RESISTANCE: Escape the Grave: Die Free

Marcia Sanchez | 13.03.2003 22:19

Against the Yankees and the Death Star Empire: My heroes are Argentina’s Che Guevara, Yemen’s Osama bin Laden, Leila Khaled - international hijacker for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and all of the women who fight for the FARC and ELN in Colombia. Armed struggle and truth.

RESISTANCE: Escape the Grave: Die Free

Escape the Grave: Die Free

Against the Yankees and the Death Star Empire
By Marcia Sanchez

My heroes are Argentina’s Che Guevara, Yemen’s Osama bin Laden, Leila Khaled - international hijacker for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and all of the women who fight for the FARC and ELN in Colombia. I support armed struggle everywhere that is revolutionary. Revolutionary for me is anything that helps to kill USA imperialism: the Yankee-Gringo Empire of death and lies.

Most of the world is sealed up in graves: graveyards of the mind or of subjugation. Many will soon die from the invasions of the US military and its puppet militias. Many will die in the aftermath of US conquest and the dead ends of economic slavery. Many will just remain trapped and sealed away in their graves of denial and fear. These graves all have tombstones engraved with the word: Lies.

We talk about the lies of capitalism, economic growth and the structural lies of the ALCA (FTAA) and the WTO. There are the lies of Bush over Iraq and their phantom weapons of mass destruction. Lies are inherent in the US drug war, US foreign aid and the War “of” Terror. One of my favorite authors says that the Second Rule of Knowledge is that the greatest harm is often done by those with the best of intentions: the lies of moderates who believe that such a thing as non-violence can exist in this world.

Pain increases as one puts all of this together because any amount of thinking cannot get around the need for armed struggle. Emperor Supreme GW Bush does not lie as much as do the political moderates like the democrats, Noam Chomsky or Naomi Klein. When Bush says “this is a crusade, you are either with us or against us,” he is being more truthful than almost anyone in history. He gives you the frank choice and the clear options. You decide. You define good and evil and then you act accordingly.

I have listened intently to the political moderates, indigenous people and the New Age gurus in the US, Europe and Colombia. I lent them the benefit of my doubts and I tried to trust their sentiments. I begged them to explain how their path of reforms could succeed. They can not speak beyond hoelessness and delay. They are lost and I take back my ears and my trust from them. If you don’t support armed struggle then you work for the death squads of Uncle Sam the-Yankee-Man.

When A US helicopter crashes anywhere, I celebrate. When a suicide bomber ignites, I am inspired. When GW Bush moves unilaterally with force, my heart beats with excitement. When I see a sniper rifle I want to kiss the sky. To be real in this sickened world is to be on fire!

Against the total fascism of everything associated with Yankee Imperialism and their desperate lies, I spit on the lifestyle of most US citizenry. I spit on their drugged-out, materialistic, individual-mania and their culture that has not one good aspect to it.

Some have said that you cannot win against US military muscle and that armed struggle alienates the masses. Rejecting this defeatist and static analysis, I say: “Think global capitalist defeat, act powerfully local!

It is true that many armed struggles of the past have lost the main battles, but the war will always go on. People everywhere take heart from the sacrifices of Che, the Cuban revolutionaries, the Tupamaros, the priests of Liberation Theology who took up arms and the 40 years of armed struggle in Colombia. In almost every country in South America and many in Central America, former guerrillas are now elected officials and two are former mutinous militaries who are now presidents. Armed struggle works, it just takes time and many deaths.

In the Middle East and throughout the Moslem world of one billion people, the heroism of the Palestinian resistance and of bin Laden inspire millions who know of no hope for independence, cultural renewal or self determination other than through struggle and sacrifice.

In 1988, the popular reformer, Luis Galan was assassinated by the CIA, US State Department and the AUC’s Carlos Castano. In 1989, his replacement, President Ceasar Gaviria turned Colombia over to the US elite and the Cali Drug Cartel. The US was the magic (legitimacy and spies) and the AUC (Cali cartel death squads) were the steel (muscle and bullets). A new period of violence ensued and since then 300,000 people have been murdered. Most of the victims were women, children and non-combatants. Since 1999 the US has sought to annihilate the guerrillas with the nearly 3 billion dollars in arms and support to the Colombian government and its death squads. Plan Colombia and the US war crimes have failed and the armed struggle in Colombia intensifies.

Since the US intensified aerial poisoning of Colombia to eradicate coca growing by poor peasants, thousands of poor women and nearly 6000 indigenous warriors have swelled the guerrillas’ ranks. This puts the lie to Presidents Bush and Alvaro Uribe who claim that the FARC have little popular support. The 40 year existence of the guerrilla and their increasing strength makes Bush and Uribe frantic. So, the US elite resort to direct US invasion and terrorism in order to crush the FARC and prepare for imperialist wars and intimidation in Venezuela and Ecuador.

More than 500 US military are leading the Colombian civil war and another 1000 spies and State Department contractors are assisting the death squads who work with the Colombian military. The US has given Colombia more than 80 helicopters and many aircraft. Spain recently donated 8 Mirage jet fighters. Israel and fascists in Nicaragua and Guatemala supply the AUC with machineguns and ammunition. But US aircraft, spies and Balckhawk helicopter are being shot down or sabotaged in Colombia, New York, Kuwait, Mexico and Afghanistan almost every week.

My dream is that a column of several thousand FARC and ELN women surround the US Special Forces and defeat them without mercy. Recent battlefield victories by the guerrilla suggest that just such a US disaster is just around the next mountain valley’s snaking corner.

I don’t think that many people in the US can understand what I am saying here. I don’t think they understand much of what goes on outside of their country or even outside of their air-conditioned SUVs. They ponder away in some kind of gibberish like: “Why do we make them hate us so?”

If you can listen I hope you will unseal your graves, dig out of the graveyards of your closed minds and help us stop the worldwide US invasions and the slaughter of so many millions of innocents by the US military apparatus and its puppet militias. Reject the WTO and the deadends of US economic slavery. Nuke your denial and fear. Destroy the Lies and the tombstones will heal themselves.

Che Guevara at: