On Sept. 17, the Baltimore Peoples Power Assembly, with a coalition that included the Palestinian Youth Movement and Jewish Voices for Peace, staged a counter-demonstration against a Baltimore area “Israeli Real Estate Expo.” In reality, this “expo” was an illegal auction of Palestinian land in Gaza and the West Bank to would-be Zionist settlers. 

These land sales have occurred across the country as Zionist real estate firms smell opportunity in the wake of the genocidal Zionist war that has raged since Oct. 7, 2023. The Pikesville Hilton DoubleTree hosted the blood land sale and became a fortress for a few hours on what would have normally been a sleepy Tuesday night. The police harassed the demonstration’s every movement, and a local attorney was stopped by the police when simply trying to serve a legal cease and desist demand on the hotel. 

Pikesville is a historically Jewish suburb of Baltimore. The bulk of Baltimore’s Jewish community relocated to the northwest suburb in the mid-20th century as part of broader white flight from Baltimore proper. In the decades since that flight, Pikesville has morphed into something of a Zionist stronghold. 

As such, the Baltimore County Police Department mobilized most, if not all, of its active officers in the Pikesville precinct to confront the pro-Palestine demonstrators. The Baltimore County gestapo officers were aggressive, threatening, and at times violent toward the protest, which numbered around a hundred people. The pro-Palestine protest was simply a noise demo with chants, drums, Palestine flags, and the like. This is important to note, considering how the events played out. 

As the afternoon progressed, Zionist provocateurs became more and more aggressive towards the protest. This reached a height with multiple assaults on pro-Palestine demonstrators and a wave of homophobic, racist, and, ironically, anti-semitic slurs hurled at the protest. Through all that vitriol, the Baltimore County gestapo took no action against Zionist provocateurs except to take them to safety. 

The same cannot be said for the gestapo’s actions toward the pro-Palestine protest. By the end of the night, the police had arrested a protester, who they charged with assaulting an officer and disorderly conduct, and held overnight on $15,000 bail. To call this a disgrace would be the understatement of the year. 

However, this repression did not stop the crowd from rallying late into the night, gestapo police and Zionists be damned. No Zionist left the land auction that night without hearing the chants of those who would see the end of the Zionist apartheid regime. 

As long as the Palestinian people are denied justice, then no Zionist nor their supporters will have peace. 

Lev Koufax is an anti-Zionist Jewish activist.

The Nigerian government was clearly very worried by the scale and support for the protests in early August against its anti-human policies of increased fuel prices, higher electric tariffs, unpaid low minimum wages, higher school fees, higher tax rates, higher food prices, higher transport costs and bad governance. They hope that heavy repression will stop future protests against hunger, higher petrol prices and bad governance.

The state tortured dozens and hundreds remain in detention. Some are being held well beyond the constitutional limit of 48 hours before going to court. The High Court in Abuja gave the police a further 60 days for holding over 70 young men from Kano. They are accused of waving Russian flags, that became the symbol of resistance in Kano. This is clearly not illegal in Nigeria.

In Abuja, another 10 people are also being held for the serious crime of treason, incitement to mutiny and levying war against the state. This is despite the complete lack of any evidence for these crimes. They are being represented by Femi Falana who has led and won the defence for four previous treason trials.

The President of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), Joe Ajaero, was detained by the secret police for 12 hours on 9 September 2024 and stopped from attending the Trade Union Congress meeting in Britain.  The NLC gained his release by organising for an indefinite general strike. The NLC in their initial press release over the detention of their President correctly said:

We equally demand that the state frees all Nigerians languishing in various prisons around the country for exercising their democratic rights to protest in the #endbadgovernance rallies around the country.

Unfortunately, these other demands were immediately forgotten with the release of Joe Ajaero the same day. Another trade union leader is still being held in prison after being picked up at 2am six weeks ago.

Eleojo Opaluwa, of the electrician’s union (NUEE) is being held with nine others in Kuje Prison. They face a range of serious charges including conspiracy to commit treason, inciting to mutiny and organising for a war against the state (each charge carry’s the death penalty). These charges arise from alleged organising and participating in the #endbadgovernance and #endhunger protests in early August.

However, the police case is extremely weak, especially as the ten detainees hardly know each other, despite being accused of conspiracy. Five lived in Abuja, but the other five were brought from Kano for waving Russian flags.

Six of the detainees are Muslim and the rest are Christians. They range in age from 21 to 51 years. Five are in their twenties and two are in their fifties. Nine are men and one is a woman. It would be hard to find a more diverse group of people.

The only thing that appears to unite the five detainees from Abuja is that they were all members of a WhatsApp group that was created on 27 July.  They are not all admin members of the group, and some of the admin members have not been accused by the police. There were around 450 members of the WhatsApp group at its height with around 30 having left.

The backgrounds of the five detainees from Abuja are:

• Michael Adaramoye (28 years) was brought up in a Christian family. He attended Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife. Michael is a writer and content creator by profession. He has committed his intellect and youthful energy to contributing to the building of a better society.

• Mosiu Sodiq (29 years) is a young practicing Muslim. He was born and raised in Lagos. He has a diploma from Kwara State Polytechnic, Ilorin. He is a graphics designer and printer based in Abuja where he has lived for more than half a decade.

• Adeyemi Abiodun Abayomi (34 years) is a devoted Christian and family man with a three-year-old daughter. He was brought up in Kaduna and graduated from Ekiti State University (TUNEDIK) with a degree in Computer Science in 2016.  He ran Iva Valley Books for the last year.

• Eleojo Opaluwa (50 years) is a Christian from Kogi State. He is married with four children. He is graduate, he also has a master’s degree in criminology from the National Open University, Abuja. His first child is at university and the other three are still in school. He is the organizer for the Nigerian Union of Electrical Employees (NUEE) in FCT. He is also Vice Chair of NLC for Kogi State.

• Angel Love Innocent (51 years) is a Christian. She has one 16-year-old son and works in the real estate business in Abuja and has several other business interests.

The names and ages of the five detainees brought from Kano are: Buhari Lawal 21 years; Bashir Bello 21 years; Suleiman Yakubu, 28 years; Abdulsalam Zubairu 37 years; and Nuradeen Khamis 47 years.

The economy in Nigeria has grown well, especially over the period 2000 to 2015. As a result, the GDP is now at least five times larger than it was at the turn of the Millennium. However, all this additional wealth, and some, has been looted by the tiny corrupt elite. The majority of the population are now significantly poorer than they were at the end of the military era in 1999. This growth in poverty has accelerated massively in the last 15 months. This is primarily due to the new Government allowing the price of petrol to shoot up and massive devaluation of the local currency.

The trade unions have a militant tradition, but their action is increasingly not meeting the required demands. As a result, for example, the real value of the minimum wage (which greatly influences all public sector salaries) has halved over the last five years. In 2019, the then new level of the minimum wage could buy 200 litres of petrol. At the end of July this year, when the recent increase of the minimum wage became law, it would only buy 100 litres of petrol. Recent shortages mean it will only buy around 50 litres or less.

The new president of the NLC, the main trade union centre, Joe Ajaero, has called at least half a dozen general strikes since he took up his position in February last year. However, all the strikes were called off before they were due to start or after not much more than a day.

The mass protests at the beginning of August showed the extent of the hunger in the land. In some places all the young men from a whole community joined massive almost spontaneous demonstrations. This was met with horrendous government repression. Around 40 protesters were murdered by the police and other security forces being shot dead on the protests and tear gas was widely used; perhaps 1,500 arrested and detained with  no legal representation or access to the courts.

Millions of Nigerians supported the #endbadgovernance/#endhunger Protests from 1 August. It is this that has upset the government. The police appear to have picked up a random group of people to be punished for the activities of hundreds of thousands – it is obviously beyond the capacity of the Nigerian state to arrest every demonstrator. . We can only hope that all detained demonstrators  are found not guilty in the near future.

Many other detainees are being held, especially in the far northern towns and cities from Sokoto in the West, through Kano to Maiduguri in the east. In one court case in mid-September, 37 protesters were released after up to six weeks in jail and 48 were given quite tough bail conditions (paying the equivalent of three years of the minimum wage).

Further protests are being called from 1 October and some local ones are still taking place. Next time these protests need the full support from the NLC.  A coalition of the masses in the streets and a robust general strike can easily defeat this government. Then we can begin to see the reduction of hunger, poverty and inequality across Nigeria.

Source: ROAPE

Calling Haitian migrants “pet eaters” is racist and dehumanizing. So is the continued attack on Haitian sovereignty by the U.S. and its global allies.

The anti-Haitian utterances by the Republican presidential ticket unleashed an avalanche of racist memes and jokes about Haitians, Haitian migrants, and U.S. citizens of Haitian descent. It began with Ohio senator and Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance’s tweet claiming – falsely – that “Haitian illegal immigrants” were “draining social services and generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio.” Vance continued the lie by asserting, “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country.” Donald Trump was quick to follow up and double down on Vance’s slanderous comments. In the televised presidential debate with Kamala Harris, Trump insinuated that Haitian migrants were “eating the pets, eating the dogs, eating the cats” of Ohio’s citizens.

Soon, hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. and around the world gleefully joined in, contributing to a racist pile-on that has seen a violent backlash against Springfield’s Haitian population. Bomb threats have caused the closure of local schools, Springfield’s city hall, and other locations. Families have been attacked. Many Haitians have been afraid to leave their homes. Others have fled the small Ohio town. It did not matter that the story was fake: it had started when a racist white woman, Erika Lee, posted a false story about her friend’s Haitian neighbors supposedly stealing and eating cats, and was deliberately amplified by a nazi group in Ohio in an effort to demonize Haitians.

The nazi efforts to demonize Haitians clearly worked. And it worked, in part, because it was buoyed by a long-standing, everyday racist anti-Haitian ideology in the United States – and in the West. In fact, while Ohio’s Haitian migrants have since received sympathetic attention from the corporate media (who have run stories about Haitian migrants as ideal factory workers and dignified individuals with a proud history), it is more typical of this same media to attack, slander, and demonize Haiti and Haitian people.

With so many people expressing surprise and disdain about the racist vitriol against Haitian migrants in the U.S., one could be forgiven for not knowing that this is not the first, or second, or third time that Haitian migrants have been slandered with racist vitriol. Slandering Haiti has been a pastime for the white west since the late 1700s, when enslaved Africans rose up to fight their white enslavers and won, disrupting white supremacy and changing the definition of “freedom” and the “human” in the process. 

During the early years of Haiti’s existence, Haitians were disparaged as “barbaric,” “savages,” and “cannibals.” The New York Times was notorious for casting Haiti as a wasteland of Black savagery. During the first U.S. occupation of Haiti (1915-1934), it quoted the administrative commander of the U.S. military forces, H.S. Knapp who said: “if Haiti were now left to herself there would be a slipping back into barbarism.” This is language describing Haiti from a 1915 editorial : “a weary list of toy kings, emperors, presidents, of revolutions, exiles, suicides, slaughters, corruption, a civilization…which has been sinking, and is brutal and permeated with magical rites.” Here is a January 4, 1921 headline from that same “paper of record:” “Natives in Haiti Ate a Marine Officer.” In a 1920 National Geographic article titled “Haiti and Its Regeneration by the United States,” the author writes of “the sacrifice of children and animals to the mumbo jumbos of local wizards.” And on and on.

The vilification of Haitian people in the western press, and from politicians and laypeople, has continued unabated. In the 1980s, Haitian migrants fleeing the U.S.-backed Duvalier dictatorship and arriving in South Florida were described as dirty “boat people,” a notorious stereotype that had an inordinate impact on Haitian migrant school children. In 1983, Haitian people were accused of being “HIV/AIDS carriers” and listed by Center for Disease Control as the only racial/ethnic group (of the “4-H Club”) at risk of AIDS: homosexuals, hemophiliacs, heroin addicts, and Haitians. Indeed, it is this vicious lie that Haitians were AIDS carriers that, in the early 1990s, the U.S. used to turn its naval base at Guantanamo Bay into an open air prison for Haitian asylum seekers while denying them due process. 

In 1994, then-Congressman Joe Biden, had this to say about Haiti: “If Haiti—a God-awful thing to say—if Haiti just quietly sunk into the Caribbean or rose up 300 feet, it wouldn’t matter a whole lot to our interests.”

Over the years, Haitian people have been castigated as having made a “deal with the devil” because their religious practices were supposedly responsible for the 2010 earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people. They were called “bandits” when fighting the first U.S. occupation of their country and “gangs” when protesting the Core Group-installed Prime Minister in 2021 and 2022. Haitians are now seen primarily as “gang members,” and, as recently as spring of 2024, as “cannibals.” In a way, the current smear that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio are “dog and cat eaters,” pales in comparison to the western media frenzy, over the past three years, around the claim that Haiti is a cesspool of violence with “gang” members cannibalizing people.

In today’s political environment, the outrage over the racist lie that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio are stealing and eating people’s pets has been filtered through partisan presidential politics. All responses purportedly on behalf of Haitian people have therefore focused on racism as a unique feature of the Republican party and white conservatives and fascists since it was JD Vance and Donald Trump that catapulted the “eating pets” lie into the national spotlight. As such, it is not surprising to see the corporate media actually conducting actual journalism – questioning the racist claims against Haitian migrants in Ohio, sending reporters to speak with local communities, etc. Meanwhile, Democratic Party operatives have treated the racist charges against the Haitian migrants as a godsend, using the controversy to point to Republicans as the always-already-unrepentant white supremacists.

But what should we call Biden’s actions in September 2021? After right-wingers protested that the Texas-Mexico border was being “invaded” by “hordes” of Haitian asylum seekers, Biden authorized the deployment of hundreds of agents from Homeland Security, the Coast Guard, and the Department of Defense. Within days, the Biden administration went on to deport thousands of these migrants without internationally mandated due process. This action by the Biden regime was so extreme that a reporter from the Jamaican newspaper, The Gleaner called it, “one of the swiftest, large-scale expulsions of migrants and refugees from the United States in decades.” In fact, during his first term, Biden has deported more Haitian people than the two terms of “deporter-in-chief” Obama and Trump’s one term. How is Joe Biden’s record of deporting Haitian asylum seekers (often without due process), which is worse than Obama’s two terms and Trump’s one term, any less racist than the racist lie about Haitian people eating pets? The pictures of the dehumanizing treatment of Haitian asylum seekers being chased by white patrols on horseback should remain etched in our memories of the Biden presidency.

But do you know what is most racist and dehumanizing? The U.S. usurpated Haitian sovereignty through non-stop meddling, intervention, and occupation.

As the republicans are demonizing Haitians as “pet thieves” and “cat eaters,” the U.S., under the democratic Biden regime, is thieving Haiti’s autonomy and devouring Haiti’s sovereignty by leading a whole-scale foreign military invasion of Haiti and planning for long term occupation. In the days since the racist pet-eating rumor surfaced, U.S. military planes flew in police and soldiers from Jamaica and Belize to add to the 400 Kenyan soldiers already in Haiti as the Blackface cover for its invasion and occupation. This comes after the U.S. has already begun building a security perimeter around the international airport in the capital city, a project that has displaced thousands of families. At the same time, the U.S. has circulated a draft resolution to the UN Security Council about turning its mercenary mission in Haiti into a full-fledged UN “peacekeeping” operation. In other words, MINU.S.TAH 2.0.

Where is the outrage about the intensification of the U.S. occupation of Haiti? Where is the outrage over the ongoing occupation by the Core Group of Haiti; over the full destruction of the Haitian state only to install an entire puppet government willing to do the bidding of the U.S., including approving foreign military occupation? Where is the outrage over a U.S.-led foreign military occupation where the mercenaries brought to occupy the land have absolute immunity over their actions in Haiti? Where is the outrage over the racist assumptions and tropes guiding white western violation and occupation of Haiti – that Haitians are violent and dumb people who cannot be allowed to rule themselves?

I would argue that the lack of outrage – or the lack of acknowledgment – of the U.S.’s illegal, continuing, and violent occupation of Haiti is precisely because the world has accepted as normal that Haitian sovereignty can be dismissed. In fact, the white west has been explicit in their views that Haitians do not deserve sovereignty. For example, former Canadian Denis Paridis, who participated in the  2003 “Ottawa Initiative” that led to the 2004 coup d’etat against Haiti’s democratically elected president, justified the west’s actions by asking of Haiti: “Is state sovereignty immutable?” And, according to Haitian-Canadian activist, Jean Saint-Vil, the Deputy General of the Organization of American States, Luigi Einuadi, lamented that “The real problem with Haiti is that the ‘International Community’ is so screwed up and divided that they are actually letting Haitians run Haiti.”

It is not only JD Vance and Trump and their Republican friends who have been racist towards Haiti and the Haitian people. It is all the other people who – either by their silence or active complicity – have consented to the ongoing U.S. meddling and push for a full occupation of Haiti. It is those who parrot the racist descriptions of the white media about Haiti being ungovernable. It is those who declare that “something has to be done” because of the “gang problem” in Haiti, as if gang membership is in Haitian DNA. It is those who focus their racist vitriol on poor Black Haitian people while remaining silent on the nonBlack oligarchs in Haiti who collude with U.S. and western governments to fuel violence in the country. It is those who do not understand that the crisis of Haiti is one of U.S./western imperialism and that the imperialists – the U.S., Core Group, and UN operatives – are the biggest gangsters and the most ferocious cannibals operating in the country.

Jemima Pierre is an editor and contributor to Black Agenda Report, the Haiti/Americas Co-Coordinator for the Black Alliance for Peace, and a professor at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

Source: Black Agenda Report

This article was originally published on May 20, 2020, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic when mass burials were conducted in New York City’s Potter’s Fields.

Grave robbing is alive and well in the capitalist United States, where anything can be done for a profit. In a Sept. 16, 2024, report, NBC News exposed how the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth, Texas, has been selling body parts.

The medical school used unclaimed bodies from the Tarrant County and Dallas County medical examiners. NBC described how the body of the Black veteran Victor Honey ― who was entitled to a burial with military honors ― was treated:

“A Swedish medical device maker paid $341 for access to Honey’s severed right leg to train clinicians to harvest veins using its surgical tool. A medical education company spent $900 to send his torso to Pittsburgh so trainees could practice implanting a spine stimulator. And the U.S. Army paid $210 to use a pair of bones from his skull to educate military medical personnel at a hospital near San Antonio.

“In the name of scientific advancement, clinical education, and fiscal expediency, the bodies of the destitute in the Dallas-Fort Worth region have been routinely collected from hospital beds, nursing homes, and homeless encampments and used for training or research without their consent — and often without the approval of any survivors, an NBC News investigation found.

“Honey, who died in September 2022, is one of about 2,350 people whose unclaimed bodies have been given to the Fort Worth-based University of North Texas Health Science Center since 2019 under agreements with Dallas and Tarrant counties.”

Similar practices are undoubtedly occurring across the United States. 

No millionaire has ever been executed in the United States. Hardly any rich people have been buried in New York City’s Potter’s Field. Over a million poor people are interred there on Hart Island off the Bronx.

Photographer George Steinmetz used a drone to document the mass burials of people who’ve died of the coronavirus. Police responded by detaining Steinmetz and seizing his drone.

Those who can’t afford a funeral have their bodies dumped in trenches 15 feet wide and 8 feet deep. The gravediggers are prisoners from Rikers Island who, if they die in jail, will probably be buried there too.

Capitalism doesn’t offer any respect for working and poor people, even in death. Everything is for sale, including last rites.

As the activist organization Picture The Homeless describes Potter’s Field, it “is not the only insult the poor face … but it’s the final insult.” 

People who are killed being struck by trains, subways or buses ― or die in them ― get buried on Hart Island if no one claims their bodies. PTH co-founder Lewis Haggins, who passed away on the subway on Dec. 23, 2003, was buried on Hart Island. 

When PTH members tried to go to Haggins’ grave site, they were forbidden to do so. Only relatives could visit. Authorities claimed it was a “security issue” since prisoners bury bodies.

The Civil Rights Committee of PTH had to wage a struggle just to say farewell. They won the right for people to pay their respects, to lay a flower, at the place where a friend or a stranger was buried.

Remember this whenever the capitalist media attack a socialist country for allegedly violating “human rights.”

Robbing Black bodies

New Jersey Assemblymember Benjie Wimberly has proposed a $20 million fund to subsidize funerals in the Garden State. New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson has suggested a similar local fund. 

Currently, New York City’s Human Resource Administration offers up to $900 as a subsidy towards a funeral service. That’s often not enough.

Families can have as little as 48 hours to claim their loved ones’ bodies under New York State law. Medical schools get first dibs on unclaimed remains. Mortuary schools get the rest in order to train students in embalming.

For centuries, medical students have dissected bodies in order to learn anatomy. That’s necessary to train doctors.

This writer’s father willed his body to a medical school. That was a voluntary act, like people having their eyes donated to an eye bank after their death.

Shields Green and John Anthony Copeland Jr. didn’t will their bodies to be cut up at Winchester Medical College. The Black freedom fighters captured at Harper’s Ferry were hanged on Dec. 16, 1859, two weeks after John Brown was executed. 

The book “Medical Apartheid” by Harriet Washington tells how Black cemeteries were given no respect by medical schools. Grave robbers and students would steal the bodies of African Americans. Some of the corpses were shipped to Northern medical schools in pickle barrels.

The first Indigenous mortuary science student at the Milwaukee Area Technical College explained why he wanted to become a mortician. He was sick of going to museums and seeing his ancestors in glass cases.

African bodies were put on display in European museums. The body of the South African woman Sarah Baartman was on display in a Paris museum until 1974. Her remains weren’t returned to South Africa until 2002. 

No dignity under capitalism

Milwaukee communist leader Albert Stergar would point out that the first working-class organizations were the “friendly societies.” During the Industrial Revolution in Britain, their members would pay a small regular contribution to ensure having a funeral.

These societies had 925,429 members by 1815. E.P. Thompson, in “The Making of the English Working Class,” wrote that this was the political culture which trained future labor leaders.

Slave masters tried to prevent funerals of enslaved Africans, fearing they could become organizing meetings for insurrections.

Establishing the African Burial Ground National Monument in Lower Manhattan took a struggle. The U.S. government sought to excavate the site.

The late Sonny Abubadika Carson, the late Elombe Brath, and the Rev. Herbert Daughtry, National Presiding Minister of The House of the Lord Churches, put their bodies on the line to stop the bulldozers.

Funeral directors were often the most prosperous members of Black communities and served as political leaders, like the Ford family in Memphis. The family of Michigan Congressperson Charles C. Diggs Jr. owned a funeral home.

When Diggs was elected to the House of Representatives in 1954, there were only two other Black congresspeople. After the Soweto uprising in South Africa on June 16, 1976, Diggs vowed to use his congressional seniority to help overthrow the apartheid regime.

Charles Diggs was instead railroaded to prison on phony charges.

All the socialist countries are targeted by the White House, the Pentagon, and Wall Street. For over 60 years, they’ve tried to strangle Cuba with an economic blockade.

This doesn’t prevent Cuba from giving every person the dignity that capitalism can never offer. All Cubans are guaranteed a funeral.

Everyone deserves a homegoing. There will be no Potter’s Fields after the socialist revolution.

Before a television audience of 67.1 million viewers, former U.S. President Donald Trump uttered racist, shameless lies against Haitian immigrants living in Ohio, accusing them of stealing and eating their neighbors’ cats and dogs, labeling them as “criminals” and “terrorists.”

On Sep. 12, two days after the Sep. 10 presidential debate between Trump and his Democratic Party rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, the thinly-veiled racist threats sparked bomb threats against Springfield, Ohio companies where the workers are predominantly Haitian. The same day a bomb threat closed down Springfield’s City Hall, where the mayor calls the Trump campaign’s assertions baseless. On Sep. 14, bomb threats also put into lockdown two Springfield hospitals.

Haitians are now organizing their response. Migrant defense organizations like the Haitian Bridge Alliance have begun to raise their voices. Haitians rallied on Sep. 12 in the heavily Haitian town of Elmont, Long Island, just east of New York City, in protest against Trump’s false allegations and those of Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance.

On Sep. 17, about 60 Haitians and their supporters, as well as New York City Councilwomen Mercedes Narcisse and Farah Louis, rallied in front of St. Jerome Catholic Church at the corner of Nostrand and Newkirk Avenues in Brooklyn, NY. Organized by Children for Change International, the rally was titled “Immigrants United Against Hate.”

The largest mobilization is planned for Sep. 18 at the Nassau Coliseum at 1255 Hempstead Turnpike in Uniondale, NY on Long Island, where Trump will be holding a campaign rally. The Haitians, other immigrants, and their supporters will hold a  counter-demonstration that will gather at 3 p.m. at 1110 Hempstead Turnpike in Uniondale, at the corner of Uniondale Avenue.

Meanwhile, in Haiti, politicians and the corrupt bourgeoisie are doing everything to maintain their class privileges and keep the popular masses in the most abject misery. This is our best opportunity to organize ourselves to be better able to respond to these false allegations which, once again, besmirch our dignity and belittle us like old clothes worn out by misery. They try to make us forget our ancestors’ glorious anti-colonialist and anti-slavery struggles.

Those nostalgic for the slave system want to erase from the humanity’s history the strong Haitian people’s example which inspires us to be resistant, human, good, free, generous, altruistic, and socialist.

The time has truly come for us to organize ourselves in Haiti and North America to have our rights respected and stop being treated as pariahs. We Haitians, the children of Dessalines, Capois La Mort, Christophe, and Pétion, cannot hand over our destiny to the hypocritical politicians of the U.S.’s Democratic Party. We must build our own autonomous and independent organizations to fight against both flavors of racism: Republican and Democrat. We must not surrender our struggle to the hypocritical, two-faced half of the U.S. capitalist duopoly, the Democrats. We can only count on ourselves!

There is a dictum: States have no friends, only interests, to paraphrase Charles de Gaulle, among others. Fortunately, people do have friends, who help them defend their interests. A rainbow of peoples around the world have brought their active solidarity to the Haitian people in the face of mankind’s great enemy.

Let’s stop being afraid! Let’s organize ourselves to better defend our interests and our country! We are more than what we have become today. We are the true freedom fighters; we were the first to abolish slavery; let us continue in the footsteps of our ancestors, to fight against exploitation and capitalist domination. These racist actions and remarks degrade those who carry out and utter them. Let us not submit to either of the two parties which just represent the two tactics of the U.S. capitalist system. The Republicans are openly racist, while the Democrats are just as racist but it is only revealed in their practice by their slyness and hypocrisy.

Let us organize ourselves by ourselves and for ourselves! Let us not be manipulated by the bigwigs of U.S. politics. Our most basic rights are flouted. We are the first victims of U.S. racism, of economic hyperinflation, of all kinds of discrimination (both racial and social). We are paid the lowest wages because of our social origin. We are victims of police brutality. We pay high prices for rent without subsidies. The cost of living increases at a rate significantly higher than the increase in our salary. We pay more for the purchase of a car and vehicle insurance premiums. Our wages are lower than any other category of immigrants, and we pay more than them for all our needs.

Nonetheless, we must win over and join with other immigrant workers as well as U.S. workers in our common class struggle.

The time to revolt has come both in Haiti and in the USA. After these malicious remarks from Donald Trump and JD Vance, if we do not rise up, it will be unforgivable. We must rise up against intervention, corruption, and insecurity in Haiti and against racial and social discrimination in the U.S..

Let us organize our forces everywhere to better fight against the capitalist system with its scourges of racism and sexism and the package of “identity politics” that liberals and Democrats use to hide this monstrous system of war, oppression, and exploitation.

Haitian progressives, let us unite to struggle for Haiti’s national liberation.

Liberty or Death! Homeland or Death!

Source: Haïti Liberté

The last quarter century has seen no shortage of Zionist horrors inflicted upon the Arab world. The examples seem endless. One could discuss the 2006 carpet bombing of Beirut. There is also the IDF’s 2022 murder of Shireen Abu Akleh and the subsequent attack on her funeral procession. The images of home demolitions in the Gaza Strip and West Bank also come to mind. 

Even with that terrible bloody history, “Israel” may have outdone itself this time. For two days in a row, the entire country of Lebanon rang out with explosions from personal electronic devices. On day one, it was pagers. On day two, it was personal radios or “walkie talkies.” Nowhere was safe. Not the supermarkets. Not the hospitals. Not the bustling city squares. 

Whether urban or rural, Hezbollah-controlled or not, the Zionist regime painted a tapestry of blood and terror across Lebanon. The first casualties were predictably children, including a 10-year-old girl.

The Zionists’ first day of terrorist attacks killed at least 32 over two days (12 Tuesday and 20 Wednesday) and wounded 3,000. The wounded included Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon. The carnage was not limited to Hezbollah members, not that the attack would have been acceptable if this was the case. At its core, this was a cowardly and evil attack aimed at sowing terror among the Lebanese people. 

The second day of attacks did not see the situation improve. As the day progressed, it all started again. Personal electronic devices began to explode and catch fire, engulfing apartments, cars, and storefronts. People could not even bury their dead without another round of terror. During the funeral procession for three Hezbollah members and a child killed by detonating pagers, a walkie-talkie exploded, severely injuring several funeral attendees. 

At the end of the second day, 12 people lay dead, including two children and four health care workers. Over 2,800 people were injured, two-thirds of whom needed some form of surgery to their face, eyes, or hands. 

As noted before, these attacks were at least partially aimed at sowing terror and fear among the defiant Lebanese people. However, this was not purely an attack of terror. This attack was carefully planned and deliberately aimed at wrecking Hezbollah’s communication infrastructure, presumably as a prelude to some level of IDF incursion into southern Lebanon. 

The Israeli army moved the 98th Division, whose forces have been fighting until recently in the Gaza Strip, to Lebanon’s border following the cabinet’s decision to shift most of the military’s capabilities toward Lebanon, Haaretz reported Sept. 18.

Both pagers and walkie-talkies are crucial tools for Hezbollah’s defensive efforts against Zionist aggression. In recent years, Hezbollah intentionally transitioned from smartphones and social media to more analog forms of communication to avoid detection by Zionist forces. This included Hezbollah fighters and political figures. 

With Hezbollah’s lessened ability to coordinate defense, mobilize reserves, and organize political support, the time for an IDF offensive is near. It is unlikely the Zionist military and its U.S. backers would commit to such a massive strike if it did not plan on following up with conventional military action.

One last thing that should be made clear is that the U.S. is not uninvolved in this attack. This attack likely required supply chain intervention and the careful placement of explosives before the pagers and radios even entered Lebanon. The Zionists also would have needed a large mechanism, probably aerial, to disseminate such a strong detonation signal across so much territory. “Israel” simply does not have this capability. This required U.S. economic influence and technological capability. 

Hezbollah must be supported in its fight against U.S. imperialism and its Zionist running dogs. The people of Lebanon will not break. In the words of an online post from a Beirut resident, “We are many. We do not break. We do not die.” 

Lev Koufax is an anti-Zionist Jewish activist.

Mexico City, Mexico, September 16, 2024 (venezuelanalysis.com) – Venezuelan Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello reported the arrest of a U.S. Navy SEAL alongside two Spanish citizens allegedly linked to intelligence agencies.

The foreign citizens are accused of plotting to assassinate President Nicolás Maduro and other high-ranking Venezuelan officials.

At a press conference on Saturday at the ministry’s headquarters, in front of some of the 400 seized firearms linked to the reported plot, Cabello accused Wilbert Joseph Castañeda, an active duty U.S. sailor, of leading the effort on behalf of U.S. intelligence.

“Castañeda is the head of the operation, placed here by the CIA,” said Cabello.

Castañeda’s arrest was first reported earlier this month. At the time, White House Spokesperson John Kirby denied that the Navy serviceman was in Venezuela on official business and argued his travel was for personal reasons.

In his press conference, Cabello said the alleged assassination plot was uncovered after authorities were tipped off about a weapons shipment from the U.S. that was illegally smuggled into the country.

“The U.S. is behind this operation. The U.S. is handing over these firearms, they allow them to freely circulate so they can arrive in Venezuela and be used in an operation,” said Cabello. He claimed the weapon parts were disguised in containers to be assembled upon arrival.

The Venezuelan interior minister said the discovery of the firearms unraveled a “terrorist plot” that included an effort to kill the president alongside high-ranking figures such as Vice President Delcy Rodríguez and Cabello himself. He added that the conspirators aimed to attack public infrastructure, including water supplies, electricity, and transportation.

Cabello said security forces had also uncovered a conspiracy to launch grenades at the Argentinian Embassy in Caracas in order to generate a diplomatic incident to be blamed on the Maduro government. Venezuela recently suspended the agreement that allowed Brazil to assume custody of the Argentine diplomatic residence in Caracas where six individuals tied to the U.S.-backed opposition had sought asylum fleeing charges.

Venezuelan authorities likewise arrested five other foreigners in connection to the denounced plans, including two Spanish citizens, José María Basoa Valdovinos and Andrés Martínez Adasme, who were accused of having ties to Spain’s National Intelligence Center.

Two other U.S. citizens, David Estrella and Aaron Barrett Logan, were also detained on charges of being “hackers.” Cabello went on to announce the arrest of a Czech individual by the name of Jan Darmovzal who was supposedly brought into the conspiracy as a mercenary.

The U.S. State Department issued a reaction denying the allegations, calling them “categorically false”.

Cabello shared images of conversations on a messaging application allegedly showing Castañeda discussing violent plans on election night with an individual identified only by his alias “El Flaco.” In these chats, Castañeda talked openly about taking advantage of the unrest in the country following the electoral authority’s announcement that Maduro had been reelected in order to assassinate the president.

“We want the world to know that Venezuela is under siege by U.S. imperialism,” stated Cabello. “The U.S. allows its territory to be used to arm [radical] groups.”

The Venezuelan official further demanded that the U.S. government address the allegations and “clarify” the role of its agencies and the control over weapons smuggled to “overthrow a foreign government.”

Several other Venezuelan nationals were accused of participating in the alleged operation. Cabello alleged ties to the hardline opposition, including to José Miguel Estrada who was convicted over his role in the assassination attempt against Maduro on August 4, 2018. Vente Venezuela, the organization led by far-right opposition leader María Corina Machado, considers Estrada a political prisoner. Cabello added a total of 14 individuals in Venezuelan prisons that were connected to the conspiracy.

Cabello compared the plot with “Operation Gideon,” a paramilitary action that aimed to topple the Maduro government. In May 2020, the Venezuelan armed forces neutralized the attempted incursion with speedboats that had departed from Colombia, with six invading operatives killed and dozens arrested.

Jordan Goudreau, a former U.S. Green Beret and the head of that operation, was recently arrested in the U.S. to face federal arms smuggling charges after allegedly shipping weapons, ammunition and other military equipment to Colombia.

Two other former green berets, Airan Berry and Luke Denman, were detained and handed 20-year sentences before returning to the U.S. on a prisoner exchange last year.

Edited by Ricardo Vaz in Lisbon, Portugal.

Source: Venezuela Analysis

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