world, poised to seize and control the wealth and strategic resources of the former colonial world on behalf of those who rule the US and Europe.
I have to admire the brazen ability to to describe Stalin, Milosevic, Gadhafi, the Taliban and Somali pirates as “nations and groups that the 1% deems at odds with its interests,” and the convenient omission of the instigating cause of “US intervention in Afghanistan.”
The protests will be large and well-organized, and while there is always the danger of violence and vandalism during such events, it appears even the anarchists are beginning to tire of this stuff, if the commenters on AnarchistNews.org are any indication (language warning):
* “At least four of the individuals sponsoring this are Leninists using whatever groups they work with as cover. I would steer clear of this, as any meaningful action will likely get you sold out to the pigs by your ‘comrades in struggle.’ Let them have their little parade.”
* “You haven’t lived until you’ve puppetmastered a few thousand leftists.”
* “The comments are right, this is a bunch of lefty crap, but we’ve hijacked a few of those, right? However, fuck the bloc, why make yourself a target. seems smaller roving bands may be more effective when coupled with as much confusion as possible.smoke bombs, noise(remember the drums?), random arson, fake 911 calls(from throwaway phones), bullhorn speeches to lefty counterrevolutionaries(some may be close to breaking away), &cetera, &cetera….”
To get the broadest coalition possible, the various protest groups should get together to draw up a treaty of friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance, creating a pact to oppose the warmongering NATO forces. There’s even a place in Illinois where they can meet.
