In recent weeks, U.S. corporate media has been flooded with coverage of imprisoned Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny’s hunger strike and stories of his failing health. After three weeks on hunger strike, Navalny’s personal doctors called his symptoms “life threatening.” 

On April 19, a panel of doctors recommended that Navalny be transferred to a hospital for treatment, which he was.

The Biden administration warned of serious “consequences” if Navalny, a pro-Western politician, should die. 

Navalny’s imprisonment and alleged health problems have been front-page news in major media outlets like the New York Times and Washington Post. Amidst the public anticipation of the Derek Chauvin verdict last weekend, NBC Nightly News devoted several minutes to Navalny.

We say “alleged health problems” because, before returning to Russia earlier this year, Navalny had claimed to have been poisoned by the Russian government with the deadly Novichok nerve agent while traveling to Germany in 2020. The problem is, Novichok is so deadly that, had his story been true, not only Navalny but his entire entourage would likely be dead. 

Navalny subsequently spent several months “recovering” in Germany, under the protection of the Berlin government. The alleged poisoning was used to make Navalny a cause célèbre in the Western media and pump up his reputation here as the main opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

It’s worth drawing attention to the fact that Navalny chose the week of Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration to return to Moscow, where he was arrested for violating the terms of his probation in a 2014 money-laundering case. In early February, he was sentenced to 3½ years in prison.

That Navalny’s case is filling the airwaves and websites right now should come as no surprise. Not only is it a convenient distraction from the rash of racist police murders and right-wing violence in the United States; it’s also propaganda for the growing war drive against Russia by Washington and its NATO allies.

Other evidence of this dangerous course includes the recent escalation of Ukraine’s war on the Donbass republics bordering Russia, more sanctions being imposed on Moscow, and the massive U.S.-NATO war games called Defender-Europe 2021 that are currently underway.

What about Mumia?

What makes the U.S. media’s hypocrisy glaring is the near-complete lack of coverage by these esteemed media goliaths of the well-documented, truly life-threatening condition of the most famous imprisoned U.S. political dissident — the internationally lauded journalist and former Black Panther, Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Abu-Jamal — who has been unjustly imprisoned for 40 years! — underwent emergency open-heart surgery on April 19, the same day Navalny was transferred to the hospital. But you would be hard-pressed to find a word about it in the mainstream U.S. media.

For months, supporters have been shouting at the top of their voices to alert anyone who will listen about Abu-Jamal’s deteriorating health. “Before this week’s health emergency,” says Dr. Ricardo Alvarez, his personal physician, “Mumia Abu-Jamal was already suffering from COVID-19, congestive heart failure, hypertension, diabetes, liver cirrhosis, and a worsening of a severe and debilitating chronic skin condition.”

It took years of battle with Pennsylvania prison officials to win treatment for Abu-Jamal’s hepatitis C — a struggle that opened the door for other prisoners to also finally receive treatment.

Hundreds of political prisoners are held in U.S. jails. Many of them are now seniors, veterans of the militant Black, Latin and Indigenous liberation struggles of the 1960s-70s, and have been imprisoned for decades. Activists have spent the past year of the COVID-19 pandemic demanding “Free Them All.”

Where are the declarations warning of serious consequences to Pennsylvania officials from President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris? Where are the front page articles in the Times and the Post? Where are the high-profile televised interviews with Abu-Jamal’s physician, Dr. Alvarez, who has said “the only treatment is freedom”?

The answer is blatantly simple. The for-profit media, the bought-and-paid for politicians of both parties in Washington, are only interested in those deemed political prisoners when those politics suit their ends and benefit their system of divide-and-rule.

Stop U.S. drive to war

Capitalism’s global economic crisis, which the pandemic served to sharpen and expose, drives Washington toward war. The U.S. spends more on the military than the next 10 countries combined, year in and year out. President Biden has proposed raising the Pentagon budget even higher, by at least $12.3 billion.

That money isn’t being spent for nothing. It’s being used to prepare for new, bigger wars. And Russia, like China, is one of the main targets.

Within the Russian left and workers’ movement, there are different views on the efficacy of Navalny’s imprisonment. As a collaborator with Western imperialism, as an advocate of privatization and exploitation of workers, and as a figure with a history of racism and association with neo-Nazis, some are happy to see the Russian government lock him up. 

Others point out that Russia’s capitalist government has used Navalny as an excuse to ban protests, and this measure is primarily directed against left movements that are fighting for workers’ rights and which oppose Western imperialism. Imprisoning Navalny also risks giving him greater credibility with young people angry about cutbacks and repression.

This is an important conversation within the Russian movement. But progressives and revolutionaries in the U.S. and Europe must recognize why the West is promoting Navalny’s case — as a pretext for war. 

Let’s fight for the release of Mumia Abu-Jamal and all the political prisoners and prisoners of war held by U.S. imperialism. And let’s fight to end the U.S. war drive, dismantle NATO and bring all the troops and weapons home.

A century ago, the peoples of what was then the Russian czarist empire carried out one of the most profound revolutions in human history. If we do our duty and remove the U.S.-NATO boot heel from their necks, the peoples of Russia will undoubtedly make any political and social changes they feel are necessary — without Western interference.

This pandemic has affirmed that public healthcare needs cannot be adequately met under a profit-based system

On March 23, 2021, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told a group of Conservative Party backbenchers: ‘The reason we have the vaccine success is because of capitalism, because of greed, my friends.’ Johnson was articulating the dogma that the pursuit of private profit through capitalist free markets leads to efficient outcomes. In reality, however, Britain’s accomplishments in developing the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine and in the national vaccination rollout have more to do with state investments than the market mechanism. Government money subsidized the vaccine development at the University of Oxford, and it is the state-funded National Health Service that has carried out the vaccination program. Johnson did not admit that it is due to capitalism and greed that Britain now has the fifth worst COVID-19 mortality rate in the world with over 126,500 deaths (almost 1,857 per million people in the population) and counting.

The British government, like most neoliberal regimes, refused to take the measures necessary to slow and halt community transmission, it failed early on to provide health care and social care workers with adequate PPE and other resources which could have saved the lives of hundreds of frontline staff who died as a result. It contracted private businesses to carry out essential activities, most with little or no relevant experience, for example, instead of equipping the community-based GP system of the National Health Service to take charge of ‘track and trace,’ the government dished out £37 billion to Serco to manage part of the system. In public health terms it has been disastrous; but measured by Boris Johnson’s celebrated standards of capitalism and greed it is has indeed excelled. The greatest beneficiaries of Britain’s response to the pandemic have been the private corporations making huge profits. Around 2,500 Accenture, Deloitte and McKinsey consultants are on an average daily rate of £1,000, with some paid £6,624 a day.

Johnson has now laid out a road map for reopening the economy. As a result, even the most optimistic scenario predicts a third wave between September 2021 and January 2022 resulting in at least 30,000 additional deaths in Britain. These deaths are preventable. But it precisely because the British government is driven by the capitalism and greed that it insists that we have to learn to ‘live with the virus’ so that the business of business can continue.

Contrary to Johnson’s claims, this pandemic has affirmed that public healthcare needs cannot be adequately met under a profit-based system. Indeed, it is the absence of the capitalist profit motive which underlies the outstanding domestic and international response to COVID-19 by socialist Cuba, which now has five vaccines in clinical trials and is set to be among the first nations to vaccinate its entire population.

By reacting quickly and decisively, by mobilizing its public healthcare system and world-leading biotech sector, Cuba has kept contagion and fatalities low. In 2020 Cuba confirmed a total of 12,225 coronavirus cases and 146 deaths in a population of 11.2 million, among the lowest rates in the Western Hemisphere. In November 2020, the airports were opened, leading to a surge with more infections in January 2021 than the whole of the previous year. By March 24, 2021, Cuba had registered fewer than 70,000 cases and 408 deaths. The death rate was 35 per million and the fatality rate was just 0.59 percent (2.2 percent worldwide; 2.9 percent in Britain). Within one year, 57 brigades of medical specialists from Cuba’s Henry Reeve International Contingent had treated 1.26 million COVID-19 patients in 40 countries; they joined 28,000 Cuban healthcare professionals already working in 66 countries. Cuba’s accomplishments are more extraordinary given that from 2017 onwards, the Trump administration punitively unleashed 240 new sanctions, actions and measures to tighten the 60-year blockade of Cuba, including nearly 50 additional measures during the pandemic which cost the health sector alone over $200 million.

Cuba has gone on the offensive against COVID-19, mobilizing the prevention-focused, community based public healthcare system to carry out daily house visits to actively detect and treat cases and channeling the medical science sector to adapt and produce new treatments for patients and COVID-19 specific vaccines. These advances bring hope not just for Cuba, but for the world.

What is special about Cuba’s vaccines?

Some 200 COVID vaccines are being developed worldwide; by March 25, 2021, 23 candidates had advanced to phase III clinical trials. Two of those were Cuban (Soberana 2 and Abdala). No other Latin American country has developed its own vaccine at this stage. Cuba has three more vaccine candidates in earlier stage trials (Soberana 1, Soberana Plus and an intranasal, needle-free vaccine called Mambisa). How do we explain this accomplishment? Cuba’s biotech sector is unique; entirely state-funded and owned, free from private interests, profits are not sought domestically, and innovation is channeled to meet public health needs. Dozens of research and development institutions collaborate, sharing resources and knowledge, instead of competing, which facilitates a fast track from research and innovation to trials and application. Cuba has the capacity to produce 60-70 percent of the medicines it consumes domestically, an imperative due to the US blockade and the cost of medicines in the international market. There is also fluidity between universities, research centers, and the public health system. These elements have proven vital in the development of Cuba’s COVID-19 vaccines.

There are five types of COVID-19 vaccines being developed globally:

• Viral vector vaccines, which inject an unrelated harmless virus modified to deliver SARS-CoV-2 genetic material (Oxford AstraZeneca, Gamaleya and SputnikV)
• Genetic vaccines containing a segment of SARS-CoV-2 virus genetic material (Pfizer, Moderna)
• Inactivated vaccines containing disactivated SARS-CoV-2 virus (Sinovac,/Butantan, SinoPharm, Bharat Biotec)
• Attenuated vaccines containing weakened SARS-CoV-2 virus (Codagenix)
• Protein vaccines containing proteins from the virus which trigger an immune response (Novavax, Sanofi/GSK)

The five Cuban vaccines under clinical trials are all protein vaccines; they carry the portion of the virus spike protein which binds to human cells; it generates neutralizing antibodies to block the binding process. Dr Marlene Ramirez Gonzalez explains that they are, ‘subunit vaccines, one of the most economical approaches and the type for which Cuba has the greatest know-how and infrastructure. From protein S — the antigen or part of the SARS-CoV2 virus that all COVID vaccines target because it induces the strongest immune response in humans — Cuban candidates are based only on the part that is involved in contact with the cell’s receptor: the RBD (receptor-binding domain) which is also the one that induces the greatest amount of neutralizing antibodies. This strategy is not exclusive to Cuban vaccines. But Soberana 2 does distinguish itself from the rest of the world’s candidates as the only “conjugate vaccine.” Currently in phase III clinical trials, it combines RBD with tetanus toxoid, which enhances the immune response…Cuba had already developed another vaccine with this principle. It is Quimi-Hib, “the first of its kind to be approved in Latin America and the second in the world,” against Haemophilus influenzae type b, coccobacilli responsible for diseases such as meningitis, pneumonia and epiglottitis.’

Idania Caballero, a pharmaceutical scientist at BioCubaFarma points out that the vaccines build on decades of medical science and work on infectious diseases. “The mortality rate in Cuba due to infectious diseases, even in times of COVID, is less than one percent. Cuba today vaccinates against 13 diseases with 11 vaccines, eight of which are produced in Cuba. Six diseases have been eliminated as a result of vaccination schedules. The vaccines produced with these technologies have been administered even to children in the first months of life.”

The Soberana vaccines are produced by the Finlay Institute in partnership with the Centre for Molecular Immunology (CIM) and the Centre of Biopreparados. Soberana means ‘sovereign,’ reflecting its economic and political importance; without a domestic product, Cuba would struggle to access foreign vaccines either due to the US blockade or to the cost. Soberana vaccines insert genetic information into superior mammalian cells. Soberana Plus is a the world’s first vaccine for COVID-19 convalescent patients to reach clinical trials.

The other vaccines, Abdala and Mambisa, names which also pay tribute to Cuba’s struggle for independence, are produced by the Centre of Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB). These vaccines insert genetic information in a less evolved organism, a unicellular microorganism (the yeast Pichia Pastoris). They build on the CIGB’s extraordinary record, including its Hepatitis B vaccines, used in Cuba for 25 years.

By developing different vaccine platforms, those institutions avoid competing for resources. Caballero explains that, “Cuba has the capacity to produce two independent vaccine chains, with over 90 million vaccines annually, while maintaining the required production of other products for the domestic market and for export.” The Cuban vaccines require three doses and, because they are stable at temperatures of between two and eight degrees, do not require costly special refrigeration equipment.

Phase III trials and ‘interventional studies’

By late March, phase III trials were underway for Soberana 2 and Abdala, each incorporating over 44,000 volunteers over 19 years old in regions with high incidence of COVID-19. Soberana 2 is being administered in Havana and Abdala in Santiago de Cuba and Guantanamo. Analysis and follow-up for phase III trial patients will continue until January 2022 to investigate whether they prevent transmission, how long immunity lasts, and other questions that no vaccine producers can yet answer. However, an additional 150,000 healthcare workers in Havana are receiving Soberana 2 shots, as part of an ‘interventional study,’ a form of clinical trial that can be authorized after drug safety has been demonstrated in phase II. Intervention studies do not involve double blind testing or placebos. Another 120,000 healthcare workers in western Cuba will receive Abdala in the next few weeks. Other interventional studies in the capital will see 1.7 million people in Havana, most of the adult population, vaccinated by the end of May 2021, meaning that two million Cubans will have been fully vaccinated.

Assuming satisfactory results, in June the real national vaccination campaign will begin, prioritizing groups according to risk factors and starting with over 60-year-olds. By the end of August 2021, six million Cubans, over half the population, will have been covered and by the end of the year, Cuba will be among the world’s first countries to fully vaccinate its entire population.

Cuban medical scientists are confident that they have the capacity and experience to adapt their vaccine formulations, technologies and action protocols to tackle new variants. The next steps are for Soberana 1 and Soberana Plus to enter phase II trials and a new study involving five to 18-year-olds will be launched.

Cuba and China team up on Pan-Corona

Cuba’s CIGB have teamed up with colleagues in China to work on a new vaccine called Pan-Corona, designed to be effective on different strains of the coronavirus. It will use parts of the virus that are conserved, not exposed to variation, to generate antibodies, combined with parts directed at cellular responses. The Cubans contribute the experience and personnel, while the Chinese provide equipment and resources. The research will take place at the Yongzhou Joint Biotechnology Innovation Center, in China’s Hunan Province, which was established last year with equipment and laboratories designed by Cuban specialists. Gerardo Guillen, director of biomedical science at CIGB said the approach “could protect against epidemiological emergencies of new strains of coronavirus that may exist in the future.” The project builds on nearly two decades of medical science collaboration between Cuba and China, including five joint ventures in the biotech sector.

A vaccine for the Global South

Cuban professionals have received ten gold medals from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) over 26 years; their biotech products were exported to 49 countries prior to the pandemic, including vaccines used in childhood immunization programs in Latin America. Cuba has stated that its COVID-19 vaccines will be exported to other countries. This brings hope to low- and middle-income nations that simply cannot afford to vaccinate their populations at high prices (between $10 and $30 per dose) demanded by big pharma. In February 2021, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported that US company Pfizer has been ‘bullying’ Latin American countries into putting up sovereign assets, such as embassy buildings and military bases, as guarantees against the cost of any future legal cases in relation to their COVID-19 vaccines.

Through an agreement with Iran’s Pasteur Institute, 100,000 Iranians will take part in the phase III clinical trials for Soberana 2 and another 60,000 people will participate in Venezuela. Other countries including Mexico, Jamaica, Vietnam, Pakistan, and India, have stated their interest in receiving the Cuban vaccines, as has the African Union, which represents all 55 nations in Africa. It is likely that Cuba will apply a sliding scale to its COVID-19 vaccine exports, as it does with the export of medical professionals, so what it charges reflects the countries’ ability to pay.

What Cuba has achieved is remarkable, but as Caballero states, “without the unjust US blockade, Cuba could have more and better results.” Cuba has become a world leader in biotechnology because it has a socialist state with a centrally planned economy, that has invested in science and technology and puts human welfare before profit; that is, with the absence of capitalism and greed that British Prime Minister Johnson celebrates.

Helen Yaffe is a lecturer in Economic and Social History at the University of Glasgow, specializing in Cuban and Latin American development. Her new book We Are Cuba! How a Revolutionary People have survived in a Post-Soviet World has just been published by Yale University Press. She is also the author of Che Guevara: The Economics of Revolution and co-author with Gavin Brown of Youth Activism and Solidarity: the Non-Stop Picket against Apartheid, Rouledge, 2017.

A version of this essay was originally published in Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No. 280, April/May 2021.

Justice for George Floyd and All Victims of the NYPD!
The Steps at the Corner of Fort Greene Pl. and Atlantic Ave.

JUNE 11 AT 5 PM EDT – JUN 12 AT 11 PM EDT
Wisconsin People’s Power Summit
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Ona Move!

On Saturday April 17, Mumia called his wife Wadiya and told her that he is scheduled to have heart surgery on Monday April 19. Your support with calling and emailing prison authorities today and in the coming weeks is absolutely critical to ensure that Mumia gets the best possible medical care before, during, and after the surgery on Monday. Please go to www.jamaljournal.com to get the latest updates, which we will be posting as soon as we get new information.

Mumia and I are both deeply grateful for all the support during this week’s health emergency, and also in the weeks since he called me on February 27 to say that he had COVID. There was the flood of phone calls and emails to prison authorities, as well as the folks who took to the streets, including our many demonstrations outside of DA Krasner’s office. Labor unions from around the world, including the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), released powerful statements and sent urgent letters to PA Governor Tom Wolf and DA Larry Krasner.

People power forced the prison to provide hospitalization for Mumia last month when he was diagnosed with both COVID and congestive heart failure. Our forcing the prison authorities to provide Mumia with the emergency hospitalization that he needed was a powerful victory for the movement!

Today we are demanding that Mumia be able to speak with his chosen physician Dr. Ricardo Alvarez., who has written a powerful new article and co-written a new petition by Medical Professionals for Mumia, that I urge everyone to read.

We are also demanding that Mumia not be painfully shackled at the hospital. Before his hospitalization last month, Mumia was already suffering from a horrible skin condition that causes extreme itching and burning. When shackled for four straight days at the hospital, the shackles created open wounds, as shown in the photo we displayed outside DA Krasner’s office in March.

The barbaric act of shackling prisoners onto the hospital bed must stop immediately!

Mumia’s 67^th Birthday Celebration

Before this week’s medical emergency, we were already organizing an April 24 weekend event in Philadelphia to celebrate Mumia’s 67^th birthday. As Mumia recovers from Monday’s heart surgery, we need to increase our organizing efforts for Mumia’s release from prison.  We need your help to bring him home to his family, where he can receive medical treatments that are not available in prison.

I have always worked with anyone supporting a new trial and I will continue to do that. But now with all of Mumia’s serious health problems, it is evident that Mumia could die in prison before actually having a new trial. That is why our Color of Change petition to DA Krasner is demanding Mumia’s outright release.

Even if the Court makes future rulings in favor of Mumia’s appeals, it will likely take several years or more before Mumia actually has the opportunity to prove his innocence at a new trial. The Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) and Maureen Faulkner are doing everything they can to delay the process even further. This is what happened with last year’s King’s Bench Appeal and then last month’s new legal motion from Faulkner and the FOP to have DA Krasner removed from the case.

Faulkner and the FOP are purposefully making frivolous legal motions meant to delay the inevitable overturning of Mumia’s conviction. Even though the Court rejected the King’s Bench Appeal, Faulkner and the FOP’s strategy was very successful because they put Mumia’s case on hold for almost one year.

Maureen Faulkner and the FOP want Mumia to die in prison. We will not let this happen. We will not allow Mumia to die in prison!

Our Challenge to Michael Smerconish and DA Larry Krasner

The long history of corporate media bias against Mumia has been very well-documented by the group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). With Mumia’s life now on the line we must directly confront this bias.

On behalf of the uncompromising International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, I am now issuing a formal challenge to both Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner and CNN’s Michael Smerconish.

As the two most prominent and passionate advocates for the legitimacy of Mumia’s 1982 conviction, I challenge them to make a public response to the 2010 ballistics test conducted by investigative journalists Linn Washington Jr. and Dave Lindorff, who concluded from their results that “the whole prosecution story of an execution-style slaying of the officer by Abu-Jamal would appear to be a prosecution fabrication, complete with coached, perjured witnesses, undermining the integrity and fairness of the entire trial.”

Lindorff and Washington’s 2010 ballistics test is a centerpiece of our Color of Change petition demanding that DA Larry Krasner stop defending Mumia’s unjust conviction. In our petition, we cite the 2010 test as evidence of misconduct committed by police investigators and the DA’s office. This is the same type of misconduct that led DA Krasner to exonerate the victims of over 18 wrongful convictions.

There is other evidence of police, prosecutorial, and judicial misconduct presented in our petition. However, for the sake of this specific challenge, we want Krasner and Smerconish to look solely at the 2010 test because I am confident that it physically disproves the trial testimony of the  prosecution’s two most important  eyewitnesses. With the 2010 test, there is no longer be any doubt that Robert Chobert and Cynthia White both lied at the 1982 trial when they testified about seeing Mumia shoot Police Officer Daniel Faulkner.

I challenge both DA Krasner and CNN’s Smerconish to personally watch the high-quality online video of the 2010 ballistics test, and to read Lindorff and Washington’s written article. In 2010, before the release of their ballistics test article, Lindorff and Washington shared their findings with the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office and asked several specific questions. They wanted to get a formal response from the DA, to present them with an opportunity to tell their side of the story so that it could be included in their article.

The DA’s office outright refused to answer Lindorff and Washington’s questions. DA Krasner needs to respond to the 2010 ballistics test and explain exactly why he is defending Mumia’s conviction. What better place to do that than on Michael Smerconish’s CNN television show?

Confronting Krasner and Smerconish

In the Jamal Journal issue #1, I already confronted DA Krasner’s Feb. 3 brief, specifically where he made a joke out of the attempted police lynching of Mumia by writing that Mumia “refused to walk” into the hospital after being savagely beaten by a mob of police officers. I directly asked Krasner: Do you oppose lynchings?

Krasner has still not responded to this question. In fact, since he took office, DA Krasner has consistently refused to meet with myself and other Mumia supporters, even once when we brought a delegation that had traveled all the way from France to meet with him. DA Krasner must be accountable to the people, so we are presenting both DA Krasner and Smerconish with an opportunity to disprove Lindorff and Washington’s findings.

I am challenging CNN’s Michael Smerconish because he recently criticized blacklisted football player Colin Kaepernick for Kaepernick’s November 16, 2020 statement in support of Mumia. Smerconish boasted that he was an authority, an expert on Mumia’s case because he is the author of the 2007 book “Murdered By Mumia.” Smerconish issued a challenge to Kaepernick, inviting him onto his show to discuss Mumia’s case.

Conclusion

The uncompromising International Concerned Family and Friends is not afraid of the truth. If Michael Smerconish and Larry Krasner are so confident about the integrity of Mumia’s conviction, they should welcome the opportunity to publicly disprove evidence that we cite in our Color of Change petition.

I want both Michael Smerconish and Larry Krasner to carefully read through our petition to DA Krasner. I am presenting them with an opportunity to publicly challenge the arguments we make, and the evidence that we presented in the first issue of our newspaper in support of the petition. Along with the 2010 ballistics test, we present the Batson issue, Robert Chobert’s credibility as a witness, Judge Albert Sabo’s extreme bias, and the Pedro Polakoff crime scene photos that were concealed by the DA’s office. The petition also cites J. Patrick O’Connor, author of “The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal” and Michael Schiffmann, author of the German book “Race Against Death.”

It is fine for Smerconish to have future shows focusing on these other topics and authors, but Smerconish and Krasner first need to deal with Dave Lindorff and Linn Washington’s 2010 ballistics test. This test proves by the absence of any bullet impact marks in the concrete around the spot where Faulkner lay on the sidewalk, that the testimony of the two key eyewitnesses to the alleged murder — both of whom claimed to have seen Mumia firing down “execution style” at the prone Faulkner multiple time — couldn’t have happened. These were prosecution manufactured lies.

I challenge Smerconish to present the 2010 ballistics video on his show to CNN’s global audience, and to then invite DA Krasner to give his opinion about the legitimacy of Lindorff and Washington’s conclusion. That is our challenge.

Pam Africa is coordinator of the uncompromising International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal

Source: The Jamal Journal

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The day of decision is coming. Closing arguments will soon take place in the case of Derek Chauvin, one of the four cops who killed George Floyd on a Minneapolis street, and the entire world will be watching as the jury begins deliberations. We settle for nothing less than justice!

The National Alliance Against Racist & Political Repression or NAARPR is calling for protests around the country, that will coincide with day that the jury reaches a verdict.  It is critical that all of us who are sick and tired of police getting away with racist murders stay in the streets and make it clear that we expect nothing less than Chauvin getting the maximum sentence. Only this can bring justice for the family of George Floyd.

Derek Chauvin, a white police officer killed George Floyd in broad day light, in front of numerous witnesses. Chauvin along with his three accomplices knew they were being taped. They did not care because they believed could get away with it.  Whether it is a knee to the neck or bullets in the back, this racist and murderous policing in the United States must stop. Now.

This past summer we saw a powerful rebellion against police crimes and racist inequality. Millions of people across the country hit the streets in one of the largest protests ever..  On March 8, the opening day of the trial more than a thousand people rallied in Minneapolis, and protests in at least 18 other cities showed their solidarity with Minneapolis by demanding justice for George Floyd!

We have the right to control those who police our communities. We want killer cops off the streets.  We want justice for George Floyd, and all whose lives have been upended by police crimes. Join us!

Justice for George Floyd!
Convict Derek Chauvin!
All power to the People!

National Alliance Against Racist & Political Repression

Human-rights organizations have already done multiple studies on the existence of white supremacist gangs within police forces in this country. Perhaps this is why police refuse to hold their fellow officers or the gangs within their departments accountable and continue to enable the genocide we witness almost weekly with the killing of Black and Brown people by law enforcement.

We don’t know if the cops who killed Philando Castile and George Floyd, or now, Daunte Wright and Adam Toledo, are members of or enablers of an organized white supremacist grouping within their departments. But we know that the culture of racist policing has an ideology that is pervasive throughout the country. 

This ideology has been encouraged by white supremacists holding high office in the government, including former President Donald Trump. They were also encouraged by President Joe Biden’s response to the problem of police shootings. His answer, during his election campaign last year, didn’t reflect on the shocking number of these shootings, or their racist nature — he just advised that cops should “shoot them in the leg.”

What do we know about the motivations of these murdering cops? We know they all felt justified in their killings; that they all tried to cover up either their own or other police killings; that they were willing to add salt to the wounds of the families by participating in the vilification of their victims. And we also know they’ve shown no real remorse for what they’ve done. It takes a special kind of person to do those things.

When then-candidates Joe Biden and Kamala Harris stated that they were against even the weak demand to address police murders by defunding police departments, it sent a signal to that kind of person: the cops and others like them. 

And, as we’ve seen so clearly with the murders of George Floyd, killed by former cop Derek Chauvin, and Daunte Wright, murdered by recently resigned cop Kim Potter – they all use childlike excuses for their acts of inhumanity that would make a 5-year-old blush. Yet they still get to use them, and have a good chance of paying with very little time, if any at all, for doing a lot of bad – another encouragement.

In Los Angeles, a well-publicized scandal in 2013 exposed a previous sheriff and senior officers directing sheriff’s deputies in extreme violence against prisoners. According to the ACLU, which filed a lawsuit against the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, “Beatings left inmates with shattered bones, eye sockets and teeth.”

In addition, the sheriffs ran a drug-smuggling operation in and out of the prison – all in coordination with and to the benefit of white supremacist gangs. This was a systemic culture of behavior that undoubtedly existed far longer than when it was exposed in 2008. 

No more shell games

Some in the movement advocate incremental change of policing. They want there to be a partnership with the police and politicians. As a member of the Socialist Unity Party’s Black Caucus, I can say we oppose that approach. 

Minneapolis again shows that this is a diversion from what is needed. We will never change the situation in this country by being content with taking some funds from police departments, which would be non-enforceable and non-transparent. 

The City of Los Angeles got away with a shell game where the $110 million that was promised to be taken from the cops was given back through a budgetary process. This money shuffle was still lauded by some in the incremental movement for change, who should have known better.

After George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis, the politicians there said they understood that the police department needed to be “dismantled.” But then they changed their minds. It’s clear that in Minneapolis today, as long as these cops are allowed to continue carrying their guns and are not replaced, they will continue to kill our children.

We don’t need reforms that are sensitive to the sensibilities of the Democratic Party. We can’t leave the battle up to the politicians, so they can manufacture more childlike excuses for allowing the pandemic of racist murders to go unchecked. We need qualitative changes that are possible only through militant actions by the community and the movement, independent of the police and political puppets.

The call for the abolishment of police departments and their replacement by community entities is already popular, especially among the communities most threatened by the police. It will never be popular with the ruling class – they must be forced to accept it.

Until then, as things stand today in this country, I’m going to have to worry about my Black son’s life every time he drives a car, for as long as he is alive. Every time he goes out to shop or visit friends, as long as he is on the streets, there’s a chance he will be stopped by police. And I will worry as long as I live in this country. There is not a single day that I can escape the thoughts behind that fear.

On April 16, U.S. President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, the first foreign leader to visit the Biden White House, issued a joint statement lashing out at China.

The statement, which covers a range of issues, includes the following: “We also recognize the importance of deterrence to maintain peace and stability in the region. We oppose any unilateral attempts to change the status quo in the East China Sea. We reiterated our objections to China’s unlawful maritime claims and activities in the South China Sea.” 

On Taiwan specifically, the statement adds, “We underscore the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and encourage the peaceful resolution of cross-Strait issues.”

What caught the most attention, though, was the statement’s assertion: “The United States restated its unwavering support for Japan’s defense under the U.S.-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security, using its full range of capabilities, including nuclear.”

The statement continues: “Each Party recognizes that an armed attack against either Party in the territories under the administration of Japan would be dangerous to its own peace and safety and declares that it would act to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional provisions and processes.” This would apply to Japan’s claim to the Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea. 

Biden and Suga pledged to intensify military cooperation “across all domains, including cyber and space, and to bolster extended deterrence.”

At the press conference, Biden said: “Prime Minister Suga and I affirmed our ironclad support for the U.S./Japanese Alliance, and for our shared security. We [are] committed to working together to take on the challenges from China and issues like the East China Sea, the South China Sea, as well as North Korea.” 

Suga said: “We also had serious talks on China’s influence over the peace and prosperity of the Indo-Pacific and the world at large. We agreed to oppose any attempts to change the status quo by force or coercion in the East and South China Seas and intimidation of others in the region.”

China’s Global Times responded with an editorial statement:

“U.S. President Joe Biden and visiting Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga on Friday issued a joint statement which mainly focused on dealing with China. The statement talked a lot about the importance of the U.S.-Japan alliance, an alliance being touted as a ‘U.S.-Japan global partnership for a new era.’ In the statement, the two countries pledge to work together to resist ‘challenges to the free and open rules-based international order.’ The statement outlined the situation in the Indo-Pacific region, accusing China of conducting ‘economic and other forms of coercion’ in the region. It also mentioned the Taiwan question — the first time since 1969 American and Japanese top leaders have done so in their joint statement.  

“‘An ocean separates our countries, but commitments to universal values and common principles, including freedom, democracy, human rights, the rule of law, international law, multilateralism, and a free and fair economic order, unite us,’ said part of the statement. But this sentimental rhetoric is hypocritical. U.S.-Japan ties are a kind of relationship where a victorious country of World War II dominates a defeated country, Japan. There is a strong ‘master-servant’ feature in this relationship in terms of diplomacy. The joint statement has strengthened the compulsive dominance the U.S.’s extreme China policy has on Japan’s diplomacy, while Japan has actively and cautiously catered to it. 

“Japan has become the country in Asia that follows the U.S. policy of containing China most closely. There are two reasons for this: First, as mentioned above, the U.S. has so far maintained its military occupation of Japan and it can be said that Japan’s diplomacy is only at a ‘semi-sovereign’ level. It’s unlikely for Japan to contradict the U.S. 

“Second, Japan is the Asian country that most wants to contain China. The biggest ‘shared value’ between the U.S. and Japan is actually the jealousy and hatred they both have against China’s strong development momentum. The U.S.’s hegemonic thinking can’t accept its status being matched by China, while Japan can’t accept becoming a ‘second-class country’ compared to China, again. 

“Has Japan forgotten how many times it inflicted devastation on China? Has China ever truly harmed Japan and can Japan cite an example? The tiny Diaoyu Islands are just a territorial dispute between China and Japan, and in Asia there are many similar disputes. But Japan takes the dispute as a strategic-level issue and hypes it up every day. What’s the point of it?

“The U.S.-Japan alliance could evolve into an axis that can bring fatal disruption to Asia-Pacific peace, just like the Germany-Italy-Japan axis alliance before and during WWII. The core intention of the U.S. is to maintain its hegemony and contain China’s development through violating international laws and rules. The arbitrary acts of the U.S. could eventually end the peace in Asia-Pacific. And Japan is positioning itself as the top Asian accomplice of the U.S.’s vicious policy.

“Washington and Tokyo want to build the Quad mechanism, comprising Japan, the U.S., India and Australia, into an expanded and upgraded U.S.-Japan alliance, and draw more countries in to jointly confront China. They trumpeted ‘shared values,’ but the world is supposed to be diverse. The most dangerous thing is confrontation, group-based confrontation in particular. The U.S. and Japan are tearing the so-called ‘Indo-Pacific’ apart at the cost of eroding and destroying cooperation. They are attempting to make confrontation the main theme of the entire region. 

“They always emphasized ‘rules-based,’ but the rules should refer to those made by the U.N., rather than those defined by the U.S. and Japan. The U.S. has willfully wielded the stick of trade war against China, and cracked down on Chinese high-tech enterprises by cutting off the supply of key technology products. Are these actions in line with the rules? The U.S. is enticing Japan to establish supply chains that exclude China. But does this comply with rules? Besides, the U.S. and the West arbitrarily interfere in internal affairs of other countries; is this encouraged by the U.N. Charter? 

“Japan once met China halfway in the past few years, which led China-Japan relations to return to the right track. But now, it has abruptly changed course and become a part of the U.S. containment strategy against China. This has ruined the momentum of improvement in China-Japan relations. It’s not only a result of the U.S.’s pressure, but it’s also caused by Japan’s expanding strategic selfishness. Japan is too short-sighted; it formed an alliance with Germany and Italy before WWII and is now singing a chorus with the U.S.’s radical line. Japan hasn’t learned its lessons. It is, instead, proactively creating and sinking into a vortex of confrontation.   

“Finally, we advise Japan to stay away from the Taiwan question. It may play diplomatic tricks in other fields, but if it gets involved in the Taiwan question, it will draw the fire upon itself. The deeper it is embroiled, the bigger the price it will pay.”

Whenever the cops kill somebody, you can count on two things: 1) Fox News and other Trump supporters will smear the victim, and 2) the TV networks and newspapers will focus on “looting,” almost drowning out the murder of a human being by police. 

Isn’t this what happened after 20-year-old Black man Daunte Wright was shot to death for having an air freshener in his car? Media coverage splurged on people taking stuff from stores in Brooklyn Park, Minn., just outside Minneapolis.

President Joe Biden chimed in, declaring: “There is absolutely no justification — none — for looting.” 

Mr. President, looting made America great. The White House you live in was built on stolen land by enslaved Africans.

The entire country was stolen from Indigenous nations. Millions were killed by massacres and smallpox. The Pilgrims looted more than Bernie Madoff could dream of.

“Those sober virtuosi of Protestantism, the Puritans of New England, in 1703, by decrees of their assembly set a premium of 40 pounds on every Indian scalp,” wrote Karl Marx in “Capital.” Marx was the founder of scientific socialism, also known as communism.

Tens of millions of people were stolen from Africa in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. By 1860, the cotton grown by enslaved Africans accounted for 61% of U.S. exports. 

Wall Street became the U.S. financial center as bankers for the slave masters. While today New York City has municipal farmers’ markets, there was once a municipal slave market on Wall Street.

It was the African Holocaust and the Holocaust of Indigenous peoples that jumpstarted the capitalist world market.

Reparations are overdue for Black and Indigenous people. As the December 12th Movement says, “They stole us, they sold us, they owe us!”

The Walton family crime gang

What is poor people taking food, clothing and other items from a Walmart compared to the Walton family’s $235-billion stash? Every cent of this filthy-rich family fortune is stolen from over 2 million poorly-paid workers. 

The starting wage for Walmart’s 1.5 million employees in the U.S. is just $11 per hour. Walmart’s 700,000 workers in other countries are paid even less.

Banksters are the biggest looters. They stole nearly 7.8 million homes from families between 2007 and 2016. 

These foreclosures threw over 20 million people on the street. If that’s not looting, nothing is.

Forty-five million people in the United States are trying to pay off $1.7 trillion in student loans. Banksters and other loan sharks will collect hundreds of billions in interest.

President Biden, won’t you stop this real looting by wiping out the debt for millions of people and tell the banks to go to hell?

Even worse looting is committed by payday lenders who in many states are allowed to charge over 100% annual interest. 

Malcolm X declared, “You show me a capitalist, I’ll show you a bloodsucker.” The United States exported $28.6 billion of blood and plasma in 2017.  

That’s $6 billion more than the $22.5 billion of all the corn, beef and wheat exported that year. Millions of poor people depend on their blood being looted so they can eat.

Over 40 bloodsucking plasma centers are located along the U.S.-Mexican border so Mexican people there can have their blood looted, too. Half of Mexico was stolen by the U.S. in order to expand slavery. 

Wage theft is looting

Because of inflation, the federal minimum wage would have to be at least $12.39 per hour in order to match the 1968 minimum wage of $1.60. 

The current federal minimum wage is instead just $7.25. That’s an additional $5.14 that’s looted from minimum-wage workers every hour. If a worker is lucky enough to be able to work 40 hours per week for an entire year, the annual wage theft amounts to $10,691.

Workers who are tipped ― most of whom are women ― have an even lower minimum wage, as do many disabled workers. Over a million workers who get paid “under the table” aren’t guaranteed any minimum wage.

Capitalism is looting in general. The source of capital is the difference between the value produced by the working class and the much smaller amount we get in wages.

Capitalists loot the difference, which Karl Marx called “surplus value.” The wealthy and powerful use this surplus value ― usually called profits, rent or interest ― to buy their mansions, jet planes and yachts.

They also use it to purchase more automated machinery in order to compete with other capitalists and throw us out of work.

Marx and his co-worker Frederick Engels pointed out in the “Communist Manifesto” that capitalists can’t “exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production.” This is unlike previous social systems where “conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence.” 

In 1991, General Motors sent Christmas greetings to 70,000 autoworkers by announcing plans to fire them. Twenty-one plants filled with billions of dollars of perfectly good machinery were shut down. 

As a result of this massive vandalism, GM’s stock price almost doubled over the next two years. 

Real vandalism

European capitalist armies destroyed magnificent, well-planned African cities because their mere existence refuted claims of white supremacy. 

In 1897, a British army burned Benin City, in what is now southern Nigeria. Priceless pieces of art were looted and are displayed in London’s British Museum and New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Chinese people can’t forget the looting of Beijing’s Summer Palace by a British army in 1860. Dozens of museums around the world have a million pieces of art that were looted from it. 

This crime occurred during the Second Opium War, which was waged so British and U.S. drug lords could sell their poison. Among the big-time drug dealers was Warren Delano, a grandfather of U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

To this day, the British government refuses to return the marble sculptures scraped off the Parthenon in Athens by Lord Elgin. Melina Mercouri, who starred in “Never on Sunday,” was rebuffed when she asked for them back as Greek minister of culture.

Then there’s New York City’s original Pennsylvania Station, a real palace inspired by the Baths of Caracalla in Rome. It was torn down starting in 1963 so the railroad could make a few million bucks from renting the space above to Madison Square Garden.

Sculptured eagles and columns were dumped in New Jersey’s Meadowlands. None of this saved Penn Central from going bankrupt in 1970, although it did lead to historical preservation laws being passed.

Building the old magnificent structure was also vandalism, since it drove out thousands of Black residents before it opened in 1910. 

So whenever you hear the talking heads on TV denounce “looters” and “vandals,” remember who the real criminals are and join the struggle to overthrow them.