From the 2004 coup d’état against President Jean Bertrand Aristide until 2017, Haiti was occupied militarily initially by US and Canadian troops and subsequently by a multinational force of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), always under the clear direction of the governments of the United States and its allies, mainly Canada and France. For the North American and European elites, the political crisis in Haiti since the 2017 departure of MINUSTAH from Haiti presented a dilemma. They always had a presence of administrative and political intervention in the form of the Integrated United Nations Office in Haiti (BINUH for its acronym in French). But they needed another mechanism of armed intervention in order to suppress the growing popular resistance to the country’s neocolonial subjugation under the corrupt Haitian de facto authorities.

A new form of intervention

These puppets of their Western masters have held on to power for over a decade via grotesquely rigged elections, the abuse of the Constitution of the Republic, and the violent repression of popular protest. In response, grassroots political opposition and the population’s defensive armed resistance have grown progressively. Now, in order to prevent a democratic and people-based resolution of the crisis in Haiti, the US ruling elite have engineered the approval by the United Nations Security Council of a Multinational Security Support Mission to Haiti, authorized to use armed force in support of the de facto regime of Prime Minister Ariel Henry. In fact, the procedure used to create this mission may well be repeated in the future to facilitate other interventions in the region.

It amounts to another modality to be added to the imperialist intervention toolbox, which already includes lawfare, unilateral coercive measures, soft and not so soft coups, diverse varieties of direct military intervention, and the abuse of international financial institutions for political purposes. As Jemima Pierre has explained to us, this new modality of intervention follows the script outlined in the Global Fragility Act approved in the US Congress in 2019 by both political parties during the presidency of Donald Trump. The Act makes clear that the United States should adapt its neocolonial interventions to more indirect means such that the role of the US government will be to provide resources, advice, support and guidance to other key actors.

Unlike the failed coup attempt in Nicaragua in 2018, this modality exploits US dominance so that the United Nations approves operations to achieve Western interventionist objectives. Their capacity for pressure and extortion will also be used to directly co-opt various local allies as protagonists of US and allied governments’ regional neocolonial policies. So now the government of an East African country, Kenya, has been co-opted as its main accomplice to lead the Multinational Security Support Mission to Haiti along with contributions from Caribbean countries such as Jamaica, Barbados, Guyana, the Bahamas, Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, Guatemala, and Suriname, in addition to Peru, Italy, Spain and another African country, Senegal.

Nicaragua and Haiti, the common history

In the same way that the United States invaded and occupied Nicaragua in the last century, Haiti also suffered from US military occupation from 1915 to 1934. And in the same way that they left behind the National Guard in Nicaragua, they left behind the Haitian Gendarmerie in Haiti. And also, in the same way that the United States ordered the murder of Benjamin Zeledón and Augusto C. Sandino, they murdered in the most cowardly way Charlemagne Péralte, the national hero of the resistance to the Yankee occupation of Haiti. For decades, both countries suffered under criminal regimes totally at the service of US neocolonial rule. While the 1979 triumph of the Sandinista Popular Revolution liberated Nicaragua from the US neocolonial system, at the same time it convinced Western elites not to allow something similar in other countries in the region.

So when a progressive and nationalist political force and its leader Jean Bertrand Aristide won the presidential elections in Haiti in 1991, it lasted only nine months before falling victim to a coup d’état promoted by the United States. While in Nicaragua, the United States imposed neoliberalism during the 17 years between 1990 and 2006 through the submissive governments of Violeta Chamorro, Arnoldo Alemán and Enrique Bolaños, in Haiti, the terms of neocolonial submission to the Washington Consensus were imposed, with all its structural adjustment apparatus, by force, with direct military occupation lasting until the year 2000, when Jean Bertrand Aristide and his Fanmi Lavalas party won the elections for a second time. That second term of President Aristide’s elected government ended in 2004 with another coup, his kidnapping and involuntary dispatch to the Central African Republic, and subsequent forced exile in South Africa.

Elections under neocolonialism

The last elections in Haiti, with a high level of participation of around 60%, were the elections under the MINUSTAH occupation in 2006, won by René Préval. The process had been postponed four times since 2005. The subsequent elections of 2010 and 2015 were also chaotic processes with rigged results based, in both cases, on a voter turnout of less than 23%. With the Fanmi Lavalas party excluded from the process, Michel Martelly was awarded victory in the 2010 elections, and Jovenal Moïse, from the same party, was made the winner of the elections scheduled for 2015, but which finally took place in November 2016. Due to the absence of elections in 2020, President Moïse ruled by decree from January 2020 onwards in a situation of chronic constitutional crisis leading to the absence of a national legislature from April of that same year.

On July 7, 2021, a group of Colombian mercenaries assassinated President Moïse with the possible complicity of one or more of the members of his own ruling circle. The United States and its allies intervened directly to impose Ariel Henry as de facto prime minister. Right now, Haiti has no legitimate government and neither does it have a legislature. In fact, the country is run by the governments of several foreign countries designated as the Core Group, coordinated by the United States. Following the guidelines of this Core Group, Ariel Henry requested an armed intervention by the United Nations, which has now been achieved with the approval of the Multinational Security Support Mission. As Kim Ives, a veteran of solidarity with Haiti, has commented, it is as if a puppet were to make a request for support to its puppet master.

The new intervention

The spurious pretext for the approval of this new neocolonial armed intervention in Haiti has been the increase in armed violence and organized crime in the country. The consensus manipulated by the United States and its allies attributes this phenomenon exclusively to the activity of criminal gangs, especially in the capital Port-au-Prince. This false version of the situation omits two facts of fundamental importance. First, the criminal gangs are controlled mainly by the same Haitian elites who collaborate politically with the United States and its allies. It was during an internal dispute between these local elites that the assassination of Jovenal Moïse occurred in 2021. The criminal groups in Haiti fulfill a political function applying terrorism against the grassroots opposition to the de facto government and to foreign intervention.

Secondly, several popular forces have taken up arms to protect their communities precisely from armed attacks on the population by criminal gangs controlled by local elites, often in collusion with the corrupt Haitian police. In reality, the approval of this new armed intervention means increasing the forces of anti-democratic repression of the de facto government in Haiti and its American and European owners in order to suppress broadly based political opposition in the country and annihilate its capacity for armed resistance in self-defense. A large group of Haitian popular organizations explained this reality in an open letter to the leaders of the African Union last August, where they wrote:

“We have received with astonishment the surprising news that a brotherly country like Kenya has agreed to lead an American-UN occupation force disguised under the label of “multinational force” against Haiti in order to continue deceiving national and international public opinion better, thus trying to hide the Machiavellian side of this criminal initiative. It should be noted that in order to prepare national and international public opinion for the acceptance of this felony, armed gangs have been mobilized nationwide with the aim of creating total chaos capable of justifying the US-UN occupation of our country. Thus, armed gangs are authorized to collectively rape girls and young women, massacre, kidnap and terrorize the defenseless population on a daily basis.”

This assertion confirms a report in January of this year in which the National Network for the Defense of Human Rights in Haiti commented that “it has strong reasons to believe that the accelerated deterioration of the security situation in the country, after a few days of calm, intends to justify and obtain from the international community the deployment of a foreign military force in Haiti.….” This cynical, sadistic manipulation has been a crucial component of the pressure from the United States and its allies for precisely this kind of intervention. It has been disappointing that the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, in the declaration of its Seventh Summit in January of this year, endorsed this type of imperialist maneuver to force an illegal intervention in the internal affairs of a country in the region.

In healthy contrast to the regrettable declaration of the CELAC summit, the government of Cuba has insisted in a statement issued after the recent decision of the United Nations Security Council on Haiti that “We defend the legitimate rights of its people to find a peaceful and sustainable way out of the enormous challenges they face, based on full respect for their sovereignty. The main pending task of the international community with Haiti is not to send a military contingent. That sister Caribbean nation, to which the international community owes an enormous moral debt, needs more financial resources for its development. It urgently requires more and better international assistance and cooperation, not only for its reconstruction, but also to advance the sustainable development of the country.”

Cuba’s rational and sensible argument concurs fully with the call of the group of Haitian popular organizations to the African Union in August, where they observe, “We want to conclude by reminding you of the urgent need to offer us your concrete solidarity in this situation of extreme menace. We want to maintain the firm conviction that you will continue to take a clear position against the criminal project of an occupation of Haiti.”

Stephen Sefton is a Nicaraguan writer who has written on Nicaragua and Latin America since 2003. Since 2008 he has coordinated the Tortilla con Sal media collective.  

Source: Kawsachun News

The time has come for Zionism to fall. Political support for Palestine is more important than ever.

The fall of Zionist apartheid in occupied Palestine is long overdue. For the past 75 years, the colonial project of Israel has terrorized Palestinian people throughout Gaza, Golan, the West Bank, and the 1948 borders. What began as a British and U.S.-backed colonial project bathed in the blood of Nakba quickly reached its full evolution into Israeli fascist apartheid. 

With every passing year, Israeli violence against nearby countries only seems to escalate, whether it be Palestine, Syria, or Iran. From continuous illegal airstrikes on Syrian airports to the ghettoization of the Gaza Strip, Israel’s crimes against humanity in furtherance of the U.S. imperialist agenda have no bounds. 

Because yes, ultimately, the crimes of Israel are the crimes of the United States and their allies. Israel is not the master but is instead a loyal dog on a leash firmly held by the U.S. military-industrial complex. 

Resistance to this terrible regime is not terrorism. It is freedom fighting. If the methods of Hamas at times seem extreme, it is only because their Zionist enemies are that much more extreme in their everyday persecution of the Palestinian people. These horrors range from the systemic deprivation of basic human necessities in Gaza to the intentional IDF execution of pregnant Palestinian women in the hopes of wiping out a generation of resistance. How long are people supposed to live under that sort of violent, racist oppression? 

Unfortunately, the Pentagon and the defense industry will not want to cede their racist satellite without a fight. As such, war criminal Joe Biden ordered a carrier strike force closer to Israel. It is not yet clear whether this move’s purpose is to support the pending Israeli siege of Gaza or as a safety net in case the Israeli occupation forces cannot stem the tide.

It is clear that all those who consider themselves friends of working and oppressed people must raise their voices and take to the streets to support the Palestinian people. The world must come to the aid of Palestine in its fight against occupation the same way it came to the defense of Black South Africans living under apartheid. Ultimately, apartheid fell due to the combined efforts of international protests, the South African working-class movement, and African and Cuban military intervention.  

The people of Palestine are now the ones who require and deserve solidarity from the entire planet, people, and governments alike. Unions, churches, community centers, student organizations, and, yes, synagogues all must come together to demand an end to Israeli apartheid and no U.S. military intervention against the Palestinian people!

Personal note

Earlier in this article, I asked how long people are supposed to tolerate brutal, racist apartheid. For an answer, we only have to look as far as the communist Jewish resistance fighters of the Warsaw ghetto in 1943. Facing another round of forced deportations from Warsaw to Nazi death camps, the socialist Jewish Fighting Organization, or “ZOB,” attacked the column of Nazi troops sent to oversee the next shipment of Jews to the notorious Treblinka concentration camp. 

The fact that there were only 600 resistance fighters and they only had small arms to fight armored vehicles and heavy weaponry did not deter Mordechai Anielowicz and his comrades. The ZOB was fighting for the very existence of Jewish people, the same way that the Peoples’ Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Hamas are fighting for the very existence of the Palestinian people. 

To think that the people playing the role of the Nazis in Palestine are none other than the people whose grandparents and great-grandparents rose against the exact same type of oppression. 

I am a Jew whose ancestors were killed and terrorized by tsarist pogroms and, later, by the SS at Auschwitz. For the life of me, I cannot understand how so many of my people have allowed the last 75 years of genocide and war in Palestine to be carried out in their name.  

Every Yom Kippur, Jews convene at synagogue to ask forgiveness from a higher power for not just the sins of the individual but for the sins of the community. The structure of these confessions is “we sinned when we did such a thing.” This year, a woman and leader at my congregation read a psalm of sorts that she wrote. I paraphrase, but this was roughly her point: 

“We (the Jewish community) sinned when he stood silent as innocents were killed in our name. We sinned when we allowed olive trees to be demolished in the West Bank. We sinned when we looked the other way when Israeli stormtroopers attacked the funeral procession of a reporter. No more.” 

No more. Zionist apartheid is a stain on my people and a stain on humanity. Any Jew who considers themselves concerned with our people or the future of all people has the responsibility to say, No More. Israel does not deserve our support, only our condemnation and rage. 

It is time for our people to stop being stooges on behalf of the real enemy, the Western war profiteers and capitalist fat cats. That is our enemy. That has always been our enemy. It is time to stand with Palestine. 

Lev Koufax is an anti-Zionist Jewish activist.

UPDATED, Oct. 9 — For 75 years, the Palestinian people have been driven from their land by the Israeli apartheid state. Millions of Palestinians live in exile, often in refugee camps.

Gaza is the biggest prison on earth, with over 2 million people living on just 16 square miles. That’s twice the population density of Manhattan.

Nearly 1 million of Gaza’s people are children. And 1.7 million are refugees. They or their families were driven from their homes in what is now “Israel” in 1948 by terror, force, and massacre. They can only return to their own land as day laborers, building shorefront hotels and condos for tourists and settlers. And if they’re not back in Gaza by sundown, they go to jail. 

Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza is the most densely populated place on earth. Israel is now attacking it with U.S.-made bombs, and missiles dropped from U.S.-made warplanes, which Washington supplies Israel for free. At least 50 people died there on the morning of Oct. 9 when the Israeli air force bombed a crowded market. 

Israel is also dropping U.S.-made white phosphorus on Gaza’s civilians. As of Oct. 9, Israel’s bombs and missiles have killed 500 civilians, including 91 children. Apartment buildings, schools, mosques, and hospitals have been destroyed. Entire families have been wiped out. These crimes are being committed with the full support of the Biden administration and Republican and Democratic politicians. 

For 16 years under a blockade

For 16 years, Gaza has been under a U.S.-backed Israeli blockade, reinforced by frequent aerial bombing. People cannot leave or enter. Medical supplies and equipment cannot come in. As a result, unemployment is 45%; some 53% of its people live in poverty. Gaza’s water, according to UNICEF, is unfit for human consumption. Raw sewage pours into its sea. People get electricity for about two hours a day.

On Oct. 8, Israeli “defense” minister Yoav Gallant announced “a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel; everything is closed. … We are fighting ‘human animals,’” he said, “and we are acting accordingly.”

Israel was founded with 70 massacres in 1948 during the Nakba, meaning catastrophe in Arabic. Fifteen thousand Palestinians were murdered, and 531 Palestinian villages were destroyed by Zionists.

Thousands of more Palestinians have been killed since then. Just in May 2021, 67 Palestinian children were killed in Gaza by the Israeli military. Israeli forces have murdered over 200 civilians in the occupied West Bank this year. Thirty-six were children. 

The U.S.-funded Israeli state is trying to complete the genocide it started in 1948. On the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, Israeli troops and armed settlers terrorize civilians, attacking towns and villages and driving people from their homes. They routinely invade mosques, including the holy site of Al Aqsa in Jerusalem, and beat and brutalize worshippers. 

Yet the corporate media is screaming “terrorism” because Palestinian freedom fighters are fighting back. That’s how southern slave masters and their newspapers demonized Nat Turner when he led a revolt of enslaved Africans. Palestinians are also breaking their chains.

The same capitalist mouthpieces are howling about the prisoners taken by the Palestinian liberation fighters. They have been silent about the 5,250 Palestinians held hostage by Israel, 1,350 of whom are being held without trial. One hundred seventy of these prisoners are children.

Washington funds racist apartheid regime

Racist Israel could not have been able to commit its crimes without the backing of the Big Oil and bankster government of the United States. Washington has shoveled $158 billion into the Zionist regime. In the United States, all those opposed to racism, injustice, and oppression must stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine. We must demand no more arms and money to the Zionist settler regime.

That’s money stolen from U.S. ghettos to keep Palestinians in ghettos.

In a dangerous move, President Biden has ordered ships of the U.S. Navy’s Sixth Fleet to move toward Palestine. This is an attempt to intimidate Palestinians, as well as to threaten Iran and the resistance forces in Lebanon, led by Hezbollah. The last thing we need is another U.S. big business war.

Poor and working people in the United States have no interest in propping up the Israeli apartheid regime that gave the old apartheid regime in South Africa nuclear weapons.

Many years ago it was written, “As ye sow, so ye reap.” For 75 years, the Zionist regime has been terrorizing the Palestinian people. The Israeli rulers and their Pentagon backers shouldn’t be surprised by the eventual reaction.

The only road to peace is for the right of the Palestinians to return to their homeland. Just as the people of Zimbabwe wiped racist “Rhodesia” off the map, so will Palestinians defeat the racist state of Israel.

Here in the United States, all those who oppose racism, injustice, and corporate rule must stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine. We must demand no more U.S. arms and dollars to the racist Israeli settler regime. 

From the river to the sea, Palestine must be free!

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) confirmed Oct. 8 that U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to provide all forms of support to the Zionist entity [Israel] comes in the context of continued American support for Zionist terrorist crimes of aggression, stemming from the depth of their organic partnership, which always aims to liquidate the inalienable national rights of the Palestinian people.

The Front stressed that the statements of the U.S. president, which were similar to statements made by NATO, express the state of shock and astonishment at the defeat and humiliation that the Zionist entity suffered in the face of the Palestinian resistance. It also represents an authorization and a green light for the Zionist entity to launch more aggression and massacres against defenseless Palestinian civilians.

The Front believes that the U.S. administration hastened these urgent decisions to try to contain the strategic results of the Al-Aqsa Flood Battle and its major repercussions on the Zionist entity, and its negative repercussions on U.S. presence and plans to control the region.

The Front pointed out that when the U.S. administration emphasizes the right of the Zionist entity to defend itself, it ignores that it has thwarted hundreds of draft resolutions to condemn the massacres and crimes of the Zionist entity in the United Nations Security Council through a veto vote, and has always sought to block calls that reject the entity’s survival. 

The Zionists are above international law, and continue to ignore the role of the United Nations and international resolutions regarding the Palestinian issue, replacing them with a U.S. position biased towards the Zionist entity.

The Front concluded by emphasizing the necessity of exploiting the historical opportunity, following the strategic achievements of the resistance in Gaza in addition to the stormy international transformations, by calling for the formation of the largest international global front that brings together the living forces and the free people of the world to confront global imperialism and its protege the Zionist entity, and confront the American-Zionist plans in the region.

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
Central Information Department
October 8, 2023

Translated by Melinda Butterfield

Source: PFLP.ps

A massive wedge of saltwater is coming up the Mississippi River, threatening drinking water for thousands in south Louisiana. This happened before in 1988, 2012, and 2022, though on smaller scales. The current saltwater intrusion is expected to last far longer — for many weeks. President Joe Biden approved an emergency declaration for the state on Sept. 27.

Freshwater flowing down the river normally prevents denser saltwater from moving upriver from the Gulf of Mexico. However, historic drought conditions affecting the entire Mississippi River Valley have caused low water levels, allowing Gulf water to move north. The long drought is intensified by human (that is, capitalist) driven climate change. Louisiana has gotten almost 20 inches less rainfall this year than usual.

On Sept. 20, saltwater overtopped the underwater barrier — or sill — constructed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in July. The Corps is currently scrambling to raise it from -55 to -30 feet to buy time.

The Corps also plans to bring in 36 million gallons of water daily to dilute the river water coming into treatment facilities. This will take a lot of boats, and that solution only works for the smaller facilities. To meet the demand of the Carrollton water plant, the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board is planning to construct a $100-$250 million pipeline to bring fresh water from upriver. Neighboring Jefferson Parish plans to construct two.

In the far south, saltwater has already entered the drinking water for communities in Plaquemines Parish. People there are relying on bottled water distribution centers. The parish’s Boothville water treatment facility just obtained a reverse-osmosis system to remove salt. For weeks, the southern end of the parish saw tap water salinity exceed 1,600ppm, six times the EPA’s standard. 

Unrelated to the saltwater intrusion — though having the same cause, i.e., drought — the system was plagued by line breaks and boil-water advisories throughout the summer as the shifting of dry ground damaged aging pipes. Saltwater intrusion is one more problem added to the pile.

This is a major environmental justice issue. The poverty level in Plaquemines is 14.5%, three percentage points higher than the national average. Twenty-two percent of the parish population is Black, with 8.4% being Latin American and 1.7% indigenous. The oil and gas industry exploits the parish’s working class with Plaquemines being home to multiple refineries.

Initially, the majority of New Orleans drinking water supply was expected to be affected by Oct. 28, impacting about 1 million people. However, as of Oct. 4, the Corps reports that the wedge is moving more slowly. They now expect greater New Orleans facilities like the Carrollton and Gretna plants to remain unaffected until late November. If this new timeline holds, outcomes may be far better. 

Pregnant people with health conditions like high blood pressure are at greatest risk. There are also concerns that corrosive saltwater could damage pipes and appliances, as people in Plaquemines have reported. Also troubling: The corrosive saltwater could cause toxic heavy metal releases in the New Orleans area’s antique lead pipes, which are interspersed among newer infrastructure.

If the water crisis drags on, the NOLA area will be counted among other municipalities whose drinking water supply has been compromised due to systemic class violence and environmental racism. Flint, Michigan, is the well-known example, but Jackson, Mississippi, is even closer. This writer witnessed water gushing up out of the streets in Jackson in 2013 while canvassing with organizers around deceased Jackson mayor, Chokwe Lumumba Sr. In 2023, racist disinvestment continues to make Jackson’s water unsafe after climate-change-driven flooding damaged the system in 2022.

Outside the U.S., Basra, Iraq, and Alexandria, Egypt, are experiencing saltwater incursions affecting their water supply. Basra is a city of over 1 million, and Alexandria has more than 5 million residents. It is worrisome that such incursions have happened two years in a row in New Orleans and are now happening in at least two other regions at the same time. Even if the crisis in south Louisiana is largely averted, the lesson is clear: With sea-level rise and an increase in extreme weather, saltwater incursion may be a significant, and expensive, threat for the world’s populations living at the nexus of river and sea.

Over 75,000 Kaiser Permanente healthcare workers across six states and Washington, D.C., went on a three-day strike starting Oct. 4 after contract negotiations failed. This is the largest healthcare strike ever in the U.S., with around 40% of Kaiser’s staff participating.

Workers — including nurses, technicians, assistants, and pharmacists — are picketing at hospitals and medical facilities in California, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Virginia, and D.C. Other strikes are planned for emergency department technicians, radiology technicians, X-ray technicians, medical assistants, pharmacists, and many other positions across facilities in California, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington state.

A coalition of several unions is battling the nonprofit health giant for safe staffing levels, cost of living pay increases, and against a two-tier pay system that Kaiser is trying to introduce.

The largest union in the coalition is Service Employees International Union (SEIU)-United Healthcare Workers West (UHW) with 57,443 members, but the coalition also includes Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU) Local 30, SEIU Local 49, OPEIU Local 2 and others.

“We are in a healthcare staffing crisis, but Kaiser is unwilling to even meet with our bargaining team to discuss a wage proposal that would keep good healthcare workers at our facilities,” wrote SEIU-UHW. “That has never happened before in the 25 years of our partnership.”

Kaiser Campaign Updates can be found at www.seiu-uhw.org/kaiser-campaign-updates/

Kenyan soldiers prepare for Haiti. Photo: Brian Inganga, Picture Alliance

The Slovak parliamentary elections [30 September] were won by the anti-war, pro-negotiations party Smer-SD DIRECTION – Slovak Social Democracy led by Robert Fico.

Smer won 22.94% of the votes and 42 seats out of 150 in the Slovak National Council. Robert Fico has been given a mandate by President Zuzana Čaputová to form a governing coalition. The Speaker of the Parliament has declared the results of the election valid.

Smer increased its share of the vote by 4.65% compared to the 2020 election and by four seats in parliament.

The victory of Smer marks a rejection of the U.S. project to pull Europe behind its proxy war with Russia. It also refutes the idea that Central and Eastern Europe is a monolithic bloc fully committed to fighting a war against Russia without compromise.

Fico has long made clear his opposition to the war in Ukraine and his desire for peace with Russia. He has promised to stop arms supplies to Ukraine, opposed sanctions against Russia, and spoken out against NATO.

Opinion polls in Slovakia reveal that only a minority of voters believe Russia is at fault for the conflict in Ukraine.

A Globsec poll earlier this year ‘noted that 69 per cent of respondents agreed that by providing military equipment to Ukraine, Slovakia was provoking Russia and bringing itself closer to war.’

In conversations with journalists immediately after the election, Fico said that ‘Slovakia’s foreign policy orientation will not change on his watch’ according to the Slovak Spectator. But it also pointed out that Fico went on to say, ‘Our position remains unchanged,’ insisting that his party will call for immediate peace talks.”

Fico

Smer’s win was achieved in the face of a blizzard of denunciations by most Western media. Pro-war outlets like CNN and the New York Times were unanimous in dismissing Smer simply as pro-Russia.

Smer has been a member of the Party of European Socialists (PES) in the European Parliament for over twenty years. This week, Fico has spoken out against a warning from the PES President threatening Smer with expulsion from the group over future actions on the war in Ukraine.

In response, Robert Fico said, “The left is losing almost everywhere in Europe, so the victory of a genuine left-wing party in a parliamentary election in an EU member state should be welcomed.” He added that he thought the PES president’s comments were a “message of blackmail.” Fico concluded, “Either we say what the U.S. wants us to say, or we will be expelled. Either we join and obediently carry out the policy of one single opinion or we become pariahs if we are going to say that the EU should launch a peace initiative in Ukraine, that it is better to stop the killing immediately and negotiate peace for ten years rather than let the Russians and Ukrainians kill one another for ten years without a result. The chairman of the PES has consistently followed the philosophy that whoever is for peace is a warmonger, whoever is for war and killing is a peace activist,”

Impact of U.S. policies on Europe

The consequences of the war in Ukraine continue to permeate European politics. War weariness is palpable.

As the New York Times reported, the battle lines have barely shifted since January 2023, with no sign of an end to the stalemate. In the meantime, there have been countless thousands of casualties.

European subordination to the U.S. and its proxy war against Russia war continues to cause massive damage to the people of Europe. The U.S.-led sanctions against Russia have broken previous trade relationships between Europe and Moscow and created a dependence on much more expensive energy from the U.S. and elsewhere.

The continent has also been hit hard by the effects of U.S.-created international inflation and the drain of capital investment from Europe to the United States due to Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. The consequent cost of living crisis is hitting the working class and the petty bourgeoisie, particularly its poorest and most marginalised parts. In Slovakia, the support for Fico and Smer was much higher outside the capital, Bratislava.

Austerity

Fico’s win follows the collapse of a pro-war, pro-austerity, center-right government composed of technocrats and civil servants, which came to power in May this year.

The news company POLITICO recently described the Slovakian economy: “Slovakia’s economy today is an also-ran. Its per-capita GDP puts it near the bottom of the euro-area rankings with the likes of Latvia and Croatia. It does top the league tables by one measure — the size of its budget deficit, which is forecast to reach nearly 7 percent this year.”

For the moment, the Slovakian election may represent, with its tiny population of 5.4m, a very small crack in the pro-war, pro-U.S. united front, but it could also be understood as the beginning of a much wider divide that is about to grow across Europe.

Smer fought the election primarily on living standards, which were made worse by the effects of the war in Ukraine. It rejects the austerity of recent governments and denounces profiteering. Its policies of economic redistribution resonate in the poorest parts of the country. However, its right-wing positions on immigration, racism, and LGBTQ+ refute the idea that Smer can simply be described as a left-wing party.

For the left to decisively win across Europe, it needs to unite opposition to austerity and war and complete opposition to racism, sexism, national chauvinism, and all forms of bigotry. That is the only way the working class can be united and win a majority in society.

Source: Britain @SocialistAct

In the hours following the raids of over 100 journalists affiliated with Indian leftist outlet Newsclick, international outlet Peoples Dispatch, and Tricontinental Research Services, and the detention of around 50, leading academics and journalists from across the world have expressed solidarity and outrage.

The coordinated repressive action was carried out as part of an investigation under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, a draconian law which has been widely criticized by human rights organizations in India and internationally as it undermines civil liberties and rights. Newsclick editor-in-chief Prabir Purkayastha and administrator Amit Chakraborty were arrested during the raid under the draconian anti-terror law and remain in police custody.

On October 3, after news broke about the raids, the Press Club of India held an emergency meeting in New Delhi, wherein journalists and media activists resolved to continue fighting for media freedom in India.

On October 4, journalists and writers, including novelist Arundhati Roy, staged a protest at the Press Club of India, while hundreds of young activists gathered at Jantar Mantar area in Delhi to reject the attacks on press freedom.

Several journalist bodies, students’, youth and civil society organisations held protests at Press Club of India and Jantar Mantar on October 4th against recent witch hunt of employees of #NewsClick, and especially the arrest of #PrabirPurkayastha and #AmitChakravarty pic.twitter.com/Qjtd7OHzwt

— CPI (M) (@cpimspeak) October 4, 2023

Roy spoke to the BBC, denouncing the charges against the journalists under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. “They have confiscated the phones, the computers, they have charged them under this anti-terrorism act, collapsing the difference between terrorists and journalists,” she said.

Media persons turned up in large number at the Press Club of India to protest against multiple raids on a number of journalists associated with #Newsclick #FreeThePress pic.twitter.com/8KFrTB8tYO

— Press Club of India (@PCITweets) October 4, 2023

#NewsClick Delhi citizens came out in hundreds to mark the protest against attack on freedom of press and expression. While Jantar Mantar saw over 500 young students and activists Press Club of India was jam packed with journalists .

First three photos from Jantar Mantar ,… pic.twitter.com/z3K2OiyWz9

— Shabnam Hashmi (@ShabnamHashmi) October 4, 2023

In New York City, activists and journalists picketed on October 3 outside of the New York Times building in Midtown Manhattan. Much of the blame for the latest unjust targeting of these Indian journalists lies at the hands of the New York Times. The Indian government has been viciously targeting Newsclick for many years, following their first raid of the outlet in 2021 following Newsclick’s faithful reporting of the farmers’ protests in the country. A recent article by the New York Times, claiming that Newsclick-affiliated journalists are part of a Chinese propaganda network, was used by Modi’s government to justify further repression.

“A Government that has not been able to substantiate any charges against Newsclick despite being in possession of all its information, documentation and communications, needed a motivated and bogus article published in the New York Times to invoke the draconian UAPA and attempt to shut down and stifle independent and fearless voices that portray the story of the real India,” said Newsclick in a recent statement. “Of peasants, of laborers, of farmers, and other oft-ignored sections of society.

The New York Times’ recent article is merely a part of the West’s Cold War against China, activists claimed. Ben Becker, editor-in-chief of BreakThrough News, said at the picket that the piece is a way to accuse “anyone who opposes US foreign policy of being an agent of China.”

“What this article did is to lay the groundwork for an attack on the anti-war movement or anyone who’s critical of US foreign policy against China,” he said.

It is Newsclick’s steadfast reporting of working class struggles in India that has landed them in hot water with the Modi government, said Zoe Alexandra, co-editor of Peoples Dispatch, outside of the 52-story New York Times building.

“[Newsclick] dared to cover the incredibly powerful and courageous uprising of farmers in India. They were talking to farmers when they were committing suicide in the dozens and in the hundreds,” said Alexandra. “It’s Newsclick that covered the largest strike in human history. A quarter million people on the streets.”

Hands off NewsClick!

A recent New York Times hit piece smeared leading Indian progressive outlet @newsclickin as part of a “Chinese propaganda network”. This week the Modi gov’t cited this pretext for mass raids & arrest of journalists — we protested outside the NYT in response! pic.twitter.com/BsOyWJzagJ

— Party for Socialism and Liberation (@pslnational) October 4, 2023

A coalition of 18 media organizations in India have penned a letter, published on October 14, to Chief Justice of India (CJI) Y V Chandrachud, expressing concern over the state’s repression. “The invocation of UAPA is especially chilling. Journalism cannot be prosecuted as ‘terrorism’. Enough instances in history abound to tell us where that eventually goes,” reads the letter. Signatories include Digipub News India Foundation, the Indian Women’s Press Corps, the Press Club of India, and the Foundation for Media Professionals.

In Taliparamba municipality in Kerala, India, dozens in the Democratic Youth Federation of India marched in solidarity with Newsclick.

The International People’s’ Assembly (IPA), a platform of over 200 trade unions, people’s movements, and left parties, declared in a statement on October 3 following the raids: “Today’s raids constitute a dangerous attack on press freedom in India and concerns all the democratic and progressive people around the world. The International Peoples’ Assembly (IPA) demands an end to persecution and press suppression in India.”

Source: Peoples Dispatch