The Unemployed Workers Union announced a lawsuit June 24 challenging Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan’s decision to end several pandemic unemployment programs early. The class-action lawsuit in Baltimore Circuit Court also seeks benefits for people whose cases have been pending in the state’s claims system.

Many claimants have been disqualified from benefits “without explanation or hearing” or “were placed in an ‘on-hold’ status for months at a time or indefinitely,” the lawsuit charges.

“The stories we have heard from people who have not received a dime — a dime — over the past year are beyond harrowing,” attorney Alec Summerfield said at a press conference in Baltimore before heading into the courthouse to file the lawsuit. “People who worked for decades now cannot afford to put food on the table. This is a disgrace.”

The Executive Secretary of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America-Peoples’ Trade Treaty (ALBA-TCP), Sacha Llorenti, read the Final Declaration of the 19th Summit of Heads of State and Government, repudiating the aggressive and coercive measures exercised by the United States and Europe, advocating for a fair distribution of vaccines and medical supplies to combat COVID-19, and supporting and promoting respect for the sovereignty and the unity processes of the countries that make up ALBA-TCP, among other issues.

The document was put to a vote and was approved by the delegations present. Llorenti also reported on the approval of three issues on the agenda:

• Environment and climate change
• Bicentennial of the Battle of Carabobo
• ALBA-TCP’s new official banner

Below is the unofficial translation of the Final Declaration of the 19th ALBA-TCP Summit:

The Heads of State and Government and the heads of delegations of the member countries of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America-Peoples’ Trade Treaty, meeting in person on June 24, 2021, within the framework of the commemoration of the bicentennial of the Battle of Carabobo in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, by signing this declaration, renew our commitment to strengthening the integration and unity of our peoples as the founding ideology of Commanders Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro Ruz; we vindicate the ideology of Bolívar, Martí, San Martín, Sucre, O’Higgins, Pétion, Morazán, Sandino, Túpac Katari, Bartolina Sisa and other heroes of Latin American and Caribbean independence, symbols of historical and cultural union of the struggle of our Indigenous peoples and the preservation of the most precious asset of freedom; we recognize the historical significance of the Battle of Carabobo, a milestone that seals the independence of Venezuela under the leadership of the Liberator Simón Bolívar, a struggle in which the combative character of the Venezuelan people was forged in defense of their right to self-determination, moral heritage and the values ​​of freedom, which have transcended Latin America, the Caribbean and the world.

• We ratify our commitment to genuinely Latin American and Caribbean integration [unity] that allows us to face together the claims of imperialist domination and the growing threats to peace and regional stability, with multilateralism and in accordance with the principles and purposes of the Charter of the United Nations and international law, in line with the proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a zone of peace.
• We highlight the need to strengthen the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) as a genuine mechanism for political agreement that brings together the 33 states of Our America, based on the principle of unity in diversity.
• We welcome the return of constitutional order in the Plurinational State of Bolivia, which—thanks to the conscience and struggle of its people—was able to dismantle the criminal and corrupt coup and open a process of national reconciliation, based on justice, self-determination and democracy, We are also pleased with its return to the legitimate regional forums of political agreement and cooperation in pursuit of the well-being and development of our peoples.
• We highlight the excellent efforts and initiatives of President Luis Arce Catacora, both domestically and internationally, to move towards economic recovery, including financing and debt relief, as well as efficient management of the pandemic.
• We welcome the installation of the new National Assembly of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, developed with absolute adherence to constitutionality and in peace. At the same time, we welcome the holding of the next regional and municipal elections, the twenty-sixth [electoral process] in the last twenty-one years of the Bolivarian Revolution, an expression of the solid participatory and protagonist democracy of the Venezuelan people.
• We ratify unconditional support for the Sandinista government, President Daniel Ortega Saavedra, and the Nicaraguan people in their decision to continue defending sovereignty, peace, and the notable social, economic, security and unity advances achieved.
• We condemn the attacks and repeated destabilizing attempts against the legitimate government of the sister Republic of Nicaragua by the United States of America, promoting unilateral coercive measures, among other destabilizing actions to try to interfere in its internal affairs.
• We welcome the preparation of the electoral process in the Republic of Nicaragua and we demand non-intervention in such matters, which are the exclusive competence of the Nicaraguan people and institutions.
• We celebrate and support the democratic forces in the election processes of governments in the ALBA-TCP region and the efforts made to achieve gender equality and the elimination of discrimination against Indigenous peoples.
• We welcome the relationship between ALBA-TCP and the UN System, CELAC, CARICOM (Caribbean Community), AEC (Association of Caribbean States), SICA (General Secretariat of the Central American Integration System), African Union, Arab League, CELA, ECLAC (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean), Eurasian Community and ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States), under the principles of respect and non-interference in their internal affairs to guarantee greater equity and greater commitment in matters of social and economic policies.
• We ratify the right of the Caribbean countries to receive fair, special and differentiated treatment, we reaffirm the unconditional and necessary support for the defense and promotion of their just claims and reparations, we strongly reject the measures adopted against the brothers of CARICOM, considered non-cooperative jurisdictions.
• We express our deep regret for the fatal victims of the COVID-19 pandemic in the world and, in particular, in our region, while recognizing the commitment of the ALBA-TCP countries to mitigate its spread, as well as the extraordinary efforts by health personnel to face the health crisis, especially the work carried out in the front line by the Henry Reeve Brigade of the Republic of Cuba, as well as its development of five vaccine candidates, samples of development, sovereignty and solidarity.
• We reject the discrediting campaign—promoted by the United States government—against Cuban medical cooperation, which is offensive and particularly immoral in the current context of the global health crisis.
• We reaffirm the need for an urgent universal immunization against COVID-19, and for ensuring a prompt, equitable, supportive, non-discriminatory and affordable distribution of vaccines, supplies and equipment that allow everyone to be protected.
• We acknowledge the efforts of the Global Collaborative Alliance under the auspices of the World Health Organization. We welcome the launch of the ALBA-TCP vaccine bank, agreed to at the 17th Summit of Heads of State and Government of ALBA-TCP, as well as the drug bank, to help improve access to medical supplies, rapid tests and PCR tests in favor of all Alliance countries.
• We renew our most energetic condemnation of the genocidal economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the government of the United States of America against Cuba and the more than 240 unilateral coercive measures adopted by Trump, and kept in place by the, whose damage in the last five years has caused losses of $17 billion.
• We appreciate the historic support of all the member states of the Alliance for the resolution of the United Nations General Assembly on the need to end the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba, adopted yesterday 23 of June.
• We express our strong rejection of the absurd and unjustified inclusion of the Republic of Cuba in the list of state sponsors of terrorism by the imperialist United States Department of State, a unilateral action widely rejected inside and outside the United States, that has a negative impact on every sector of Cuban society and increases the country’s difficulty inserting itself in international trade, carrying out financial operations and acquiring basic supplies.
• We express our deep concern over the massive human rights violations against the Colombian people and demand respect for the dignity of the people, as well as their right to peaceful demonstration.
• We reject the reprehensible action of the Secretary General of the Organization of American States who, in exceeding his functions, has led that organization along an endless path of nonsense, the legitimization of violent actions, interventions in internal affairs, and breaches of the constitutional order in some countries of the region.
• We acknowledge the commendable work of the Alliance during the events that took place in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines following the eruption of the La Soufrière volcano, as a symbol of support and solidarity of the ALBA-TCP countries with the people and the Vincentian government.
• We reaffirm our full support to the Caribbean countries in their claim for compensation for the genocide of the Native population and the horrors of slavery and the transatlantic trade, and we also express our commitment to the defense and promotion of Latin American and Caribbean culture and the identity of the peoples of the region with particular respect for, and promotion of, autochthonous and Indigenous cultures.
• We support promoting the development of the complementary economic zone ALBA-Petro Caribe as a true model of productive and technological development based on the values ​​of the Alliance and the principles of the Peoples’ Trade Agreement.

-Caracas, June 24, 2021

Source: Orinoco Tribune

Cuba won another diplomatic victory in the General Assembly of the United Nations June 23 against the government of the United States. The majority of countries (184) voted in favor of the resolution which calls for the lifting of the blockade against Cuba. 

The resolution has been brought to the U.N. every year since 1992, except in 2020 when the government of Havana was unable to present it due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

This victory is a reminder of the Cuban people’s long wait for an act of justice that can rectify the worrying situation, which is a mix of the abuse of authority, the disproportionate use of violence, and the very specific intention to “destroy, totally or in part, a national, ethnic or racial group, in its totality,” the U.N.’s definition of genocide in its 1948 Convention.

Only a very few cases of mass killings have been considered genocides unequivocally by the international community. However, there is no other name for this horror which has lasted for more than 60 years and has forced several generations of Cubans to go about their daily lives under a heavy fog. 

This powerful elite carries out inhuman monstrosities against millions of people for the mere crime of existing. Is it not genocide to deny people, in the middle of a pandemic, medicine and food, access to internet services to the majority of people, to finance and trade between equals? If so, we must then, like Raphael Lemkin, invent a word for this nameless crime.

It is difficult to account for how many in Cuba have died because they did not have the medicine they needed or because it did not arrive on time. The report presented by Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez, on the damages of the blockade in 2020, has 60 pages without one adjective. The report is merely a list of what happened, excessive costs, items that did not arrive on time because they had some component from the U.S. — from a plane to a respirator that was destined for an intensive care unit — names of companies that have refused to supply the island with the technology, raw materials, reactive agents, diagnostic kits, medicine, devices, equipment and replacement parts needed by a public health system.

A friend told me that the images of George Floyd’s assassination had a strong impact in Cuba. Being suffocated on the ground by the police officer who refused to lift his knee off his neck, despite the cries of the victim saying that he couldn’t breathe. The video went viral across the world and was the catalyst for the largest anti-racist protest in the United States since the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

We understand the feeling of impotence of the people of the United States who feel rightly so that this is a systematic abuse of power. In the case of the 8 minutes and 46 seconds of George’s agony, it was key that the entire incident was recorded. 

The question that remains, after the conviction of the killer cop, is how many other people have been killed or have suffered in silence simply because there was no camera when the system didn’t let them breathe. We know that there is always a knee on someone’s neck, suffocating them. 

This is what happens with the blockade. This strange word that may seem to be abstract for many, but not for the person who finds themselves in the emergency room in Cuba, has a sick child or has spent six hours in line to buy food that before the 242 additional sanctions added by Donald Trump and before the damn pandemic, could be found with less difficulty.

Joe Biden’s representative at the U.N. reached new levels of cynicism when they said that the blockade is the responsibility of the Cuban government which uses it as a pretext to remain in power. This is like George Floyd’s killer saying his knee on somebody else’s neck was the victim’s excuse for suffocating.

As such, these are moments of joy in Cuba as we learn that once again from the New York headquarters of the U.N., the world said no to the U.S. blockade. This coincided with more hopeful news: Cuban scientists were able to finalize the first two Latin American vaccines. One of them, Abdala, has a 92.28% rate of efficacy.

Rosa Miriam Elizalde is a Cuban journalist and founder of the site Cubadebate. She is vice president of both the Union of Cuban Journalists (UPEC) and the Latin American Federation of Journalists (FELAP). She has written and co-written several books including Jineteros en la Habana and Our Chavez. She has received the Juan Gualberto Gómez National Prize for Journalism on multiple occasions for her outstanding work. She is currently a weekly columnist for La Jornada of Mexico City.

This article was first published in La Jornada.

In his funeral eulogy for Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, W.E.B. Du Bois declared, “They died because they would not lie.” The Rosenbergs were burned to death in the electric chair by the U.S. government on Juneteenth 1953.

Du Bois, the legendary Black scholar, also arranged the adoption of the Rosenbergs’ two young children, Michael and Robert. The Jewish orphans were adopted by Anne Meeropol and Abel Meeropol. Abel wrote “Strange Fruit,” a song about lynching that Billie Holiday made famous. 

The Rosenbergs were blamed for the Soviet Union being able to develop an atomic bomb. Their frame-up and execution for espionage during the Korean War was the peak of the anti-communist witch hunt in the United States. 

The ruling class was in a frenzy because of the Chinese Revolution. The Soviet Union’s ability to defend itself against the Pentagon’s nukes made the banksters even more mad.

The FBI and corporate media insisted the Soviets “stole the secret” of the atom bomb. The real secret was revealed when the U.S. dropped an atom bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945. By incinerating 100,000 people, including 30,000 Korean slave laborers, the Pentagon showed it was possible to develop nuclear weapons.

Showing it was what made it knowable. Some of the scientists involved in the Manhattan Project — the code name for the U.S. atom bomb project — gave the Soviets five years to match the U.S. effort. 

The rub wouldn’t be in the theoretical work. U.S. scientists knew the Soviet Union had capable physicists.

Among them was Lev Landau, who would win the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1962. Even before the Bolshevik Revolution, the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev had devised the periodic table of the elements.

U.S. scientists thought the Soviets would have difficulty in making extremely pure chemicals and seals to lock in corrosive gases. Because of socialist economic planning, the Soviet Union was able to concentrate its efforts and explode a nuclear device on Aug. 29, 1949. It took four years, not five, to produce.

Decades of lies

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover immediately set out to nab the “communist spies” that smuggled secrets. How else could those “stupid people” in the Soviet Union have produced nuclear weapons? 

U.S. schoolchildren were taught their country was the land of great inventors like Thomas Edison. Newspapers told their readers that only the U.S. could have built the bomb.

Thirty years later, President Ronald Reagan said there wasn’t a Russian word for freedom. (There is. It’s svoboda.) 

So U.S. capitalists were astonished when the Soviet Union sent the first artificial satellite into space on Nov. 7, 1957 — the 40th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.

Claims that the Sputnik satellite was the result of spying fell flat. The Pentagon wasn’t able to launch its own satellite until months later, on Jan. 31, 1958.

It would have been much more difficult to execute the Rosenbergs after Sputnik. It shattered the bigoted conception that 150 different nationalities in the Soviet Union couldn’t do science.

Today another big lie is being told. The People’s Republic of China is being blamed for the COVID-19 pandemic.

With no evidence, the media and even comedians like Jon Stewart are claiming the coronavirus “leaked” from a Wuhan laboratory. This is a blood libel similar to blaming Jewish people for plagues in medieval Europe or the racist myth that immigrants bring diseases to the U.S.

Building a frame-up

The FBI framed the Rosenbergs and a co-defendant, Morton Sobell, by connecting dots and forging evidence. At the end of World War II, the Communist Party in the United States had around 75,000 members, according to the University of Washington’s “Mapping Social Movements” project, including thousands of Black members. They fought racism and built unions.  

Over 10,000 party members were members of the U.S. armed forces. Some party members had government jobs, including the electrical engineer Julius Rosenberg, who was employed at Fort Monmouth army base in New Jersey.

The Manhattan Project had 130,000 employees. U.S. army counterintelligence agents constantly spied on them. 

Even J. Robert Oppenheimer, considered to be the father of the atomic bomb, was a suspect. The army hesitated appointing Oppenheimer to lead the Manhattan Project’s Los Alamos laboratory because of his left-wing associations before the war.

Yet with thousands of U.S. Army and FBI agents prowling around, nobody claimed to have found any spy rings until after the Soviets exploded their bomb.

Julius Rosenberg was fired from his civilian job with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in January 1945 as a suspected communist. (He actually resigned his membership in 1942.) But Julius wasn’t arrested until July 1950.

At the time there were still around 40,000 Communist Party members. Hundreds of thousands of people had worked with the CP or the Young Communist League.

That was a big talent pool for Hoover and his FBI agents to construct a frame-up by matching people with left-wing backgrounds. They found out that Julius Rosenberg’s brother-in-law David Greenglass, an ex-YCL member, had worked as a machinist at Los Alamos. 

Presto! The “Rosenberg spy ring” was invented.

Under threat of the death penalty, David Greenglass told prosecutors whatever they wanted. His lying testimony sent his sister Ethel Rosenberg to the electric chair. It took five jolts of electricity to kill her.

Show trial

The Rosenbergs and Morton Sobell were convicted in a show trial. Although at the time a quarter of New York City’s population was Jewish, not a single Jewish juror was chosen.

One of the federal prosecutors was Roy Cohn, who had illegal “ex parte” conversations with presiding Judge Irving Kaufman in which Cohn urged the death penalty. After serving as Senator Joe McCarthy’s sidekick, Cohn became a lawyer and mentor for Donald Trump.

The evidence was flimsy. David Greenglass produced three crude sketches. One looked like a pie chart. A baby carriage couldn’t have been made from them, much less an atomic bomb.

Greenglass said his spy contact was Harry Gold, a chemist and pathological liar who admitted that he “lied for a period of 16 years.” Gold also claimed to be a courier for Klaus Fuchs, a scientist at Los Alamos.

Fuchs confessed he was a spy to a Scotland Yard detective and was jailed in Britain. Fuchs identified Gold as his contact from a picture.  

Fuchs’ statement and identification of Gold is questionable. Fuchs never confronted Gold in a U.S. court and thus couldn’t be cross-examined. It’s striking that the convictions of Greenglass, Gold and Fuchs would have been impossible without their confessions.

The FBI even suspected future Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman, who had been Fuchs’ roommate at Los Alamos. FBI agents changed their mind only because Feynman was completely non-political.

Morton Sobell was indicted because he was a schoolmate of Julius Rosenberg at New York’s City College and a former YCL member. The only witness against Sobell was Max Elitcher, who claimed vaguely to have seen Sobell visit Julius Rosenberg while carrying a container that could have had film in it. 

He then said he had no idea what was in the container, yet Sobell was sentenced to 30 years in prison.  He served 17, including five years at Alcatraz.

The prosecution stressed that Sobell and his family went to Mexico after David Greenglass was arrested. If Sobell was such a master spy, wouldn’t the Soviets have tried to help him escape?

Instead Mexican secret police kidnapped Sobell and turned him over to FBI agents at the border.

A key piece of evidence was forged. A hotel card from the Albuquerque Hilton was introduced to prove Harry Gold was in town to meet David Greenglass on June 3, 1945.

Miriam and Walter Schneir were authors of “Invitation to an Inquest,” a detailed exposé of the Rosnberg-Sobell case. They looked at copies of the card. It had different date stamps on the front and back despite Gold having checked in and out on the same day. 

When the Schneirs sought to examine the original card, the FBI told them that the evidence was destroyed, even though J. Edgar Hoover called the Rosenberg case “the crime of the century.”

Smearing the dead

Millions of people around the world rallied around the Rosenbergs. They saw parallels between their frame-up and the anti-Jewish persecution of French army officer Alfred Dreyfus decades before.

The American Jewish Committee, which represents the small section of the Jewish Community that’s capitalist, didn’t think so. Writing in the AJC’s Commentary magazine, historian Lucy Dawidowicz endorsed the Rosenbergs’ execution. 

Today when Jewish youth join marches supporting Palestinian liberation, Commentary magazine supports bombing and starving Gaza.

The publication of “Invitation to an Inquest” in 1965 sparked new interest in the Rosenberg and Sobell cases. The U.S. deep state counterattacked, particularly after the overthrow of the Soviet Union.

The FBI and CIA say they have proof that the Rosenbergs and Sobell were guilty. They point to the “Venona Project,” which consists of allegedly deciphered messages between Soviet agents in the U.S. and their Moscow headquarters. The documents claim to show that the Rosenbergs, Sobell and dozens of other people in the U.S. were Soviet agents.

Why should anybody believe U.S. spy agencies? These are the folks that told the world that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Even if the Venona papers are genuine, the rub is matching code names with individuals.  One of the alleged code names for Julius Rosenberg was “liberal.” Does that sound like a name for an accused communist super-spy? 

The code name linked to Morton Sobell described him as having a wooden leg, which he didn’t have. There was no code name for Ethel Rosenberg.

The Venona Project smeared a series of liberals who couldn’t defend themselves since they were dead. That was the case of the economist Harry Dexter White, who worked in the U.S. Treasury Department.

The deep state and the ultra-right use the Venona papers to support Joe McCarthy’s phony charge that President Franklin Roosevelt’s administration was filled with communists.

The documents have also been used to rehabilitate Elizabeth Bentley’s tarnished reputation. The professional liar gave dishonest testimony against the Rosenbergs, defendants in other trials and before a series of congressional witch-hunting committees.

Typical of the so-called “red spy queen” was her claim to have given the secret date of the Normandy landings to the Soviets. Actually, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower informed the Soviets of when D-Day would occur. He did so because he wanted them to launch an offensive and prevent German troops from being withdrawn from the Eastern Front.

Never forget the Rosenbergs

“I consider your crime worse than murder,” declared Judge Kaufman when he sentenced the Rosenbergs to the electric chair  

Worse than the killers of the 14-year-old Emmett Till? The two racists who tortured the Black youth to death got off scot-free. 

Gen. Douglas MacArthur wanted to drop dozens of atom bombs on Korea and China. Judge Kaufman blamed the Rosenbergs for the U.S. not being able to do so.

Former Secretary of State Dean Rusk wrote in his memoirs that the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs wanted President John F. Kennedy to approve a plan to launch nuclear first strikes against the socialist countries.

The whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg revealed that the Pentagon plan would have killed 600 million people. 

What if the Rosenbergs and Morton Sobell had helped the Soviets build an atom bomb? It was only because the Soviet Union — and later the People’s Republic of China and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea — were able to develop a deterrent to the Pentagon’s arsenal of atomic and hydrogen bombs that a nuclear holocaust was averted. 

But the Rosenbergs and Sobell didn’t have the ability to penetrate the Manhattan Project. The FBI wanted them to finger dozens of liberals to back up Joe McCarthy’s fantastic claim of “20 years of treason” under the Roosevelt and Truman administrations. 

The courage of Ethel Rosenberg, Julius Rosenberg and Morton Sobell prevented this nightmare.

Ethel Rosenberg was electrocuted for supposedly typing reports. She was arrested almost a month after Julius Rosenberg was jailed to put pressure on him to lie.

David Greenglass later admitted he lied about Ethel Rosenberg’s typing. Justice demands that Ethel Rosenberg be given a presidential pardon.

When Morton Sobell was 91 years old, he was badgered by New York Times reporter Sam Harris into saying he and Julius Rosenberg offered information to the Soviets. It was from their jobs as electrical engineers, not from the Manhattan Project.

Twenty-seven million Soviet people died defeating Hitler. Yet during World War II both Britain and the United States refused to share new anti-aircraft weapons and radar with the Soviets.

If Morton Sobell and Julius Rosenberg did indeed help the Soviets, it wasn’t espionage to help a gallant ally. It was whistleblowing, like Daniel Ellsberg did when he released the Pentagon Papers or the truth-telling by Chelsea Manning about U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The best way to honor the Rosenbergs is to fight even harder to free Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, Ruchell Cinque Magee, Sundiata Acoli, Mutulu Shakur and dozens of other political prisoners.

One way to do so is to donate to the Rosenberg Fund for Children, which helps the children of political prisoners, at RFC.org.

Long live the memory of Ethel Rosenberg, Julius Rosenberg and Morton Sobell! 

Statement by Cuban Foreign Minister at the UN General Assembly

Mujeres en Lucha – Women in Struggle, organización miembro de la FDIM fundada en los Estados Unidos, se une al clamor mundial que exige a Estados Unidos – este gobierno del centro del imperialismo – el CESE DEFINITIVO del CRIMINAL BLOQUEO a nuestra nación hermana la República de Cuba.

Si la administración Biden vota No el 23 de junio, está votando en contra de la voluntad del pueblo estadounidense. Organismos gubernamentales y sindicales electos que representan a más de 30 millones de estadounidenses han pasado resoluciones pidiendo el fin del bloqueo. Los propios cubanos residentes en Estados Unidos han protestado en caravanas de autos y bicicletas contra el bloqueo que golpea a sus familias.

Mientras en Estados Unidos se apartan cruelmente a niñas y niños de sus familias solo por el hecho de haber nacido fuera de las fronteras imperialistas; se le niega la justicia a sus hijos de naciones originarias como Leonard Peltier, o a heroicos portavoces del pueblo negro como Mumia Abu Jamal; se persigue a valerosos baluartes representantes de luchas por derechos civiles, de género, sindicales, y de todo lo que represente justicia social, económica y ambiental; este país que tiene un monumental historial terrorista en contra de países a los cuales declara unilateralmente como enemigos lanzándole sus poderosas y asesinas fuerzas militares, este país de enorme crueldad tiene la osadía de declarar un acto de guerra – un BLOQUEO – contra un pueblo noble y generoso como el de Cuba.

Cuba ha sido y continúa siendo un glorioso ejemplo de humanidad y solidaridad internacional. Solidaridad que ha demostrado incluso en beneficio del pueblo estadounidense a pesar de la agresión de ese gobierno contra el pueblo cubano.

No obstante, Cuba socialista ha desarrollado cinco proyectos de vacuna COVID-19 para inocular a su población. Ayer se anunció que la vacuna cubana Abdala, tiene una eficacia del 92,28 por ciento, la cuarta a nivel internacional. Un inmenso logro para un pequeño país en medio de una pandemia que afecta grandemente la economía sumándose a un bloqueo estadounidense cruelmente intensificado. Nos regocijamos con el mundo por la esperanza que trae esta noticia para derrotar al virus a través de la solidaridad global.

Desde cada una de nuestras trincheras de lucha seguiremos enarbolando la bandera de la unión entre los pueblos y la defensa de la República de Cuba.

¡Viva la solidaridad internacional!
¡Viva la República de Cuba Revolucionaria!
¡Fin al criminal bloqueo!

Martes, 22 de junio de 2021

June 22, Detroit — Today, the National Network on Cuba (NNOC), partner organizations, as well as academics, elected officials, labor leaders and Cuban Americans will gather for a press conference highlighting the ongoing humanitarian crisis caused by the United States blockade against Cuba. Speakers include a representative from the Cuban-American organization Project EL PAN, an independent Cuban journalist, a leader of the Seattle chapter of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, and a member of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.

Other representatives include the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization and elected officials Commissioner Alicia Bell, Chair of the Wayne County Board of Commissioners and former State Representative Hon. Sherry Gay Dagnogo, Detroit Public Schools Community District Board Member.

This conference will be held prior to the United Nations (U.N.) annual vote on resolution 74/7 of the United Nations General Assembly: “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba,” scheduled for tomorrow, June 23. Participating organizations will speak to the urgency of the need for the U.S. to vote “yes” and end the blockade against Cuba immediately.

Cuban-American, Felix Sharpe-Caballero said, “Given the pandemic and the policies of the previous administration, intended to create suffering, never has it been more difficult for the Cuban People. But never before have Cuban Americans joined together to call on the genocide to end. In cities, counties, school boards and State Legislatures representing greater than 35 million people, through resolution, Americans are also calling on President Biden to act on Cuba.”

Since 1992, an overwhelming majority of U.N. member countries have continuously voted to end the embargo as well. During the most recent vote in 2019, 187 Member States demonstrated their support for the resolution to end the blockade, while only Brazil and Israel joined the U.S. in voting no.

“According to international law, the United States does not have the right, politically or morally, to dictate the actions of sovereign nations like Cuba, and those who wish to build relationships with Cuba. Why is the United States government positioned above international law? The world stands with Cuba, and so should we. It’s time to end the U.S. sanctions against Cuba,” said Gail Walker, Executive Director of the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organizations, the administering organization for U.S. medical students studying at Cuba’s Latin American School of Medicine.

This embargo, known in Cuba as el bloqueo (the blockade), is the longest documented economic war in modern history. It has resulted in the Cuban people suffering food and medical shortages, issues which have been exacerbated since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to Cubans suffering domestically from the United States’ embargo, millions of African, Latin American and Caribbean people, who rely on medical support from Cuba, also suffer from this inhumane policy.

Interested parties can register here to attend the press conference, or submit questions here:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN__hKNPTFSQDuTf7mVPDp1gw

For more information regarding the United States blockade against Cuba, please visit or contact the following partners:

Project EL PAN, breaking bread with the Cuban People
https://www.facebook.com/ProjectElPAN/

Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization
https://www.ifconews.org

Saving Lives Campaign
SavingLives.US-CubaNormalization.org

Global Health Partners
GHP.org/syringes4Cuba

WPFW-Voices with Vision

National Network on Cuba
NNOC.info

Canadian Network on Cuba
http://www.canadiannetworkoncuba.ca/

PRESS INQUIRIES:
National Network on Cuba:
Cheryl LaBash
313-999-1376
UnblockCubaJune23@NNOC.info

A message to those who leaked the tax records of the extremely wealthy who do not pay taxes:

Whoever leaked this report deserves a reward for revealing the information. Access to these tax reports is the right of all working people, who pay a disproportionate share of their income in taxes.

ProPublica released its report, “The Secret IRS Files: Trove of Never-Before-Seen Records Reveal How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax,” on June 8. It revealed that:

• In 2007, Jeff Bezos, then a multi-billionaire and now the world’s richest man, did not pay a penny in federal income taxes. He achieved the feat again in 2011. 
• In 2018, Tesla founder Elon Musk, the second-richest person in the world, also paid no federal income taxes.
• Michael Bloomberg managed to do the same in recent years. 
• Billionaire investor Carl Icahn did it twice. 
• George Soros paid no federal income tax three years in a row.

The data provides an unprecedented look inside the financial lives of U.S. capitalist titans, including Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch and Mark Zuckerberg.

A tax rate of only 3.4%

According to Forbes, the 25 wealthiest saw their worth rise a collective $401 billion from 2014 to 2018. They paid a total of $13.6 billion in federal income taxes in those five years, IRS data shows. That’s a staggering sum, but it amounts to a true tax rate of only 3.4%.

By the end of 2018, the 25 were worth $1.1 trillion.

For comparison, it would take 14.3 million ordinary workers in the U.S. put together to equal that same amount of wealth.

The personal federal tax bill for the top 25 in 2018: $1.9 billion.

The bill for real wage earners: $1.24 trillion (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, April 17, 2020).

Wealthy did not earn their riches

The wealthy did not gain their immeasurable riches by some magic elixir they may claim to have cooked up by their “rare genius.” Instead, the source of their wealth is unpaid labor, extracted in profits from the sweat and blood of the workers who have to pay taxes. 

Workers earn the miserly wages allotted to them so that they can continue to create more wealth. Then this income is taxed. It can be bitterly joked that the poorer you are, the more it costs to live.

The small, ultra-wealthy sector of society does not pay taxes because they do not report an income. They do not work for wages. Also, they employ tax attorneys who write the tax laws to make sure their profits are exempt.

Biden’s response

In response to the ProPublica report, the Biden administration announced it was conducting a multi-pronged investigation to determine the source of the IRS leak. They claim the unauthorized disclosure of tax return information is the crime — not the failure to pay taxes. 

This is in spite of Biden’s “Made in America” tax plan that vaguely promises more equitable taxation.

Workers have little access to information on the value of the wealth they create. According to the U.S. Treasury Department, they are not even supposed to know that the super-rich are not taxed on the growth of that wealth.

Certainly wage earners who pay income taxes have little control on how the proceeds are spent, including the U.S. military-industrial complex that is destroying the planet, as well as the cost of supporting a murderously racist police force for the protection of the wealthy and their property.

Another tax evasion by the wealthy is hidden in their “philanthropy.” One result of this philanthropy is the privatization of services that are supposed to be provided by the government.

Is the solution a tax on the wealthy? Who would administer that wealth tax? This government is dedicated to and run for the benefit of the ruling capitalist class. It’s a classic case of the fox guarding the chicken house. 

How could there be justice without getting rid of the fox?

MONDAY, JUNE 28, 2021 AT 8 PM EDT

Pride Month & LGBTQ2S Liberation: Discussion with author Bob McCubbin
Online Event

SUNDAY, JUNE 27 AT 8 AM EDT – 11 PM EDT
Baltimore – Attending Queer Liberation March 2021 NYC

The Peoples Power Assembly, Struggle La Lucha, Socialist Unity Party are supporting the “Reclaim Pride March — Queer Liberation March” and the “Free Palestine” contingent in New York City.

Many of us have participated in Baltimore’s March in years past, but because there is no local March we will be traveling to New York City. We are traveling by car. If you would like to be a part of our contingent, sign up. We are working on details such as when we are leaving and returning. Please call Russ at 443-754-8969 after 6 pm for more information.

Here is a short description from the “Reclaim Pride Coalition”

Reclaim Pride Coalition (RPC) is a New York City-based group of LGBTQIA2S+ activists in alliance with dozens of grassroots community groups, nationally and internationally. RPC’s primary work is organizing the Queer Liberation March. In June 2019, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, RPC mobilized more than 45,000 people to recreate the original 1970 Christopher Street Liberation Day March route uptown from Stonewall to Central Park. In 2020, under the darkness of the global pandemic, RPC held the Queer Liberation March for Black Lives and Against Police Brutality. The QLM is the annual people’s protest march without corporate funding; corporate floats; politicians’ grandstanding; or police control or involvement.

3RD ANNUAL MARCH: 6/27/21

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