October 2, 2024

Greetings All,

On this Wrongful Conviction Day, Leonard Peltier, the longest-serving Indigenous political prisoner, is incarcerated in lockdown-modified operations conditions at USP Coleman I, operated by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP).

Yet, in this moment of silence, Leonard speaks. To honor his birthday and all those who are unjustly convicted and incarcerated, the Leonard Peltier Official Ad Hoc Committee has released a video of Leonard Peltier that is going viral. Narrated by renowned scholar Ward Churchill and set to a video created by award-winning filmmaker Suzie Baer, the film most importantly centers Leonard’s personal reflection on his 80th year.

Jenipher Jones, Mr. Peltier’s lead counsel, commented, “This powerfully moving film captures the essence of who I know Leonard to be. I am grateful to Professor Churchill and Suzie Baer for their work and longstanding advocacy of Leonard. As the recent execution of Marcellus Williams-Imam Khaliifah Williams shows us, we as a society bear a responsibility to uplift the cases of all those who are wrongfully convicted and also hold the government accountable to do that for which it professes to exist. We must challenge our impulses of blind blood-thirst for guilt and the use of our legal systems to carry out this malignant pathology. There is absolutely no lawful justification for Leonard’s incarceration.”

“Leonard Peltier is Native elder whose wrongful incarceration is shameful. His continued imprisonment exemplifies the historical cruelty of the US Government toward Native people. The US BOP’s treatment of Leonard Peltier is unlawful, and he deserves his freedom.” – Suzie Baer

“Until Leonard Peltier breathes free air, we are all caged. When will this government commit one act of Justice? ” – Dawn Lawson

Below, please find Leonard’s Statement.

To view the film, please visit https://tinyurl.com/Peltier80thPresentation. We hope to have additional updates on Leonard soon. In the meantime, please engage our calls to action or donate to his defense efforts. Miigwech.

LEONARD PELTIER’S 80th BIRTHDAY STATEMENT 2024 ©

Greetings my Friends, Loved Ones, Relatives, Supporters,

When I was a child, I looked to my Elders to learn how to live within Mother Earth’s rhythms.

I yearn to sit by the fire with my loved ones and have our children look to me to learn the mysteries of Mother Earth. I want to laugh, share the pipe, and gaze into the eyes of a woman who does not carry handcuffs.

I have become an Elder. I suppose, in many ways, I am still the nine-year-old who founded The Resistance among my peers at Wahpeton Boarding School, the young man willing to sacrifice everything to protect my people, and the young man who worked hard and played hard when the chance arose.

At the same time, I feel every second of these past eighty years wreaking havoc on my body.

I have been losing my eyesight, but my inner vision is not that of an old man. I long to get out there and work. My mind is filled with ideas to combat the greed and corruption that spread like a poisonous mold through the halls of those who govern us.

When I was sentenced, I stated:

“I do feel pity for your people that they must live under such a ugly system. Under your system you are taught greed, racism and corruption, and the most serious of all, the destruction of our mother earth. Under the native American system we are taught all people are brothers and sisters, to share the wealth with the poor and needy; but the most important of all is to respect and preserve the earth, to me considered to be our mother.”

I could not help but see far and wide. I saw the continued colonization and destruction of Mother Earth and the ongoing termination of an entire People.

I perceive more than most of you know, even in lockdown. I see spirit warriors stand up and speak out; it does my heart good.

I also see the erosion of laws meant to protect our very right to survive. Civil rights used to be a pretense. They were never a true thing. Now, I see that the government is not bothering to pretend.

We cannot continue to allow greed, racism, and corruption to rule us.

Remember, my people. Remember who you are. Mother Earth herself flows through our veins. We endure. The greed, corruption, and disdain of the colonizers will bring them to their ruin. They seek to ravish Mother Earth while chasing the almighty dollar.

We have survived their apocalypse. We are not simply enduring; we are destined to thrive.

The lockdowns have not been kind to my body. I am not going to stand here and cry over what happens to an eighty-year-old body held in lockdown for over four years. I will continue to plan, think, and change what is within my reach.

Hope is a hard thing, but I still hold hope. The parole denial was not unexpected. I will not say I was overjoyed with the outcome, but we knew. They may yet surprise us with the answer to the appeal Jenipher Jones and Moira Meltzer-Cohen filed.

Jenipher Jones has assured me from the start that she is fully committed to my case. I trust her word. Jenipher will fight for me and with me in court if the appeal is rejected.

My friends, I need you to fight for you.

Police are beating children in the streets. The Parole Commission still illegally holds many of us long past our release dates. The Supreme Court has made it impossible for people to challenge wrongful convictions.

Indigenous people are still being forced from our land – we protect Mother Earth. They have stripped her bare and now want our resources. Our people go missing at a staggering rate, and no one blinks.

We are awaiting the Uhuru verdict to determine whether free speech exists, a verdict that may well come down on my eightieth birthday.

And – I am still in prison.

The Constitution reads, “We, the People.”

We must tell those in power we ARE the people.

***

This statement was meant to be released on my 80^th birthday. I was in a ten-day lockdown, and my Board waited for me to approve the final edits.

I regret that no statement was released on my 80^th birthday. I regret that this country has been taken by those who can cage human beings in conditions that would be illegal for dogs.

As I said, I need you to fight for you. I fight every day for my freedom with my legal team. I am now fighting for my life. They sentenced me to Death by Incarceration. They are trying hard to enforce that.

They have never managed to cage my Spirit. They never will. Do not allow anyone to cage yours.

In the Spirit of Crazy Horse

Doksha,

Leonard Peltier

Source: Free Leonard Peltier Now Committee

Get PDF here

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• China & Africa: Mutual assistance to defeat imperialism
• Explosions across Lebanon: Imperialist and Zionist terror escalates war
• Coalition fights illegal auction of Palestinian land in Baltimore
• L.A. protesters shut down Wilshire Boulevard in solidarity with Lebanon
• Protesters denounce U.S.-Israeli mass murder in Lebanon
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• Information war: Telegram under fire for hosting pro-Palestinian content
• Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry: Cruel to tigers and kids
• Make no mistake: Zionist war on Lebanon is a U.S. war
• East Coast dock workers on strike
• Bill Camp ¡Presente!
• Todo nuestro apoyo a la Internacional Antifascista: Declaración de la Casa de las Américas

Oct. 1 — A striking force of almost 50,000 dockworkers from Maine to Texas has halted operations at 36 U.S. ports. Community activists from the People’s Power Assembly joined workers at the Baltimore Locust Point port today in solidarity.

Workers at this site were eager to share their experiences, challenging media narratives portraying them as overpaid and greedy — lies perpetuated by the U.S. Maritime Alliance (USMX). The truth is that union members are constantly on call with no guarantee of work or wages if there are no ships. Their benefits are tied to hours worked in previous years, and they must work at least six years to advance to the top tier. Additionally, the contract spans six years, with automation looming as a threat to their future.

One worker remarked, “They [the shipping companies] can afford to send their kids to Harvard; we are lucky if our kids can go to community college.”

The work environment is grueling and dangerous. ILA workers at Locust Point described horrific incidents involving fellow workers who fell to their deaths or were decapitated. “And if you survive, you are likely to see your pension eroded by unfair rules and manipulations.”  

Additionally, shipping companies have stolen funds meant as wage supplements, known as Container Royalties. The union is demanding that these funds be paid in full to the workers. 

Strikers expressed anger over how companies have repeatedly broken the previous contract.

The primary source of anger among workers centers around the rise of automation, especially as shipping companies raked in millions in profit during the COVID-19 pandemic while longshore workers, considered essential, operated with minimal protection for themselves and their families. The mood among the picketing workers is determined; workers see this as a life-and-death struggle for their future.

For more details from the International Longshoremen’s Association go to: https://ilaunion.org/letter-of-opposition-to-usmxs-misleading-statement/

The last two weeks have seen Zionist escalations against Lebanon, and really the entire Arab world, not seen in decades. This escalation began with the U.S.-Zionist mass murder of more than a thousand Lebanese people through explosive electronic devices on Sept. 17 and 18. 

Occupation forces followed the grizzly pager attack with widespread air strikes on southern Lebanon. In the six days following the initial pager attacks, the Zionist air force launched over 2,000 air strikes against targets across Lebanon. These targets included everything from Hezbollah rocket sites in the south to densely packed apartment complexes in the Beirut suburbs. The strikes resulted in the deaths of thousands of people, including many children and health care workers.

As if those events weren’t filled with enough terror, the regime assassinated Hezbollah Secretary General and liberation icon Hassan Nasrallah and announced a ground offensive into Lebanon proper. 

While there is no doubt that the racist, imperialist project known as “Israel” is the direct weapon used against the people of Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iran, etc. – there is a hand that holds that weapon, and that hand is drenched in blood. 

Every single drop of Lebanese blood shed in this recent onslaught covers the hands of the United States. As Zionist aggression has continued, so has a noxious narrative in U.S. media – mainstream or otherwise. This narrative portrays the U.S. government and military as benevolent actors attempting to restrain Israel, described as a rogue actor.

On Sept. 24, as the Zionist air strikes on Lebanon escalated, CNN reported that “U.S. officials work feverishly to stop the Israel-Hezbollah confrontation from spiraling into a regional war.” The war criminal in chief himself, Joe Biden, repeated his tepid call for a “ceasefire” between “Israel” and Lebanon. 

On Sept. 30, in light of announced IDF incursions into Lebanon, Business Insider asserted that the raids were the “latest sign Netanyahu is ignoring Biden’s warnings.” Just a day later, SkyNews asked, “Biden was clear – so why is Israel defying its closest ally?” The article went on to chide Netanyahu for refusing to follow the U.S.’ lead in seeking a “ceasefire.” 

The assertion of this narrative is clear: The U.S. is, as always, the good guy, and Netanyahu is simply out of control. Simply, this narrative is a lie. 

You may not have seen that U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, the head of the Pentagon, a retired four-star general who was also a board member at military contractor giant Raytheon Technologies, publicly corrected Biden and said that the U.S. is not for a ceasefire. Austin said he had spoken to his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, and that Gallant had agreed to launch what Austin called the “necessary” operation in Lebanon, including the ground invasion. The Pentagon sets the policy.

As the entirety of Lebanon took cover from U.S.-funded Zionist strikes, “Israel” secured another $8.7 billion in military aid from the U.S.. The U.S. government does not want legitimate deescalation in this conflict because the defense industrial complex that the U.S. politicians and bureaucrats represent want the opposite of de-escalation in the Middle East. An expanded Zionist war against Lebanon means expanded profits for Raytheon, General Dynamics, and Boeing. 

If the U.S. government really wanted peace, they would not provide “Israel” the means to so provocatively strike at the empire’s enemies in the region. It is ridiculous for the U.S. government to provide the Zionist regime with all the weapons of terror it could hope for. That’s not what anyone seeking a diplomatic solution would do. 

The Zionist project is only able to strike at the people of Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen, Iran, and Syria because the U.S. equips and empowers them to do so. No U.S. imperialist outpost – no war. It really is that simple. 

As this war escalates, the U.S. cannot be allowed to escape pressure and retribution for unleashing this genocidal onslaught against the entirety of the Middle East. 

Long live the resistance! 

Lev Koufax is an anti-Zionist Jewish activist.

Introduction

Oct. 1, 2024, marks the 75th anniversary of China’s earth-shaking revolution, which broke the chains of feudal slavery and imperialist domination.  

The Communist Party of China, under the leadership of Mao Zedong, commonly known as Chairman Mao, both inside China and among the world’s oppressed, did what was considered near impossible.  The revolution ended China’s “Century of Humiliation,” which began with the British imperialists’ First Opium War in 1839.

Widespread famine, floods, and forced labor, as well as severely shortened lifespans, marked the era of imperialist domination.  China’s huge landmass and difficult terrain made it seemingly impossible to unite the diverse population, including its numerous ethnic groups. 

In 1949, only 20% of the population could read, and the life expectancy was 35 years.  China was primarily a rural peasant economy; its working class was tiny in comparison. There was almost no industrialization or education. But by 1975, the revolution had increased life expectancy to 65.5 years.

The newly founded People’s Republic of China, under the banner, “Women hold up half the sky,” abolished arranged marriage, child brides, and concubinage.  The status of women was uplifted and enshrined in the 1950 Marriage Law and the Land Law.

In the last 75 years, progress for the masses and China’s working class has been remarkable. 

In 2012, China’s President Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee, vowed to eradicate the vestiges of extreme poverty by 2020. Despite the additional challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese government proudly proclaimed the eradication of extreme poverty on November 23, 2020. 

The World Bank, indeed no friend of the Communist Party of China, declared that China has lifted over 850 million people out of poverty. “By any measure, the speed and scale of China’s poverty reduction is historically unprecedented. With this, China has contributed close to three-quarters of the global reduction in the number of people living in extreme poverty.”  

China is now a world scientific power.  It has built high-speed trains and affordable electric cars, reduced pollution and carbon emissions, and engaged in space exploration. The People’s Republic of China’s accomplishments have spanned the gamut from health care to education and sports. 

China is the world’s second-largest economy by nominal GDP (Gross Domestic Product), behind the United States, and since 2017 has been the world’s largest economy when measured by purchasing power parity (PPP).

GDP is the monetary market value of all final goods and services made within a country during a specific period.  What is not measured by this standard is how that is distributed.  

PPP is an alternative way to measure GDP that takes into account the differences in the cost of living between countries. It adjusts the GDP figures to reflect the actual purchasing power of a country’s currency. When measured by PPP, China’s economy has been larger than that of the United States since 2017. The cost of living in China is generally lower than in the United States. This means that the same amount of money can buy more goods and services in China than in the U.S.

The development of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) by China, in contrast to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which demands austerity and cutbacks for loans, has contributed to the developing countries of the Global South. 

The BRI is aimed at building infrastructure that links land and sea.  In Africa, this includes railways in Kenya, an electric railway in Ethiopia, and hydropower stations in Uganda. Washington, which does not contribute to local development, mainly ships weapons and war munitions to Africa, building AFRICOM — the U.S. Africa Command, a unified combat command of the Pentagon.

Global class war and China

Revolutionary change and the struggles of the working class don’t happen in isolation; international events and global pressures influence them. The same applies to the material conditions that shape them.

What the Communist Party of China and the Chinese working class have faced, whether through external or internal pressure, trade wars, attempts at dismemberment, military threats, or hot war, can best be described as a global class war. This struggle primarily pits U.S. imperialism against the working class worldwide, especially in countries intent on building socialism and liberating themselves from imperialist control.

The approach of U.S. monopoly capitalism has not, at any moment, adopted a hands-off policy regarding building socialism in China, nor, for that matter, anywhere else in the world. They are for intervention against socialism everywhere.

It’s important to underscore that in the decades preceding the success of the 1949 revolution, the United States military and government were already playing a role in attempting to defeat the Chinese communist revolutionaries by supplying arms to the reactionary Kuomintang. 

Both the bloody Korean and Vietnam wars were equally about containing, encircling, and strangling China, along with defeating the liberation aspirations of the Korean and Vietnamese people. 

The Pentagon visited unfathomable destruction on both northern Korea and Vietnam. It bombed North Korea to rubble and engaged in carpet bombing and deforestation in Vietnam.  An estimated 2.5 million Koreans lost their lives, and the estimated deaths of Vietnamese range from 1 to 3 million. The people of both the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam successfully moved heaven and earth to rebuild.

The 1989 reactionary Tiananmen Square “student rebellion” characterized as a massacre by the West and later exposed as a lie might possibly be described as a much earlier attempt, failed as it was, at “color revolution” (the name given to Western-backed attempts at regime change starting with the Rose Revolution in the country of Georgia in 2003). 

Throw in the Dalai Lama and the CIA-led “Tibetan independence movement,” and the Falun Gong project, and you can see the pattern of lies meant to turn all manner of sympathy against the CPC and direct efforts to divide and dismember the People’s Republic of China.

The key to China’s ability to hold off counter-revolution and to weather imperialist schemes is that the Communist Party of China and its government, backed by the People’s Liberation Army, have continued to hold state power in the name of the working class. China continues to have a planned economy based on the state-owned infrastructure.  

Today’s heightened danger

The present decade has brought bigger challenges. The maneuvers by U.S. imperialism have been increasingly more dangerous and point in the direction of a hot war centered around Taiwan. The U.S. NATO proxy war against Russia and the increasing regional war in Western Asia, with Palestine as its central flash point, should be seen as one.

What undergirds and fuels this crisis is the contraction of monopoly capitalism.  More than ever, the U.S. economy relies less on production for use and more on spending and development for what is popularly called the military-industrial complex.  The capitalist banking system is intertwined with these developments.  It is the super fuel for inflation and the deepening impoverishment of the broader working class, making larger war inevitable.

Lenin’s thesis on imperialism is more important than ever. The drive toward war is independent of political administrations or individual intentions, regardless of how venal or corrupt.  As the global capitalist crisis deepens, the U.S. imperialist system is propelled toward wider war. 

Our role in the “belly of the beast” is clear.  

The global working class, including U.S. workers, who increasingly embody a diverse collective of nations, must be united in solidarity with the working class of China.

The vast majority of the people of the United States have nothing in common with the multi-trillion dollar bankers and war profiteers who are promoting the war buildup against China.

This book, “The U.S. War Drive Against China: What it means for workers,” is an effort to expose the increasing danger of a U.S. war against China and to reveal the real enemies of the working class.

“Over the past 65 years, China and Africa have forged unbreakable fraternity in our struggle against imperialism and colonialism, and embarked on a distinct path of cooperation in our journey toward development and revitalization. Together, we have written a splendid chapter of mutual assistance.” 

– Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, President of the People’s Republic of China

That message was delivered at the Eighth Ministerial Conference of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). These powerful words against colonialism and imperialism were said in 2021, during a time when the COVID-19 pandemic especially affected Africa — a continent victim that has endured colonialism and imperialism, as well as the struggle for access to vaccine production. 

While the U.S. and Europe put profits before the needs of the victims of colonialism and imperialism, President Xi chose to put those words of solidarity into action.

In that address, President Xi pledged 1 billion vaccine doses to African countries, planning to achieve a 60% vaccination rate in Africa by 2022. In 2021, the cumulative total population coverage with ≥1 dose ranged by country from 0.3%. Xi announced that 600 million doses were donated and 400 million would be produced by joint production projects with Chinese companies and African countries – allowing a further boost in infrastructure and self-determination on the African continent.

The 2024 FOCAC Summit that ended Sept. 6 remained consistent in direction: “Following the Eighth FOCAC Ministerial Conference in Dakar in 2021, we have worked together to fully implement the nine programs and deliver on other outcomes of the meeting.”

The relationship is also mutual in benefit. Xi thanked the African countries that helped restore China’s lawful seat in the United Nations — last year marked the 50th anniversary of that achievement. China also benefits from Africa’s markets and the need for access to the continent’s lithium, cobalt, and other minerals.

Turn 180 degrees from this relationship of mutual benefit, and you land at the feet of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, the imperialist financial institutions demanding austerity cutbacks for loans.

Nigeria is facing the worst economic crisis, with inflation levels not seen in almost three decades due to the austerity demands to secure IMF financing. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that 26.5 million of Nigeria’s 220 million people are food insecure.

The primary architects of the IMF at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944 — the United States and Britain — ensured that African, Latin American, and Asian self-determination would be denied. 

At the end of World War II, the Bretton Woods system established U.S. dominance of the world economy, with the U.S. dollar becoming the world’s primary reserve currency for international trade and finance. Most world trade is conducted in U.S. dollars, not local currencies.

The IMF does not contribute to the development of essential infrastructure within a country; instead, it focuses on privatization and significantly reducing social spending.

Zambia faced strong-arm pressure from Canada, the IMF, the World Bank, and First Quantum Minerals in the 1980s. The denial of crucial economic aid jeopardized Zambia’s survival. Consequently, the country was forced to privatize its nationalized copper mines in 1990, allowing companies like First Quantum to acquire them cheaply. Additionally, Zambia was forced to appoint a former vice president of the Bank of Canada as the governor of the Bank of Zambia. This guaranteed long-term poverty for Zambian workers … until now.

A turn around pointing upward

“China is ready to use its experience and help Zambia unlock its development potential,” said Chinese Ambassador to Zambia Han Jing at a press briefing held Sept. 12 in the Zambian capital of Lusaka after the end of the 2024 FOCAC Summit in Beijing.

Han said China was working with Zambia to make strategic plans for multiple means of power generation, storage, and distribution to help end the current power cuts and make Zambia an electricity exporter.

In 2013, China introduced the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), aimed at building infrastructure that links land and sea for the economic and social development of the Global South. In Africa, this includes railways in Kenya, an electric railway in Ethiopia, and hydropower stations in Uganda.

While the Belt and Road Initiative focuses on substantial infrastructure development through land and sea projects, the Digital Silk Road is about enhancing digital connectivity and fostering economic growth in a digital landscape for the countries involved. 

In 2022, the technology sector in BRI countries saw a remarkable surge in engagement, achieving a staggering 7536% growth compared to the previous year, according to the Africa-China Center for Policy and Advisory.

Many African nations resisted U.S. pressure from the Trump administration against engaging with China, the Africa Policy Research Institute reported. As of September 2021, approximately 70% of the 4G base stations in Africa were built by the Chinese company Huawei. This is alongside the contributions of other Chinese firms in the development of fiber optics throughout the continent.

Which explains why Huawei was targeted by the U.S. Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou was arrested on Dec. 1, 2018, at Vancouver International Airport by Canadian authorities. She was on a stopover from Hong Kong during a business trip to Mexico City. Meng faced allegations of violating U.S. sanctions that barred trade with Iran and was taken into custody, pending extradition to the United States.

It is not solely the Republicans or Trump who assume a godlike role in their decision-making. In 1998, President Clinton authorized a missile strike on the Al-Shifa Pharmaceutical Plant in Sudan, resulting in one fatality and injuring others. This action was based on false claims that the facility was manufacturing a VX nerve agent. The plant was crucial for producing essential malaria medication for the African continent. Although Clinton later admitted that the information was incorrect, the U.S. government refused to pay for the devastation caused and did not mind the rising malaria-related fatalities that followed.

At the 2024 Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation held in Beijing, China outlined its plans to address malaria. According to the World Malaria Report 2023, Africa accounted for 94% of global malaria cases and 95% percent of malaria-related deaths in 2022.

Chinese scientists have developed solutions that resulted in a significant decrease in malaria cases and infection rates in the pilot regions following treatment. The World Health Organization is now collaborating with the CDC’s parasitic disease team to expand malaria projects in Tanzania, Zambia, and Senegal.

The Clinton bombing, which contributed to the spread of malaria in Africa, was answered by China’s action. It is important to note that during the 1960s, both the Soviet Union and China facilitated the liberation of 17 African nations from colonial rule by providing military support. In fact, the liberation fighters in former Rhodesia received military assistance from China, and one of the earliest freedom fighters to receive training there is the current President of Zimbabwe, Emmerson Mnangagwa. Furthermore, Zimbabwe continues to receive military aid from China.

Threatening the world with rhetoric about remaining “lethal,” as Presidential candidate Kamala Harris stated at the DNC, underscores that it ultimately does not matter whether such threats originate from Republicans or Democrats when they enable racism and genocide. African people, like the Palestinian people, know how to fight back; they are not alone in their struggle for liberation.

Sept.  24 — Why China? That’s a question I have had to answer a lot these past few months. Whether it be family, friends, or previous co-workers, everyone wants to know why I have chosen to apply to Wuhan University for law school. 

I’m 23 years old and a recent graduate of college. I am also the first person in my Black working-class family to graduate from college.  Since I was a teenager, I’ve always wanted to be a lawyer, with my specific interest being international law. 

It was my dream to serve as counsel on the International Criminal Court. However, given the recent failure of ICC lawyers to bring Israel and its genocidal supporters to heel, I no longer live under any delusions about international law’s capabilities in the current world order. 

While it is true that there are a myriad of U.S.-based law schools that provide international law programs for students to enroll in, the problem that I have continuously found myself in is cost. I have no help to finance furthering my education and already have around $20,000 of student loan debt. 

The slight humor to this situation is that I’m considered lucky compared to other recent Gen-Z graduates, as the average student loan debt is currently over $37,000. I offer this to give perspective on why I would consider what most have politely told me is a drastic change of scenery. 

While I must admit the prospect of such change at first was scary, especially since this would be the furthest I have ever traveled, I now embrace the change. The first two reasons I offer to those who ask are cost and cultural experience. Like so many others my age, I want to receive an education for my passions and have ambitions of turning those passions into a career. 

The better option is obvious

The School of International Law at Wuhan University has one of the world’s top international law programs and thousands of students worldwide enroll every semester. The total cost for the duration of the program, 2 years, is currently a little over $9,000. In comparison, the tuition costs for Georgetown University Law Center’s three-year program are over $79,000 per year. To any student, the better option is obvious. 

Most, if not all, young adults in Gen-Z cannot afford to take out loans to cover this amount of money, nor can they attach all their hopes to receiving scholarships from philanthropists who are only interested in receiving a tax write-off. 

China has a rich history that more people should want to experience, not to mention their public transportation systems allow both the Chinese people and visitors to fully enjoy what the country has to offer. 

It surprised me when I found out that the Chinese government allots money in the form of scholarships to students from dozens of countries around the world, the U.S. being one of them. All that is required is that an interested student applies directly with the Chinese government, most likely through an embassy in their country or the university itself. 

Unsurprisingly, the U.S., Britain, and Australia are amongst the lowest student populations to utilize the scholarship monies provided. This needs to change, as there should be as few barriers to higher education as possible, despite the ruling class’s desire to keep people stuck in perpetual debt. If the international community welcomes me with open arms, I think it only makes sense to accept the invitation and learn from people worldwide.  

While I’m sure many may not understand my decision to go outside the box of U.S. conventionalism, all I have to offer is that those with my circumstances, will and do understand. Some have even offered to visit me while I’m there. I am the first in my family to graduate from college, and while that is something to celebrate, my story does not end there. I have always wanted to be part of the international community, to see for myself what is true and what is not, and to work with others around the world to bring true justice to the working class. 

True international solidarity rooted in the working class is not something any U.S. law program could ever offer, and thus, it’s not for me anymore. Although I wrote this to explain why I decided to make this decision, I’m hoping that this gives information to other young people interested in doing the same. 

A telling comparison between capitalist decay in the United States and surging economic growth in the socialist People’s Republic of China is in their railroad systems.

Between 1950 and 2000, more than 79,000 miles of railroad lines were abandoned in the United States. Passenger service, now run by Amtrak, has withered.

Meanwhile, China has greatly increased its railroad network and now has 100,000 miles of track. China has built twice as many miles of high-speed rail than the rest of the world combined.

Last year, Chinese railways carried 3.68 billion passengers. That’s 10 million passengers daily, a hundred times Amtrak’s ridership.

China’s railroads are on schedule to move 4 billion metric tons of freight in 2024. That’s about three times the U.S. total. 

Socialist China will invest almost $108 billion in its railroads this year. That’s four-and-half times the $23 billion railroad monopolies in the capitalist United States spend on average. 

How about urban transport? China has 55 cities with subway systems. Just in Beijing, three new metro lines will open this year. 

In contrast, New York City has been trying to complete the construction of the Second Avenue subway for a century. Wall Street’s hometown may be the only metropolis with less rapid transit than it had in the 1930s. That’s because elevated lines were torn down without replacing them with subways.

The biggest victims of capitalist railroad shrinkage in the U.S. are railroad workers. There were two million workers on the railroads in 1920.

The Great Depression helped reduce railroad employment to 1.5 million workers in 1947. Since then, railroad jobs have fallen by 90%, with just 151,200 railroaders working in August 2024.

That’s a smaller number of railroad workers than in 1870, one year after the first transcontinental railroad in the United States was completed. These massive job cuts devastated railroad towns coast to coast.

Railroads and racism

Before any railroads were built in China, 15,000 Chinese immigrants were indispensable to building the transcontinental railroad across the Sierra Nevada mountains in California and Nevada. At least a thousand were killed.

Chinese workers, who were 90% of the Central Pacific’s workforce, were paid as low as $26 a month, considerably less than their white counterparts. When they went on strike in 1867 over these dangerous conditions and low pay, their demands were ignored by the wealthy railroad moguls.

These tycoons included Leland Stanford, who founded Stanford University, and Charles Crocker, whose Crocker National Bank was merged into Wells Fargo in 1986.

When you hear reactionaries from Stanford University and its Hoover Institution attack the People’s Republic of China, remember that Stanford’s endowment includes the blood of Chinese immigrants.

Chinese workers were not given any thanks for their vital contribution. At the May 10, 1969, centennial of the Golden Spike ceremony, marking the transcontinental railroad’s completion — now all part of the Union Pacific — Transportation Secretary John Volpe refused even to mention the Chinese railroad workers.

Two years after the Golden Spike, working people in Paris “stormed heaven,” in Karl Marx’s words, and formed the Paris Commune, the first working-class government. The same year, in Los Angeles, then a village with a population of 6,000, 18 Chinese people were lynched in an 1871 pogrom.

Ten percent of the local Chinese population were murdered. Sixty years later, the city’s Chinese community was forced to move so Union Station could be built.

In the capitalist United States, railroads and racism went hand-in-hand. Before the Civil War, 9,000 miles of railroads were built by enslaved Africans.

Thousands more miles of tracks were laid after the Civil War by Black prisoners. Among them was the “steel-driving man” John Henry, who was worked to death building the Chesapeake and Ohio, now part of the CSX system. The capitalist running the C&O was Collis P. Huntington, one of the Central Pacific’s founders.

Another big railroad capitalist was the former slave owner Johns Hopkins, whose fortune came from the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O), now also part of CSX. His loot established Johns Hopkins University and its medical school in Baltimore.

General George Custer had it coming. He died for the Northern Pacific — now part of billionaire Warren Buffet’s BNSF — that was invading Lakota Sioux land.

Capitalism vs. socialism

About 41 high-speed trains travel daily between the Chinese capital of Beijing and Shanghai. They take around four-and-a-half hours to make the 819-mile trip.

Amtrak has one train, the Capitol Limited, between Washington D.C. and Chicago. It takes 17.5 hours to cover the 764-mile distance.

None of this is the fault of Amtrak workers. It’s the result of decades of a capitalist class allowing much of the railroad system to decay.

On Oct. 1, 1949, Mao Zedong declared that “China has stood up.” The People’s Republic of China was born. At the time there were maybe 12,000 miles of operable railroad track in the country.

Seventy-five years later, China’s railroad network has increased eight times in length and many more times in capacity. Almost all of it is owned and operated by the socialist government. There are 2.2 million railroad workers in China.

U.S. railroads were so dangerous that one in nine rail workers was injured in 1909. One in 205 were killed.

The response of the old Interstate Commerce Commission – abolished in 1996 in the name of deregulation – was to stop collecting these embarrassing statistics. (“The Economic History of the United States” by Ernest Bogart)

Two years ago, railroad tycoons like Warren Buffett refused to agree to sick days for railroaders whose work schedules could include any time of day or night, any day of the week.
We need what the People’s Republic of China has: a socialist railroad system. The people need to take over the railroads.

The writer is a retired Amtrak worker and a member of the American Train Dispatchers Association and Transportation Communications International Union.

The U.S. was behind the Sept. 27 assassination of Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in an apocalyptic bombing attack using 85 U.S.-built and supplied BLU-109 bunker-buster bombs in a residential area of Beirut. 

Nasrallah had led the Lebanon-based liberation organization for 32 years. His assassination was part of a broader massacre, as the same Israeli airstrikes resulted in the deaths and injuries of hundreds of Lebanese civilians.

The same attack that resulted in Nasrallah’s death also took the life of Brigadier General Abbas Nilforooshan, the deputy chief of operations for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Council. 

Nasrallah’s daughter, Zainab Nasrallah, was also killed.

Israeli airstrikes in the following days killed Hamas’ leader in Lebanon, Fateh Sherif Abu el-Amin, along with his family. Another Israeli airstrike in Beirut killed the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) military security chief, Mohammad Abd al-Aal, military commander Imad Odeh, and  Abdelrahman Abd al-Aal.

On Oct. 1, the Associated Press reported that the Israeli Occupation Force “has moved into southern Lebanon … opening a new front” in its war on the people of Palestine and of Lebanon. 

Nasrallah’s assassination was ordered from New York City by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, where he appeared before a nearly empty U.N. General Assembly meeting. Netanyahu’s office released a photo of him inside an office at the U.N. headquarters in New York while using a landline telephone to approve the strike on Beirut. 

Responsibility lies ultimately with the U.S., which finances and arms the Zionist regime. President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris – both Democrats – and Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson have expressed support for the bombing, praising the assassination. The U.S. recently authorized an additional $8.7 billion in arms to Israel, facilitating its ongoing actions in Gaza, the West Bank, Yemen, and now Lebanon.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III spoke twice with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in the hours before the bombing attack, presumably giving the order to proceed (the tail does not wag the dog; Austin is the commanding officer, the head of the Pentagon, and he gives the orders, not the other way around as the official news reports claim). The news report added that General Austin “expressed full support for Israel’s” operation in Lebanon and “made it clear that the United States remains committed to the defense of Israel.”

Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah was a brilliant leader who twice defeated Israel. Nasrallah was killed due to his unwavering support for Palestine. 

The great Palestinian scholar Edward Said recalled meeting the “remarkably impressive” Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and noted he “adopted a strategy toward Israel quite similar to that of the Vietnamese against the Americans: We cannot fight them because they have an army, a navy, and a nuclear option, so the only way we can do it is to make them feel it in body bags.”

Hezbollah is a political party in Lebanon born out of the resistance against Israel’s illegal invasion and military occupation of southern Lebanon in the 1980s and 1990s. 

Nasrallah and Hezbollah spearheaded the resistance against Israel on two occasions, resulting in significant victories: first, when Israel was compelled to withdraw from Lebanon in 2000, and second, when Israel failed to overcome Hezbollah in 2006.

Nasrallah knew precisely who the oppressor was in the region. “It is America that controls Israel,” he declared:

“There is a misconception prevalent in the Arab world regarding ‘Israel’-U.S. relations. We keep repeating this lie about the Zionist lobby — that the Jews rule America and are the real decision-makers, and so on. No. America itself is the decision maker. In America, you have the major corporations; you have a trinity of the oil companies, the weapons industry, and the so-called ‘Christian Zionism.’ The decision-making is in the hands of this alliance. ‘Israel’ used to be a tool at the hands of the British, and now it is a tool in the hands of America.

“The recent call from Biden (to Netanyahu) proves everything I said before. If the Americans want to stop something, they can make it stop. The claim that the Americans cannot force Israel to do something is nonsense. According to some theories, Israel controls America. No sir, it is America that controls Israel.”

Long live the resistance in Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and Iran! 

Defeat U.S. imperialism!

Rain didn’t stop nearly a thousand people from coming to New York City’s Times Square on Sept. 29 to protest the assassinations and mass murder of Lebanese people by the Zionist apartheid regime. The emergency action was called by the Shut It Down Coalition and the Palestinian Youth Movement.

Speakers pointed out that it was the U.S. supplied and paid for 2,000-pound bombs that murdered Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and their fellow freedom fighters. Over a thousand Lebanese have been killed, and hundreds of thousands have been forced to flee their homes by the attacks.

The U.S. first invaded Lebanon 66 years ago in response to the Iraqi Revolution that overthrew Big Oil’s puppet monarchy on July 14, 1958 — Bastille Day. The Pentagon invaded again in the early 1980s before they were thrown out by the Lebanese people.

Protesters were somber, defiant, and angry as they marched through Manhattan streets to the skyscraper headquarters of the New York Times. The newspaper has been lying about Palestine for over 76 years, before the Zionist settler state was established. 

Typical of the lying capitalist media was the New York Times’ Sept. 29 opinion piece, “Why the World’s Biggest Powers Can’t Stop a Middle East War.” The truth is that U.S. capitalism and its Biden-Harris administration just signed off on another $8.7 billion in weapons to Netanyahu’s killing machine.

Behind all the Zionist atrocities is U.S. and European imperialism. 

The French colonialists thought they had won the Battle of Algiers, but five years later, they were kicked out of Algeria. Lebanon and Palestine will win.