NATIONAL DAY OF MOURNING

Since 1970, Indigenous people & their allies have gathered at noon on Cole’s Hill in Plymouth to commemorate a National Day of Mourning on the US Thanksgiving holiday. Many Native people do not celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims & other European settlers. Thanksgiving Day is a reminder of the genocide of millions of Native people, the theft of Native lands and the erasure of Native cultures. Participants in National Day of Mourning honor Indigenous ancestors and Native resilience. It is a day of remembrance and spiritual connection, as well as a protest against the racism and oppression that Indigenous people continue to experience worldwide.

54^th Annual National Day of Mourning
November 23, 2023
12:00 Noon
Cole’s Hill (above Plymouth Rock), Plymouth, MA

Join us as we continue to create a true awareness of Native peoples and history. Help shatter the untrue image of the Pilgrims and the unjust system based on racism, settler colonialism, sexism, homophobia and the profit-driven destruction of the Earth that they and other European settlers introduced to these shores.

Solidarity with Indigenous struggles throughout the world! We welcome our relations crossed by the US border & ICE.

While many supporters will attend in person, we will also livestream the event from Plymouth.

United American Indians of New England (decolonizing since 1970)
info@uaine.org * UAINE website * UAINE Facebook Group

Facebook event

Watch the 2023 National Day of Mourning Livestream on Youtube

Donate

Masks required! No social, but light box lunches will be available.

#MasksUpMayflowersDown #NDOM2023 #NoThanksNoGiving

Appeal to all political prisoners in the world to participate in a one-day hunger strike in defense of Palestinian prisoners on Friday, 11-24-23

On October 27, 20 political prisoners from multiple prisons in Euskal Herria (Basque Country) began a one-day hunger strike in solidarity with the Palestinian people and against the genocidal aggression of the Zionist occupation in support of the right of resistance of the Palestinian people. 

We salute these fighters for their unwavering commitment to the just Palestinian struggle and their internationalist principles. Our Basque colleagues know that Zionism is a Western imperialist project and that defeating Zionism is defeating the same imperialist oppression for which they fought and sacrificed their freedom in their own country. They also know the Palestinian resistance is the resistance of the oppressed peoples of the world and the liberation of Palestine is the liberation of all peoples and a destructive blow to all the imperialist forces of the world.

Two weeks after their hunger strike and a month since the beginning of the Zionist aggression, the violence of the occupation supported by NATO and the EU has reached an unprecedented level, with almost 10,000 martyrs in Gaza, which are bombed with an explosive power in the last month that equals the destructive power of the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima. … 

While this genocide takes place before the eyes of the international community, the occupation unveils its fascist tendencies with the Palestinian prisoners. It is clear, even in the statements of its officials, that this is an expression of revenge for their recent defeat on October 7.

Over the past month, the number of Palestinian prisoners has almost doubled, reaching around 10,000, of which more than 1,000 are in administrative detention, that is, imprisoned without charge or trial. More than 170 of them are children. 

The Zionist armed forces took over the administration of the prisons, cutting off electricity and restraining the availability of water (only one hour a day), diminishing the prisoners’ food rations to the point prisoners had to fast. Prisoners’ personal belongings, such as clothing, books, and kitchen utensils, are confiscated. They are denied access to television, radio, or visits; therefore, they are completely isolated from the world. 

Beatings and torture have become a daily practice, with multiple sections of the prisons soaked in blood with no cleaning materials provided to remove the smell. Over the past month, two Palestinian prisoners were tortured to death, bringing the number of martyrs in the Palestinian prisoner movement to 238. Today, Palestinian prisoners are subjected to the full force of Zionist murderous and genocidal tendencies.

Therefore, and following the footsteps of our colleagues in the Basque Country, we call on all political prisoners in the world to participate in a one-day hunger strike on Friday, 11/24/2023, and we call on organizations of solidarity with the prisoners to support the hunger strikers, spread the word, and join us in defending the Palestinian prisoner movement, which stands firm on behalf of all the oppressed peoples in the world, while they are subjected to all the force of Zionist and imperialist fascism. This action will bring everyone’s attention to their inhumane conditions. It will allow all our prisoners to resist together on the same day in a common action. It will show the world that, even in prison, resistance is still possible and necessary.

Defeating Zionism is defeating imperialism and fascism.
Defending the Palestinian resistance is defending all the oppressed peoples of the world.
Defending political prisoners is defending humanity.
Long live international solidarity.

We ask lawyers and relatives of political prisoners who intend to participate in the hunger strike to contact us so that we can publish their participation.

We also ask organizations of solidarity with political prisoners that join the appeal to contact us so that their names can be added to the list of adhesions.

Below, we reproduce the statement published by our colleagues from Euskal Herria on October 27, 2023:

Palestinian women and men have been suffering from violence caused by the Zionist occupation for decades; forced to leave their homes and move, their cities and towns destroyed; they have been imprisoned, tortured, raped, murdered…

We have evidence of this genocidal policy carried out by this terrorist Zionist state, of the massacres and horrors in Gaza that the entire world has seen these days.

For all this, in solidarity with the Palestinian people and declaring the legitimacy of the rights of defense of the oppressed peoples, the Basque political prisoners who sign this letter will hold a day of fasting next Friday, the 27th. October.

Free Palestine!

Answering the U.S./Israeli lies

The world is horrified at Palestinians being massacred in Gaza by Israel using U.S. bombs and shells. Entire families have been exterminated, with 5,000 children murdered. Another 80 Palestinians were killed on Nov. 18 when Israel bombed Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp. 

These war crimes included Israeli tanks attacking Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest medical facility. Israeli soldiers fired upon doctors.

The World Health Organization described the carnage as a “death zone.” Thirty-two babies remained there in extremely critical condition.

The total death toll in Gaza by Nov. 17 is over 12,000. Meanwhile, Israeli settlers and soldiers are on a shooting spree on the West Bank, with at least 205 Palestinians killed there. 

Within the United States — the center of world capitalism and political reaction — a movement in defense of Palestine has swept the country. Three hundred thousand people demonstrated in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 4 while multiple protests are happening daily, often in smaller communities. Many Jewish people have joined these anti-racist actions.

President Biden and both the Democratic and Republican parties continue to oppose a ceasefire. They insist that the killing of Palestinians continue.

The response of the capitalist media and politicians to the growing anti-war movement is always the same. They demandingly ask:

What about Hamas? What about the Oct. 7 attacks and killings of Israeli “civilians”? What about the hostages?

All these questions are misdirections meant to justify the bloody war on Gaza. Here are the facts.

Resistance is justified

1.) Oppressed people have a right to fight for their freedom. They pick their own leaders and organizations. The Islamic Resistance Movement, also known as Hamas, is the elected government of Gaza.

The attacks on Hamas as being “Islamist” are bigotry. Two billion human beings are Muslims. The attacks on Hamas are similar to the attacks on Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam.

2.) For 75 years, the Palestinian people have been driven from their homeland. The majority of Gaza’s population are refugees or descendants of refugees from the rest of Palestine.

The Great March of Return

3.) The corporate media has been silent about the 2018-19 Great March of Return. Thousands of unarmed Palestinians marched up to the fences that surround Gaza and prevent them from returning to their homes.

The protesters were also demanding an end to the Israeli economic blockade of Gaza that began in 2005. Israeli snipers responded to these protests by killing 266 Palestinians.

Forty-six of those killed were children. Another 8,000 were wounded with live ammunition, part of the over 36,000 who were injured. A single Israeli soldier was given a one-month prison sentence for the “unauthorized shooting” of a 14-year-old boy who was killed.

The Oct. 7 offensive

4.) The Al-Aqsa Flood offensive that began Oct. 7 consisted of not only Hamas but also other Palestinian resistance organizations. Among them is the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, whose founder, Dr. George Habash, was a revolutionary socialist.

This fightback was named after the famous Al-Aqsa mosque in Al-Quds (Jerusalem), which has been under attack by Zionist settlers and police.

5.) Despite unlimited backing from the Pentagon, the Zionist State could barely cope with the Al-Aqsa offensive. Their billion-dollar system of ghetto walls, automated machine guns, and sensors was overwhelmed by the Palestinian freedom fighters.

The Al-Aqsa Flood is reminiscent of the 1968 Tet offensive by Vietnamese liberation forces. It completely surprised the oppressors, both in Israel and at the Pentagon.

Some of the Palestinian freedom fighters used hang gliders to leap over the apartheid barriers. As Dr. Huey P. Newton — the founder of the Black Panther Party — said, “The power of the people is greater than the man’s technology.”

Biden and Netanyahu lie

6.) Both U.S. President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shamelessly lie about the Al-Aqsa Flood offensive. Biden even claimed he saw pictures of Israeli children who had been beheaded, a whopper that the White House had to retract.Netanyahu tried to use a picture of a burnt Israeli baby, which was actually created by artificial intelligence (AI). The latest Zionist falsehood is that an elevator shaft at Al-Shifa hospital is a secret “Hamas tunnel.”

7.) No proof has been offered for the lurid stories of the Palestinian freedom fighters committing rapes. This is the stuff used to mobilize lynch mobs. It aims to justify the mass killing of Palestinian adults, children, and babies.

Political prisoners are also hostages

8.) Two hundred forty prisoners were taken during the Al-Aqsa offensive. The media calls them hostages. They were taken so they could be exchanged for Palestinian political prisoners, which numbered 4,500 as of June. 

Since the beginning of the Al-Aqsa offensive, another 2,000 Palestinians have been detained. They are being jailed under “administrative detention“ without trial or charge. Torture is routine.

9.) Israeli authorities have lowered the number of Israelis killed to 1,200. They admit that 340 were soldiers. Many of the colonial settlers — whom the U.S. media call civilians — were killed by the so-called friendly fire of Zionist troops.

Yasmin Porat, a 44-year-old mother of three, told how Israeli forces fired indiscriminately at both the Palestinian fighters and their Israeli prisoners. “They eliminated everyone, including the hostages,” she told Israeli radio. “There was very, very heavy crossfire” and even tank shelling, she said. 

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz also reported that Israeli tanks and helicopters fired on Israelis. The Palestinian fighters, on the other hand, wanted to take as many prisoners alive as possible to exchange them for jailed Palestinians.

Remember Attica

10.) The Israeli military’s willingness to kill their own to prevent prisoner exchanges is in line with its “Hannibal doctrine,” a slur for the great African general. This directive calls for the use of “maximum force” to prevent any Israeli soldiers or civilians from being captured, even if this results in the death of Israelis.

The “Hannibal doctrine” is no different than what happened at Attica prison in 1971. New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller had his state police open fire on the prisoners even though guards would be killed as well.

Rockefeller did this so he wouldn’t have to come to an agreement with the prisoners who were demanding human rights. The media then spread the story, later debunked, that prisoners had cut the guards’ throats.

Never forget the Nakba

11.) The colonial settler state of Israel was born In 1948 with 800,000 Palestinians forced out of their homes and 531 villages destroyed. Eighty-five percent of Palestinians were displaced.

Fifteen thousand were murdered during what Palestinians call the Nakba, which is Arabic for catastrophe.

Over 100 Palestinians were killed in Deir Yassin by Zionist terror gangs on April 9, 1948.

Malcolm X and Che visited the Gaza ghetto

12.) Malcolm X said, “The Zionist argument to justify Israel’s present occupation of Arab Palestine has no intelligent or legal basis in history.” Malcolm X went to Gaza in 1964 and saw the wretched conditions there.

Gaza is today the world’s biggest prison, with 2.3 million inhabitants. 

Che Guevara visited Gaza on a solidarity mission in 1959. 

Apartheid Israel

13.) The Zionist state is an apartheid regime. An apartheid wall separates Palestinians living in the Bantustans on the West Bank from their sisters and brothers within the pre-1967 borders of Israel.

Israel even has a system of segregated highways. Israelis and Palestinians have different color license plates, which determine what roads Arabs can travel on.

It’s for these reasons that Nelson Mandela, in a 1997 speech, declared, “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.” Just as Palestinians are labeled “terrorists,” Nelson Mandela was on the U.S. government’s terrorist watch list until 2008.

A racist sewer

14.) Israel continues to be a racist cesspool. Former Israeli Minister of Heritage Amichay Eliyahu called for dropping an atomic bomb on Gaza. The thousands of bombs dropped on Gaza have twice the explosive power of the atomic bomb that incinerated Hiroshima.

“We are fighting animals,” declared Zionist Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, referring to the people of Gaza. The Israeli daily newspaper Hayom stated the time had come to “send Gaza back into the Stone Age.” 

15.) None of these crimes would be possible without the Pentagon’s support and $260 billion in U.S. aid. This isn’t charity. Israel is ready to intervene to preserve Big Oil’s rule in Western Asia.

For Wall Street as well as older colonial powers like Britain and France — whose immense wealth began with the African Holocaust — Israel represents the open colonial rule that they want to restore.

Solidarity Forever includes Palestine

16.) The wave of solidarity worldwide with Palestine is becoming a material force. While it took years to build an anti-war movement to stop the Vietnam War, support for Palestine has already reached millions.

Palestine is also a working-class issue. Mark Diamondstein, the 200,000-strong American Postal Workers Union president, knows that.

At a recent AFL-CIO executive council meeting, Diamondstein, who is Jewish, urged the council to demand a ceasefire. All of labor should support the APWU president.

Solidarity Forever means solidarity with Gaza. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!

In late October into November, New Orleans was blanketed with fog and smoke from fires burning in nearby marshes. The marsh fires came on the heels of a finding that salt water was seeping into the drinking water from the Mississippi River. The fires and the water crisis are caused by the drought hitting the entire Mississippi Delta. New Orleans resident and SLL writer Gregory Williams recently wrote about the drinking water crisis and is interviewed here regarding the marsh fires.

Could you talk about how rare drought conditions are in the Gulf Region?

Yes, there’s nothing normal about this. New Orleans has a humid, subtropical climate. Seattle, Washington, has a reputation as a rainy city but gets 37 inches of rain per year compared to New Orleans, which gets 64 inches.

Normally, in the summer, we’re worried about flooding. It’s partly an effect of being below sea level. This year, Louisiana got 20 inches less rainfall than usual. We’ve never before experienced dry heat in the summer like this. There hasn’t been much rainfall since fall started, either.

Visibility is always low when there are fires, but this is more extreme. Can you tell our readers a little more about why that’s true?

They’re calling it “super fog.” As I understand it, the fire smoke mixes with water vapor released by smoldering, wet material – damp brush, etc. Cooler air from outside the burn area makes the smoky, vaporous mix condense. It just hangs around.

At times, when the fog hits, visibility reaches nearly zero, and that can happen in moments. We were seeing Interstate highway closures weekly.

On Oct. 23, this super fog caused a deadly 160-car pileup on I-10. Eight people were killed. Sixty-three were injured. This was on a 5.7-mile bridge over Lake Pontchartrain. There’s no easy way for first responders to get there. They closed that part of the interstate for around three weeks.

On the morning of the 23rd, I thought that my apartment building was on fire because when I opened my door, I couldn’t even see a few feet beyond. I could barely breathe. I panicked and went around looking for the source of the fire, preparing to go back to leave with my two cats.

Why are the fires burning for so long?

The fires are in different locations, and the type of fire differs.

There’s a marsh fire in the Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve, far to the south. There’s a marsh fire in St. Bernard Parish to the east. That’s a highly industrial area – white working class, pretty high poverty rates. Then there’s the marsh fire in the Bayou Sauvage Urban National Wildlife Refuge. That’s in what’s called New Orleans East, a very Black and also Vietnamese working-class part of the city. These are suburban areas where a lot of working-class people have been pushed because of post-Katrina gentrification.

The Bayou Sauvage fire is more difficult. It’s a peat fire. Peat is compacted organic matter in bogs and moors. It used to be a fuel source. If you dry it out, you can cut it into bricks and burn it. There’s a lot of carbon tied up in peat worldwide. Two times as much as in the world’s forests. Peat can ignite on its own if it gets dry enough. The peat is burning underground and is hard to get to in the Bayou Sauvage fire.

Also, because we live in a capitalist society, there is the problem that it’s on privately owned land. It’s absurd that land can be bought and sold. But that’s the current reality: the fire is on private property. I don’t know what is happening with the owner, but all the news pieces cite this as a complication, meaning that some landowner is compromising millions of people’s health.

There are no fire hydrants out there, and no easy road access to the site. Parts of the property are bounded by natural gas pipelines (more fossil fuels!), and they’re worried about damaging the pipes by bringing trucks in.

There doesn’t seem to be a lot of information about the danger of breathing in the smoke. Have the city, parish, or state done anything to alleviate that?

Officials are just telling people to take care of themselves and stay indoors if they are pregnant or have pre-existing conditions. That’s not so easy for people who are homeless, depend on bikes for transport, work in construction, or countless other situations.

One NOLA.com article references a 2021 study published in a scientific journal, Current Opinion in Environmental Science & Health. That study says that smoldering peat fires – like the one in Bayou Sauvage – release more toxic heavy metals and 15 times more mercury than flaming fires!

In and around New Orleans, is there a history of protests over the responsibility of energy companies in global warming?

The fossil fuel industry dominates the region. There are plants up and down the Mississippi. People are organized and fighting in St. James Parish between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. There’s a Halliburton office downtown on Poydras Street.

In the aftermath of hurricanes, we get out in the street, and the environmental issues come to the fore. But definitely, we need a broader, ongoing fightback that can connect up the various environmental struggles. The fires are a slow-burning crisis, literally and figuratively. We should take them as seriously as hurricanes.

Strategically, we need targets. At first glance, the Palestinian liberation struggle also seems abstract and distant from the point of view of New Orleans, even though we have a sizable Palestinian population.

But recently, the movement here has started going after more concrete targets. The capitalists and politicians running the Port of New Orleans have significant dealings with the Zionist entity, “Israel.” Just this year, they inaugurated an “Innovation Embassy” between the New Orleans port and the Israeli Port of Ashdod. Now, activists have launched a campaign focused on the port authority, demanding they cut ties. We’ll see how that goes. I think that if we keep it up, we can get somewhere.

There may be more general movement lessons here. With the environmental movement, we also need to figure out where to strike and how to strike, and not just respond to crises but to get ahead of the enemy. 

According to a Nov. 14 Bloomberg report, the U.S. has been “quietly” pouring in weapons and ammunition from U.S. and NATO stockpiles for the invasion of Gaza. These are arms that are not part of the official Congress-approved military aid to the apartheid state of Israel. Quietly is Bloomberg’s weasel word for secret. 

Bloomberg reported that the Pentagon has “quietly increased military assistance” to the Israeli apartheid forces, fulfilling requests for additional laser-guided missiles for its Apache gunship fleet, 155mm shells, night-vision devices, bunker-buster munitions, and new army vehicles. Bloomberg quoted an internal Defense Department list.

The military armaments go beyond the widely known provision of Iron Dome interceptors and Boeing smart bombs. As of late October, deliveries included all 36,000 rounds of 30mm cannon ammunition, 1,800 of the requested M141 bunker-buster munitions, and a minimum of 3,500 night-vision devices. The ammunition for AH-64 Apache helicopter gunships includes about 2,000 Hellfire Laser Guided missiles made by Lockheed Martin.

There can be no question that the U.S. is fully behind the apartheid regime’s “ethnic cleansing” of the Gaza Strip, an operation that began after President Joe Biden’s theatrical public embrace of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv. It was the hug that launched an invasion.

Zionist-occupied Palestine — “Israel” — is an apartheid settler state, more like a U.S. colony. Joe Biden recently repeated a line he famously said in 1986: “If there were not an Israel, we’d have to invent one.” Actually, they did invent one.

Although the British declared the creation of the settler colony in the 1917 Balfour Declaration, it was after World War II, with British power fading, that the Zionist state of Israel was founded (invented) with the backing of the United States. It couldn’t and wouldn’t have been done without U.S. backing. From that beginning, Israel could not have existed for even one day without U.S. financial and military support.

The United States has officially given Israel more than $260 billion in combined military and economic aid since World War II, plus about $10 billion more in contributions for missile defense systems like the Iron Dome, according to a U.S. News report. No other country in the world has received such military and economic support from the U.S. Some have even called it the 51st state of the U.S.

In a speech in December 1981, Gen. Alexander Haig, Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of State, said Israel is “the largest American aircraft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk, does not carry even one American soldier, and is located in a critical region for American national security” (source: NYT article, Dec. 15, 1981).

The profits of this “American aircraft carrier” go to Big Oil and the military-industrial weapons manufacturers.

Taking over Europe’s gas market

Since the 1990s, Washington and Wall Street have been trying to take over the natural gas market in Europe from Russia. The Nord Stream pipeline was the primary route for Russian natural gas, and Nord Stream 2 was built to expand capacity. Before the NATO proxy war against Russia began, Victoria Nuland, then undersecretary of state for political affairs, declared that “one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.” On Sept. 27, 2022, the pipeline was blown up by the U.S. military, as reported by Seymour Hersch.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the disruption of the Nord Stream pipelines a “major strategic opportunity for years to come” and highlighted that the “U.S. has become the leading supplier of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Europe,” which is at a significantly higher price than the Russian natural gas.

LNG, delivered by ships, is the only alternative available right now to Russian natural gas delivered through pipelines. The top two suppliers worldwide of LNG are the U.S. and Qatar. The North Field East Project of Qatar Energy is an ExxonMobil, ENI, Total Energies, ConocoPhillips, and Shell partnership. They are talking of a pipeline across occupied Palestine to the Mediterranean to expedite deliveries to Europe.

The natural gas U.S. oil giant Chevron already plunders natural gas from the stolen waters off Palestine. Chevron operates a major natural gas facility, named Tamar, located 12 miles off the coast in the territorial waters of the Palestinian Territory of Gaza. As the New York Times reported, this has been projected to become a hub for exporting natural gas to Europe through the proposed EastMed pipeline.

Military-industrial profits soar

Never to be underestimated, “Wall Street eyes big profits from war,” was a Guardian headline on Oct. 30.

“Wall Street is hoping for an explosion in profits,” the Guardian reports.

“During third-quarter earnings calls this month, analysts from Morgan Stanley and TD Bank took note of this potential profit-making escalation in conflict and asked unusually blunt questions about the financial benefit of the war …

“Joe Biden has asked Congress for $106bn in military and humanitarian aid for Israel and Ukraine and humanitarian assistance for Gaza. The money could be a boon to the aerospace and weapons sector, which enjoyed a 7-percentage point jump in value …

“Greg Hayes, Raytheon’s chairman and executive director, responded: ‘I think really across the entire Raytheon portfolio, you’re going to see a benefit of this restocking … on top of what we think is going to be an increase in the [Department of Defense] top line [budget].’”

Gary Wilson is the author of War and Lenin in the 21st Century.

On November 17, the Global Conscience Convoy announced that their planned humanitarian aid convoy planned for November 24 had to be postponed due to bureaucratic obstruction by the Egyptian government’s Ministry of Affairs. All progressive and anti-war organizations need to demand that the Egyptian government open the Rafah border crossing and allow the Global Conscience Convoy depart from Cairo.

The Global Conscience Convoy is a call to: 

1. End the War 
2. Open the Rafah Crossing, for all humanitarian aid (food, water, medication, and fuel) to enter Gaza, and for unconditional exit for the critically wounded 
3. Medical, humanitarian relief, and journalist crews enter Gaza
4. Support the Palestinian people in standing against Israel’s expulsion plans. 

To effectuate these goals, the Egyptian Journalists Union planned a convoy of relief workers, activists, and supplies in trucks and buses to the Rafah border crossing to the Gaza strip. Not only is the convoy focused on delivering material aid, but there is something else at stake: The world deserves to know what is really happening in Gaza. The aim of the journalists organizing the convoy is to gain access to the Strip as to report to the world Israel’s atrocities against the Palestinian people. 

This war will only end with intervention from the world’s governments, unions, religious institutions, universities, non-profits, etc. The Convoy’s organizers are asking all like-minded individuals to support the convoy through social media and public statements. So please, post a photo of yourself with a note: Let the #GlobalConscienceConvoy go and #OpenRafahCrossing on twitter and instagram. 

Let’s stand with the Egyptian Journalists’ Union and the people of Palestine! Let the Global Conscience Convoy Go! Open Rafah Crossing NOW!!!!!

Today and tomorrow, an international tribunal is being held in the Belgian capital to denounce the damages suffered by the Cuban people as a result of the U.S. blockade that the island has been experiencing for more than six decades.

This tribunal was convened last July 18 at the parallel summit of the peoples that took place in Brussels, and from the very first moment, it was a call to debate in the European Parliament, in a political and legal way, the effect of the blockade and the denunciation of its extraterritoriality. The violation of the sovereignty not only of the Cuban people but also of the European peoples and people who want to relate to Cuba.

Let us remember.

Lester Mallory. 1960. His memorandum to overthrow the Cuban Government. Seeing in textual words that “the people want Castro,” they could not come up with a more macabre idea than to drown the people and their desires with a blockade that, over the years, has been turning into a war in all its aspects. To quote the objective they had:

“To provoke disillusionment and discouragement through economic dissatisfaction and hardship, to weaken the economic life of Cuba, denying it money and supplies in order to reduce nominal and real wages, to provoke hunger, despair and the overthrow of the Government.”

But the blockade grew as time went by and as different U.S. presidents passed through the White House. We could write and smudge pages, but in the shortest possible way, let us synthesize, making use of redundancy.

Then came the Torricelli Act in 1992; the Helms-Burton Act in 1996, whose Title III went into effect in 2019. The 243 new measures against the people of Cuba were imposed during the Donald Trump Administration.

And then the inclusion of the island in the list of countries sponsoring terrorism, sponsored in a capricious and criminal manner by the United States of America.

It reads fast without delving into what it implies, but it means a lot. Just to quantify the damage that all these measures have caused to the population, let’s stop her at the losses in the first 14 months of the mandate of the current U.S. President Joe Biden.

According to the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP), the damages caused by the blockade reached 6,364 million dollars, or more than 15 million dollars a day. Between August 2021 and February 2022, they set a record, for only seven months, of 3,806 million dollars. In the absence of the blockade, in that period, the GDP could have grown by 4.5%.

At present, this system of unilateral coercive measures has intensified in the midst of a complex scenario, marked by the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and the combined effects of a multidimensional crisis at a global level, reflected in the energy, food, environmental, and transportation sectors, among others.

And it is taking into account all these scenarios of violation against a people that representatives of the European and American society, political parties, associations of jurists, businessmen, scientists, and friends of Cuba are convening this tribunal today. It will be made up of five European and American judges and three prosecutors together with witnesses also from both locations and Cubans. With more than 300 confirmed participants from 17 countries.

In an interview granted to Resumen Latinoamericano, German judge Norman Peach stated:

“We are hopeful that the European governments will make valid an influence on the US government to put a definitive end to a policy that is in violation of international law (…) We appeal to the reason not only political, but also legal, of a government that must comply with the basis of the UN Charter to ‘live and coexist in peace with neighboring states’”.

And although the court’s ruling will not be legally binding, it will serve as a theoretical and legal argumentation and also as working material for solidarity associations, political parties, trade union organizations, companies, and countries.

The participants and congregants agree that the blockade is a crime and must be condemned. So much so that the United States, in the words of Spanish activist and solidarity activist David Rodriguez, should reward Cuba for the aggressor country that it is.

This meeting will mean a qualitative and quantitative advance in the world struggle against the inhuman blockade suffered by Cuba and all those who want to relate to it in any way. Without leaving behind its significance in showing the truth beyond the disinformation and the constant media manipulation in this regard.

The international support for the cause that occupies the court will also be evident these days in Belgium. Along with the screening of the documentary La gota de agua, produced by Resumen Latinoamericano, which shows the effects of the blockade on the life of a little girl suffering from cancer at only a few years old, as just one example.

The humanism that Cuba has shown since 1959 is what the aggressors cannot bear. Because Martí was not just a passing breath of air in Fidel. Not even a source of inspiration. He was not an influence on him. He was a presence. Fidel was all his life in consistent dialogue with Martí’s teachings. And this fact made him forge his personality as a man, politician, and leader that influenced a people towards sovereignty and freedom.

Nor can they refute the fact that a people were taught to read and write from the first days of the triumph of the Revolution. That today, even with all the impediments and obstacles they put in their way, it can be said loud and clear that this island is home to, I dare say, the most educated people in the world. History fulfilled its absolution with Fidel, and it was demonstrated with the passion he put into education.

What can we say about the fulfillment of the Moncada program and the fact that so many men and women chose a leader to lead a national project for more than half a century?

And do you know in spite of what? Invasions, bandits, biological warfare, terrorist attacks and all kinds of daily threats. And always helping people in need around the world. Where others sowed war, he sent life.

That is why, to this day, the world loves Fidel as the great freedom fighter he was and is. And of the rest, of those who tried to overthrow him, no one remembers their names.

Source: Cubadebate, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English

Si bien en Puerto Rico lo más importante es la descolonización, no menos es cierto que toda lucha que conduzca a elevar la conciencia política, es imprescindible. Porque para lograr la independencia se requiere de todos los métodos y de la suma de las diferentes luchas.

Y aunque por sí sola no es suficiente, una de las formas de adelantar el camino hacia la soberanía y la independencia es la electoral. 

Por eso, lo que pasó esta semana es importante. Se anunció oficialmente una alianza electoral entre el Partido Independentista Puertorriqueño y el Movimiento Victoria Ciudadana como un esfuerzo conjunto para derrotar el bipartidismo neoliberal corrupto en las próximas elecciones del 2024.

Si bien esta clase de alianzas o frentes unidos son comunes en toda Latinoamérica, aquí han sido prohibidas por encargo de los dos partidos colonialistas que se han turnado la administración del gobierno las últimas décadas. Así que han tenido que ingeniárselas para hacer valer esta alianza orientando a sus miembros a que voten por determinados candidatos en ambos partidos. 

Y esta vez tendrán una posibilidad real de ganar la gobernación o por lo menos, muchos puestos legislativos y alcaldías, lo que marcaría un cambio significativo en la influencia antiimperialista y anti neoliberal en el gobierno. 

De hecho, como rechazo a las políticas neoliberales, ya se ha visto una tendencia a la abstención en los últimos dos procesos electorales. En las elecciones del 2020, la abstención fue casi de un 50%, y del resto que votó, sólo poco más del 30% eligió al actual gobernador Pierluisi, lo que en cualquier otro país hubiera requerido una segunda vuelta.  Sin embargo, el PIP y Victoria Ciudadana lograron un porcentaje histórico. 

Esto es un rayo de esperanza en medio de la enorme crisis que atravesamos en esta colonia.

Desde Puerto Rico para Radio Clarín de Colombia, les habló, Berta Joubert-Ceci.