​Achinthya Sivalingam, a graduate student in Public Affairs at Princeton University did not know when she woke up this morning that shortly after 7 am she would join hundreds of students across the country who have been arrested, evicted and banned from campus for protesting the genocide in Gaza.
​
She wears a blue sweatshirt, sometimes fighting back tears, when I speak to her. We are seated at a small table in the Small World Coffee shop on Witherspoon Street, half a block away from the university she can no longer enter, from the apartment she can no longer live in and from the campus where in a few weeks she was scheduled to graduate.

She wonders where she will spend the night.

The police gave her five minutes to collect items from her apartment.

“I grabbed really random things,” she says. “I grabbed oatmeal for whatever reason. I was really confused.”

Student protesters across the country exhibit a moral and physical courage—many are facing suspension and expulsion—that shames every major institution in the country. They are dangerous not because they disrupt campus life or engage in attacks on Jewish students—many of those protesting are Jewish—but because they expose the abject failure by the ruling elites and their institutions to halt genocide, the crime of crimes. These students watch, like most of us, Israel’s live-streamed slaughter of the Palestinian people. But unlike most of us, they act. Their voices and protests are a potent counterpoint to the moral bankruptcy that surrounds them.

Not one university president has denounced Israel’s destruction of every university in Gaza. Not one university president has called for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire. Not one university president has used the words “apartheid” or “genocide.” Not one university president has called for sanctions and divestment from Israel.
Instead, heads of these academic institutions grovel supinely before wealthy donors, corporations—including weapons manufacturers—and rabid right-wing politicians. They reframe the debate around harm to Jews rather than the daily slaughter of Palestinians, including thousands of children. They have allowed the abusers—the Zionist state and its supporters—to paint themselves as victims. This false narrative, which focuses on anti-Semitism, allows the centers of power, including the media, to block out the real issue—genocide. It contaminates the debate. It is a classic case of “reactive abuse.” Raise your voice to decry injustice, react to prolonged abuse, attempt to resist, and the abuser suddenly transforms themself into the aggrieved.

Princeton University, like other universities across the country, is determined to halt encampments calling for an end to the genocide. This, it appears, is a coordinated effort by universities across the country.

The university knew about the proposed encampment in advance. When the students reached the five staging sites this morning, they were met by large numbers from the university’s Department of Public Safety and the Princeton Police Department. The site of the proposed encampment in front of Firestone Library was filled with police. This is despite the fact that students kept their plans off of university emails and confined to what they thought were secure apps. Standing among the police this morning was Rabbi Eitan Webb, who founded and heads Princeton’s Chabad House. He has attended university events to vocally attack those who call for an end to the genocide as antisemites, according to student activists.

As the some 100 protesters listened to speakers, a helicopter circled noisily overhead. A banner, hanging from a tree, read: “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free.”

The students said they would continue their protest until Princeton divests from firms that “profit from or engage in the State of Israel’s ongoing military campaign” in Gaza, ends university research “on weapons of war” funded by the Department of Defense, enacts an academic and cultural boycott of Israeli institutions, supports Palestinian academic and cultural institutions and advocates for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire.

But if the students again attempt to erect tents—they took down 14 tents once the two arrests were made this morning—it seems certain they will all be arrested.

“It is far beyond what I expected to happen,” says Aditi Rao, a doctoral student in classics. “They started arresting people seven minutes into the encampment.”

Princeton Vice President of Campus Life Rochelle Calhoun sent out a mass email on Wednesday warning students they could be arrested and thrown off campus if they erected an encampment.

“Any individual involved in an encampment, occupation, or other unlawful disruptive conduct who refuses to stop after a warning will be arrested and immediately barred from campus,” she wrote. “For students, such exclusion from campus would jeopardize their ability to complete the semester.”

These students, she added, could be suspended or expelled.

Sivalingam ran into one of her professors and pleaded with him for faculty support for the protest. He informed her he was coming up for tenure and could not participate. The course he teaches is called “Ecological Marxism.”

“It was a bizarre moment,” she says. “I spent last semester thinking about ideas and evolution and civil change, like social change. It was a crazy moment.”

She starts to cry.

A few minutes after 7 am, police distributed a leaflet to the students erecting tents with the headline “Princeton University Warning and No Trespass Notice.” The leaflet stated that the students were “engaged in conduct on Princeton University property that violates University rules and regulations, poses a threat to the safety and property of others, and disrupts the regular operations of the University: such conduct includes participating in an encampment and/or disrupting a University event.” The leaflet said those who engaged in the “prohibited conduct” would be considered a “Defiant Trespasser under New Jersey criminal law (N.J.S.A. 2C:18-3) and subject to immediate arrest.”

A few seconds later Sivalingam heard a police officer say “Get those two.”

Hassan Sayed, a doctoral student in economics who is of Pakistani descent, was working with Sivalingam to erect one of tents. He was handcuffed. Sivalingam was zip tied so tightly it cut off circulation to her hands. There are dark bruises circling her wrists.

“There was an initial warning from cops about ‘You are trespassing’ or something like that, ‘This is your first warning,’” Sayed says. “It was kind of loud. I didn’t hear too much. Suddenly, hands were thrust behind my back. As this happened, my right arm tensed a bit and they said ‘You are resisting arrest if you do that.’ They put the handcuffs on.”

He was asked by one of the arresting officers if he was a student. When he said he was, they immediately informed him that he was banned from campus.

“No mention of what charges are as far as I could hear,” he says. “I get taken to one car. They pat me down a bit. They ask for my student ID.”

Sayed was placed in the back of a campus police car with Sivalingam, who was in agony from the zip ties. He asked the police to loosen the zip ties on Sivalingam, a process that took several minutes as they had to remove her from the vehicle and the scissors were unable to cut through the plastic. They had to find wire cutters. They were taken to the university’s police station.

Sayed was stripped of his phone, keys, clothes, backpack and AirPods and placed in a holding cell. No one read him his Miranda rights.

He was again told he was banned from the campus.

“Is this an eviction?” he asked the campus police.

The police did not answer.

He asked to call a lawyer. He was told he could call a lawyer when the police were ready.

“They may have mentioned something about trespassing but I don’t remember clearly,” he says. “It certainly was not made salient to me.”

He was told to fill out forms about his mental health and if he was on medication. Then he was informed he was being charged with “defiant trespassing.”

“I say, ‘I’m a student, how is that trespassing? I attend school here,’” he says. “They really don’t seem to have a good answer. I reiterate, asking whether me being banned from campus constitutes eviction, because I live on campus. They just say, ‘ban from campus.’ I said something like that doesn’t answer the question. They say it will all be explained in the letter. I’m like, ‘Who is writing the letter?’ ‘Dean of grad school’ they respond.”

Sayed was driven to his campus housing. The campus police did not let him have his keys. He was given a few minutes to grab items like his phone charger. They locked his apartment door. He, too, is seeking shelter in the Small World Coffee shop.

Sivalingam often returned to Tamil Nadu in southern India, where she was born, for her summer vacations. The poverty and daily struggle of those around her, to survive, she says, was “sobering.”

“The disparity of my life and theirs, how to reconcile how those things exist in the same world,” she says, her voice quivering with emotion. “It was always very bizarre to me. I think that’s where a lot of my interest in addressing inequality, in being able to think about people outside of the United States as humans, as people who deserve lives and dignity, comes from.”

She must adjust now to being exiled from campus.

“I gotta find somewhere to sleep,” she says, “tell my parents, but that’s going to be a little bit of a conversation, and find ways to engage in jail support and communications because I can’t be there, but I can continue to mobilize.”

There are many shameful periods in American history. The genocide we carried out against Indigenous peoples. Slavery. The violent suppression of the labour movement that saw hundreds of workers killed. Lynching. Jim and Jane Crow. Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan. Libya.

The genocide in Gaza, which we fund and support, is of such monstrous proportions that it will achieve a prominent place in this pantheon of crimes.

History will not be kind to most of us. But it will bless and revere these students.

GDD 3 Part Three— THE FASCIST DANGER  [part one here, part 2 here]

First, what is fascism? According to THE AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY it is  ‘’A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, a capitalist economy subject to stringent governmental controls, violent suppression of the opposition, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.”


Trump, MAGA, and Republicans are often called ‘’fascists.’’ It would seem that, under this definition, that’s not quite the right word. The last thing the MAGA folks/ Republicans are advocating are ‘’stringent government controls’’ of the capitalist economy — it’s just the opposite. We Communists are the ones who advocate that to control and eventually, one fine day, to abolish capitalism.  


As far as ‘’violent suppression of the opposition’’ is concerned, THE PEOPLE’S WORLD (the advocate of Bill of Rights Socialism), maintains that Trump, MAGA, and Republicans are part of the Fascist Danger and quotes approvingly from the Communist leader Dimitrov  ‘’the creation and fortification of a united front, one determined to ‘resist and smash fascist bands’ and motivate government, even a bourgeois one, ‘to adopt measures of defense against fascism.’ As he advocated: ‘Arrest the fascist leaders. Close down their press, confiscate their material resources and the resources of the capitalists who were financing the fascist movement’.’’PW 11-7-2022 


This is certainly PC as far as dealing with fascists is concerned. The PW was lamenting the perceived leniency the January 6, 2021 Capitol rioters were receiving. But we have to be sure that we are dealing with actual fascists and not just crying wolf over the actions of typical American right-wing extremists and racists that appear to be endemic to the US bourgeois version of liberal democracy. There were certainly fascist elements at the Capitol but the majority were seemingly opportunistic rioters and people milling around outside watching. It was definitely a Trump inspired riot but it was too amorphous and ill planned to qualify as an ‘’insurrection.’’  


Marxists have their own definition of ‘’fascism’’ given in the same PW article—‘’Fascism, as described by Dimitrov, is ‘the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic, and most imperialist elements of finance capital’.’’ It is highly unlikely, if Trump becomes President again since not only the Pentagon as well  as ‘’the deep state’’—i.e., the FBI, CIA, and the intelligence community in general, consider him an incompetent and many states will be under control of the Democrats, more importantly the vast government bureaucracy is hostile to him, that the next four years will see ‘’an open terrorist dictatorship’’ as capitalism is doing just fine without one [so far]. Even the PW recognizes this— ‘’there will likely come a time when the ossified ruling class will be unable to rule in the old way, and when the enlightened ruled masses no longer wish to be ruled in the old way. Should that revolutionary moment arrive, capital may openly resort to fascism to save itself.’’ The CPUSA should be spending its time trying to bring about that mass enlightenment that both major parties are infected with the virus that causes fascism and we need a viable workers party, not telling us Genocide Joe has our backs. 


Anyway, the GDD, plays down Trump and company as the major fascist threat. “Rather, the threat stems from a mass neo-fascist movement organized by the most reactionary sections of the billionaire class. It’s been nurtured over decades, first in the evangelical right’s Moral Majority, then in the Tea Party, and now in the MAGA movement.”


MAGA is just the tip of the iceberg of a mass neo-fascist movement fomented by elements of the “billionaire class (sic).”  Again, it is  a bourgeois, not a Marxist, view of class to view it as based on wealth rather than its relation to the means of production.  So, where does the source of neo-fascism come from? The answer of the GDD is based on the aforementioned PW article. It turns out to be practically every private and public entity listed on any of the stock markets or conducting business of any sort in the country, as well major educational institutions, everything from the local chamber of commerce to the Fortune 500. 


In other words, almost the entire American economy and its supporters are behind, or part of, this faction of the billionaire pseudo-class. Since the overwhelming majority of voters identify with and/or vote for one of the two major parties which are controlled by the ruling class which controls the economy, the whole frigging country logically, willing or unwilling, is part of this neo-fascist movement. It appears that the author(s) of the GDD is too extreme in the description of the fascist threat. There is  a serious neo-fascist movement at work in the country but it will not take over as a result of the 2024 election. We have time to organize against it, but not by advocating electoral support for one of the two leading parties which follow de facto neo-fascist lines of thought. 


The GDD paints a picture of both parties following a bipartisan neo-fascist foreign policy but domestically the GDD sees a difference, but it obfuscates what it is. It’s basically Good Cop versus Bad Cop and all the revisionist BS in the world won’t change the nature of monopoly capitalism’s ruling parties. Good Cop will not (most of the time) use sticks and stones to break your bones, but you are still going to jail. 


Well, let the GDD and its class collaborationist position speak for itself.
As U.S. imperialism strives to adjust to an increasingly multi-polar world, their positions [ the DP & RP] may coincide to some degree on foreign policy, but governing domestically is another issue. Coincidence of position in one arena does not necessarily imply convergence in others. Understanding why positions at times correlate and in other instances diverge is key to learning how to exploit these contradictions in the course of ongoing democratic struggles over policy. And it’s the ongoing struggles over policy that are key to advancing the cause of the working-class and people’s movement. It’s also key to defeating the fascist threat. The role of the Communist Party is to bring these issues forward and organize around them.


 The role of a CP is just the opposite. Here the role is seen as concerning itself with the squabbles between the leaders of the DP and RP over which policies better reflect the interests of the ruling class  and using the contradictions between them to further the ‘’democratic struggle’’ — we will see shortly that this consists in de facto support for the DP and, pari passu, whether we like its or not, support for the genocide in Gaza because, like love and marriage (so they say) with Genocide Joe and the DP, you can’t have one without the other. The CP is supposed to advance the cause of working people and defeat the fascist threat by exploiting the differences between two groups of fascists to see which one will throw us more crumbs from the table. The real role of the CP is to denounce and expose both imperialist parties and have others join with us to build a working class alternative party not muck around with some mythical ‘’all peoples front’’ full of self-styled socialists, progressives and also various centrists and even anti Communist liberals all working at cross purposes with the only common denominator being they are anti-Trump.


Here is what the GDD is worried about. Millions on the left are disgusted with Biden and the DP and their wholehearted support for the apartheid Zionist state and its genocide waged against the people of GAZA. Many people will vote against Biden and the DP or just stay home on Election Day. Nevertheless, they shouldn’t allow their distaste for genocide and the murdering of thousands of innocent and helpless children stand in the way of their civic duty of electing Genocide Joe as president for four more years (inshallah).


Because of all this Genocide stuff ‘’the election’s outcome may now be in serious jeopardy.’’ Yes, indeed it is. ‘’A significant part of the anti-fascist coalition is in danger of splintering off, precipitating a serious crisis.’’ Not to worry. The ‘’anti-fascist coalition’’ is a fiction of the Webbite revisionists. There is no such coalition, i.e., an alliance entered into for joint action e.g., a coalition government, or an alliance of unions. Talk of our coalition or our coalition partners, save for one or two tiny groups, is pure rubbish to give the membership the illusion the leadership is actually doing something. In reality there are many large and small organizations and civil society groups that are, for their own many and manifold reasons, opposed to Trump and the RP and want to see them defeated in November. But they have not created any sort of official coalition to work together for this common end. They may support each other’s marches and demonstrations but that’s about it. Most of them wouldn’t know what you were talking about if you asked them, ‘’Are you in a coalition with the CPUSA?” after you explained to them what the letters CPUSA stood for. Nevertheless, yet again like the Emperor in his new clothes, the leadership will continue to refer to ‘’our’’ coalition. Anyway, the next part of the GDD deals with how the party should meet ‘’the serious jeopardy.’’


Coming up Part 4, and last, WHAT IS TO BE DONE

​Within just 24 hours of the horrific mass shooting in Moscow’s Crocus City Hall on March 22nd, which left at least 137 innocent people dead and 60 more critically wounded, US officials blamed the slaughter on ISIS-K, Daesh’s South-Central Asian branch. For many, the attribution’s celerity raised suspicions Washington was seeking to decisively shift Western public and Russian government focus away from the actual culprits - be that Ukraine, and/or Britain, Kiev’s foremost proxy sponsor.
​
Full details of how the four shooters were recruited, directed, armed, and financed, and who by, are yet to emerge. The savage interrogation methods to which they have been, and no doubt continue to be subjected are concerned with prising this and other vital information from them. The killers may end up making false confessions as a result. In any event, they themselves likely have no clue who or what truly sponsored their monstrous actions.

Contrary to their mainstream portrayal, as inspired purely by religious fundamentalism, Daesh are primarily guns for hire. At any given time, they act at the behest of an array of international donors, bound by common interests. Funding, weapons, and orders reach its fighters circuitously, and opaquely. There is almost invariably layer upon layer of cutouts between the perpetrators of an attack claimed by the group, and its ultimate orchestrators and financiers.

Given ISIS-K is currently arrayed against China, Iran, and Russia - in other words, the US Empire’s primary adversaries - it is incumbent to revisit Daesh’s origins. Emerging seemingly out of nowhere just over a decade ago, before dominating mainstream media headlines and Western public consciousness for several years before vanishing, at one stage the group occupied vast swaths of Iraqi and Syrian territory, declaring an “Islamic State”, which issued its own currency, passports, and vehicle registration plates.

Devastating military interventions independently launched by the US and Russia wiped out that demonic construct in 2017. The CIA and MI6 were no doubt immensely relieved. After all, extremely awkward questions about how Daesh were comprehensively extinguished. As we shall see, the terror group and its caliphate did not emerge in the manner of lightning on a dark night, but due to dedicated, determined policy hatched in London and Washington, implemented by their spying agencies.

‘Continuingly Hostile’RAND is a highly influential, Washington DC-headquartered “think tank”. Bankrolled to the tune of almost $100 million annually by the Pentagon and other US government entities, it regularly disseminates recommendations on national security, foreign affairs, military strategy, and covert and overt actions overseas. These pronouncements are more often than not subsequently adopted as policy. 

For example, a July 2016 RAND paper on the prospect of “war with China” forecast a need to fill Eastern Europe with US soldiers in advance of a “hot” conflict with Beijing, as Russia would undoubtedly side with its neighbour and ally in such a dispute. It was therefore necessary to tie down Moscow’s forces at its borders. Six months later, scores of NATO troops duly arrived in the region, ostensibly to counter “Russian aggression”. 

Similarly, in April 2019 RAND published Extending Russia. It set out “a range of possible means” to “bait Russia into overextending itself,” so as to “undermine the regime’s stability.” These methods included; providing lethal aid to Ukraine; increasing US support for the Syrian rebels; promoting “regime change in Belarus”; exploiting “tensions” in the Caucasus; neutralising “Russian influence in Central Asia” and Moldova. Most of that came to pass thereafter.

In this context, RAND’s November 2008 Unfolding The Long War makes for disquieting reading. It explored ways the US Global War on Terror could be prosecuted once coalition forces formally left Iraq, under the terms of a withdrawal agreement inked by Baghdad and Washington that same month. This development by definition threatened Anglo dominion over Persian Gulf oil and gas resources, which would remain “a strategic priority” when the occupation was officially over. 

“This priority will interact strongly with that of prosecuting the long war,” RAND declared. The think tank went on to propose a “divide and rule” strategy to maintain US hegemony in Iraq, despite the power vacuum created by withdrawal. Under its auspices, Washington would exploit “fault lines between [Iraq’s] various Salafi-jihadist groups to turn them against each other and dissipate their energy on internal conflicts”, while “supporting authoritative Sunni governments against a continuingly hostile Iran”:

“This strategy relies heavily on covert action, information operations, unconventional warfare, and support to indigenous security forces…The US and its local allies could use nationalist jihadists to launch proxy campaigns to discredit transnational jihadists in the eyes of the local populace…This would be an inexpensive way of buying time…until the US can return its full attention to the [region]. US leaders could also choose to capitalize on the sustained Shia-Sunni Conflict…by taking the side of conservative Sunni regimes against Shiite empowerment movements in the Muslim world.”

‘Great Danger’So it was that the CIA and MI6 began supporting “nationalist jihadists” throughout West Asia. The next year, Bashar Assad rejected a Qatari proposal to route Doha’s vast gas reserves directly to Europe, via a $10 billion, 1,500 kilometre-long pipeline spanning Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Turkey. As extensively documented by WikiLeaks-released diplomatic cables, US, Israeli and Saudi intelligence immediately decided to overthrow Assad by fomenting a local rebellion, and started financing opposition groups for the purpose.

This effort became turbocharged in October 2011, with MI6 redirecting weapons and extremist fighters from Libya to Syria, in the wake of Muammar Gaddafi’s televised murder. The CIA oversaw that operation, using the British as an arm’s length cutout to avoid notifying Congress of its machinations. Only in June 2013, with then-President Barack Obama’s official authorisation, did the Agency’s cloak-and-dagger connivances in Damascus become formalised - and later admitted - under the title “Timber Sycamore”.

At this time, Western officials universally referred to their Syrian proxies as “moderate rebels”. Yet, Washington was well-aware its surrogates were dangerous extremists, seeking to carve a fundamentalist caliphate out of the territory they occupied. An August 2012 US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report released under Freedom of Information laws observes that events in Baghdad were “taking a clear sectarian direction,” with radical Salafist groups “the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria.”

These factions included Al Qaeda’s Iraqi wing (AQI), and its umbrella offshoot, Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). The pair went on to form Daesh, a prospect the DIA report not only predicted, but seemingly endorsed:

“If the situation unravels, there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria…This is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want in order to isolate the Syrian regime…ISI could also declare an Islamic state through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria, which will create great danger.”

Despite such grave concerns, the CIA inexorably dispatched unaccountably vast shipments of weapons and money to Syria’s “moderate rebels”, well-knowing this “aid” would almost inevitably end up in Daesh’s hands. Moreover, Britain concurrently ran secret programs costing millions to train opposition paramilitaries in the art of killing, while providing medical assistance to wounded jihadists. London also donated multiple ambulances, purchased from Qatar, to armed groups in the country.

Leaked documents indicate the risk of equipment and trained personnel from these efforts being lost to Al-Nusra, Daesh, and other extremist groups in West Asia was judged unavoidably “high” by British intelligence. Yet, there was no concomitant strategy for countering this hazard at all, and the illicit programs continued apace. Almost as if training and arming Daesh was precisely the desired outcome.

Author

Kit Klarenberg, Investigative journalist.

Republished from Al Mayadeen.

​United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) conference,

“Decolonization and the Fight Against Imperialism”.

April 5 – April 7, 2024

The recent 2024 United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) conference, brought together an international group of activists from member organizations who are mobilizing against imperialism, racism, and neo-liberal policies around the world.

​What did people say at the UNAC? They said: “Stop the wars at home and abroad.” The conference spent a weekend talking about war - a war waged by capitalists, racists, and imperialists against humanity.

These people are the modern-day class descendants of those who had ravaged the continent, themselves, for hundreds of years. Here in Mankato, Minnesota, the largest public execution in US history took place December 26, 1862, during which 38 Lakota men were hanged.

They were killed for resisting the genocide against their people in the so-called Lakota War. Outside the window of the conference’s venue, the Mississippi River is in full view, flowing all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico.

The Mississippi was one of the largest means of transit in the domestic, internal slave trade, as human beings were sold along this route in Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Everything that was discussed over this weekend has its origins in these stories of stolen land, stolen human beings, and wars against humanity.

More recently, it was here in Minnesota in 2020 that a man named George Floyd was murdered by the police. His killing sparked the mobilization of activists across the country and around the world!

The capitalists, the imperialists, and the racists are in the process of killing all life on the planet with money forced out of our hands in the form of government subsidies. A few days the media featured a headline, “Greenland's glaciers are melting 100 times faster than estimated.” Every month in the past year has been the warmest month since records were kept. March 2024 was the warmest March in history, and February 2024 was the hottest in history, and so on. Of course, a country with 800 military bases around the world plays a primary role. What quantity of fossil fuels is needed to fly jets, operate ships, and run military bases? We talked about that issue here at this conference.

Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people was also on the agenda. Life in the belly of the beast is more apparent than ever looking at Gaza, as the same Joe Biden who says he is defending democracy has given Tel Aviv a blank check to kill thousands of people with the help and support of Congress.

Even after tens of thousands of dead civilians, including aid workers like those of the World Central Kitchen, Israel will continue to receive weapons. And their deaths would not even have been brought to the public’s attention without grassroots resistance.

To their great credit, the Palestinian people have shown us their dead – no trigger warnings whatsoever. They have shown the world these victims and accelerated the political crisis necessary to end these war crimes.

UNAC understands the importance of bringing people together from all over this country and the world, as exemplified by the two ambassadors we had for the conference, from Nicaragua and the Western Sahara, the Polisario front.

The US government and its allies in corporate media hide the rest of the world from us. The UNAC attempts to do the opposite and bring the information we need to see to light. Specifically, the same people who fight against the sovereignty of African nations and who want to destroy the Nicaraguan revolution are the same people who build police-state cities.

The same people who speak of “collateral damage” committed by the IDF are the same people who dismiss the around 1,000 police killings that take place in the country as mistakes. Yes, 1,000, an average of 3 people have been killed every day by police in the US for at least the past 5 years.

Everyone who attended the conference knows that they are a revolutionary. The word revolutionary used to scare me. I felt it was a word I could not live up to. But sharing information about these issues and working on them - these are revolutionary acts. By taking part in UNAC member organizations, we know who our enemies are and we know that wishful thinking reformism is a road to failure. Gatherings like this give us renewed focus and concentrate our efforts.​

​It is also important to acknowledge what we are doing ourselves and for one another when we come together like this. The ruling capitalist class wants us to be atomized, to be separate, to feel estranged from one another. We’re always told nobody wants to listen to us – that nobody believes what we believe. Sometimes when attempting to engage with people it can be difficult, especially for those who are in denial or are susceptible to propaganda. This can be very frustrating, but the worst thing we can do is to believe that we are alone when we’re not.

Millions around the world do not want the public’s resources to be used for war. They know that their needs aren’t being met precisely because of the violence of war-mongers and the greed of profit-grubbing capitalists.

People know that they are not living well. They know they are struggling. The worst thing we can do is to think that we are special people in a unique bubble. There are plenty of people who understand what we have been talking about and others who are desperate to hear from us, which is why they marginalize and censor us. They know that people do want to hear what we say. 

So, I will close by saying, “Power to the people!” and by calling on the European Appeal to the World community, the UN, the BRICS Alliance, the multipolar World, and the Global South to convene a Global Peace Conference!

​The current conflicts in the world tend to escalate and expand geographically. The countries of the capitalist/imperialist center (USA, Great Britain and the British Commonwealth, France, the FRG, in general, the EU) are participating in these wars.

The essence of the escalation and expansion of these conflicts (Ukraine-Russia, Palestine-Israel, Yemen) is an attempt to overcome stagnation in the imperialist world, revive the economy of global capitalism as a whole, and in particular to bring super-profits to the main arms manufacturers – the USA, Great Britain, France and the EU as a whole.

Also, when employing modern weapons systems in conflict zones, highly qualified personnel specialists for the maintenance of such machines are necessary. This applies primarily to personnel who manage and operate air defense systems, missile defense systems, and missile weapons. Thus, many local personnel in Ukraine cannot properly operate the latest Western weapons systems, which are different from Soviet weapons. Due to this difference, there is a need to perform service to these systems by representatives of the supplying countries, sometimes with whole crews.

In the course of the Ukraine conflict, personnel working with new Western weapons have become legitimate and priority targets for the influence of opponents of the Kiev authorities. It should also be emphasized that by attracting the latest weapons and trained personnel from the weapons-supplying countries, the Kiev regime is not able to ensure the safety of these personnel.

It is already quite apparent that not only volunteers or mercenaries but also active officers (and maybe soldiers and officers) of the NATO armies and civilian specialists of weapons companies are among the employees of the latest weapons systems being sent to Ukraine. Therefore, these persons were sent to the conflict zone solely out of their official duty.

On January 16 of this year, the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation reported an attack on the temporary transfer points of the foreign military in Kharkov, in which 60 people were killed, presumably mostly French. This tragic example shows the full extent of the irresponsibility not only of the Kiev authorities but also of the French authorities, who send their citizens to the conflict zone because of the excess profits of arms corporations. The French leadership is also trying to deny these facts.

Not only mercenaries, but also personnel and civilian experts from the USA, Great Britain, Germany, and other EU countries could have just as easily stood in the place of the dead French.

French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent statement calling for the deployment of troops from European countries to the conflict zone in Ukraine is extremely alarming, as expressed by the French ruling circles' intention to draw their citizens into the fire of the conflict and thus resolve part of France’s internal contradictions.

​In this regard, we, the peace-loving peoples of the world, turn to the UN, the European Parliament, the US Congress, the parliaments of the EU, and the United Kingdom to call for:

A.  Immediate and unconditional ceasefires in the existing conflict zones – Gaza, Ukraine, Yemen!

B.  Stop the practice of sending soldiers and civilian specialists from the USA, France, Great Britain, Germany, and other EU countries to conflict areas to generate the super profits of large arms manufacturers!

C.  Stop arms deliveries to Israel and Ukraine from the EU! Europe should not be dragged into a spiral of conflict, sacrificing its citizens for the benefit of partners from abroad!

D.  To achieve a comprehensive peace, a Global Peace Conference should be convened as soon as possible!

​Author

Michael Rotenshtern
 
Republished from Revolution Report

​Japan being drawn into any conflict over Taiwan is essential for the US ability to maintain Combat Air Patrol capabilities over Taiwan. Control over the skies is imperative for any US military operation near there.The US carrier fleet, while the strongest in the world, is still incapable of contending with the land based air power that China can bring to bear over Taiwan, especially since China continues to invest in the research and development of stronger long range anti-ship missiles, and is building more and more of them. Therefore, the US will always choose to strengthen Japanese military capabilities and give Japan whatever it asks in a desire to maintain the 85 military facilities that it currently has within their territory. But this is all a given for anyone who’s been keeping track.

The real question that we should ask about this move is if it was explicitly an ask of the Japanese Government, or if it came as a result of American political pressure. A deeper question still is if this is the genuine desire of the Japanese people or if this shift has been fostered by a bloc of interests solely within the military industrial complex’s section of the ruling class. We know for Japanese citizens living in Okinawa the public sentiment for decades has been against the US military bases on their island. On the core islands of Japan, however, public opinion towards a more expansive/defensive military has grown. According to the official press release, the weapons systems being delivered are “defensive in nature” but we should realize that American military bases in Japan are already an aggressive act from the United States, aimed at other sovereign states in the region, such as China and the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea. Due to this, any attempt by the US to arm Japan, even with defensive armament, is a further entrenchment of Japan as a military air strip for the US empire. We should also remember that the Japanese government is only putting its own citizens at risk by accepting this deal. As we have seen in Ukraine, the U.S. ruling class has no issue with sacrificing an entire generation of other countries’ young men in order to pursue its foreign policy goals. Ironically, the Japanese purchase of defensive armaments emboldens that same ruling class in the theater and may lead to open conflict over Chinese territorial waters and Taiwan. Therefore, if Japan truly wants to ensure that its people are protected it should first remove the American military presence from its own nation and end its relationship as a lackey for US imperialism. 
​
Only in this way can Japan ensure its own safety, which would also go a long way towards ensuring a more peaceful planet, in general, in the long run.

​Today I visited the Lincoln memorial and felt a genuine sadness at the fact that our country has totally failed to live up to the ideals that it was founded upon.

Consider the last words of Lincoln’s second inaugural address which are carved into the walls of the Lincoln memorial:

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Far from creating a lasting peace among nations, the United States has become a world imperialist hegemon, which acts as the number one threat to world peace.

Or consider the much simpler quote from George Washington plastered all over the Washington monument’s gift store.

“Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth."

Perhaps old George would have been more correct to say, Capital, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth, concentration, and accumulation. Because the U.S. is now a country which prioritizes the profits of capitalists and bankers far above the liberty of its citizens.

The words that most affected me though were from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, which like the second inaugural address, have been immortalized on the walls of the Lincoln Memorial.

“[T]his nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

How far we have strayed from a Government of by and for the people that these American leaders of the past dreamed of, and that hundreds of thousands of union soldiers fought to create.

We now live in a so called Democracy where 92% of elections are determined by the candidate who raises the most money, where the Supreme Court has completely legalized political bribery  through passing Citizens United, and where bills are literally written by corporate lobbying firms.

Right across from the Lincoln Memorial is the Federal Reserve, which is one of many tools that the U.S. Government uses to control currency, and maintain unprecedented dominance over the global economy. Ironic that such a building is placed right across from a memorial dedicated to preserving a Government “of, by, and for the people.”

So while my trip to the Lincoln memorial slightly disturbed me, it also inspired me. Visiting the memorial that day were busses of young schoolchildren on a field trip around Washington D.C. It got me thinking about what kind of country we are going to leave the youth? It is fully possible to create an economy and political system that works of, by, and for the people. It is called socialism.

The only way to actually live up to the ideals that the country was founded upon is for working people to stand up and fight, to stand up and take this country back from the cretinous Wall Street parasites who have completely captured it. Just like our ancestors in the Union army stood up against slavery and tyranny not so long ago.

PREFACE
This is the first in a series of opinion pieces on the upcoming CPUSA convention based on the main general discussion document (GDD).  It is not my claim that the positions taken by the CP leadership are not consistent with their premises. My claim is that their premises are not Marxist and/or not sound. 
​
PART 1 GDD-1 

Having postponed its mandated 2023 National Convention for a year in order to consolidate its control of the party, the current leadership has scheduled a National Convention for June 2024. Since the end of the Gus Hall era in 2000 the party leadership appears to have fallen into the hands of a right leaning Eurocommunist, Bernstein-inspired revisionist leadership cadre that under consecutive top leaders Sam Webb, John Bachtell and Joe Sims has followed a liquidationist policy [Webbism] which has seen the abolition of the print edition of the party newspaper and its replacement with a saccharine left liberal social-democratic internet version devoid of a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary working terminology, the abolition of the existing YCL and the creation of a new youth organization more in the form of The Sims Youth than an independent YCL affiliated with the party, a turnover of the party archives to a bourgeois affiliated labor library associated with NYU, the abolition of the party’s theoretical journal and a decline in Marxist class consciousness as reflected in party literature. 

Webb has himself left the party to support the Democrats, Bachtell resigned as top leader and has said he no longer considers himself a Leninist but he remains in control of the party press. Joe Sims was put in his place as a top leader (or ‘’co-leader’’) and prefers the term ‘’scientific socialism’’ to ‘’Marxism’’— although now as the putative leader of the party he uses Marxist terminology pro forma that he had abandoned previously.

Well, I need to provide some justification for the above remarks. I hope my analysis of the General Discussion Document [GDD] the leadership has put out as the guide to the upcoming convention will do this. CPUSA conventions are usually well choreographed to end up exactly as the leadership wants and the GDD will give a good idea of what kind of program is in store for the membership [hint: it has something to do with making revisionism look orthodox and getting out the vote for Biden.]  This, of course, is just my opinion of the post-Hall era, after 50+ years of seeing the party in action, and I could be wrong.

The document opens with a general description of the effects today of the general crisis of capitalism, more or less similar to the effects that have characterized it for the last 50 or 60 years. The GDD also points out that ‘’fascism is increasingly promoted as an alternative by the most reactionary sections of the billionaire class.”  It should be pointed out that Marxist theory doesn’t refer to a ‘’billionaire’ class.’’ The class in question is the monopoly capitalist (le gran bourgeoisie) class which owns and controls the financial and industrial means of production in the US— I.e., the ruling class which controls the Republican and Democratic  parties as well. 

We are next told ‘’The crisis has its origins in the U.S.’ incomplete bourgeois democratic revolution that granted freedom to those with property, but subjected those without to bonded labor, slavery, and genocide, systems of exploitation that not only contributed to the country’s development but also laid the basis for a united struggle against such exploitation.’’ This is historically incorrect. The bourgeois democratic revolution was completed in the US in the 19th century after the Civil War.

The bourgeois democratic revolution’s goal was to replace one ruling class with another— i.e., to make the capital class, the bourgeoisie, the ruling class and replace the feudal class which has no positive role to play in the new economic system of capitalism. At the end of the Civil War, with the downfall of the slave owning section of the capitalists (free independent workers not slaves or serfs are the theoretical exploited class under capitalism) the industrial bourgeoisie consolidated itself as the ruling class and completed the bourgeois democratic revolution in the US. 

The political struggle today is confined within the limits of this revolution. There is, however, a higher form of democracy that Marxists are fighting for— i.e., proletarian or working class democracy which will replace bourgeois democracy. How to conduct this fight will be determined by whether or not Marxists decide to build a revolutionary movement to bring about this higher form or confine themselves to trying to improve by reforms the already basically completed bourgeois revolution by which the capitalist class maintains its power. 

PART 2 coming up

“I don’t have time for hate. I only have time for love.”

A year after his death, the university where Tchadensky studied and performed has yet to come to terms with their loss. His close friend and colleague James Junior Jean Rolph offered his own eulogy, reminiscing that this youthful renaissance man did not “have a big head, constantly motivated his peers, worked and progressed without complaining and always had his head in the books.”

Tchadenksy, like so many in this city of 2.5 million, lived on the run. He remained a light in Port-au-Prince’s most infamous neighborhoods 一 Matisan, Delma 2, Kafou Fèy and Belè. These are the bidonvils (ghettos) that provide the canvas for the clips of unrestrained violence that circulate on Haitian whatsapp. Tchad and the movement rejected the sensationalism of the media. Internally within MOLEGHAF and other socialist organizations, they discouraged the sharing of what they saw as “Black Death Pornography.” Tchad and others cautioned against the sharing on Whatsapp of grizzly images of heads cut off, sexual violence against the most vulnerable, bodies tortured and massacres. After a deep breath, he patiently explained to a crowd that they and their self-esteem had been brutalized and traumatized enough. The insurgent’s responsibility was to re-instill hope and love in the masses. And this is what our protagonist did until he was again run out and his home, alongside thousands of others, was burnt down. How many poems, memories, dreams, libraries and futures have disappeared in the flames, smoke and ashes of imperialism? For some militan, what they most lamented after the loss of life, was the loss of memories. How many bookshelves of fresh literature and newly-written poems have been sacrificed at the altar of the U.S. government’s obsession with guns, violence and plunder?

Haiti’s top newspaper, Le Nouvelliste, published the poet’s last words “Running, Always Running” which has survived the author and the hybrid war[3]:

“Running, Always Running"

I am always on the run
Until I am out of breath

I am not an athlete
I am no type of sportsman
But I am always running

I am fleeing and hiding from stuff I did not do

After Lasalin 
I am in Aviyasyon
I sprint through Dèlma 2
All I know how to do these days is run
Drenched in sweat
I am running out of breath 

I’m not running
To get in better shape
Or to impress anyone with a 6-pack
I run because I am on the run  

I have my backpack on
My baby is in my hands
I have blankets wrapped around me
I grab any last memories I can
I drop my passport in the fury
I search for a corner
A nook and cranny
To rest my weary head
My exhausted body
To think of the life I completely lost.

We all run
We run together
Our grandmothers
Little ones
Everyone
United
Running
Some of us are burnt
Others are on fire
All of us running
shoulder to shoulder with the trauma
To see who will cross the line of death first.

After Kanaran 
I run through Divivye
Then Site Solèy
We are all running
Drenched in sweat
We are running out of breath
We search for a hiding spot
A refuge
Where we can maroon the bullets
So the stray bullets
Do not
Swallow us whole
On the path
where we are running”​

Washington Bullets and Resistans Ayisyen (Haitian Resistance)

The average life expectancy in France is over 82 years. The average life expectancy in The Dominican Republic is 73 years. In Haiti , it is 10 years less. For a revolutionary in Haiti, the statistic drops several more decades. Tchadenksy joined a growing list of community leaders liquidated under the rule of the PHTK, the Haitian Bald Headed Party, named so because their first dictator, Michel Martelly was bald. The party's rule is especially sinister because they hide behind their hired mercenaries, denying any involvement. Paramilitaries are more effective in Haiti, just as they were in Colombia, Argentina, El Salvador and other U.S. neocolonies because they are not accountable to anyone.
​
The modern makouts (thugs and assassins) are loyal to Izo, Kempès Sanon, Barbecue, Vitalhom or whoever the local warlord is. Three survivors of a kidnapping in Mon Kabrit, who do not want to be named, explained: “The young recruits didn’t have money to eat that day but they gripped AR15s and AK47s worth over $10,000 on the streets of Haiti. We know they are involved with the drug trade. How can they get such expensive weapons when most of us are hungry? When they divided the men from the women (the speaker looked down), the kidnappers screamed allegiance to their leader Lanmò San Jou (Death without a day announced). They asked us who we were loyal to…which political party or gang? Refusing the debate, we looked away. They hit us and reminded us that their president and the president of all of Haiti was their boss, the paramilitary gang leader, Lanmò San Jou.” This anecdote is telling and sheds light on the highly localized reality of gang bosses who preside over their own fiefdoms of looting, raping and destruction. This is the colonial Haiti run by guns for fire that Tchadensky resisted, and the one that ultimately consumed him and thousands of other innocents. ​

​Our protagonist never hesitated to denounce the powers that be, “the gangsters in ties ” and foreign forces who fanned the flames of the fratricidal war. The griot articulates what so many know but cannot express or are deathly afraid to express – the chaos in Haiti has its origins faraway in the palaces and boardrooms of Washington D.C., New York, Miami, Ottawa, Montreal and Paris. While CNN, Fox and the New York Times deceitfully portray Haiti as isolated, the Caribbean nation of over 11.5 million has for centuries been integrated into the international capitalist machinery .[4]  And if the maroon nation ever steps out of line, U.S. Marines are not far off to remind them of their place in the global pecking order. Washington now prefers mercenaries from Brazil, Kenya, Chile, Chad, Nepal or Benin to carry out their fourth invasion and occupation of Haiti in the past 100 years.

Regardless of the historical odds, there is an abundance of leaders and organizations who trained with Tchadensky and are fighting to elevate their homeland out of the neoliberal quagmire. They too are survivors of this hybrid war. Highly conscious of the ideological and media war against them, MOLEGHAF, the Black Panthers of Haiti , model another brand of leadership, honest, self-sacrificing and anti-imperialist.[5] For this reason, they have been targeted by state and paramilitary bullets. Many political demonstrations and protests in Haiti are in front of the U.S. embassy precisely because of this anti-imperialist awareness. Dahoud Andre, a spokesperson of KOMOKODA, the Committee to Mobilize Against Dictatorship in Haiti, and host of "Haiti Our Revolution Continues" on WBAI analyzed the ins-and-outs of the struggle today for Haiti’s definitive self-determination on Black Agenda Radio.
​
On the anniversary of the death of a Haitian Fred Hampton, take time to resist the mainstream clichés against Haiti and share the memories of our Haitian saints. The Gregory Saint-Hillaires , Jean Anil Louis Justes and Tchadenskys gave everything for everyone, while awaiting nothing for themselves in return, as they fought and fell in combat in order to guarantee all the homeland’s children an abundance of water, food, peace, liberty, dignity and joy.

Author

Danny Shaw teaches Latin American and Caribbean Studies and International Relations at the City University of New York. He holds a master’s degree in International Affairs from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. As the Director and professor of the International Affairs Department at the Midwestern Marx Institute, he works to build unity and anti-imperialist consciousness. He is fluent in Spanish, Haitian Kreyol, Portuguese, Cape Verdean Kreolu and has a fair command of French, and works as an International Affairs Analyst for TeleSUR, HispanTV, RT and other international news networks. He has worked and organized in eighty-one countries, opening his spirit to countless testimonies about the inhumanity of the international economic system. He is a Golden Gloves boxer, fighting twice in Madison Square Garden for the NYC heavyweight championship. He teaches boxing, yoga and nutrition and works as a Sober Coach. He is a mentor to many, guiding them through the nutritional, ideological, social and emotional landmines that surround us. He is the father of Ernesto Dessalines and Cauã Amaru. He has also authored articles on Latin American history, boxing and nutrition, among other topics. You can follow his work at @profdannyshaw

​Republished from Black Agenda Report

This past Sunday, a group of Cubans took to the streets of Santiago de Cuba, in the east of the island, to show their dissatisfaction with the economic situation in the country. In recent weeks, fuel shortages have caused long hours of scheduled blackouts, especially in that city, which, along with food shortages and salaries strongly affected by inflation, have turned the daily life of Cubans into an odyssey of frustration.

Immediately after the news broke, the hegemonic media of the North and some sectors of the ultra-right-wing in Florida and other parts of the world tried to take advantage of the circumstances to bring about a change of regime in the country. They hoped that what began as a peaceful protest amid a painful economic situation would multiply throughout the island and turn into a social outburst that would lead Cubans to confront one another.

It hurts how they dismiss the real causes of the economic crisis in Cuba, which includes, above so many other reasons, the U.S economic blockade that has continued non stop against the island for over 64 years, preventing us from establishing trade relations with the rest of the world and, therefore, our own development. The opportunists look at us from a distance with hamburgers in hand and want us to get heated up, with sticks in hand against the government, as if they were attending one of the battles of the U.S. bestseller The Hunger Games.
This Sunday, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel acknowledged on the social network X that people had expressed dissatisfaction with the current situation. He warned that this context is being taken advantage of by the enemies of the Revolution “for destabilizing purposes.” Their objective has nothing to do with the needs of the Cuban people.

Diaz-Canel denounced that terrorists based in the United States are encouraging actions against the internal order of the country. The president also reiterated the willingness of the Cuban authorities of the Communist Party, the State, and the Government, to attend to the demands of the Cuban people.

“We are willing to listen, dialogue, and explain the many steps taken to improve the situation, always in an atmosphere of tranquility,” he said and reaffirmed the government’s commitment to “work in peace to overcome the current situation, despite the blockade that seeks to suffocate the nation.”

While the president took the podium to assure the people that they are not alone and that the government understands, listens, and acts, the U.S. embassy took to social media to speak about “human rights.” On the official X account, the diplomatic headquarters in Havana posted, “We are aware of reports of peaceful protests in Santiago, Bayamo, Granma, and elsewhere in Cuba, with citizens protesting the lack of food and electricity. We urge the Cuban government to respect the human rights of the protestors and address the legitimate needs of the Cuban people.” Spoken like they are innocent concerned bystanders.

​On Monday, U.S. Chargé d’Affaires Benjamin Ziff was summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs by Deputy Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío, who formally expressed Cuba’s firm rejection of the U.S. government’s and its embassy in Cuba’s interference and slanderous messages regarding internal affairs of the Cuban reality.

“How cynical and despicable to ask the government of Cuba to satisfy the needs of its people, when your government has been applying a brutal siege for +60 years to deprive my people of the essentials and cause its suffocation,” Cuba’s Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Josefina Vidal, denounced.

The destabilizing plan and its execution are obvious for all to see. It rests on the reinforcement of a ruthless economic war to provoke and exploit the natural irritation of the population. It is financed with tens of millions of dollars from the U.S. federal budget every year.

According to a statement issued by the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the plans have a powerful technological infrastructure to exploit digital networks from U.S. territory for aggressive purposes. They enjoy the complicity of important U.S. and international mainstream media and the mercenary support of people based mainly in South Florida, in the United States, whose only livelihood is the industry of aggression against the island.

What do Cubans need? To reject the suffocation to which we are subjected to, the lack of access to food, inflation, bureaucracy, corruption, and internal problems that can be solved but we will do that. And above all, we condemn the determination of the U.S. Government to limit and hinder every effort of the Cuban State to find solutions and provide answers to the economic and social needs of the country.
​
It is actually quite simple, as a sovereign country we are resolute in our insistence that we will build our society without the dictates of any country.

Author

Alejandra Garcia 

Republished from Resumen Latinoamericano English 

The first resistance warriors against Western imperialism in the Americas, were the Taíno nation, a people which once inhabited the Caribbean Islands, including the land which we now know as Puerto Rico. Scholars now agree, what the natives knew all along, Christopher Columbus did not discover anything, rather he was discovered himself.  Contrary to the lies perpetrated throughout official history, Columbus was lost. Or as James Baldwin puts it: “Columbus was discovered by what he found''.[1] Columbus believed he arrived in Asia and died swearing that Cuba was mainland Japan. In fact, Columbus' ship wrecked and it was the Taíno people who rescued him and brought him  ashore. The Europeans were shown mercy, gentleness, trust and were welcomed with gifts and open arms. In return, the invaders made them slaves, destroyed their culture, slaughtered the people, burned their history, and took the land.[2] Ever since 1492, Western Imperialism has dominated the world;centuries ago it was Spain, a few decades ago it was Britain, and today it is led by the United States of America, the world’s biggest empire.  The People of the World have fallen victims to the first true global empire. With some, of course, defeating it and in the process achieving liberation. The ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Natives of the Americas at the hands of European imperialism, distinctively parallels  with the ongoing slaughtered and destruction of the Palestinian people by the State of Israel. However, we cannot overlook the fact that Israel would not be able to act with such impunity and have such military, political and economic power without the massive support of the world’s most powerful empire, the United States; the same empire that continues to occupy and colonize Puerto Rico.
           
Yet, however, today we see two nations struggling against a common enemy: Palestine and Puerto Rico, a struggle against imperialism and for liberation. The State of Israel, as Yasser Arafat famously stated in an interview with a British reporter, is the baby of Western imperialism, namely Britain and the United States.[3] After all, it was Britain who ushered the creation of the State of Israel with the notorious Belfort Declaration of 1917.[4]  Today, the UK and the United States, are the biggest political, economic and military supporters of Israel. The United States alone has provided Israel with hundreds of billions of dollars in military aid, along with its fundamentally corrupt support in the International arena.[5] The United States corporate media have displayed unrelenting support for the genocide being committed by Israel in Palestine.  The fundamental motives of the United States empire in its involvement in the ongoing Palestinian genocide, are best expressed by president Joe Biden, which once stated in 1986, in front of Congress: “Were there not an Israel the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interests in the region”. [6]

What are the interests of the United States, one may ask; the answer is to continue the over 500 years legacy of Western imperialism, that being to exploit, plunder and pillage the peoples of the world, for the enrichment of the international bourgeoisie. The Palestinian people, like the Taino people, are today facing the possibility of undergoing ethnic cleansing at the hands of the savagery enforced by Israel. Ethnic cleansing  has come to be defined as a crime against humanity, punishable by International Law.  [7]The atrocities committed by the Israeli government have sent shock waves throughout the international community, with the United Nations 15-member Security Council voting 13-1 in favor of a ceasefire with the United States being the only country voting against it, and the UK abstaining its vote. [8]Furthermore, South Africa presented their case in the International Court, accusing Israel of crimes against humanity, including genocide, with other countries taking the United States to court for their complicity in this genocide.
           
The bombs dropped today in Palestine were tested in Puerto Rico. The United States Navy, for decades, experimented in Puerto Rico with chemically dangerous explosives which destroyed the ecosystem of Vieques, a small municipality east of the Island(s). The remnants of this continue to haunt the people of Vieques, which today have the highest rate of cancer in the archipelago.[9]Furthermore, today the United States military occupies 13% of the land of Puerto Rico, occupying the Puerto Rican nation since 1898, using  it as a military base and as a giant laboratory for its multinational chemical corporations like Dupont ,the pharmaceutical industry, and those of the Military Industrial Complex, like Lockheed Martin. [10]The same claws covered with the  blood of the Puerto Rican people have Palestinian blood as well. [11]Lockheed Martin is a giant profiteer from the war in Palestine, which also made great wealth from the invasion of Iraq and other imperial wars throughout the world.[12]
          
Ever since, the State of Israel ramped up its vicious military attacks against the Palestinian people, the People of Puerto Rico ,and its diaspora, and have been conducting demonstrations and protests in solidarity with Palestine.[13] Yet, the solidarity between Palestine and Puerto Rico has not begun recently. Rather, Puerto Ricans have expressed for decades clear support for Palestine with the late great Puerto Rican  lawyer and social justice activist, Juan Marís Bras, declaring in front of the United Nations in 1982 that, “Puerto Rico is the Palestine of the Americas'' and  that the “Palestinian people who fight together with us, are leading one of the most heroic struggles of our contemporary times”.[14] Like the Palestinian people, the Puerto Rican people are resisting the horrors of colonialism and imperialism.  Edwin Cortés, political activist for the liberation of Puerto Rico once wrote in the 1980s:

“Within the past two months renewed resistance in the Middle East has once again captured world attention. This time it is not the tragic Iran-Iraq war but Palestine, a nation in struggle that represents a vital threat to the existence of Zionism, Arab reaction, and US imperialism in the Israeli occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.”[15]

Furthermore, in 2001, as a clear sign of solidarity between the two occupied nations, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition marched during the National Puerto Rican Day Parade in Manhattan. [16]
           
The acts of the State of Israel have been conceived by some as the most documented genocide in history, and perhaps they are right.  There are clear similarities in the vicious acts of  Israel with those committed by the Spanish empire against the Taíno people. Israel, like Spain, has dehumanized the people which terrorizes, often demonizing them, showing no mercy or common humanity, engaging in the most atrocious crimes imaginable. Since the formation of the State of Israel in 1948, over 2 million Palestinian have been displayed from their ancestral land, with Israel now occupying over 80% of Palestinian land, and those who refuse to leave, are facing annihilation. [17]These acts will be remembered in history and those who are responsible will be compared to the horrors committed by Nazi Germany. For there is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people. Yet, we cannot overlook the fact that Israel would not be able to conduct this display of force and might, without the support of the United States, the empire that today occupies and colonizes Puerto Rico.

Notes

[1] Baldwin, J. (1990). Jimmy’s blues: Selected poems. St. Martin’s Press.
[2] Clarke, J. H. (2014). Christopher Columbus and the Afrikan holocaust slavery and the rise of European capitalism. Lushena Books.
[3] Counter Narrative News. (2023, October 30). Yasser Arafat: Israel is the west’s baby. Counter Narrative News YouTube. https://youtu.be/nXvLsl17mHM?si=x_jGW_CTb0QTMKOQ
[4] Khalidi, R. (2022). The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A history of settler colonialism and resistance, 1917-2017. Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company.
[5] Masters, J. (2024, January 23). U.S. aid to Israel in four charts. Council on Foreign Relations. https://www.cfr.org/article/us-aid-israel-four-charts
[6] Kestler-D’Amours, J., & Stepansky, J. (2024, January 30). “defies logic”: The makings of Joe Biden’s “blank cheque” to Israel. Al Jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2024/1/30/defies-logic-the-makings-of-joe-bidens-blank-cheque-to-israel#:~:text=“Were%20there%20not%20an%20Israel,decades%20away%20from%20becoming%20president.
[7] Pappé, I. (2023). The ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Oneworld.
[8] Lederer, E. M. (2024, February 21). The US vetoes an Arab-backed UN resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza. AP News. https://apnews.com/article/un-israel-palestinians-gaza-ceasefire-resolution-vote-350c86ef261bf1a00a2515cf22764de5
[9] Chan, W. (2023, May 1). “I thought they’d kill us”: How the US navy devastated a tiny Puerto Rican Island. The Guardian.
[10] Hofstaedter, E. (2022, October 12). Big Pharma is flooding Puerto Rico with toxic waste. Mother Jones. https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2022/10/big-pharma-is-flooding-puerto-rico-with-toxic-waste/
[11]Power, M. (1989, July 27). Time to end U.S. occupation of Puerto Rico. The New York Times.https://www.nytimes.com/1989/07/27/opinion/l-time-to-end-us-occupation-of-puerto-rico787489.html
[12] War profiteer of the Month: Lockheed Martin. War Resisters’ International. (2006, August). https://wri-irg.org/en/story/2006/war-profiteer-month-lockheed-martin
[13] Florido, A. (2024, January 19). Why Puerto Rico has such deep support for the Palestinian cause. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2024/01/19/1225722287/why-puerto-rico-has-such-deep-support-for-the-palestinian-cause
[14] Hevesi, D. (2010, September 11). Juan Mari Bras, voice for separate Puerto Rico, dies at 82. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/11/us/politics/11bras.html
[15] Ramos-Zayas, A. Y., & Rúa, M. M. (2021). Critical dialogues in Latinx Studies a reader. New York University Press.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Khalidi, R. (2022). The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A history of settler colonialism and resistance, 1917-2017. Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company.

Author​

Benjamin Perez Gonzalez graduated in Sociology and Political Science from Florida International University and is current a graduate student at the University of Puerto Rico. They are also a teacher, writer and activist.

"In the midst of a blockade that intends to suffocate us, we will continue working in peace to overcome this situation".
​
This was stated, through the social network X, by the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, while denouncing the propagandistic and instigating articulation of the enemies of the Revolution to provoke destabilization and chaos, based on the tensions generated by the current limitations of the electric service in the country, due to fuel deficit, and other daily shortages, mainly as a result of the relentless policy of economic suffocation of the United States Government against Cuba.

"In the last few hours we have seen how terrorists based in the U.S., whom we have repeatedly denounced, encourage actions against the internal order of the country," the president accused, referring to the growing counterrevolutionary campaign that, through the artificial multiplication of hate messages and subversive content disseminated on social networks and anti-Cuban sites, distort and manipulate the claim that groups of citizens have expressed, due to logical disagreements with the electricity service and food distribution.

"The disposition of the authorities of the Party, the State and the Government is to attend to the claims of our people, to listen, to dialogue, to explain the numerous steps being taken to improve the situation, always in an atmosphere of tranquility," Díaz-Canel argued.

A clear example of this was the honest and open dialogue held yesterday by the first secretary of the Provincial Committee of the Party in Santiago de Cuba, Beatriz Johnson Urrutia, with a group of people who complained about the unbalanced schedule in the supply of electricity and the effects on products such as milk for children.

According to statements in X, Johnson Urrutia explained that "the population of Santiago de Cuba was respectful and listened attentively to the information provided by the municipality's management regarding the distribution of the food basket", and added that "they also talked about the supply of electric energy, due to the effects on the National Electro-energy System, because of the problems of the thermoelectric power plants and the availability of fuel".

"The premise will always be the attention and explanation to the people, in an atmosphere of peace and tranquility, in the face of the persistent attempts of counterrevolutionaries and terrorists abroad to destabilize the country", stressed, also through X, the member of the Political Bureau and Secretary of Organization of the Central Committee of the Party, Roberto Morales Ojeda.

That the traditional enemy of the Cuban Revolution and its chorus of mercenaries associate for the strangulation of the Island has nothing spontaneous about it.

"They seek asphyxiation with the genocidal blockade and, on the shortages and daily difficulties they impose on us, they articulate their other war from the platforms they dominate and usufruct," denounced Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, also a member of the Political Bureau, when he pointed out the interferenceist conspiracy of the diplomatic representation of the Northern power in our country.

"The direct and cruel responsibility of the U.S. in the acute economic situation that weighs on the well-being of the Cuban people is well known. The U.S. Government, especially its Embassy in Cuba, must refrain from interfering in the internal affairs of the country and inciting social disorder," he demanded.
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Author

Granma, The Offical Voice of the Communist Party of Cuba Central Committee. 

aiti is again breaking news. One of the top news stories in the world on March 12 was the alleged “cannibalism” of a Haitian gang. No different than the Department of Health’s equating Haitians with carriers of the AIDS virus in the 1980’s and Hollywood films such as The Serpent and the Rainbow, this disinformation campaign is a racist attack on the collective Haitian self-esteem. Such propaganda seeks to ideologically justify the impending fourth U.S.-directed invasion and occupation of Haiti in the past 100 years. 

But where there is repression, there is resistance. Haitian grassroots actors and their supporters around the world are saying no to both internal and external mercenaries usurping Haitian participatory democracy. As Haitian Bald Headed Party-affiliated (PHTK) paramilitary death squads rampage through Port-au-Prince, seeking to displace and massacre as many families as possible, Jake Johnston’s new book Aid State: Elite Panic, Disaster Capitalism and the Battle to Control Haiti is a valuable contribution to understanding the geopolitical origins of these “gangs.” The book provides context on why the Biden government appointed the unelected prime minister, Ariel Henry, in 2021 and then requested his removal from office last week  as continued support for the illegitimate leader became untenable.

Gangs or Mercenaries for Hire?

Johnston’s page-turner is a necessary read for those new to Haitian studies, as well as those long familiar with the anti-dictatorship and anti-paramilitary struggles that Haiti has embarked upon in decades and centuries past. One thing is clear: the current paramilitaries, described in the mainstream press as “gangs,” must be analyzed on the historical continuum of U.S.-sponsored, state-affiliated armed groups, tasked with subduing the perennially “restless natives.” The preferred weapon of the mercenary gang bosses—Izo, Kempès, Barbecue, and others—is the torching of the communities they seek to subdue. Johnston points to the Michel Martelly administration (2011 - 2016) as being the first expression of the PHTK to use armed mercenaries to do their bidding. This assault on Haitian democracy, as personified by the politically-active populations of Belè, Lasalin, Solino, Delma anba, and the other ghettos of downtown Port-au-Prince, has reshaped Haiti’s capital city (spellings of Haitian words are in Haitian Kreyòl and not in the French colonial language). While early 2021 saw a mass movement that sought to topple the second expression of the PHTK dictatorship, headed by Jovenel Moïse, today armed and masked gunmen control some 80 percent of Port-au-Prince. 

According to the Displacement Tracking Matrix of the International Organization of Migration, 330,000 people have been internally displaced in Haiti, the majority of whom are children. Consistent with one of the principal themes of the book, I documented in visits to refugee camps at the end of January how the U.S.-sponsored Haitian state has yet to even visit the thousands of families sheltered in schools, alleyways, public plazas, and beyond.

Aid State compiles 10 plus years of Johnston’s research in the Capital Beltway and 1,400 miles away, in the ancestral homeland of Haitian revolutionary leaders Dutty Boukman, François Makandal, and Jean-Jacque Dessalines. The backdrop of the work is a literary tour de force of the spellbinding mountains of the Grandans department, the crowded refugee camp of Titanyen, and the abandoned farms of the Grannò. The reader who has not visited Haiti in the past years as a result of what the Haitian people call the ensekirité planifye e òganize (planned and organized instability) is sure to shed a tear or two of nostalgia upon reading of the landgrabs of armed thugs employed by the PHTK.

Haitian Patriots or Colonial Lackeys?

The meat of the book provides a broad overview of the corrupt inner workings of Haitian state corruption beginning with the selection of Martelly as president in 2011 up to the present, and the U.S. government puppeteers who oversee the clumsy “politics as usual.” Johnston examines from the inside-out how the “aid state”—a state almost wholly dependent on thousands of private, foreign NGO’s—both consciously and unconsciously functions to disempower Haitians. Every page confirms what almost any Haitian will tell you: politics and “aid” are a rich man’s game which mocks the lives, interests, and dignity of Haiti’s 99 percent.

Haitian young professionals searching to be of service to their country would have been militants of national liberation organizations in decades past. Today, much of this homegrown talent is compelled to follow the lure of some 10,000 NGOs that can pay salaries in U.S. dollars the Haitian left does not have access to. “Soft imperialism” contributes to an internal brain drain that discourages the upcoming generation from struggling for true Haitian sovereignty.

Johnston shows how the Republic of NGOs—one accurate nickname for both pre and post-earthquake Haiti—is not organized to respond to everyday people’s needs.

​The product of years of investigative journalism, Johnston shows how the Republic of NGOs—one accurate nickname for both pre and post-earthquake Haiti—is not organized to respond to everyday people’s needs. Thoroughly researched chapters show how donors responding to the 2010 earthquake, including the Clinton Foundation, Citibank, and an entire cast of neocolonial characters, squandered $10 billion dollars, $1 billion of which was from the United States, constituting the “largest ever international mobilization to respond to a natural disaster.” A high percentage of that money was pilfered by Western companies who created fraudulent paperwork and looked out for corporate bottom lines, not the needs of the Haitian people. 

The chapter “The $80,000 House” explains with painstaking detail how Haitian Martelly’s government and his cronies, such as his childhood friend Harold Charles, worked with USAID and their U.S. contractors—including Thor Construction, Tetra Tech, and the CEEPCO company—in the wake of the earthquake to swindle Haiti’s population in the north. The Caracol-EKAM village was supposed to provide $8,000 homes for workers displaced by the earthquake who were the rank and file of the Clinton-USAID free trade or sweatshop project. After the vultures divided up the booty, each house turned out to have “cost” $88,000. What was supposed to be a community of 15,000 “culturally appropriate” homes for survivors of the earthquake ended up being 750 homes with major construction and sewage problems. This malfeasance was “the perfect encapsulation of everything wrong with our foreign aid system: the favoritism and corruption, the reliance on expensive foreign ‘experts,’ the lack of community consultation. Most of all, the houses stood as proof of how difficult it was to hold anyone accountable for their actions in Haiti.”

Johnston, a Senior Research Associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, provides the necessary global—or more accurately U.S.—geostrategic context that explains how political unknowns like Martelly, Moïse, and Henry became the leaders of the nation, despite enjoying very little popular support. Johnston shows that the PHTK, the party of the U.S.-backed former president Martelly, is the principal Haitian actor at the center of the Guns, Gangs, and Neocolonialism drama that continues to play out. Interviews with former president René Préval, the head of the scaled-down UN mission Susan Page, and musician, hotelier, and former Martelly ambassador Richard Morse add to the entertaining, easily-digestible chapters. Aid State is further bolstered by chapters covering the theft of billions of dollars in Petro Caribbean funds by the Haitian state from Venezuela, and the 628,000 “zombie votes” from people who did not exist in 2016 that guaranteed victory for the PHTK and the United States’ man in Haiti, Moïse. Aid State ends with explosive new plot twists that help explain who was behind the July 7, 2021, assassination of Moïse that will shock even seasoned followers of all things Haiti.

The Only Solution: Haitian Self-Determination

The myriad threats and doxing to which the author has been subjected are the clearest proof he has exposed and touched the sensitive veins of colonial rule in Haiti.

Like Jeb Sprague’s Paramilitarism and the Assault on Democracy in Haiti, Mark Schuller’s Humanitarian Aftershocks in Haiti, Dada Chery’s We Have Dared to Be Free: Haiti's Struggle Against Occupation, and a phalanx of others, this is a book that belongs in every library of Haitian and anti-colonial studies. Johnston has been a valuable witness to an important chapter in the ongoing Haitian national liberation struggle. His lucid pen does justice to the continued mobilization of millions of Haitians against the Aid State. The myriad threats and doxing to which the author has been subjected are the clearest proof he has exposed and touched the sensitive veins of colonial rule in Haiti.

I am an ethnographer who has filled up notebooks with notes on Haitian Kreyòl and culture for almost three decades. Since 2021, I have been following the paramilitary gang war on the long-peaceful and stable ghettos of Port-au-Prince. Jake Johnston’s rigorous research over the course of fifteen years has helped me better understand the present brutality that neocolonialism has produced. Johnston’s book is a necessary read for any friends and supporters of Haiti seeking to contextualize what is playing out in the korido (alleyways) and katyè popilè (oppressed communities) of Port-au-Prince as you read this article.

Upon finishing this political science and journalistic gem, the reader wonders how, nearly one quarter of the way through the 21st century in the era of social media and identity politics, Haiti can so clearly remain a colony of the United States. Every U.S. government move in Haiti, from appointing prime ministers to organizing the next invasion, reflects their desire to maintain hegemonic control over Haiti. The years 1492 and 1697—the year of the “Peace of Ryswick” treaty which defined colonial ownership of the island the Taino natives called Ayiti—hemorrhage into 2024 as the masses of hungry and humiliated Haitians continue to dream of and fight for the Second Haitian Revolution. Until then, Haitian communities stand like David before Goliath, erecting their barricades to resist the onslaught of the paramilitaries and their foreign masters.

Author

Danny Shaw teaches Latin American and Caribbean Studies and International Relations at the City University of New York. He holds a master’s degree in International Affairs from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. As the Director and professor of the International Affairs Department at the Midwestern Marx Institute, he works to build unity and anti-imperialist consciousness. He is fluent in Spanish, Haitian Kreyol, Portuguese, Cape Verdean Kreolu and has a fair command of French, and works as an International Affairs Analyst for TeleSUR, HispanTV, RT and other international news networks. He has worked and organized in eighty-one countries, opening his spirit to countless testimonies about the inhumanity of the international economic system. He is a Golden Gloves boxer, fighting twice in Madison Square Garden for the NYC heavyweight championship. He teaches boxing, yoga and nutrition and works as a Sober Coach. He is a mentor to many, guiding them through the nutritional, ideological, social and emotional landmines that surround us. He is the father of Ernesto Dessalines and Cauã Amaru. He has also authored articles on Latin American history, boxing and nutrition, among other topics. You can follow his work at @profdannyshaw

Republished from NACLA

Let’s take Trump’s impeachment trials, for example, where he was accused of ‘abuse of power and obstruction of justice.’ The case relies on attacking the character of President Trump - an ad hominem argument, which serves only to defame a person as inherently untrustworthy, without providing substantive evidence. Ad hominem attacks are inherently flawed because they fail to address the truthfulness or falsehood of the person's statements. The crux of the Democrats' articles of impeachment revolved around portraying Donald Trump as either a "dictator" as stated by Rep. Jerry Nadler or a "threat to our democracy" as asserted by Rep. Adam Schiff. 
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Trump is also known for his frequent and often controversial use of ad hominem attacks against his political opponents, critics, and adversaries. ‘Crooked Hillary’, ‘Sleepy Joe’, ‘Crazy Bernie’, and ‘Pocahontas’ - Trump's use of these and similar terms is a consistent feature of his political communication style, both during his presidency and current campaign. The former president didn’t hesitate to engage in character assassination against immigrants, either. In June of 2015, Trump referred to Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists, stating when Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. Despite facing backlash, Trump doubled down on his stance and continues to use inflammatory language when discussing immigration-related issues, portraying immigrants in a negative light. He demonizes immigrants as "alien invaders" and "illegal aliens," to further divide the working class.

Another way of practicing identity politics is to bring a new face to represent US Imperialism; a new face that’s different from the straight white man. Dressing up the same capitalist and imperialist policies with someone female, LGBT, or African American, gives the illusion of inclusive and progressive change. How many hopes were dashed when Obama proved to be the more effective evil in perpetuating the same policies, but with a ‘prettier face’? This woke-washing also lays a trap for Republicans, who when criticizing Democratic policy can more easily be condemned as sexist, racist homophobes. 

Only after the economic revolution, when workers take control of the means of production, can the immigration question finally be resolved. We should understand that neither of the two major parties nor the presidential candidates are interested in improving the lives of citizens or immigrants. Siding with one of the parties is not useful for the revolutionary movement. We must oppose and expose them both

Author

Slava the Ukrainian Socialist

Republished from Revolution Report

There’s an infuriatingly common type of liberal who purports to oppose Israel’s actions in Gaza while also saying they support “Israel’s right to exist”, as though Israel’s existence is somehow separable from its genocidal murderousness. This is a state that literally cannot exist without nonstop violence and tyranny, as demonstrated by its entire unbroken history since its inception. It was set up as a settler-colonialist outpost for western imperialism from the very beginning, and that’s exactly what it’s been ever since.
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History has conclusively established that it is not possible to drop an artificial ethnostate on top of an already-existing population in which the pre-existing population is legally subordinate to the new one without tremendous amounts of warfare, police violence, mass displacement, apartheid, disenfranchisement and oppression. This is not actually debatable. It is a settled matter (no pun intended).

Is it possible to have a nation in which Jews are welcomed and kept safe? Of course. Many such nations exist outside of Israel, and the majority of the world’s Jews live in them. What isn’t possible is a Jewish ethnostate in historic Palestine in which the pre-existing population is treated as less than the Jewish population that does not necessarily entail nonstop violence, tyranny and abuse. This is self-evidently a direct contradiction in goals, but it’s what the liberals we’re discussing here pretend to believe is a reasonable possibility.

There absolutely could be a state in that region wherein Palestinians and Jews coexist peacefully, but it would be so wildly different from present-day Israel that you can’t pretend it would be the same state as the one we see now. It would entail such a radically dramatic overhaul of Israeli civilization, such a comprehensive dismantling of deeply ingrained racism, such a drastic restructuring of governmental and living systems, so much labor, sacrifice, humility, inner work and reparations, that to call it by the same name as the state that presently exists would be nonsensical.

And that isn’t what the liberals in question are talking about instituting when they say they oppose Israel’s atrocities in Gaza but “support Israel’s right to exist”. What they are saying is they want Israel to remain the unjust and tyrannical apartheid state that is has always been, but for the killing to stop. They want the injustice to continue, but they want its most overt manifestations to stop causing them cognitive dissonance. They want the status quo, without the murderous savagery that is necessary for the status quo’s existence. They want to pretend they live in an imaginary fantasyland where such a thing is possible.
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In order to make this fantasy seem more believable, liberals will pretend that the violence we are seeing can be blamed entirely on the Netanyahu government, as though things would be fine without Bibi in office despite the fact that Israel’s abusiveness began long before he showed up, and despite the fact that Israel’s atrocities in Gaza have the approval of the vast majority of Israelis. Israeli violence isn’t the product of Netanyahu, Netanyahu is the product of Israeli violence. He built his political career upon sentiments that were already in place.

They’ll also tell themselves fairy tales about a two-state solution to make their position seem more valid, ignoring inconvenient facts like that Israeli officials have been openly saying a Palestinian state will never happen, that Israeli Jews overwhelmingly oppose such a measure, and that Israeli settlements are being built in Palestinian territories with the explicit goal of making a future two-state solution impossible. Liberals subscribe to these fantasies as a kind of cognitive pacifier, which allows them to relax and feel okay with themselves despite the fact that they’re not actually endorsing any viable path toward justice.
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And to be clear this isn’t just what liberals do with regard to Israel-Palestine; it’s their whole entire position on everything. On every issue their position is little more than “Maintain the status quo, but make it pretty and psychologically comfortable for me.” They never want to do what’s right, they just want to feel like they are right. Theirs is an imperialist, militarist, tyrannical oligarchic ideology with a bunch of feel-good social justice bumper stickers slapped on top of it. A boot on your neck and a flower in its hair.

That’s who liberals are. It’s who they’ve always been. Phil Ochs released the song “Love Me, I’m a Liberal” in 1966, and they haven’t changed one iota ever since. The issues change, their arguments change, but their “maintain the status quo but let me feel nice about it” values system has remained exactly the same for generations.

Author

Catilin Johnstone

Republished from Catilin's blog. 

Speaking in Rome, Italy, the head of the United Nations World Food Program Cindy McCain said, “If we do not exponentially increase the size of aid going into the northern areas” of Gaza, “famine is imminent. It’s imminent.” Over 30,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza by the genocidal Israeli war, and the Palestinians in Gaza are on the verge of famine. Palestine’s Permanent Observer at the United Nations Riyad Mansour said that over half a million people are “one step away from famine.” “What it means for mothers and fathers to hear their babies and children cry of hunger day and night, no milk, no bread, nothing,” he added. Indeed, babies and children already have begun to die due to the famine-like conditions in Gaza. With Ramadan already begun, the situation is not only physically acute, but also mentally torturous.
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There are currently 2,000 medical workers who are trying their best to operate basic medical care in northern Gaza. They are working without access to any hospital facilities and often with no power or water, including very limited supplies of medicines. Now, the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza has said that these workers are themselves in a dire situation. The staff, said the Ministry, “will start Ramadan without Suhoor or Iftar meals.” “Doctors will die. The nurses there will die. And the world will witness the largest number of victims of hunger in the coming days,” said Ashraf al-Qudra, the ministry’s spokesperson.

War Crime

In June 1977, at a conference on humanitarian law in armed conflict, the member states of the United Nations extended the Geneva Conventions (1949) to add Protocol II. Article 14 of that protocol says that “[s]tarvation of civilians as a method of combat is prohibited.” The belligerent power is “prohibited to attack, destroy, remove, or render useless” any “objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works.” Two decades later, when the UN member states wrote up the Rome Statute (1998), they added in a section on starvation under the heading of war crimes (Article 8); “intentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare by depriving them of objects indispensable to their survival, including wilfully impeding relief supplies” is a war crime. The Rome Statute is the treaty that formed the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has thus far remained silent on its obligations to act on its own founding document.

On February 29th, trucks with humanitarian aid came into the northern part of Gaza. When desperate people rushed to these trucks, Israeli soldiers fired on them and killed at least 118 unarmed civilians. This is now known as the Flour Massacre. In its aftermath, 10 UN experts released a strong statement, which noted, “Israel has been intentionally starving the Palestinian people in Gaza since 8 October. Now it is targeting civilians seeking humanitarian aid and humanitarian convoys.” The UN special rapporteur for food, Michael Fakhri, who signed that statement, later expanded this accusation against Israel. “Israel,” he told the UN Human Rights Council, “has mounted a starvation campaign against the Palestinian people in Gaza.” These statements are very pointed. Words such as “intentionally” and phrases such as “starvation campaign” directly accuse Israel of war crimes based on Protocol II and the Rome Statute.

Fakhri focused on Gaza’s fishing industry, which had provided important food security for the 2.3 million Palestinians who live there. “Israeli forces,” he said, have “decimated the Port of Gaza, destroying every single fishing boat and shack. In Rafah, only two out of 40 boats are left. In Khan Younis, Israel destroyed approximately 75 small-scale fishing vessels.” This destruction, Fakhri said, has pushed Gaza “into hunger and starvation.” “In fact,” he added, “Israel has been strangling Gaza for 17 years through a blockade, which included denying and restricting small-scale fishers access to their territorial waters.”

At the UN General Assembly, Palestine’s Riyad Mansour said that Israel has bombed “every bakery and farm, destroying livestock and all means of food production.” In the first month of the bombardment, Israel bombed the major bakeries of Gaza City. In November 2023, Abdelnasser al-Jarmi of the Bakery Owners Association in the Gaza Strip said that bakeries have not been able to function for lack of fuel and flour. As a consequence of the absence of bread, families have begun to gather a weed called khubaiza (or Malva parviflora) and to boil this as the main meal. “We are dying for a piece of bread,” said Fatima Shaheen as she built a meal for her two sons and their children in northern Gaza.

Crossings

Israel has refused to fully open the crossings into Gaza at Beit Hanoun and Karem Abu Salem as well as refused to allow complete opening of the Rafah crossing the links Gaza to Egypt. Since these land crossings are closed, and since Israel destroyed the Yasser Arafat International Airport in 2001, there are no easy solutions to bring food aid into Gaza. Delivery of food and supplies through the air is not sufficient—indeed it is a drop in the ocean (which is where some of the aid packages landed). There is now talk of building maritime corridors, but since Israel has bombed the Port of Gaza this is not an easy option. That the U.S. has said that it would build a temporary pier off the coast of Gaza’s southern half is ridiculous. It would be so much easier to open the Rafah crossing to allow at least 500 trucks a day into Gaza. But Israel will not permit this option.

International law is clear as daylight on the point of starvation as a war crime. There are no loopholes in Protocol II (1977) or in the Rome Statute (1998). Friends in Gaza are finding this Ramadan month to be more difficult than any previously. Starvation is their general condition. But, unlike with other Ramadans, there is no early morning meal (Suhoor) and no late-night meal (Iftar). There is only the perennial noise of Israeli fighter jets mirrored by the groans of hunger in their bellies.
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Author

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism and (with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.