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.

Real hate mongers love Zionism

Tens of thousands came to the Mall in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 14 to support the bloody U.S. / Israeli war against Gaza. Over 11,000 Palestinians have been killed so far, including at least 4,609 children. 

The hate rally was called by Zionist organizations led by a small section of U.S. capitalists who are Jewish. Many Jewish people and organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace oppose the racist Israeli regime.

The turnout for the Zionist rally was barely a third of the 300,000 people who came to the Nov. 4 demonstration for Palestine.

Nov. 14 rally organizers invited Mike Johnson, the new speaker of the House of Representatives, to speak. Johnson is a Christian nationalist who opposes women’s rights and hates LGBTQ+ people. 

He repeats the fascist claim that immigrants from Africa, Latin America, and Asia are carrying out a “great replacement” of whites. As the 60th anniversary approaches of the Dallas coup d’état that killed JFK, this bigot would become president if Joe Biden and Kamala Harris got knocked off.

Johnson denounced calls for a ceasefire in the war against Gaza, saying, “The calls for a ceasefire are outrageous.” The pro-Israeli crowd responded by chanting, “no ceasefire.”

Yelling “no ceasefire” is cheering the killing of Palestinian children. It’s approving the bombing of hospitals in Gaza.

The day after the Nov. 14 rally, Israeli forces invaded Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest. Incubators were turned off because the electric generators ran out of fuel. Babies were somehow kept alive with aluminum foil.

Al-Nasr Children’s Hospital was also occupied by Israeli soldiers. “We said goodbye to the children, left them on the machines, and left the hospital with guns pointed at us,” said one of the doctors there. “There are more than 150 children in the hospital who were left for their fates, and there is no one else in the hospital.”

President Biden has demanded that another $14.3 billion in arms be given to the apartheid state carrying out these war crimes. That makes Biden a war criminal, too.

Anyone who opposes a ceasefire, like Biden, has blood on their hands. That applies to Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer, who spoke at the Nov. 14 hate rally. And that means you, Bernie Sanders, who also denounced any ceasefire.

Fascists for Israel

An estimated 100,000 people came to a Nov. 12 rally in Paris to supposedly denounce anti-Jewish racism. It really served to cheer on Israeli atrocities while ignoring the racism directed at Arab, African, and immigrant communities in France.

Among those who came was Marine Le Pen, the leader of the fascist Rassemblement National. Her daddy, Jean-Marie Le Pen, claimed that Hitler’s gas chambers were “merely a detail.”

During Algeria’s war of independence, French colonialism killed a million Algerians, 40,000 of whom were tortured to death by scum that included Jean-Marie Le Pen.

French cops routinely brutalize Arab and African people. Hundreds of Algerians were killed on Oct. 17, 1961, by Paris police, who dumped their bodies in the Seine River.

The same capitalist class that deported 76,000 French Jews to Nazi extermination camps carried out the murder of Algerians.

Any genuine rally against racism in France has to condemn the attacks on Arab and African people, as well as Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians. Gaza ghetto is today’s Warsaw Ghetto.

Another supporter of Israel is Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who worships Adolf Hitler’s best buddy, Benito Mussolini. The Italian fascist dictator killed a million people in Ethiopia and another million in Libya.

Italian workers, who were Mussolini’s first victims, shot the sawdust Caesar and hanged his naked body upside down in Milano. Meloni’s fascist sympathies didn’t prevent Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from welcoming her to the Zionist state.

While fascists and other bigots support Israeli atrocities, capitalist governments have decreed the slogan, “from the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free!,” to be hate speech. Austrian police banned a pro-Palestinian demonstration because of the chant.

Britain’s Labour Party suspended its parliament member Andy McDonald for using the phrase. 

Prosecutors in Berlin claim it’s incitement to hate. The expression is called a “genocidal call to violence to destroy the state of Israel,” in the Congressional resolution censuring Rashida Tiaib, its only Palestinian member. 

George Washington University suspended Students for Justice in Palestine, which projected the slogan on a campus building. Columbia University suspended both SJP and Jewish Voice for Peace. 

Fear of a Palestinian majority

It’s strange that a slogan that refers to geography should be so controversial. Pre-1948 maps of the region clearly show that Palestine does indeed extend from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

What should be shocking are the wild, expansive Zionist claims to Arab lands.

The election symbol of the old Herut party displays the Zionist state as occupying not only all of Palestine but Jordan as well. Herut — which was denounced by Albert Einstein as fascist — was a predecessor of Netanyahu’s Likud Party.

One of the pre-1948 Zionist terrorist groups called Lehi demanded a “Hebrew kingdom from Euphrates [in Iraq] to the Nile.” Lehi participated in the April 9, 1948, Deir Yasin massacre in which over 100 Palestinians were murdered.

It’s a big lie that chanting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” calls for killing Jewish people. What Zionist supporters are really saying is that Israeli settlers refuse to live under a Palestinian majority government.

This was the same argument used by supporters of the Jim Crow white supremacist regimes in the U.S. South. William F. Buckley Jr. did so in his 1957 National Review editorial, “The South must prevail.”

Buckley, who called whites the “advanced race,” was worried that Black people could outvote whites in many places. The National Review is 100% for Israel today.

The hysteria over the “from the river to the sea” slogan also serves to smother the demand for the right of return of Palestinians to their homes. This seems like simple justice to most people.

The Zionist State was born in 1948 with 800,000 Palestinians being driven out of their homeland during the catastrophe called the Nakba. Fifteen thousand Palestinians were killed.

It was the old apartheid regime in South Africa that wanted the country split up into several mini-states, really Bantustans. All the U.S. schemes for Palestine are the same. The African National Congress fought for one state with a Black majority.

French colonialism occupied Algeria for 132 years before they were kicked out. Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea!

Emergency Protest
Stand with Al-Shifa Hospital
Stop U.S. Funded Genocide

On the National Day to Shut It Down for Palestine

Baltimore – Friday Nov.17
4:30 pm gather at MLK Blvd & W. Mulberry St.
March at 5:30 pm
6 pm Rally at UMMC Hospital Sq Park
Baltimore & Greene St.

Join the Campaign to demand the Baltimore Mayor & City Council call for immediate ceasefire & divest from Israel SIGN UP

Next Step

Rally at City Hall, 100 Holliday St
Monday, Nov 20, 5 pm

Peoples Power Assembly to endorse or info: Text 301-327-4799

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The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) confirmed that the occupation’s assault this morning on the Al-Shifa hospital complex, its brutal bombing, firing, and shelling inside it, targeting thousands of displaced civilians, tampering with patients’ rooms and wards, and terrorizing patients and medical staff, is a fully constituted war crime for which the American administration and the so-called international community, which encouraged the enemy to commit this major crime, are responsible.

The Front considered that the defeated Zionist enemy, by assaulting the Al-Shifa medical complex, is openly seeking to gain a false image of victory from within the confines of a civilian hospital sheltering thousands of citizens, endangering the lives of hundreds of premature babies, leaving patients prey to shelling or death due to inability to treat them, and with the presence of bodies and remains of martyrs that medical staff cannot bury.

The Front affirmed that what is happening now in the Al-Shifa complex is a resounding exposure of the so-called international community and free world, which allows this dark and criminal Zionist entity to invade a civilian medical complex that should be protected under international law.

The Front added that the Zionist entity, whose cowardly forces fled the battle after suffering heavy losses inflicted by our heroic resisters in the neighborhoods and alleys of the sector, found in its assault on a civilian hospital a means of revenge, an expression of its sadism and doctrine of killing, in full view of the world and satellite TV screens.

The Front emphasized that the Western world, with its alignment and complicity in these major crimes, cannot beautify or repair its criminal image, which has been exposed again, warning of a silly dramatic series directed by Zionists and produced and sponsored by America and the West to try to justify this crime or the crimes to be committed within the complex.

The Front concluded its statement by affirming that Palestinian hospitals will remain a witness to the unprecedented crimes of this entity, which have reached a level not practiced by any occupation or colonialism before. However, our people are determined to resist and remain steadfast and firm and will not raise the white flag. Our doctors, patients, and all our people will remain strong, undeterred by these crimes, and will not forgive or forget the complicity of the international community and international medical institutions that turned a blind eye to the targeting of hospitals and the medical system, and the killing of doctors and patients.

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
November 15, 2023

Source: Resistance News Network

Thousands of people joined a Queers for Palestine march in New York City on Nov. 12. The crowd was young, militant, and angry about the deluge of Israeli pinkwashing aimed at the LGBTQ+ community in the U.S. 

Speakers representing Palestinian, Muslim, and Jewish communities emphasized that Israel’s genocidal bombing of Gaza demonstrates that queer liberation is impossible without Palestinian national liberation. Activists also called on prominent LGBTQ+ figures and politicians to take a stand in solidarity with Palestine.

From Union Square, the marchers took over 14th Street, heading to the Stonewall Inn – site of the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion – and concluded in Washington Square Park.

This was the only second face-to-face meeting during the Biden presidency. It seems the aim was to clarify just how close the U.S. and China are to conflict over Taiwan and other security issues, as well as trying to establish some semblance of trade progress after years of U.S. moves to reduce China’s rise in hi-tech and other products (EVs) that threaten U.S. hegemony.  Indeed, Xi was also meeting U.S. business leaders to try and reassure them that they can invest in China, despite recent moves by the Chinese CP leaders to tighten controls on the capitalist sector.

It does not appear much came out of the meeting apart from agreeing not to attack each other ‘by mistake.’  But while the leaders ‘talked turkey,’ the economic reality is that U.S. efforts to strangle the Chinese economy are not working.  Western ‘experts’ continue their never-ending message that China is close to a debt collapse; China’s property market is imploding; and above all, China’s previous phenomenal growth is now over, and the economy since COVID is grinding to a halt and will end up like Japan, stagnating in a sea of debt.

If this were really so, then Biden and American capital would have nothing to worry about – but they do worry, and rightly so.  Yes, China’s property bubble has burst, and some very large private-sector property developers are going bust.  In previous posts, I have argued that it was a big mistake by the Chinese CP leaders to adopt the Western capitalist model for urban development.  Instead of putting housing construction into the public sector to build homes at reasonable rents for the hundreds of millions of Chinese who have moved into the cities to work, the government allowed private developers (with billionaire owners) to do the job, and now the result is a classic debt-driven bubble that has burst.

And yes, overall debt in the capitalist sector has rocketed.  Now, the government will be forced to liquidate many of these developers and/or ‘restructure’ their operations with state money.  But this does not mean China is about to have a deflationary crash.  China’s net debt to GDP ratio (debt burden) is only 12% of the average in the G7 economies.  The state holds huge financial assets, so it can easily manage this property slump.

The government has just announced that its new Central Financial Commission will take over from the People’s Bank and the existing financial regulator, the control of China’s financial private sector.  The ‘Western experts’ decry this move because they think the market can better allocate investment than the state.  “The temptation to intervene in capital and credit allocation, whether arising from risk or management failure, or from political directive, is likely to be elevated,” said perennial China skeptic George Magnus.  He added. “These features do not augur well for China’s financial stability or economic prospects.”

The point is that the Xi leadership no longer trusts the Western-educated economists in the People’s Bank to regulate the private sector – the bank is a fortress of neo-classical pro-market economics.  The bank’s economists would support Magnus’ approach to free up the finance sector – something so successful in Western economies! But the CP leaders still stop short of bringing these speculative financial and real estate speculators into public ownership (no doubt some leaders have personal links).  Until they do, financial speculation will continue to distort the economy much more than any arbitrary policies of the party leaders.

The Chinese economy is not diving into a recession.  The IMF has just forecast that China’s real GDP will rise by 5.4% this year – and that’s an upgrade from its previous forecast.  The housing market may be struggling, but productive industrial construction is booming.  China has already built enough solar panel factories to meet all demand in the world.  It has built enough auto factories to make every car sold in China, Europe, and the U.S.. By the end of next year, it will have built in just five years as many petrochemical factories that Europe and the rest of Asia have now.

And take hi-speed rail and infrastructure projects.  Back in the U.S., Biden makes much of his infrastructure program after decades of decline and neglect in U.S. transportation facilities.  But that’s nothing to the rapid expansion of high-speed rail and other transport projects that now have linked up the vast expanse of China’s regions.  Compare this to the state of infrastructure in the San Francisco area as Xi visits.

Ah, but you see, China’s economy is seriously ‘imbalanced’.  There is ‘too much’ investment in such projects and not enough handouts to the people to spend on consumer goods like iPhones or services like tourism and restaurants. China cannot grow anymore unless it switches households from saving to spending and investment to consumption.  The old state-led investment and export model is dying.  China will now end up like Japan, stagnating with near-zero growth and a falling population.

I have pointed out the nonsense of this view on several occasions.  China’s growth has been based on a high rate of productive investment – at least until the unproductive capitalist property development sector came overloaded with debt.

But high investment does not mean low consumption growth – on the contrary, investment leads to more production, more jobs, and then more income and consumption.  China’s supposedly low consumption ratio to GDP compared to the highly successful Western capitalist economies is accompanied by a much faster growth in household spending.  Indeed, retail sales rose 7.6% yoy in October – not suggesting an entirely weak consumer.  China’s workers may not have any say in what their government does, but nevertheless, their wages are still rising faster than anywhere else in Asia.

.

And those wage rises are not being eaten away by inflation as has happened in the last few years in the rest of the G20 economies.  China’s inflation rate is near zero, while inflation, despite recent falls, in the U.S. and Europe is several times higher – indeed, U.S. workers have seen prices rise by 17% since COVID.

The Western mainstream economists proclaim China’s ‘disappointing’ economic slowdown (real GDP growth of 5.4% and forecast 4.5% next year), but they say little about Japan. Japan is dropping into stagnation and even slump.  In Q3 2203, real GDP fell 2.1% at an annualized rate (the measure U.S. economists use to bolster the U.S. rate); consumer spending is stagnating, and business investment’s decline is accelerating.

Japan: real GDP growth (annualized rate) %

Japan is joining much of the Eurozone, the UK, Canada, Sweden, New Zealand, etc, in contraction this coming year.

And if Biden is hoping that the upcoming presidential election in Taiwan will lead to a victory for the pro-independence candidate from the Democrat party, then he could be in for a surprise.  It seems that the two anti-independence, pro-China parties, the Kuomintang and People’s Party, are planning to run a single candidate for the presidency and current polls show that such a candidate would win.  So that could mean a pro-China president in Taiwan next year.

Source: Michael Roberts Blog

On Nov. 9, Mississippians rallied to stop the U.S.-Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people. They demonstrated in the capital city, Jackson, at the intersection of Woodrow Wilson and North State Street.