The U.S. ruling class is risking World War III to keep global wealth flowing to them, a U.S. political analyst and anti-war activist says.

“The oligarchs of Wall Street are desperate to keep the wealth of the world flowing into their coffers. They dream of reclaiming the position they enjoyed in the world economy after the Second World War,” said Bill Dores in an interview with Press TV on March 11.

He called on the people of the U.S. to act urgently to stop the corporate servants in Washington from dragging the U.S. into a global conflict that could turn into a nuclear war.

“The menace of a full third world war, even a nuclear one, is very real,” Dores warned.

“It grows by the minute. It does not come from Russia or China or Iran. It flows from the financial desperation of the U.S. corporate ruling class, which owns both political parties, the White House, Congress, the Pentagon and the CIA,” he added.

‘20th-century world wars killed 100 million people’

The analyst said that the “world wars of the 20th century killed upwards of 100 million people.”

“The wars left much of the world in ruins, hundreds of millions maimed, orphaned, and homeless. They saw the first and only use of nuclear weapons in war — by the United States on the civilian population of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” he said.

“But for the bankers and CEOs of Corporate America, many of whom supported Hitler in the 1930s, the world wars were the best thing that ever happened,” he added.

“It’s a problem for them that they have not been able to have another war on that scale,” Dores continued.

Wars made Wall Street the world’s financial center

“World War I put the colonial empires of West Europe, grown rich from the plunder of Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, in debt to U.S. banks. New York City replaced London as the world’s financial center,” the anti-war activist revealed.

“World War II’s massive destruction cemented Wall Street’s position at the center of the world economy. In 1945 the U.S. produced 50 percent of global GDP and held 80 percent of the world’s hard currency reserves. The war made the dollar the world’s reserve currency,” he said.

So-called ‘golden age of capitalism’

Dores noted that U.S. historians call it the “golden age of capitalism.”

“It was an age that could only be preserved by war and destruction. The military-financial state in Washington has tried to preserve it that way ever since,” he explained.

45-year mass murder spree called ‘Cold War’

“That was the object of the 45-year mass murder spree they called the ‘Cold War.’ Two years after World War II ended, President Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947, creating the Department of Defense, the National Security Council, the U.S. Air Force and the CIA. The permanent U.S. war economy was born. It has kept the world at war for eight decades,” he observed.

“The Cold War wasn’t cold. While they built tens of thousands of nuclear weapons to threaten the USSR, the Pentagon and CIA and its proxies murdered tens of millions of people in Asia, Africa and Latin America. It was, in reality, a war against the right of the people of those continents to freedom and economic development, a war to destroy any avenues of economic life on this planet that don’t run through Wall Street. It was also used to keep West Europe and Japan under Washington’s thumb,” Dores said.

“The Cold War supposedly ended with the overthrow of the Soviet Union. The U.S. need for war didn’t. Washington launched a 30-year war to regain the near monopoly Corporate America once held on the world’s energy supply,” the analyst said.

‘Russia was inevitably a target’

“Starting with Iraq, Washington invaded, bombed or sanctioned energy-producing countries that didn’t pay tribute to Wall Street. Russia is the biggest. It was inevitably a target,” Dores said.

“In their drive to control the world economy, the U.S. ruling class could not tolerate even a capitalist Russia. NATO’s drive to the east began less than a decade after the USSR fell, before President Putin was elected,” he stated.

“People in the United States have no need for Wall Street banks to command the world economy. We don’t need endless wars for corporate power, especially since those corporations use their power against us. We need to act urgently to stop the corporate servants in Washington from dragging us into World War III,” Dores concluded.

Source: Press TV

The White House released its budget request for 2024. For the Pentagon, there is $824 billion. Adding armaments for military operations in Ukraine takes that figure to more than $950 billion.

Add the $24 billion Department of Energy budget item, as the department maintains nuclear bombs and related armaments. Hidden are the budgets for the CIA and other secret military forces. Biden’s total budget for world war totals well over $1 trillion.

The Biden administration has started a proxy war in Ukraine against Russia. At the same time, it is building up toward war on China, including a possible U.S. invasion of Taiwan (last September, Biden said U.S. forces are prepared to “defend” Taiwan) under some wild pretext, such as a threat from weather balloons.

Don’t laugh. That’s how every U.S. imperialist war started, like the sinking of the battleship USS Maine in Havana harbor — the Maine sank because of a coal-bunker fire next to the ship’s gunpowder storage, not from mines planted by Spain, as was reported at the time. “Remember the Maine” became the battle cry for launching the war with Spain in 1898. 

Like the “Gulf of Tonkin incident” in Vietnam, alleged attacks by the Vietnamese on U.S. ships that never happened but were used to authorize an all-out war on Vietnam. Like the “weapons of mass destruction” that never existed but were used to launch a war on Iraq.

As history has shown, a country that prepares for war is likely to go to war. Washington is engaged in a military buildup against China, diplomatic hostility including sanctions and trade barriers, and multiple semi-unreported operations such as basing a fleet of U.S.-crewed nuclear-powered attack submarines in Australia.

Also slipped through on March 13, the Biden administration extended U.S. capitalism’s war on the environment, approving a massive oil drilling project on federal land in Alaska.

Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed to restore diplomatic relations, a dramatic breakthrough brokered by China after years of soaring tensions, NBC News reported on March 10.

“The deal, which will see the two leading oil producers reopen embassies in each other’s capitals, was sealed during a meeting in Beijing — a boost to China’s efforts to rival the United States as a broker on the global stage,” NBC reports.

The joint statement by Saudi Arabia, Iran, and China says:

“In response to the noble initiative of His Excellency President Xi Jinping, President of the People’s Republic of China, of China’s support for developing good neighborly relations between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran;

“And based on the agreement between His Excellency President Xi Jinping and the leaderships in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran, whereby the People’s Republic of China would host and sponsor talks between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran;

“Proceeding from their shared desire to resolve the disagreements between them through dialogue and diplomacy, and in light of their brotherly ties.”

Iran’s mission to the United Nations says the agreement with Saudi Arabia will help bring a political settlement to Yemen’s years-long war. The IRNA news agency said the deal with Saudi Arabia would accelerate efforts to renew an expired ceasefire deal, “help start a national dialogue, and form an inclusive national government in Yemen.” The ceasefire, the longest of the Yemen conflict, expired in October.

The Wall Street Journal reported on March 10: “The deal signals a sharp increase in Beijing’s influence in a region where the U.S. has long been the dominant power broker, and could complicate efforts by the U.S. and Israel to strengthen a regional alliance to confront Tehran … It comes as the U.S. has been trying to broker a peace deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel, an effort now clouded with uncertainty.”

M.K. Bhadrakumar at Indian Punchline writes: “The U.S.’s humiliating exclusion from the center stage of West Asian politics constitutes a ‘Suez moment’… comparable to the crisis experienced by the U.K. in 1956, which obliged the British to sense that their imperial project had reached a dead end and the old way of doing things — whipping weaker nations into line as ostensible obligations of global leadership — was no longer going to work and would only lead to a disastrous reckoning.”

University of Southern California shuttle bus drivers have petitioned for a union election which is now scheduled for March 23. Graduate students at USC won union representation within weeks of the successful strike by their UCLA counterparts. USC’s shuttle drivers are now gearing up to make it a trifecta.

SEIU organizer Felipe Caceres pointed out that “historically, USC has spent millions on union-busting firms and consultants” and has already begun a campaign of lies to derail the union drive.

But momentum is on the side of the workers! At a Feb. 28 rally, drivers marched across campus joined by students and faculty supporters chanting “Sí, se puede” and “What do we want? Justice!” The decision to push for unionization was nearly unanimous.

The drivers earn lower wages when compared to other area shuttle bus drivers, such as LAX airport drivers and shuttle bus drivers at UCLA, and both of those workforces are unionized. Union drivers can also negotiate for bonuses. In Riverside, California, minibus drivers are represented by SEIU Local 721 and won a $10,000 bonus in 2022.

Wages aren’t the only issue. Without union representation in California, all workers are considered “at-will.” That means they can be fired without the bosses having to justify it in any way – at any time.

Being in a union solves that problem!

SEIU 721 Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/seiu721/

On the 20th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq

No War in Ukraine! No to NATO! No Weapons, No Money for the Ukraine War

More than 200 antiwar and anti-imperialist organizations are supporting a national march in Washington, DC on the 20th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.

The plan:

We will rally at the White House (Lafayette Square) at 1:00 pm on Saturday, March 18. Then we will march and finish with an indoor event at the New York Presbyterian Church at 13th Street and New York Avenue, NW.

There will also be local actions that weekend across the country.

This action is being organized by a coalition of groups that are dedicated to building an antiwar movement rooted in working class and poor communities. The danger of global war is growing! The people must act!

March 11 — Silicon Valley Bank, the 16th largest in the U.S., was shut down on March 10 and put under the control of the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation.

“The fact that the FDIC took over the bank during the day — rather than Friday evening, which is the normal procedure — shows just how fast-moving and chaotic this situation, including a massive run on the bank, had become,” commented financial journalist Wolf Richter.

SVB had $175BN in deposits as of December 31. About $151.5BN of the deposits are uninsured. The collapse of SVB is the second largest (by assets) bank failure in U.S. history after Washington Mutual, which collapsed in 2008.

As the takeover of SVB was being executed, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said at a hearing before the U.S. House Ways & Means Committee that the department is monitoring “a few” banks amid issues at SVB.

“There are recent developments that concern a few banks that I’m monitoring very carefully and when banks experience financial losses, it is and should be a matter of concern,” Yellen said.

“The [SVB] collapse was a byproduct of the Federal Reserve’s hiking of interest rates by 1,700% in less than a year,” reports Business Insider. “Once risk-free Treasurys started generating more attractive returns than what SVB was offering, people began withdrawing their money, and the bank needed a quick way to pay them. They were ultimately forced to sell their loan portfolio at a huge loss.”

Christopher Whaler, Chairman of Whalen Global Advisors in New York, said: “There could be a bloodbath next week as banks are in trouble, the short sellers are out there, and they are going to attack every single bank, especially the smaller ones.

“I think [the fall of crypto bank] Silvergate started it. That one was the first pebble to go off the mountain and now we have a boulder and more are likely to follow.”

The collapse of crypto

Before SVB, two high-profile failures were attributed to the high interest rates.

The first was the collapse of the cryptocurrency market. Since the Fed started raising interest rates in March 2021, Bitcoin has plunged more than 65%. This contributed to the demise of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, founded by Sam Bankman-Fried.

On March 8, crypto bank Silvergate went into liquidation. There’s also been a double-digit decline in high-growth tech stocks over the same period.

Signature, one of the main crypto banks, was hit hard on March 10, with shares sinking 32% before trading was halted for volatility. CNBC reported that Signature’s losses were almost 50% for the week. First Republic Bank, PacWest Bancorp, and Western Alliance Bancorp were among the other banks whose stock trading was halted for volatility.

[UPDATE: Signature Bank collapsed and was shut down on Sunday, March 12. This is the third-largest bank failure in U.S. history. Federal regulators have taken over.]

A bank run is the capitalist “free market” method of keeping the banking system solvent. During a bank run, many depositors lose confidence in the banking system, and seemingly all the depositors at the same time demand payment in cash.

During a general bank run, the banks scramble for cash. Commercial banks halt new loans to conserve cash, and existing loans are called in. A bank run causes credit to seize up throughout the economy. Businesses also are forced to scramble for cash as the banks and other creditors call in their debts. Forced to raise cash quickly, they dump their unsold commodities at considerable losses causing prices to fall sharply. Production, trade, and, most significantly, employment falls sharply.

The Banking Panic of 1933

The most famous bank run is known as the Banking Panic of 1933. In response, in 1934, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation was established, backed by the full credit of the U.S. government. Even if the Federal Deposit Insurance Fund were exhausted, the U.S. government would be charged with coming up with the money to pay off the depositors of failed banks, at least up to the insured limit.

The result, however, is that while the FDIC makes bank runs less likely in the short run, it has made the solvency of the banking system erode over time.

Government-backed bank insurance creates what is called a “moral hazard.” When banks and their depositors fear runs, the managers are under pressure to use caution and avoid risks. But when the government deposit insurance “guarantees” deposits, bank managers figure there is little danger they will ever face a run. Therefore, they will pay less attention to maintaining reserves and take more risks to maximize profits for their shareholders, including the bank managers. That risk is the “moral hazard.”

Today, bank regulators cannot liquidate an insolvent bank as they did in the 1930s. In today’s credit-run world, even petty transactions like purchasing morning coffee are done with debit cards, credit cards, and smartphones.

The FDIC has already announced that “the main office and all branches of Silicon Valley Bank will reopen on Monday, March 13, 2023. … Banking activities will [also] resume … including online banking and other services. Silicon Valley Bank’s official checks will continue to clear.”

In the current crisis, the banks hold the government hostage. They demand anything and everything to bail us out, or we will take you down with us. As long as capitalism rules, the bankers are not lying when they say this.

On cue, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), whose Silicon Valley district includes both the bank and many of its venture capital and startup clients, called on the White House and Treasury to do “whatever is legally permissible & appropriate to support the Bank which is central to the startup & tech economy,” in a tweet.

[UPDATE: On March 12, the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation unveiled a plan to rescue uninsured depositors, Semafor reports.

Only customers with deposits $250,000 and below are insured by the FDIC. But by invoking a “systemic risk exception,” they’ll now be able to cover larger accounts, which make up a much higher percentage of SVB’s deposits than most banks.

The Fed also announced a new “Bank Term Funding Program” with $25 billion from its Exchange Stabilization Fund that would provide temporary loans to financial institutions as needed.

The bailout has begun.]

Interest rates

Unlike stock market price fluctuations that have little effect on the real economy, changes in long-term government bond interest rates have a big impact. This is because mortgage, auto, commercial and industrial loan interest rates are tied to those of long-term government bonds.

The Federal Reserve System and its Open Market Committee appear to be in command of the course of the capitalist economy. If the Fed lowers interest rates, it leads to inflation and a recession. If the Fed raises interest rates, the result is slow growth, bank failures, or outright recession with rising unemployment. A tight monetary policy (higher interest rates) can worsen an inevitable recession. No policy followed by the Federal Reserve can prevent a recession and mass unemployment from developing once capitalist overproduction has gotten to the point where it floods the market with unsold commodities, destroying profitability.

The COVID shutdown in 2020 resulted in capitalist underproduction. The economic boom that rose after the COVID shutdowns ended led to a wave of commodity hoarding, triggering overproduction. The Fed’s easy money policies (low interest rates) drove commodity prices higher in terms of dollars as well as gold.

As a result, overproduction was accelerated as unsold commodities tied up shipping ports. Fearing that the suddenly overheated economy would crash unless promptly reined in, the Fed was forced to reverse course and drive up interest rates to restrain the boom.

The result can be seen in the fall of cryptocurrencies in 2022, the collapse of FTX and the crypto bank Silvergate, and now the collapse of Silicon Valley Banks.

Major corporations, including Amazon, Goldman Sachs, META (parent company of Facebook), and Twitter, among others, have announced major layoffs.

Average hourly earnings growth slowed greatly in February while the unemployment rate increased.

The Fed can’t control the economy like controlling the water level in a bathtub.

Lowering interest rates will not revive business until excess inventories — overproduction — have been liquidated. A period of overproduction must be followed by a period of underproduction. Only the inevitable recession — a period of underproduction and mass unemployment liquidating overproduction — can reverse the capitalist bust.

There’s never been a millionaire executed in the United States

Richard “Alex” Murdaugh was convicted on March 2 of murdering his spouse and youngest son. Those are horrible crimes. So why didn’t the South Carolina prosecutor demand the death penalty for the wealthy white lawyer instead of seeking a life sentence for Murdaugh?

It isn’t as if the Palmetto State has been shy about inflicting capital punishment. It has executed 665 people since 1718.

Among them was 14-year-old George Stinney, Jr., who was executed in the electric chair on June 16, 1944. The Black youth was convicted by an all-white jury in a one-day trial. Stinney was so small that his Bible was used to boost him in the electric chair.

The Black sharecropper Sammy Osborne was 18 when his drunken landlord pulled a gun on him. Osborne shot the white landlord in self-defense.

The Second Amendment right to bear arms isn’t for everybody. Sammy Osborne was sentenced to death by future senator Strom Thurmond and was electrocuted on Nov. 19, 1943. 

Thurmond was the personification of the lynch rope in the U.S. Senate, where he filibustered every civil rights bill. His bloody record didn’t stop then-Senator Joe Biden from giving the eulogy at Thurmond’s funeral.

Forty-five Black people were hanged in South Carolina for slave revolts, including 35 in the 1822 bid for freedom led by Denmark Vesey.

One day after Donald Trump announced he was running for president and denounced Mexicans as rapists, the white supremacist Dylann Roof murdered nine Black people on June 17, 2015, in Charleston, South Carolina. They were killed while attending Bible study at Denmark Vesey’s place of worship, the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. The arresting cops provided Roof with a meal from Burger King. He was sentenced to death, but has not been executed.

Robert Johnson was electrocuted in 1960. He was the last of 25 people, all of whom were Black men, who were executed on charges of attempted rape.

Nine white men and one Black man, all heroes, were executed for aiding enslaved Africans who escaped.

Freedom of choice in executions

These statistics don’t include at least 191 persons, almost all Black people, who were lynched in South Carolina.

Nor do they include three Black youths ― Samuel Hammond Jr., Delano Middleton, and Henry Smith ― who were murdered by the South Carolina Highway Patrol. They were killed on Feb. 8, 1968, in Orangeburg following protests at a segregated bowling alley. 

The Murdaugh family was part of this state killing machine. Alex Murdaugh’s father, grandfather, and great-grandfather sought the death penalty more than 30 times as prosecutors. His grandfather ― Buster Murdaugh, Jr. ― sent 14 people to the electric chair. 

In addition to their role in filling the prisons and death row, the Murdaugh dynasty’s law practice made them multi-millionaires. Alex Murdaugh’s estate where he killed his spouse and son had 1,700 acres. That’s three square miles or twice as large as Central Park in New York City.

The Murdaugh family’s base is Hampton County, named after the slave owner and Confederate general Wade Hampton III. Following the Civil War, he overthrew the Reconstruction government which was a brief hope of freedom for Black people.

Its Black-majority state legislature ― dubbed “the Black Parliament” ― set up public schools for everybody. It was the best government poor white people in the state ever had. (“Black Reconstruction” by W.E.B. Du Bois)

Some members of the state legislature are upset that South Carolina hasn’t officially killed anybody since 2011. The rub is that under public pressure, pharmaceutical companies are refusing to sell the drugs for lethal injection.

So the legislators passed a law that’s offering inmates the right to choose whether they want to die in the electric chair or before a firing squad. Meanwhile, a state lawmaker has introduced a bill making abortion a death penalty offense.

Blaming Black men

Some legal observers felt that it was a mistake for Alex Murdaugh to take the stand in his own defense. Several jurors said his testimony helped convince them he was guilty.

A few decades ago, Murdaugh might have claimed that Black people killed his spouse and son. That’s what Susan Smith did when she drowned her two sons in a South Carolina lake in 1994. It was the mercy shown by Black jurors that saved Smith, who had psychiatric problems, from the death chamber.

Up in Boston, Charles Stuart had no such excuse. He murdered his spouse Carol Stuart, who was pregnant, in October 1989 for insurance money.

Stuart claimed he had been carjacked by a Black man. One day after Carol Stuart died on Oct. 24, 1989, Boston Mayor Raymond Flynn announced a manhunt.

Black men were stopped and searched wholesale by police, with many stripped naked. Some politicians demanded that Massachusetts bring back the death penalty.

Just as Sam Osborne had no right to self-defense in South Carolina, Black men in Boston didn’t have Fourth Amendment rights against illegal searches.

This police terror continued even after Charles Stuart committed suicide by jumping off a bridge on Jan. 4, 1990. Stuart’s own brother said he was guilty. 

The U.S. government has also used this tactic. The CIA needed to rub out Mary Pinchot Meyer in its clean-up campaign after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

Divorced from Cord Meyer, a top CIA official, Meyer allegedly had a relationship with JFK. She was killed on Oct. 12, 1964, while walking along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal towpath in the Georgetown section of Washington, DC.

James Angleton, the CIA’s sinister head of counterintelligence, broke into Meyer’s studio to search for her diary. Mary Meyer may have known too much.

Authorities charged a Black laborer, Raymond Crump, with Meyer’s murder despite evidence that the shooter was taller and much heavier. No gun was ever found. Using a racist stereotype, prosecutors claimed that Crump tried to sexually assault Meyer.

The CIA hoped Crump would be convicted and any doubts would end with his execution. Fortunately, Crump was defended by the famous lawyer Dovey Roundtree and acquitted by the jury. Justice demands a reopening of Mary Pinchot Meyer’s murder.

Terrorism against the oppressed

The death penalty is used in the United States as an act of terrorism against poor people and political activists. Italian-American labor organizers Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were framed on murder charges and executed in the Massachusetts electric chair on Aug. 23, 1927.

Ethel Rosenberg was electrocuted on Juneteenth 1953 for supposedly typing up spy reports. The Jewish mother was really killed in order to intimidate opponents of the Cold War.

Despite murders committed by the rich ― which have been a staple of TV police detective shows ― there’s never been a millionaire executed in the U.S.

There was no capital punishment for John Eleuthère du Pont after he murdered the Olympic gold-medal-winning wrestler Dave Schultz on Jan. 26, 1996, in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania. The local prosecutor immediately declined to ask for the death penalty.

You can’t execute somebody with a $250 million fortune. The member of the DuPont dynasty may have been mentally ill, but there are hundreds of inmates with severe psychiatric problems on death row.

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania kept the innocent political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal on death row for almost 30 years and is still holding him in prison.

Why isn’t a war criminal like Dick Cheney on death row? The former vice president should be extradited to Iraq to face justice.

War criminal Henry Kissinger should be on trial for mass murder in Angola, Chile, East Timor, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. It’s a shame that Kissinger is 99 years old. If Medgar Evers, Dr. King, Malcolm X, and Che Guevara had not been murdered, they would still be younger than Kissinger.

The entire Bush family should be investigated. A terrorist bomb exploded inside Cubana de Aviación Flight 455 on Oct. 6, 1976. All 73 people aboard were killed.

CIA operatives Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch were responsible for this mass murder. It was revenge for Cuban volunteers helping to defend the People’s Republic of Angola against an invasion from then-apartheid South Africa.

Future President George H.W. Bush was the CIA director at that time. Both his sons, future President George Bush and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, protected Carriles and Bosch.

Capital punishment in the United States was aptly described by John Arthur Spenkelink, who was electrocuted in Florida in 1979. He said, “Them without the capital get the punishment.”

El Día Internacional de la Mujer Trabajadora en PR estuvo marcado por una fuerte respuesta de las mujeres boricuas desde sus diversas perspectivas políticas, a la intensa ola derechista y fascistoide de eliminar los derechos adquiridos por las mujeres después de tantos años de lucha.

Proyectos legislativos contra el aborto seguro, y el rechazo del gobierno para implementar una educación con perspectiva de género que pueda ayudar a que las nuevas generaciones estén libres del cáncer misógeno, han dominado la esfera política.

Pero el 8 de marzo, las mujeres alrededor de la isla, dejaron saber que no tolerarán tanta injusticia en los diferentes ámbitos de su vida personal, económica y política. 

Comenzando en la madrugada, mujeres en diferentes puntos de la isla desplegaron pancartas gigantes exigiendo el derecho a la energía y al agua que por las privatizaciones, se hacen cada vez más caras e inasequibles. 

Otras se manifestaron frente al edificio de la Junta de Control Fiscal que impone la austeridad neoliberal. Con la consigna de Desplazadas, ¡nunca más! y ¡A los gringos los sacamos!, se refirieron a la  práctica de ventas desmedidas de nuestro territorio a millonarios extranjeros, que resulta en el desplazamiento de comunidades enteras.  

En la tarde, se concentraron frente al Edificio del Departamento de Recursos Naturales y Ambientales que a pesar de su nombre, está facilitando la destrucción de las costas y los recursos naturales tan valiosos para preservar el entorno. Cortes de árboles y manglares que protegen nuestras costas, y construcciones sobre yacimientos y cuevas que conservan valor histórico, son avalados por este departamento.

Por eso en PR, la justicia verde, la justicia de las mujeres, es una lucha ante todo, anticolonial.

Desde PR, para Radio Clarín de Colombia, les habló Berta Joubert-Ceci

Bezalel Smotrich is one of the main pillars of the current Israeli government. Although generally described as the finance minister, his work is not confined to curbing inflation.

His broad portfolio gives him partial responsibility for the defense ministry and a major role in administering Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

A far-right extremist, Smotrich has used his new platform to incite violence. Just days after Israeli settlers carried out a pogrom in Huwwara – killing one Palestinian and inflicting huge destruction on homes, businesses, and vehicles – Smotrich called for that West Bank village to be “wiped out” by the Israeli state.

That racist statement was denounced internationally. Ned Price, spokesperson for the US State Department, called it “irresponsible” and “repugnant.”

Smotrich is not the only member of the Israeli government who supported the crimes by settlers in Huwwara.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister, was initially silent after the pogrom. Yet it did not take long before his admiration for the perpetrators became clear.

Ben-Gvir denounced the detention of two settlers accused of taking part in the pogrom.

Members of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, from Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power party have openly applauded the pogrom.

One such lawmaker Zvika Fogel said, “A closed, burnt Huwwara – that’s what I want to see.”

Limor Son Har-Melech, another Jewish Power elected representative, called the pogrom “the righteous cry of hundreds of Samaria residents.” Israel refers to the West Bank as Judea and Samaria.

The Huwwara pogrom took place during a time of mass protests by Israelis against Benjamin Netanyahu and the government he leads, which has declared a war of sorts on the state’s high court.

An estimated 250,000 people took to the streets in one day of protest this month, part of an ongoing series of demonstrations.

Among those joining the protests have been Yair Lapid, the former prime minister, and Benny Gantz, the former defense minister. Gantz, then heading Israel’s military, oversaw a 2014 attack on Gaza that – in his own words – caused so much destruction that parts of the territory were “returned to the stone ages.”

Lapid, Gantz, and other politicians now in opposition are seeking to isolate Ben-Gvir and Smotrich. The opposition has portrayed the violence in Huwwara as an example of the extreme racism that is supposedly at odds with its liberal values.

Abnormal?

From the Palestinian perspective, the Huwwara pogrom is not something abnormal. Rather, it is the logical result of the Zionist colonial project in Palestine.

Israeli settlers – colonizers would arguably be a more accurate word – are not an outlaw group in Israel. They are a strategic tool in the implementation of policies pursued by successive Israeli governments.

The objectives of those policies have been to steal land and to expel Palestinians.

What is new is that the most hardline colonizers now occupy a position of immense power. Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are both colonizers themselves, living in settlements that are illegal under international law.

The settlers do not act alone. B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, has pointed to how settlers benefit from cooperation. “The settlers carry out the attack, the military secures it, the politicians back it.”

B’Tselem has rejected the notion that the Israeli state has somehow lost control. “This is exactly what Israeli control looks like,” the group stated, adding that “the Huwwara pogrom was an extreme manifestation of a longstanding Israeli policy.”

Violence is necessary to achieve the state’s aim of emptying Palestine of its Indigenous population so that it may be replaced by foreign settlers.

Founded on massacres

Settlers often do not represent official institutions.

They are, therefore, not confined by rules. They are unrestrained in committing crimes against Palestinians.

The Huwwara pogrom is eerily reminiscent of the violence which occurred in the period leading to Israel’s establishment in 1948.

A whole series of massacres were carried by Zionist forces out around that time. The most infamous was the massacre at Deir Yassin, a village in the Jerusalem area.

The April 1948 bloodbath at Deir Yassin placed terror in the hearts of civilians. It was a significant factor in the Nakba, the huge displacement of Palestinians.

Israel is a state founded on massacres.

The current Israeli political dispute is between two camps.

One camp – the hardline settlers epitomized by Ben-Gvir and Smotrich – clearly and explicitly expresses the truth of the Zionist colonial project. The other camp also believes in the same strategy of relentless colonial violence against Palestinians but paints itself with a coating of liberal values.

That coating makes the second camp preferable for Western governments.

Israel’s most prominent “liberals” of the past few decades – Benny Gantz, Ehud Barak, Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni – were all involved in killing Palestinian civilians, collective punishment, the construction, and expansion of settlements and other efforts to deny basic rights to Palestinians when they were in power.

Jonathan Ofir, a trenchant anti-Zionist commentator, has put it well: “Israelis and everyone else are right to be shocked by the explicit genocidal nature of Smotrich’s words. But the righteous, liberal and indignant Israelis should take a good look in the mirror, to see how much of Smotrich’s fascistic vein lives in them.”

For more than a year now, there has been a noticeable uptick in Israeli violence in the West Bank. The formation of a new and overtly racist Israeli government, which clearly supports the settlers and encourages more violence against Palestinians, has helped create a certain atmosphere.

That atmosphere is ripe for more depravity on the part of settlers. Nobody would be surprised if the Huwwara pogrom is followed by similar acts of aggression by settlers, who now have greater access to government and feel stronger politically than before.

But there is another story to be told. It is the story of Palestinians determined to prevent a new Nakba.

The past seven decades have taught Palestinians that the price of resistance is much lower than the price of fear or the price of fleeing.

There has been a noticeable upsurge in resistance activities by Palestinians in recent times. Palestinians are constantly confronting Israel’s forces of occupation.

The coming months and years will undoubtedly be painful. We are witnessing an increase in the level of terror practiced by the Israeli colonizers.

But this period also carries many opportunities for a new phase in the Palestinian struggle against the colonizers.

Ahmed Abu Artema is a Palestinian writer, activist and refugee from Ramle.

Source: Electronic Intifada

Join Bearing Witness in the Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal:

SAT, MARCH 11, 2023 2-4pm ET, 1-3pm CT, 11am-1pm PT

First United Methodist Church of Germantown, Philadelphia

Or Watch the Livestream Here

Featured Speakers:

• Rev. Judge Wendell Griffen – Retired State Court Trial Judge, Arkansas

• Dr. Cornel West -Philosopher and Theologian, Union Theological Seminary

• Gabriel Bryant – Philadelphia Based Organizer

• Dr. Johanna Fernandez – Historian, Movement Liaison to Abu-Jamal Legal Team

• Pedro Polakoff – First Photographer on the Crime Scene, 1981

• Dr. Mark Lamont Hill, Professor, Author, Activist
• Moderator: Linn Washington Jr. – Professor of Journalism, Temple University

Evidence of Abu-Jamal’s innocence was illegally withheld by prosecutors at his trial and subsequent appeals

Will Judge Lucretia Clemons have the impartiality and independence to make a decision that reckons with the long history of racism in Philadelphia?

The case of Black journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal, falsely convicted in 1982 of the murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner the year before is now back in court. Newly discovered evidence, previously withheld by prosecutors, a clear violation of law, makes it clear that Abu-Jamal should be freed or given a new trial. Abu-Jamal has endured over 40 years of wrongful imprisonment and almost three decades on death row.

Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas Judge, Lucretia Clemons, is expected to rule by March 16, 2023, on whether newly-found documents pointing to Abu-Jamal’s innocence are worthy of an evidentiary hearing where they can be properly reviewed and examined.

The court is reviewing three sets of documents that the prosecution withheld from Abu-Jamal’s attorneys for more than 36 years: 1) Handwritten notes by prosecutor Joe McGill that show that he tracked the race of potential jurors during the jury selection process; 2) A handwritten letter by star witness, Robert Chobert, in which he asks prosecutor Joe McGill for money “owed” him, an indication that Chobert’s testimony was bribed, and 3) A series of memoranda between prosecutors and officers of the judicial system in and outside of the state of Pennsylvania, indicating that the prosecutor’s other main witness, Cynthia White, was also bribed. Just months after her testimony at Abu-Jamal’s trial, all of White’s pending prostitution charges were suddenly dismissed.

Failure to release Robert Chobert’s letter and the series of memoranda between the prosecutor and numerous officers of the court across state lines is a flagrant violation of the 1963 landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the case of Brady v. Maryland. Brady established that prosecutors MUST turn over to defense attorneys, all potentially evidence pointing to a defendant’s innocence.

Prosecutors in District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office who are currently litigating Abu-Jamal’s case today are arguing, against all reason, that Robert Chobert’s letter demanding money owed to him as well as all the memoranda seeking favorable treatment for Cynthia White are not “materially important” and that, therefore, the Brady claim is not merited in Abu-Jamal’s case. They argue that Abu-Jamal would have been convicted with or without the testimony of these witnesses.

But the other “evidence” used to convict Abu-Jamal mainly consisted of a made-up confession allegedly heard by police and their claim that Abu-Jamal’s gun was found next to him at the scene, but which police failed to test to prove it had been fired. The alleged confession was “remembered” two to three months after the fact by police, among them one who wrote in his report about Abu-Jamal the night of the shooting, “the negro male made no comment.” Both claims were made by the very same police officers who beat Abu-Jamal brutally, within an inch of his life, shouting “Kill the Black motherfucker, beat the shit out of the Black motherfucker,” and lied on the stand about having properly handled the crime scene, while in fact the police did the opposite.

DA Larry Krasner’s office is, thereby upholding the perjured testimonies and theory of the case put forth by the same homicidally violent police officers whose behavior, according to an investigation of the Philadelphia Police by the U.S. Department of Justice in 1979, “shocks the conscience.”

The narrative of what happened on the night that Office Faulkner was killed, promoted by Larry Krasner’s office and the racist Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), is false.

In fact, the original prosecutor in the case had to bribe the testimonies of key witnesses, Chobert and White, because they did not see what happened that night, as long-standing evidence shows. The newly discovered evidence is “material” because the original trial court heavily relied on their bribed testimony to convict Abu-Jamal. If jurors would have known that Chobert and White were, respectively, paid and relieved of prison time in exchange for their testimonies, the jury would have doubted the prosecutor’s theory of the case. And the fact that this new evidence of bribery was withheld for almost four decades by Philadelphia prosecutors requires throwing Abu-Jamal’s conviction out, or at the very least, holding an evidentiary hearing.

Our event brings together eminent scholars, experts, and activists who will bear witness to constitutional violations in a case that is emblematic of how the prosecutor’s office operates and disfigures the lives of Black people, their families, and communities in Philadelphia. Participants include Cornel West, who will testify to the cruel and inhumane nature of death row’s solitary confinement and death by incarceration; recently retired Arkansas state judge, Rev. Wendell Griffin, who will address Brady; professor and social critic, Dr. Marc Lamont Hill;  Abu-Jamal’s friend and defense team liaison, Dr. Johanna Fernandez; and photographer Pedro Polakoff whose photos, among other things, document the absence of cab driver Robert Chobert from the crime scene.

The evidence that justice was not done in Mumia’s case and that federal law was violated is overwhelming. Will Judge Clemons of the CCP listen to it and do the right thing?