The Port of Tacoma in Washington state was shut down by a picket line shortly before 5:30 a.m. on Nov. 6. Protesters swarmed the entrance with signs and chants: “No aid for Israel” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” 

Demonstrators parked cars along the road leading into the port, stopping all traffic, including trucking to and from the port. Organizers say their protest delayed the ship’s departure by at least 12 hours.

The action was called to prevent the MV Cape Orlando, part of the U.S. fleet, from transporting military cargo to Israel. On Nov. 3, the ship had been delayed by a last-minute, unpublicized demonstration at the Port of Oakland. 

At that protest, Lara Kiswani, executive director of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, said: “We’re hoping that the workers in Tacoma will not load that military cargo, that people of Tacoma will show up to protest this genocide, and that workers around the world will continue to stop ships like this anywhere they may be found,”

In fact, at the Tacoma Port located near McChord Air Force Base, workers could not load the vessel. As members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), they are bound not to cross picket lines. It is a clear violation of their union principles and potentially dangerous as well. 

Clarence Thomas, a retired longshore worker and former secretary-treasurer of ILWU Local 10 in Oakland, remarked that protests are more powerful when workers at the point of production become involved.

It was reported that members of the U.S. military had been ordered to attempt to load the ship using water taxis.

Commenting on the success of the demonstration, protester Alon Lapid told KOMO News: “This turnout is incredible. The people here are all showing up to support Palestinian liberation, to stop an ongoing genocide, and to call out all U.S. military aid to this genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza. 

“We know that we have a responsibility and a duty to shut down this port because the military is literally going to be loading weapons and bombs that are going to be sent to the Israeli occupation regime to commit genocide today. We’re all out in force for Palestine,” Lapid concluded.

As the sun rose on Nov. 3, protesters began to pour into a site near Berth 20 in the Port of Oakland in California, where the U.S. military vessel MV Cape Orlando was preparing for departure. It is a roll-on/roll-off ship, part of the U.S. fleet that is replenishing military stockpiles in Israel.

After leaving Oakland, the ship’s next destination was the Port of Tacoma, in Washington state, where there is a power projection platform* located close to the McChord Air Force Base. The Cape Orlando will be prepared to deliver tanks, armored personnel, carriers, and mobile rocket launchers, as well as troop trucks, cargo trucks, and Humvees.

Swelling ranks of protesters occupied Berth 20 and shut it down. The departure of the ship was delayed for more than nine hours. 

A group of young Palestinians, their energy fueled by the loss of family and community, breached the Homeland Security Department’s MARSEC security perimeter. While they scaled the fence, they must have thought of their siblings shot dead by Israeli forces when they approached the walls bounding Gaza.

Protesters lashed the boat back to its mooring lines on the bollards. Three locked themselves to the ladder leading onto the ship, adding significant delay. They are currently being held in custody by the police.

The protest was called by the Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC) less than 24 hours after the U.S. House of Representatives passed a $14.3-billion aid package to Israel. Merchant marine workers told AROC about the ship.

“We know that the ship is destined as a military ship to Israel because of the courage of workers,” says Lara Kiswani, AROC executive director.  

“We’re hoping that when it reaches Tacoma, the workers will not load that military cargo, that people of Tacoma will show up to protest this genocide, and that workers around the world will continue to stop ships like this anywhere they may be found,” she said. 

“We are simply trying to call for an immediate ceasefire and stop the aiding of the genocide of my people.”

The protest grew quickly even though there had been little time to organize the action. Speakers denounced President Biden’s cruel hypocrisy of talking about a “humanitarian pause” to the epic massacre of Palestinians in Gaza. 

Kiswani said: “Today we showed the world: No business as usual while Israel commits genocide against the Palestinian people. This genocide is being funded by our government and they’re sending weapons starting from our city.” 

ILWU solidarity with Palestine

Clarence Thomas, a retired longshore worker and former secretary-treasurer of International Longshore Workers Union (ILWU) Local 10, spoke to the rally. He called out to the merchant marine crew of the military cargo ship to let them know that longshore and maritime workers in Gaza could not get work.

As an African American worker, he said he had experienced the scourge of apartheid in the U.S. — the inability to find a job, the theft of land and homes, as well as genocide. 

Bishop Tutu, Nobel laureate, criticized Israeli policies toward the Palestinians as “humiliating,” and said those policies were familiar to all Black South Africans under apartheid.

“ILWU Local 10 has had a long record of solidarity with the Palestinians. In 2014 they blocked an Israeli ship after Israeli commandos launched a murderous attack on a flotilla bringing aid to Palestine. During another assault on Gaza in 2021, longshore workers refused to unload Israeli cargo in Oakland, Seattle, Tacoma, and Vancouver, British Columbia.”

Thomas added that he wasn’t surprised to see this demonstration just a week after dockworkers in Belgium pledged not to work any ships destined for Israel.

Sharif Zakout, speaking for AROC, said: “Israel’s ability to commit genocide against the people of Gaza is entirely dependent on U.S. military aid. We are here to sound the alarm on this U.S. military ship bound to Israel, to disrupt this war machine, and to do whatever we can to stop the killing of our loved ones in Gaza.”  

AROC reported that as many as a thousand people joined in the demonstration against U.S. military support for Israel. Communities in the Pacific Northwest have already called for more protests to block the military supply vessel.   

* A power projection platform is an Army installation set up to mobilize and generate forces and project those forces anywhere in the world at any time.

Nov. 3, New Orleans – About 100 pro-Palestine protesters gathered on Canal Street downtown, outside the Sheraton Hotel, where the annual State of the Port address was happening. This is an elite event for business people and politicians.

Activists demanded that the Port of New Orleans, the city and state governments, along with the police forces, cut all ties with the Zionist state, which is currently carrying out a genocide of Palestinian people with Washington’s full backing. Protesters rallied, passed out literature, formed a picket line, and then marched during the lunch rush.

Connecting the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico, the Port of New Orleans is a major economic hub for the United States, responsible for a nationwide economic output of $29.8 billion. The port has established collaborations with Israel’s Port of Ashdod in Tel Aviv, launching an “Innovation Embassy” this year.  

The U.S. Census Bureau says that 28.3% of people in New Orleans live in poverty. While working-class people struggle to make ends meet, U.S. capitalists – including in Louisiana – continue to get richer by collaborating with Zionist Israel. These business leaders have blood on their hands.

Friday’s protest action was called by Freedom Road Socialist Organization – New Orleans, Students for a Democratic Society, and other groups. Speakers indicated that this is the beginning of a campaign focused on the port authority. They promised to continue disrupting meetings, luncheons, and other functions until the port ends its relations with Israel.

Speakers included Tulane students facing charges after they were attacked by Zionist students during a peaceful protest for Palestine on that New Orleans university campus. Since the incident, they have faced harassment by university police and disinformation campaigns accusing them of antisemitism. 

As with all other pro-Palestine protests in New Orleans, anti-Zionist Jewish activists played a leading role on Friday. Jewish Voice for Peace has been a driving force in the movement, showing that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism. 

This past Monday, October 30, the Puerto Rican independence movement commemorated, like every year on this date, the Jayuya Insurrection of 1950 led by the Nationalist Party.

Although the Grito de Lares of 1868 is better known outside of Puerto Rico, the importance of the Jayuya Uprising is that it was the first armed uprising against the Yankee invaders. Nationalist men and women fought in several towns on the island, but it was in Jayuya where the Republic of Puerto Rico was proclaimed free from gringo domination. There, the pro-independence forces fought and maintained combat, even with rudimentary weapons, for three days before the US military forces, together with the local police, repressed them.

The commemoration events this year were very special because they took place in a very painful global context. The genocide by Israel and the United States of the Palestinian people. And for us in Puerto Rico, the Palestinian struggle has always been a sister struggle. We are both colonies, and our people have been displaced from our lands in Puerto Rico with a less bloody character but with the same purpose of taking over our homeland.

That is why this year, the commemoration of the Jayuya insurrection was not only the expression of a people that continue to fight in various ways for our liberation but also an act of solidarity with those sisters and brothers who are being massacred by the same criminal hand that tries to rob us of our future. Showing solidarity with the Palestinian struggle and resistance. This was demonstrated by the speeches and even a song written by our singer, Tony Mapeyé, in honor of the Palestinian people.

Long live Puerto Rico! Long live Free Palestine!

From Puerto Rico for Radio Clarín of Colombia, Berta Joubert-Ceci spoke to you.

Translated by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.

Shut It Down for Palestine
Baltimore
Thursday, November 9th, 3 pm
gather at MLK Blvd & W. Mulberry Street

Shut It Down for Palestine – Banner Drop & More

Thursday, November 9th,

• 3 p.m. gather at Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd & W. Mulberry Street
• 5 pm flashlight event & March

For details, please SIGN UP

Huge thank you to all those who participated in the November 4th March on Washington D.C. and the Baltimore Stands with Palestine Contingent. Thank you for your participation and your support, whether you provided water and food, donations for transportation, or you put on your marching shoes.

Over 300,000 people gathered Saturday at Freedom Plaza in Washington D.C. for the National March on Washington for Palestine. We must continue our work to stop genocide in Palestine! We must lift up our voices and continue our actions in the street to end all U.S. wars and occupations. Say no to U.S. troops in Haiti!

Baltimore show up for the national shut it down for Palestine — called on November 4th by the Palestinian Youth Movement and many others.

The Peoples Power Assembly is planning a major community outreach banner drop and event. Let’s cut through the war lies and broaden our movement – take our protest to Baltimore’s workers and poor. The billions of dollars spent on bombs and genocide need to be spent on safe water, housing, medical care and ending food deserts.

Thursday, November 9th,

3 p.m. gather at Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd & W. Mulberry Street

5 pm flashlight event & March

For details, please SIGN UP

If your organization would like to endorse: text 301-327-4799

————————————-

Peoples Power Assembly Files Complaints for Police Blocking Doors at Penn Station

Our attorney, Alex Summerfield, has filed formal complaints against both the Baltimore Police Department and Amtrak police, who blocked doors at Penn Station on November 4th in violation of our constitutional rights. If there is anyone who missed the 11 am train as a result, please text 301-327-4799.

————————————-

Night of Solidarity
Dinner, Music & Program
Saturday, November 18
6:30 pm to 9 pm
Doors open at 6 pm
719 N. Howard Street

Proceeds to benefit: Palestinian Youth Movement DMV, Peoples Power Assembly, & NomuNomu

————————————
Donate Venmo@SolidarityCenter

PAYPAL CLICK HERE
or mail checks made out to Solidarity Center,
Send to 703 E. 37th Street, Baltimore, MD 21218.

Dumping cutbacks by fighting back 

The strike of the United Auto Workers against General Motors, Ford and Stellantis (Chrysler and Jeep) is a big step forward for all workers and poor people. The tentative agreements with these corporations — whose sales total $500 billion — signal an end to a decades-long retreat of givebacks and wage cuts.

UAW members won wage increases of at least 25%. More importantly, the lowest-paid auto workers will get increases of 150%.

Raising the pay more for those on the bottom largely eliminates the outrageous wage tiers that were implemented in 2008 during the Great Recession. These tiers resulted in big differences of pay for UAW members doing the same work simply because of the date they were hired. 

This victory for equality builds solidarity.

Cost-of-living wage increases, to compensate for inflation, have been restored. Pensions have increased. The UAW even forced the reopening of the Chrysler plant in Belvidere, Illinois, near Rockford.

Workers at any future electric battery or car plants will be brought under the UAW Big Three contract.

No wonder former Ford vice-president, Chrysler president and General Motors vice-chairman Bob Lutz hates the union contract. “This is not like other labor negotiations,” Lutz said. “This was a gun to the head from a government-sanctioned monopoly called the labor union.” 

The Washington Post — whose billionaire owner Jeff Bezos runs Amazon.com — didn’t like the UAW contract either. Listen up, Bezos: Your $160-billion stash won’t stop Amazon workers from getting a union.

Toyota, whose U.S. plants are non-union, promptly announced it was raising wages by at least $2.94 per hour. 

This wasn’t generosity. It’s trying to keep the UAW out of Toyota’s factories.

UAW President Shawn Fain announced that the union is planning organizing drives at Tesla, Toyota and other non-union outfits. Full speed ahead!

Ending a long retreat

Back in 1970, 321,000 UAW members in the United States struck General Motors for 67 days. Another 21,000 workers, now represented by Unifor, struck GM plants in Canada for 94 days.

They won retirement after 30 years on the job (“30 and out”), as well as getting 95% of their pay during layoffs. 

During the same period, mass demonstrations demanded an end to the Vietnam War. Access to food stamps, now called SNAP benefits, was expanded. Women and LGBTQ+ people demanded equality.

Despite Richard Nixon in the White House, both the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) were established.

On July 24, 1973, two Black workers — Larry Carter and Issac Shorter — had enough of Chrysler’s racist management and dangerous working conditions. They turned off the power at the company’s Jefferson Avenue assembly plant on the east side of Detroit in the first big sit-down strike in 36 years.

There were 6,074 strikes across the United States in 1974.

The wealthy and powerful counterattacked, taking advantage of recessions and job-killing automation. U.S. corporations make super-profits by exploiting millions of workers in other lands.

Today GM has 170,000 fewer workers in the U.S. than it did in 1970. While 29.1% of all workers belonged to unions in 1970, only 10.3% were union members in 2021.

Wall Street demanded 50,000 New York City public workers be fired during the 1975 municipal debt crisis.

When Chrysler got financial guarantees from the federal government in 1979, the deal resulted in 30,000 workers being fired in Detroit alone. Chrysler’s workforce went from 70% Black to 30%.

So much of the burden of 6 million manufacturing jobs being destroyed fell upon Black workers. 

White family median income fell in the Midwest by 7.1% from 1978 to 1982. That’s a recession.

During those same years Black family median income fell in the Midwest by 35.8%. That’s a great depression.

Instead of young workers getting jobs with union wages and benefits, many were railroaded to prisons instead. Two million prisoners are members of the working class, too.

Why aren’t Trump and the rest of the billionaire criminals locked up instead? The labor movement needs to demand “jobs, not jails!”

Palestine needs labor solidarity

The UAW strike and the election of Shawn Fain as UAW president means not only an end to almost 50 years of givebacks. It’s also breaking with 75 years of the labor movement knuckling-under to an anti-communist witch hunt that started in the late 1940s.

AFL-CIO President George Meany supported the dirty U.S. war against Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia that killed millions, including 58,000 GIs. Meany’s home union, Plumbers’ Local No. 1 in Howard Beach, New York City, didn’t have a single Black or Puerto Rican apprentice in 1963.

The same year Meany refused to endorse the March for Jobs and Freedom, where Dr. King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech.

In contrast, Shawn Fain announced: “We went to each of the Big Three and proposed an expiration date of April 30, 2028. We did this for several reasons. First, this allows us to strike on May Day, or International Workers’ Day.”

The workers of Chicago gave May Day to the world in 1886 and their leaders were hanged for it. Even since then capitalists have tried to smother it.

Palestine is also a working-class issue. Just as Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos were bombed, U.S.-made bombs are being dropped on Gaza, killing thousands of Palestinian children.

President Biden is demanding billions of more dollars to kill Palestinians. There’s nothing more cynical in U.S. history than the Big Oil government in Washington supporting the Zionist regime occupying Palestine. 

U.S. war secretary Henry Stimson refused to bomb the railroad tracks leading to the Auschwitz extermination camp. Anne Frank’s family was denied a U.S. visa.

Henry Ford was the biggest Jew-baiter in U.S. history. His car dealers distributed a Ford-owned newspaper that ran a 91-week long lying series called the “The International Jew.”

Ford was also a union-buster, whose thugs beat up UAW organizers, including future union president Walter Reuther. 

GM’s Opel subsidiary was Hitler’s biggest truck maker. IBM’s punch cards were indispensable to organize the extermination of Jewish and Roma people.

None of this prevents the Israeli regime from allowing Ford, GM and IBM to have facilities in occupied Palestine.

Mark Diamondstein, who is Jewish, is president of the 200,000-strong American Postal Workers Union. At a recent AFL-CIO executive council meeting, Diamondstein urged the council to demand a ceasefire in Israel’s attacks.

All of labor should support the APWU president. “Solidarity Forever” means solidarity with all oppressed people, including the children of Gaza.

Este pasado lunes 30 de octubre, el movimiento de independencia de Puerto Rico conmemoró como todos los años en esta fecha, la Insurrección de Jayuya del 1950 liderada por el Partido Nacionalista.

Si bien es más conocido fuera de Puerto Rico el Grito de Lares del 1868, la importancia del Levantamiento de Jayuya, es que fue el primer alzamiento armado en contra del invasor yanqui. Los hombres y mujeres nacionalistas combatieron en varios pueblos de la isla, pero fue en Jayuya donde se proclamó la República de Puerto Rico, libre del dominio gringo. Allí las fuerzas independentistas lucharon y mantuvieron el combate, aún con armas rudimentarias, por tres por días antes de que les reprimieran las fuerzas militares estadounidenses junto a la policía local.  

Los actos de conmemoración este año fueron muy especiales, porque se daban en un contexto mundial muy doloroso. El genocidio por Israel y Estados Unidos del pueblo palestino. Y para nosotros y nosotras en Puerto Rico, la lucha palestina siempre ha sido una lucha hermana. Ambos somos colonia y a nuestros pueblos se les ha querido desplazar de nuestras tierras, en Puerto Rico con un carácter menos cruento, pero con el mismo fin de adueñarse de nuestra patria. 

Por eso este año la conmemoración de la insurrección de Jayuya fue no solo la expresión de un pueblo que sigue luchando de diversas formas por nuestra liberación, sino un acto de solidaridad también con esas hermanas y hermanos que están siendo masacrados por la misma mano criminal que intenta robarnos de nuestro futuro. Solidarizándose con la lucha y resistencia palestina. Así lo demostraron los discursos y hasta una canción escrita por nuestro cantor Tony Mapeyé en honor al pueblo palestino. 

¡Viva Puerto Rico Libre! ¡Viva Palestina Libre!

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

Havana, Nov. 2 — Today, as happens at the beginning of November every year, the resolution presented by Cuba to call for the end of the economic, commercial, and financial blockade imposed by the United States was overwhelmingly approved Thursday by the General Assembly with 187 votes in favor. There were two votes against that were not a surprise: the U.S. and Israel, with Ukraine abstaining.

The resolution recognizes the blockade as the central element of U.S. policy towards Cuba for more than six decades. In all that time, its effects have not ceased for a single day; 80% of the Cuban population have never known their country free of the blockade.

Speaking at the plenary of the 78th session of the General Assembly in New York, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla denounced the violations against the right to life, education, progress, and well-being of Cubans caused by the U.S. blockade.

“Families in the country feel it in the shortages, excessive prices and devalued salaries,” said the foreign minister, and recalled the efforts that the Government of Havana must go through to guarantee the basic food basket to the population despite the obstacles imposed.

“Only with one third of the cost of the effects of the blockade from March 2022 to February 2023 would it have been possible to cover the expenses for that concept”, he asserted.

At the same time, he pointed out that sectors such as agriculture and energy face serious obstacles in acquiring spare parts or new machinery.

Under strict licenses, some agricultural products in the United States travel to the island while subject to draconian and discriminatory laws that violate international trade regulations, he recalled. “These products,” he added, “arrive in U.S. ships that have to return empty because of the blockade itself.”

Rodríguez Parrilla pointed out the intensification of harassment policies during the hardest years of the pandemic when the exemption of sanctions was promoted for humanitarian reasons for some countries but not Cuba. Instead, the blockade was tightened up even further by Trump with 243 new sanctions that continue under Biden; in fact, it has gotten even worse under this Democratic president.

“Why was Cuba excluded from that temporary relief?” questioned Rodríguez Parrilla in rejection of the use of the pandemic as an ally in Washington’s policy of hostility towards Cuba.

Today is one of those days when the support and love we get from the entire world is on display, and we appreciate it. Since 1992, there have been 31 consecutive years of votes with resounding support to end the blockade in the General Assembly, and our question to our arrogant neighbor to the North is how many more will it take for you to get in stride with the humanitarian sentiment of the world.

Source: Resumen Latinoamericano – English

On October 17, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo announced new bans on the giant tech company Nvidia from sales of its advanced computer chips, particularly its advanced H800 and A800 products.

Raimondo claimed that this move was directed solely against the Chinese military. According to an October 18 CNN report, she said in August on her visit to China: “the administration was “laser-focused” on slowing the advancement of China’s military. She emphasized that Washington had opted not to go further in restricting chips for other applications.”

But on October 17, Raimondo made clear that the target of these sanctions against socialist China is much wider:

“The goal was to limit China’s ‘access to advanced semiconductors that could fuel breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and sophisticated computers’.”

China’s Foreign Ministry quickly responded:

“The US needs to stop politicizing and weaponizing trade and tech issues and stop destabilizing global industrial and supply chains,” spokesperson Mao Ning told a press briefing. “We will closely follow the developments and firmly safeguard our rights and interests.”

China has decided to cut off the U.S. from supplies of germanium and gallium, essential for manufacturing semiconductors.

Commerce secretary calls Huawei’s computer chip breakthrough ‘incredibly disturbing’

At a Senate hearing on October 5, Commerce Secretary Raimondo called the Chinese firm Huawei’s new cellphone and its 7nm computer chip “incredibly disturbing.” Why? It’s because that chip was produced by the Chinese state-owned Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC).

Both companies, Huawei and SMIC, have been “blacklisted” by both the Trump and Biden administrations to prevent them from developing advanced semiconductors and other computer technologies.

In 2018, Trump had gone so far as to have a top Huawei executive placed under house arrest in Canada for three years for supposedly violating U.S. sanctions against Iran.

The Biden administration has escalated its economic war with China, prohibiting not only U.S. companies from selling advanced computer technologies to Chinese companies but also other countries from doing so, such as South Korea, the Netherlands, and the computer companies based in Taiwan. U.S. “experts” had predicted that this move would take decades for China to overcome if it ever did.

An October 4 opinion piece in the New York Times details how the U.S. establishment uses international digital financial tools to bend their “junior partners” to their will over the sentiments of the populace in their own countries. The article discusses a recently published book: “Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the Global Economy,” by Henry Farrell of Johns Hopkins and Abraham Newman of Georgetown:

“These institutions include the dollar and the bank-messaging system known as Swift (the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication), which is based in Belgium and run by an international board but vulnerable to American pressure. It helps that the rise of the internet has made the United States home to much of the wired world’s circuitry and infrastructure, including, in our time, some of the major cloud computing centers of Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, and Google.

”The United States now has the ability to survey and influence the world’s communications and supply chains, should it choose to. After the Sept. 11 [2001] attacks, it chose to. It bent the institutions to which it had access into a defensive (as it then saw things) weapon in the war on terror. ‘To protect America,’ Mr. Farrell and Mr. Newman write, ‘Washington has slowly but surely turned thriving economic networks into tools of domination.’

“A study this past summer by the European Council on Foreign Relations found large majorities, 62 percent continent wide, would wish for Europe to remain neutral should the United States and China ever enter into conflict over Taiwan. Yet last April, when President Emmanuel Macron of France urged his fellow Europeans to preserve their ‘strategic autonomy’ in Sino-American matters and avoid getting swept up in ‘a logic of bloc against bloc,’ he was rebuffed, not just by American politicians but also by certain of his European allies.“

Up until these imperialist sanctions, socialist China had obtained its semiconductor and other tech designs from a complex global network. Facing this U.S. blockade, the Chinese government began a robust campaign to develop its own semiconductor design capabilities. With this new Huawei success, it appears that socialist China has made a massive breakthrough.

Of course, in an example of extraordinary arrogance, the U.S. accused China’s SMIC, a company that it had already sanctioned, of violating those sanctions by not asking the U.S. Commerce Department for “permission” to develop its own new computer chip and sell it to another Chinese company, Huawei.

Not only is the U.S. placing stricter requirements on computer chip sales by its own companies and its Western subordinates, but it has demanded that Taiwan rulers stop its companies from engaging with tech companies on the mainland.

An October 5 Benzinga article stated that a probe by the Bloomberg business website revealed that four companies based in Taiwan were helping to build semiconductor plants in the mainland. The linchpin of the entire U.S. strategy to counter China is Taiwan and the Trump/Biden threat to wage war to defend the island’s “independence,” breaking with the “One China” policy that the U.S. had agreed to in 1979.

Biden’s much-touted anti-China “Chips and Science Act” program has hit a snag with the most important of Taiwan’s tech companies – the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). An August 28 article from the Guardian indicates that the company is eager to get the U.S. government money but is in no hurry to actually build the plant in Arizona or hire union workers:

Eight months on, the Phoenix microchip plant – the centerpiece of Biden’s $52.7bn US hi-tech manufacturing agenda – is struggling to get online.

The plant’s owner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the largest chip maker in the world, has pushed back plans to start manufacturing to 2025, blaming a lack of skilled labor. It is trying to fast-track visas for 500 Taiwanese workers. Unions, meanwhile, are accusing TSMC of inventing the skills shortage as an excuse to hire cheaper, foreign labor. Others point to safety issues at the plant.

A “presidential” election is slated in Taiwan in January 2024. Polls indicate that the pro-independence ruling party’s candidate has only 33 percent popular support, while the three opposition candidates who oppose independence garner more than 50 percent support. They have yet to come up with a way to unify their opposition, but it still indicates that Taiwan’s residents reject the Ukraine-style proxy war scenario that the Pentagon and the Biden White House are pushing.

Artificial Intelligence – the next front

Now, the U.S. is scrambling to prevent China from developing even more powerful semiconductors and other advanced technologies that would power Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems.

Of course, AI presents opportunities for greater profits in a capitalist society. Each worker becomes more “productive”; that is, she or he can produce more goods or services in less time. But since the value of each commodity or service is measured by the amount of “average” labor time to produce it, this same technical development drives down that value, forcing companies to “overproduce” to try to maintain their level of profits. This leads to the “bust” part of the capitalist cycle – recessions and depressions.

But this is not a problem in a socialist system, where production is socially owned and is driven by scientific planning, not profit. China has virtually eliminated poverty. President Johnson declared his “War on Poverty” in 1964, but just like his war against socialist Vietnam, poverty won and is still widespread here among the workers and oppressed communities.

And the capitalist class fears that artificial intelligence could be used under socialism to greatly enhance the coordination and accuracy of that scientific planning. The workers, through their Communist Party, could use it to far more capably direct their economy to meet the people’s needs rather than fill the coffers of the banks and corporations.

The imperialist ruling class is keenly aware of the danger of this, not only in its economic competition with socialist China but also with the example of a powerful and prosperous socialist China lighting a revolutionary beacon to the global working class as to the possibilities with a new social system.

Source: Fighting Words

The fight for our sovereignty and independence, although increasingly uphill, is carried out every day from different scenarios: in agriculture, where young people try to rescue the land to ensure a future with food sovereignty; in communities fighting against forced displacement by large foreign millionaire interests that receive benefits from local government; in the environmental defenders who fight incessantly against the dispossession and destruction of our coasts and natural reserves; in the fight against privatization that the neoliberal process has intensified, making each public service a source of million-dollar profits for mafia companies, mostly foreign, which, while profiting, deteriorate the services necessary for the population, services such as energy, health, education, public transportation.

In addition, there are the left-wing and pro-independence political parties and organizations that fight from their various ideological platforms against colonialism and the new government imposed by the US Congress, the Fiscal Control Board, which came with the excuse of “fixing the finances”. ”, and it has become a true center that has encouraged foreign money laundering.

On the other hand, there is the fight at the international level, where representatives of our organizations raise the protest, especially in United Nations organizations.

And it is here, in its Geneva office, that this week, the true face of the United States at the UN was shown to the world.

The American Civil Liberties Union in Puerto Rico and the Puerto Rican Institute of International Relations presented two detailed reports on the need for decolonization of Puerto Rico and the incompatibility of colonialism with Human Rights.

Mr. Fermín Arraíza, director of the ACLU-PR, went on to say that “Puerto Rico is not simply a territory; is a nation with the full right to self-determination”, and that the UN has the obligation to address it, and “the United States could face the International Court of Human Rights and the UN general assembly for misinterpreting the colonial status of Puerto Rico” .

In response, the representative of the USA refused to answer. So in the face of this refusal, the Puerto Rican delegation and delegations from other countries stood in silent protest and turned their backs in solidarity with Puerto Rico.

The fight will have to continue at all levels, and if the UN and its courts refuse to consider it, it will be the united peoples who will finally achieve victory.

From Puerto Rico, for Radio Clarín of Colombia, Berta Joubert-Ceci spoke to you.

Translated by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews