The racist campaign against the Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio, is dangerous and must be stopped.

Both Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, are fanning the flames of racial hatred. They’re claiming that Haitians living in Springfield are eating people’s pets. Billionaire Elon Musk repeated these lies to his nearly 200 million followers on X (formerly known as Twitter).

These ludicrous allegations using racist stereotypes can’t be regarded as a mere joke, as many candidates of the Democratic Party are doing. They are the stuff that can lead to mob violence.

What Trump, Vance, and Musk are telling people is that Haitian people are “dangerous savages” who have to be put down and driven out. A neo-Nazi gang called the Blood Tribe was bellowing the same message when they marched through Springfield in August carrying swastika flags. 

Instead of investigating these Nazis, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost is considering filing a lawsuit to prevent migrants from coming to Ohio. That’s reminiscent of an 1807 Ohio ordinance that required Black people coming into the state to post a $500 bond.

The tragic death of 11-year-old Adrian Clark last year in Springfield when his school bus was struck by a Haitian driver is being used to whip up racism. The plea of Adrian’s father, Nathan Clark, a teacher, not to use his son’s death to spread hate is being ignored.

Vance posted on X that “a child was murdered by a Haitian migrant.”

Nathan Clark responded at a Springfield City Commission hearing, saying “My son was not murdered. He was accidentally killed by an immigrant from Haiti … don’t spin this towards hate.”  

On Sept. 12, a racist bomb threat forced Springfield’s city hall, two schools, and other facilities to be evacuated. The schools involved had many Haitian students.  

Revenge for liberating themselves

The current racist hysteria is another chapter in over 230 years of revenge against Haitian people for having conducted the only successful slave revolution in history.

The wealthy and powerful in the United States and Europe have never forgiven Haitians for doing so. From Texas to Maryland, U.S. slave masters lived in fear of “another Haiti” breaking out on their plantations. 

It was Haitian President Alexandre Pétion who gave Simón Bolívar ships and guns to liberate much of South America from Spanish colonialism. Venezuela’s elected President Nicolás Maduro is standing on the shoulders of Pétion and Bolivar.

The white supremacist President Woodrow Wilson had U.S. Marines steal Haiti’s gold reserve and occupy the country for nearly 20 years. The Marine who assassinated the Haitian national hero, Charlemagne Péralte, was obscenely awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

While Trump & Co. are spreading filthy lies about Haitians in Ohio, the Biden Administration wants to re-occupy Haiti using soldiers from Kenya and other countries.

A long history

Springfield, Ohio, has seen mob violence before. Richard Dickerson— sometimes spelled Dixon — was taken from his jail cell there and hanged from a telegraph pole by a mob of racists on March 7, 1904.

Two thousand came to watch the African American die. Revolvers were passed around so that the corpse could be shot up.

After killing Dickerson, the mob then went to the “Levee” district by the river and burned 150 Black people out of their homes. White firefighters did nothing except protect the drinking establishment owned by Charley Bray, a white saloon keeper. 

While all this was happening, Company A of the Ohio National Guard’s Ninth Battalion — an all-Black outfit — was kept bottled up in the armory by Springfield Mayor Bowlus. (Cleveland Gazette)

But there’s another side to Springfield’s history. Seventeen miles away are the Wilberforce University and Central State University campuses, both historically Black institutions (HBCUs).

John Brown lived in Springfield, Ohio from 1845 to 1851, running the “Perkins and Brown” wool warehouse there.

Frederick Douglass first met John Brown in Brown’s Springfield home. There, Brown revealed to Douglass his great plan to turn the Allegheny Mountains into a guerilla stronghold. (“John Brown” by W.E.B. Du Bois)

Springfield’s Black community righteously rebelled in 1967 against racism.

Like other communities across the Midwest, factory closings have deeply wounded Springfield, pushing back the labor movement. Yet today 1,300 United Auto Workers Local 402 members work at Springfield’s Navistar truck plant.

The labor and people’s movements have to mobilize to stop the racist hysteria being incited by Trump and Fox News. Beat back the racist attack!

On Aug. 23, multiple pro-Palestinian Telegram channels were banned across Europe, including the “Palestine Archive” channel and the “Resistance News Network” (RNN). A week before the ban, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that “Telegram has proved a massive challenge for Israel since the start of the war.”

Telegram has been a critical platform in the ongoing information war regarding the situation in Gaza. It allows supporters of the Palestinian cause to share information about Israeli actions easily and to highlight the resistance efforts of Hamas, Hezbollah, Yemen, and Iran.

These channels, not its encrypted communications, were the focus of the New York Times special report on Sept. 10 aimed at taking down Telegram. Telegram has a unique service called Channels, which is used to broadcast public messages to channel subscribers. Anyone can set up a Telegram channel, and anyone can subscribe to the channels.

Haaretz noted, “While many tech firms have streamlined mechanisms through which states can reach out to them” to censor content, “Telegram is considered the least cooperative of them all.”

Telegram founder arrested by French police

On Aug. 24, the day after the Europe-wide ban on pro-Palestinian channels, Telegram founder Pavel Durov was arrested by French police. Following four days of intense interrogation, he was brought before a court and charged on multiple counts. Currently awaiting trial, Durov has been released on $5.5 million bail, is required to report to the French police twice weekly, and is prohibited from leaving the country. Additionally, a warrant has been issued for his brother, the co-founder of Telegram.

French authorities have framed this action as a standard cybercrime operation to combat criminal activities. President Macron has reassured the public that the arrest is “not political.”

However, the French government and its allies appear to be seeking access to the extensive user data stored on Telegram, aiming to establish a legal precedent and send a strong message that any messaging platform refusing government intervention will be punished. It is an entirely “political” attack.

The charges against Durov mirror the targeting of Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, and the Uhuru 3 as part of a broader campaign of political persecution. Under the guise of anti-terrorism and crime prevention, the imperialist powers are using repressive tactics against those who dare to oppose their actions at home and abroad.

Snowden revealed tech giants work with U.S. intelligence

In 2013, following Edward Snowden’s revelations that tech giants had granted U.S. intelligence extensive backdoor access on platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook, Durov established Telegram as a secure messaging alternative.

A leaked 2021 FBI document confirms that Telegram is the most opaque messaging platform regarding what the agency can legally access. 

As a result of its consistent refusal to disclose user information, Telegram has experienced intermittent bans in 31 countries since 2015. Telegram has emerged as a vital platform for organizing protests and revolutionary movements.

Its appeal lies in the fact that it has largely evaded external pressures. The platform has 950 million monthly active users, a significant increase from 500 million in 2021.

In the Ukraine war, Telegram serves as a crucial communication tool. The CIA-funded Radio Free Europe reports that almost everyone in Ukraine tunes into Telegram channels to get the news, particularly the reports from Russia.

Telegram has become the primary news source, offering real-time battlefield updates that don’t always align with the Biden-Zelensky propaganda that fills Kiev-based media. The Ukrainian government tried to ban Telegram last year.

A note about encrypted communications

Telegram’s Channels are a free and open communications tool that is available to anyone. The messages sent through the channels are encrypted in transit between your device and Telegram’s servers and cannot be read by any form of unauthorized access to the transmission. But the messages are stored unencrypted on Telegram’s servers, and theoretically the content can be accessed by Telegram, or if compelled, it can be shared with authorities. 

Many reports on Telegram confuse the encryption during transmission with end-to-end encryption used in truly private conversations. In end-to-end encryption, the messages are encrypted in transmission and on the server and cannot be read by anyone.

Telegram’s Secret Chats offers end-to-end encryption, but this can’t be used on the channels.

WhatsApp uses end-to-end encryption for all personal messages, group chats, voice calls, and video calls. What WhatsApp calls a “channel” is not free and open, requiring a business account to use it fully. However, WhatsApp is owned by Facebook, which collects a lot of information from what people do on WhatsApp. WhatsApp is reportedly programmed to identify key words in sentences, like “birthday” or “travel,” and send them to Facebook’s servers to be processed for advertising before encrypting messages. Facebook and, therefore, WhatsApp also work with the police and government whenever requested, unlike Telegram.

Signal is a messaging app often promoted as an alternative to Telegram. All communications on Signal are end-to-end encrypted, including its channels. Not frequently mentioned, Signal collects some user metadata, including user phone number, device information, and connections made. 

Signal was and remains very prominently used and promoted by dissidents and protesters backed by the U.S. government-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Signal itself was developed by the Open Technology Fund, another U.S. government project. The app was initially used for U.S. intelligence operations globally. WikiLeaks documents from 2017 revealed that the CIA has a backdoor to bypass Signal’s encryption. 

South African attorney Wikus Van Rensburg expressed concerns over the ongoing financial and resource support from the U.S. to “Israel,” which effectively enabled crimes against the people of Gaza.

Nearly 50 South African lawyers, led by attorney Wikus Van Rensburg, are gearing up to file a lawsuit against the United States and Britain, asserting their complicity in Israeli forces’ war crimes in Palestine, Anadolu Agency reports. This initiative follows South Africa’s filing of a genocide case against “Israel” at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

Rensburg, the driving force behind the legal action, aims to prosecute those complicit in the crimes through civilian courts, collaborating with legal professionals in the U.S. and Britain.

In an interview with Anadolu, Rensburg emphasized the need to hold the U.S. accountable for its actions and highlighted the forthcoming legal proceedings against Washington and London.

“The United States must now be held accountable for the crimes it committed,” Rensburg stated. “No one says stop, enough is enough.”

He referenced the lack of accountability for the U.S. crimes in Iraq and underscored the importance of giving due significance to such issues.

“What happened in Iraq is an example of this; no one held the U.S. accountable for the crimes it committed in the Middle Eastern country as the issue was not given the necessary importance,” he noted.

Source: Al Mayadeen English

On the morning of September 12th, the jury returned a verdict in the free speech trial of the century, where Chairman Omali Yeshitela, Penny Hess and Jesse Nevel faced bogus charges of working as Russian agents.

The 12 person jury concluded a not guilty verdict on count number two, “failure to register as a foreign agent,” in other words, working as agents of Russia. This was the big charge that carried an up to ten year prison sentence. The jury contained no black jurors, but to their credit, they saw clearly that African people have agency and sovereignty over their actions.

The government presented 14 witnesses, 12 of them FBI agents, while the defense needed to present no witnesses to prove that the government’s accusation of being Russian agents was fabricated.

The jury returned a guilty verdict on count number one, “conspiring against the U.S. government.” This charge carries a maximum of five years.

The not guilty verdict on the primary charges was a devastating blow to the prosecution whose main objective was to convict on the Russian agent charge. With their lack of evidence and exposed lies, they were unable to convince the jury that Russia was behind the 60 year legacy of anti-colonial struggle led by Chairman Omali Yeshitela. The lawyers are preparing to appeal to ensure all of the baseless accusations are defeated and no prison time is served.

The judge has not set a sentencing date on the conspiracy conviction. Chairman Omali Yeshitela, Penny Hess and Jesse Nevel remain in the community to carry out the Uhuru anti-colonial mission.

After the verdict, Chairman Omali Yeshitela and the Uhuru 3 lawyers spoke with supporters and the press on the steps of the Tampa Federal Courthouse.

Chairman Omali reminded his supporters that “the most important thing is that they were unable to convict us for working for anybody except black people, that’s the most important thing. They could not convict us for working for anybody except black people. They had to say we were not working for the Russians and I am willing to be charged and found guilty of working for black people.

“We are involved in a movement for the liberation of African people and the destruction of a colonial system that oppresses the peoples of the world. That’s what we came here for and so it ain’t over.”

Attorney Mutaqee Akbar, representing Jesse Nevel, was quoted saying, “The fight doesn’t stop here, we will appeal this. As the Chairman says, The Party has always and consistently worked for the liberation of Black people, not Russians, not anybody else; we can’t be bought, we can’t be paid for and we will continue to fight and continue to struggle. That’s been clear and that will continue to happen. Uhuru means freedom!”

Attorney Leonard Goodman, representing Penny Hess, says, “We are not guilty of being Russian agents. And the conspiracy charge was incredibly confusing. I don’t think the jury understood that it required them to find that there was conspiracy to act as Russian agents. As Mutaqee was saying, we are going to appeal and we’re going to fight on.”

Attorney Ade Griffin, representing Omali Yeshitela closed by stating, “It’s been an absolute honor to represent Omali Yeshitela, and the African People’s Socialist Party. I believe in your work and I believe in your cause. I think we did an excellent job on the case. I’m happy with the verdict. I would’ve, obviously, liked it to be not guilty across-the-board, but considering the goals that we were trying to achieve, we won!”

For daily updates and all information about the Hands Off Uhuru Free Speech Trial of the Century go to: https://handsoffuhuru.org/

Malcolm X famously said, “show me a capitalist and I’ll show you a bloodsucker.” That’s literally true for U.S. capitalism.

The United States exported $37 billion worth of blood last year, making it the country’s ninth-largest export. That’s $9 billion more than what Uncle Sam got from selling 48 million metric tons of soybeans. 

The Economist — an 181-year-old mouthpiece of the British and U.S. financial aristocracy — thinks that’s great and wants to increase the bloodsucking.

Back in 1846, The Economist blamed the Irish themselves for the famine that killed a million Irish people, declaring it was “brought on by their own wickedness and folly.” 

The same magazine notes with approval that since 2020 — that is, since the COVID-19 pandemic began — 400 more of the bloodsucking plasma centers have opened across the United States.

That’s in addition to the 805 plasma centers already operating in 2019. It’s another sign of the growing poverty of the U.S. working class.

These 1,200 or so Dracula establishments are not set up in Beverly Hills or other fancy neighborhoods. Poor and working people go there to sell their blood because they desperately need money.

The Economist pooh-poohs any health concerns for the poor folks who are economically compelled to sell their blood:

“Some feel uncomfortable that poorer people are allowed to open their veins. But plasma, which is mainly water, is quickly replaced by the body. Health checks exclude the truly unwell and frequent donation seems safe (although more research could be done in that area).” 

Nothing to worry about here, although the magazine admits that “more research could be done in that area.” People are allowed in the U.S. to sell their plasma twice a week. That couldn’t have helped the donor’s immune systems during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly seniors.

Are body parts next?

What the Economist ignores is that ghettos, barrios, Indigenous communities, and poorer white neighborhoods are filled with plasma centers. In 2019, 43 of these blood-sucking enterprises were located near the Mexican border.

Border Patrol pigs lock up Mexican and other immigrant children in cages. But Mexicans can use a B1/B2 visa to sell their blood in the U.S. 

In many cases, they do so to buy food. That’s what colonialism looks like. The U.S. government stole half of Mexico in 1848 to expand slavery.

Health care requires blood and blood products. Millions of people donate blood often during blood drives organized by community organizations including unions.

What we’re discussing here is how capitalist corporations exploit poor people who may be endangering their health because they are forced to sell their blood.

One of these companies, CSL Behring, had sales of over $9 billion in 2023. Behring operates more than 300 plasma centers.

Right behind CSL Behring is Takeda Pharmaceuticals, which has over 200 of the bloodsucking establishments.

It’s not just blood that’s needed. Thousands of patients are on waiting lists for kidneys and livers.

There’s already an illegal underground market for body parts in the United States. According to the “free market” principles of the Economist, people should be able to sell their body parts for the best price. 

Of course, nobody would do so unless they desperately needed the money for themselves or their loved ones. The prospect of a legal market for body parts is reminiscent of Jonathan Swift’s 295-year-old “Modest Proposal” for selling Irish children to be eaten.

Swift’s famous satire was written to expose the misery caused by English colonialism. The market for kidneys and livers is real. Bood exports are another sign of how decayed the U.S. economy has become and how oppressed the U.S. working class is. 

Fares on New York City’s buses and subways are 58 times what they were in 1948 when it cost a nickel. That’s wholesale robbery of the working class.

The current fare of $2.90 means people going to and from work have to shell out at least $29 a week. Many families have to spend $60 or more per week to get to jobs, schools, or medical appointments.

It’s worse for the unemployed. The Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) wants to raise the fare to at least $3 next year.

Even compared with other U.S. cities, Gotham’s fares are steep. While it costs $2.50 to get on Chicago’s El or Atlanta’s metro system, the basic transit fare is $1.75 in Los Angeles, $1.70 in Boston, and $1.25 in Houston.

Hundreds of thousands of people respond to the high fares in New York City by not paying them. They jump the turnstiles, go through a gate, or avoid the farebox on a bus because they can’t afford to pay. Good for them!

Transit fares are really transportation taxes on poor and working people. They should be abolished along with sales taxes. Mike Quill ― the founder of the Transport Workers Union (TWU) ― once called for free fares.

The billionaire class ― which always tries to avoid paying taxes ― 

is howling about what they call “fare evasion.” So do their elected officials and other servants in the media.

This form of self-help is really mass resistance by poor and working people, especially youth. When the transit fare was hiked from 20 to 30 cents in January 1970, members of Youth Against War and Fascism held subway gates open to let thousands of riders through.

Now the MTA claims that half of the city’s bus riders aren’t paying the fare. They can’t afford it. 

The median income of NYC bus riders with a job was just $28,455 in 2017. The wealthy and powerful consider them to be criminals.

Instead of admitting that the fare, like rent in New York City, is too high, Mayor Adams has sent another 800 more cops into the subways. 

New York Gov. Hochul has dispatched 750 members of the National Guard to the subways. Pay the fare or we’ll fix bayonets!

Hatred for the poor

The MTA claims the revenue lost to riders refusing to pay is $700 million. Compared to the 2023-2024 New York State budget of $233 billion, the alleged loss amounts to three cents out of a 10-dollar bill.

It’s a quarter of the $2.8 billion that the MTA shells out in tax-free interest to bondholders on its $47 billion debt. Banks and other financial sharks slurp up this tax-free loot like pigs at a feeding trough.

Yet MTA Chairman Janno Lieber calls non-payment of fares “the No. 1 existential threat” to the transit system. This is the same MTA that initially forbade transit workers from wearing masks during the COVID-19 epidemic.

At least 177 MTA workers, most of them members of TWU Local 100, died of COVID while keeping the city moving. Never forget that billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg called TWU members “thugs” when they went on strike in 2005.

New York Times columnist Pamela Paul wants to return to mass arrests on the subways. One of the victims was the artist Michael Stewart, who was beaten to death by cops in the subway in 1983.

Paul’s article was entitled “The Solution to New York’s Transit Problem Is So Obvious Nobody Wants to Hear It.” This writer thought it might be an argument for free fares.

Paul instead calls for returning to “broken windows” policing, where cops look upon any small offense, like non-payment of fares, as an excuse to arrest. 

This is the same Pamela Paul who attacks gender-affirming care for transgender teenagers in her newspaper columns. Paul’s writings have been used by transphobic bigots in Idaho to ban such medical care.

Free fares!

All of Manhattan’s skyscrapers would be worthless without a transit system. A trillion dollars of real estate depends upon getting workers to them.

Yet, for the last 80 years, the capitalist class has starved the subways in the Big Apple while wrecking transit systems across the United States. Big Oil considered public transit to be dangerous competition. 

New York City may be the only metropolis on earth with fewer transit lines than it had in the 1940s. That’s because elevated lines like the Third Avenue El in Manhattan and the Bronx were torn down without being replaced by subways.

Less than 29% of subway stations are accessible to people with disabilities.

Instead of building new subway lines, expressways like the Cross Bronx were rammed through neighborhoods, displacing tens of thousands of families. That’s a crime, not poor people getting on a bus for free.

In contrast, the socialist People’s Republic of China built 62 new metro lines in 35 cities just in 2021. 

The proposed congestion fee that will force cars and trucks entering lower Manhattan to pay a toll will be a fiasco. It will also pit workers who need to use a car against workers who ride a bus or subway.

Just the billions in weapons being sent to kill Palestinian children in Gaza could provide free fare for everyone coast-to-coast. Just as we won Social Security and Medicare, we can win free fares.

Activists in New York City have mobilized to stop the frame-up of the Uhuru 3: Omali Yeshitela, Chairman of the African People’s Socialist Party; Penny Hess, Chair, African People’s Solidarity Committee; and Jesse Nevel, Chair of the Uhuru Solidarity Movement.

The Biden administration is trying to railroad the Uhuru 3 for opposing the Pentagon’s wars. They’re facing years in prison if convicted on ridiculous charges of being “unregistered foreign agents” of the Russian Federation.

With their trial going on in Tampa, the December 12th Movement has moved to expose the frame-up, organizing a rally in Brooklyn on Sept. 6.

More than 40 people attended. Among the speakers were former New York assembly member Charles Barron and December 12th chairperson Omowale Clay, who attended the trial in Tampa. 

A press conference was held in front of the House of Representatives minority leader Hakeem Jeffries’ office on Sept. 10 at the Shirley Chisholm State Office Building in downtown Brooklyn. More than 50 people came to listen to the speakers.

“We are calling on Democratic Congressional leader Hakeem Jeffries to speak out against the prosecution of political activists’ right to freedom of speech in opposing oppression,” read the December 12th statement. “Congressman Jeffries is urged to add his support for dropping the trumped-up charges against these leaders.”

“These indicted leaders are freedom fighters. They have earned the respect of the Black community, and its allies, for fighting the United States Government’s legacy of slavery and its aftermath of racism, lynchings, Jim Crow, police brutality, poor health care, miseducation and, rampant unemployment, etc. 

“It is ludicrous to propose that a foreign government need be the source of direction or inspiration for these leaders to struggle against the United States’ historic oppression of Black people. A history that predates the existence of Russia,” concluded the December 12th statement. (The capitalist Russian Federation was not established until 1991, with the backing of U.S. imperialism.) 

Free the Uhuru 3!

You may or may not remember — about a month ago, at the beginning of August, the corporate press ran nearly carbon copy coverage of Venezuela’s election. The U.S. State Department issued a statement that the New York Times must have used as a template.

In fact, the State Department released another statement a few days ago titled “Marking One Month Since Venezuela’s Presidential Election.” 

It’s like clockwork. A country’s people elect a leader who won’t kiss the ring of the U.S.; then, the U.S. uses its entire arsenal to delegitimize and destabilize its entire government. 

The Peoples Power Assembly in Baltimore, Maryland, held a film screening and forum to tell Venezuela’s real story. 

After screening Oliver Stone’s “South of the Border,” the forum began with two eyewitness reports from Venezuela’s elections. The first was a report from Venezuela’s 2018 elections, and the second was from 2024. 

“What really struck me was how ordinary it all was,” said this writer, who visited Venezuela in May 2018 as an elections observer. “On election day, we visited voting precincts all over the country, both in the cities and the countryside. What we saw were completely calm and orderly voting procedures.”

“We even toured the factory where the voting machines are built. They showed us how the machines are completely air-gapped — meaning they have never had any interaction with the internet. This keeps them safe from cyber-attack.” 

The voting machines are air-gapped for good reason. Though the pro-imperialist opposition cannot cyber-attack the machines themselves — they would if they could — they attack ensuing communications of election reports, slowing down the process of verifying the actual election results. 

Jill Clark-Gollub, a member of Friends of Latin America, Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition, and the Americas Without Sanctions, reported on her time as an elections observer this year.

“On July 25, 2024, the last day that campaigning was allowed before the July 28th vote, I saw the largest gathering of Venezuelans since the days of Hugo Chavez,” reported Clark-Gollub. “The people’s enthusiasm for their revolution is still going strong!”

“No wonder, since the government has managed to deliver 5.1 million low-cost or free homes; free health care has been brought to every neighborhood through the Barrio Adentro program; education is free with more previously poor students studying in higher education; illiteracy has been eliminated; participatory democracy flourishes through a system of communes and councils; and the country has overcome the crisis caused by crushing U.S. unilateral coercive measures, or ‘sanctions.’” 

The vote on Sunday, July 28, 2024, Clark-Gollub reports, was another civic festival. There was a high turnout in a process that was peaceful, orderly, and upbeat. Violence only broke out the day after, but on a much smaller scale than in previous episodes. 

“Fortunately, the violence ended within 48 hours,” reported Clark-Gollub, “thanks in large part to the huge turnout of ordinary Venezuelans who took to the streets to show that the majority of the people are in favor of peace and support their revolution.”

The audience in attendance completely agreed — Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution must be defended, especially from U.S.-led interference, sabotage, and sanctions. 

On Aug. 22nd, Venezuela’s Supreme Tribunal of Justice — their equivalent of a Supreme Court — verified President Maduro’s victory. The very next day, the U.S. State Department released a statement questioning the credibility of the ruling without any evidence at all. 

Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of several French cities on Saturday, September 7, to protest against what has been dubbed as “electoral theft” committed by President Emmanuel Macron, who appointed far-right Michel Barnier as the prime minister of the country despite the fact that Barnier’s party won on;y 5% of the vote in the latest general elections.

The protests were called by the center-left coalition New Popular Front (NFP) in more than 150 cities across France.

The protests were organized in opposition to Macron‘s appointment of Les Républiques party’s Michel Barnier as prime minister, a decision that has been widely criticized by the French left, which has called it a coup against the people’s will, as it was the NFP that had received the maximum number of seats in the July 7 parliamentary elections but had failed to win an absolute majority.

Michel Barnier, 73, is a veteran of French and European politics, historically associated with the right-wing Les Républiques party. With a career spanning more than four decades, Barnier has held senior positions both in France and Brussels (European Union).

Demonstrations have been going on in several cities across the country. In Paris, the iconic Bastille Square has been the epicenter of the protests, from where thousands marched towards the Place de la Nation.

“We will not give up until he is removed from office,” said Andy Kerbrat, a member of parliament for the NFP, who took part in a huge rally in Nantes, a city in western France.

Although the protest is supported by La France Insoumise (LFI), the French Communist Party (PCF) and the ecologists, the Socialist Party (PS) has decided not to officially participate. However, some local sections of the party have joined the demonstrations.

The General Confederation of Labour (CGT) has also distanced itself from this mobilization, concentrating its efforts on a labor strike planned for October.

In addition to the protests, the NFP has launched impeachment proceedings against Macron in parliament, arguing that Barnier’s appointment does not recognize the results of the legislative elections, where the NFP emerged as the largest bloc with 182 seats.

Macron’s party came in second with 168 seats, and Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally won 143.

The discontent is emerging in a context of deep polarization in France. Latest opinion polls show that 74% of the French population believes that Macron has not respected the will of the people expressed in the ballots.

Amid political uncertainty, new Prime Minister Michel Barnier faces the challenge of forming a government and presenting a finance bill before October, all under the threat of censure by the opposition. The next few weeks will be decisive for France’s political future.

(La Radio del Sur) by Magdalena Valdez

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

Argentina woke up on September 2 with the University of the Mothers (UNMA) fenced off and surrounded by members of the national police, who prevented workers from accessing the center.

The Argentine President, Javier Milei, since his arrival to the Government, started a crusade against public education -which he accuses of ‘indoctrinating’- which implied hard cuts to the economic means for its own development, among many other coercive measures. Meanwhile, he favors teaching in private centers, in his opinion, they are much more ‘objective’ in their curricula.

The Mothers’ University, formerly the Popular University of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, was founded by the homonymous association that was born on April 30, 1977, when 14 women marched in front of the Executive to demand the dictator Jorge Rafael Videla to know the whereabouts of their disappeared children.

Beyond the current Argentine president’s war against the public, we must add the fight against memory. In this sense, the persecution against the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo has not only been limited to trying to destroy academic institutions but to also erase the atrocities of the military dictatorship of the 1970’s as well.

At the end of February 2024, the new authorities of Argentine public television excluded from its programming ‘Mothers of the Plaza’, a program broadcast since 2008, which served to denounce the cases of forced disappearances of the dictatorship.

In this process of dememory, furthermore, after the commemoration of the Day of Memory, Truth and Justice on March 24, the authorities carried out actions in response. Thus, painted over handkerchiefs of the Mothers, located in front of the headquarters of the Comando Monte XII, in Misiones, were covered; and the monument in homage to those same women, in the municipality of Marcos Juarez in Cordoba, was removed.

Last Monday’s picture serves to visualize, in its symbolic and practical expression, something even more terrifying.

The Argentine dictatorship was part of what is known as Plan Condor, which led to the creation of dictatorial regimes – under the umbrella of Washington and the Latin American national oligarchies – in countries such as Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay, Brazil and Uruguay, as well as the persecution and murder of more than 100,000 people.

The context was the Cold War and, under the protection of the anti-communist Truman Doctrine -a conjunctural update of the Monroe Doctrine-, the US justified its interference in what it still considers its “backyard”.

The consequences included the staging of various coups d’état, the financing of armed counterrevolutionary groups, the persecution of leftists and even the physical disappearance of their militants, as well as the creation of regimes in line with its interests. At the same time, it also served as a test laboratory for the implementation of the neoliberal model, whose main reference will always be Augusto Pinochet’s Chile.

The Latin American oligarchies and their political-partisan manifestations have developed based on a model of dependency, where they act as ‘viceroys’ at the service of the metropolis and at the expense of their peoples. The strongly reactionary and lackey character of these oligarchies is in conflict, in a natural way, with any process of popular and national emancipation in the region.

However, they are fundamental in a general scenario of geopolitical struggle, where the U.S. needs to maintain control in Latin America. All this, favored, in turn, by an organizational advance of the extreme right at the international level, which also attends to this rising conflict.

The strongly reactionary and lackey character of the oligarchies to external interests naturally conflicts with any process of popular and national emancipation in the region.
In 2021, the former president of Bolivia Evo Morales denounced the implementation of a ‘ Plan Condor 2’ in the region, after it was made public the shipment of weapons, military and anti-riot material, by the Argentine government, then led by Mauricio Macri, during the coup d’état in Bolivia, in 2019.

In recent weeks, we have witnessed a new offensive against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, which has manifested itself in different spheres: the non-recognition of its political system, its institutions and its sovereignty; cyber attacks and power cuts; and the hijacking, in collusion with the authorities of the Dominican Republic, of a Venezuelan presidential plane.

In parallel, the pressure against other States has been manifested in the interference attempts of U.S. diplomats in Mexico and Honduras, which, in the end, have been failures due to the forceful response of sovereign defense implemented by their leaders.

Meanwhile, the government of Ecuador, which violated the sovereignty of Mexico with the illegal kidnapping of Jorge Glas in the Mexican Embassy a few months ago, in a macabre staging of irony, signed new agreements with the U.S. Southern Command focused on “the implementation and promotion of human rights”.

Similarly, Gabriel Boric, who has stood out as a leader against Venezuelan sovereignty in recent weeks, followed this same script. The Southern Command and the Chilean Navy, on September 2, kicked off, the Multinational Naval Exercise UNITAS 2024, making this the second time, in less than a month, that the Chilean government has participated in naval exercises in the Pacific Ocean together with the US.

“Why is this region so important? With all its rich resources and rare earth elements, you have the lithium triangle, which is necessary for today’s technology. Sixty percent of the world’s lithium is in the lithium triangle: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile. You have the largest oil reserves, light sweet crude discovered in Guyana more than a year ago. You have the resources of Venezuela as well, with oil, copper, gold. We have the lungs of the world, the Amazon. We also have 31% of the world’s fresh water in this region. I mean, it’s out of the ordinary. We have a lot to do. This region matters. It has a lot to do with our national security and we have to step up our game,” declared Laura Richardson, head of Southern Command, in late January 2023.

However, Richardson is wrong: they do not, and will not, have all those resources. But that is why we are seeing new versions of Videla, Banzer or Pinochet walking around Latin America, once again on the arm of the United States of America.

Source: Cuba en Resumen