From the Aug. 16 Vanguard newspaper in Abuja, Nigeria, on the International Conference for the Eradication of Colonialism, which was held in Abuja, Nigeria, from August 12-13, 2024:

“The conference, which included delegates of colonized and oppressed peoples who flew in from the Caribbean, North America, Latin America, and Europe, was a potent reminder that although some have been colonized for hundreds of years, they have not forgotten their roots. 

“African-American internationalist John Thompson Parker had already written to register for the conference when, two weeks ago, DNA tests revealed that his forebears were taken from Nigeria. For a widely traveled man who had undertaken peace and solidarity visits to countries like Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Sudan, Syria, and Gaza, his participation in the conference was initially in solidarity with the colonized peoples of the world and to make suggestions on how this human scourge can be brought to an end. But finding out that he was originally Nigerian added urgency to his footsteps to be in Abuja. He said: ‘For Black folks in the U.S., it is a big deal to know where our ancestors came from.’

“However, his enthusiasm was dampened when, on August 10, he was refused boarding in Germany for his connecting flight to Abuja on the basis that his application for visa-on-arrival had not been confirmed. As the aircraft that should have taken him to Abuja took off, he lamented: ‘They stole me from Africa, and now they told me I can’t come back; that I can’t even get back to my homeland.’ He later got the confirmation, so the next day, he flew into Nigeria.”

A 24-year-old Nigerian man who works in a tailor shop cannot go home to his mother and two siblings because the bus fare doubled. When he can afford to go home, he brings home the money to support his mom and siblings and skips meals to allow others to eat. He’s got his food cost down to $1.60 a day.

Nigeria is facing the worst economic crisis, facing inflation levels not seen in almost three decades.

Basic staples like rice, milk, and corn are now at levels that promote malnutrition. The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that 26.5 million of Nigeria’s 220 million people are food insecure, with at least 9 million children at risk of wasting – a medical condition that stunts development.

In Ghana, the level of poverty cannot be explained when the production of timber, iron or diamonds, etc., including gold – the fifth largest producer of that metal in the world – seems to only maintain poverty.

Poverty in Somalia and in Sudan, etc., on our earth’s African continent is left in torment by Western imperialism and especially U.S. imperialism, and the IMF and World Bank in maintaining that torment.

The IMF was created at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944. And the primary architects from Britain and the United States ensured that African, Latin American, and Asian self-determination would be denied in the service of the maximization of profits of financial and industrial monopolies of the United States and Britain.

The IMF sits in Washington, D.C., which guarantees that the U.S. Treasury exerts the greatest influence.

World War II allowed the United States to be in virtual control of the world economy and place the world on the U.S. dollar rather than local currencies.

Only three of the 40 original members of the IMF were in Africa and at the time most of that continent was still under colonialism. Eventually, one-third of the IMF members were from Africa. But, they’re low income, the effect of years of colonialism. This gave them less than 9% of the voting power, and they held only three of the 22 seats on the executive board. Meaning self-determination for Africa was not a priority of the IMF.

African scholar Walter Rodney exposed in 1968 “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa” and wrote: “In the first place, the wealth created by African labor and from African resources was grabbed by the capitalist countries in Europe and in the second place restrictions were placed upon African capacity to make the maximum use of its economic potential, which is what development is all about.”

And in their own words, the IMF writes: “Their economic problems tend to be structural even more than macroeconomic; rooted in the need for improvements in education, health care, infrastructure and governance rather than finance and more deeply ingrained and persistent than in other regions.”

In spite of those words, the IMF does not help build vital infrastructure of a nation. It prioritizes privatization and a dearth of social spending.

While in the U.S., I saw a photo from a protester’s sign in Kenya that read, “IMF keep your hands off Kenya” and “Kenya is not IMF’s lab rat.” That protester and many others were subject to gunfire and tear gas from police in Nairobi’s streets. They were responding to President Ruto’s fiscal and austerity policies that were driven by the IMF in order to be eligible to receive loans.

The so-called shock therapies that are currently being used by the Nigerian president includes the reduction of gas subsidies, higher electrical costs, and the devaluing of currency which is like a pay cut for workers; which is why labor unions have gone on strike and protest. That austerity allowed Nigeria to get a $2.25 billion loan from the World Bank, and the austerity is celebrated by the banks.

Latin America has also inspired protests from the victims of the IMF social cutbacks.

In 1980, the structural adjustment programs or SAPs imposed deep cuts on public services and encouraged privatizations and trade policies in favor of capitalist countries.

Fela Kuti, the famous Nigerian musician – famous in the U.S. as well – sang a song about taking the wealth from African people called “SAP,” which he interpreted as meaning “Suck African People – suck them dry.”

The IMF has also been used in North African countries for a long time, inspiring inflation and high poverty rates. But, unauthorized protests are strictly enforced. I can tell you that I got a taste of the police on this continent in an unauthorized protest in Egypt that landed me in detention last November. I was simply a part of an international delegation trying to get humanitarian aid into Gaza.

I should also mention that I found out more of my history using Ancestry.com, which is a relatively new ability – being able to find out your ethnicity using DNA really is a big deal. You see, it is a unique disability that African Americans endure – our families were broken up and sold on arrival to foreign shores. But, two weeks ago, I found out where my ancestors are from, and that is a very big, emotional deal – just imagine not knowing where you are from. Just two weeks ago, I found out – it is a really big deal because most of my DNA comes from here – Nigeria! I’m so proud looking at the people here in Nigeria – my people, my family. I just found out two weeks ago!

And while I’m on the subject of my ancestors who were taken to the United States in chains from here, I want to point out that the wealth that was created by slaves in the U.S. in cotton production created the capital of the ruling class and the founding capital of the IMF.

The great wealth that was used to catapult capitalism in the U.S. was from cotton, thanks to the invention of the cotton gin and another advance in technology that increased production. Annual cotton exports reached 4 million bales. The cotton traveled up north and out of New York, making way for England and other places, allowing the fortunes of the industries facilitating its movement there to grow exponentially. And who were those beneficiaries? They were the railroads of the Vanderbilts. They were J.P. Morgan’s steel. They were Rockefeller, Melon, and Morgan’s Manhattan Bank (now Chase Manhattan), and created the capital for Rockefeller’s Standard Oil. All thanks to African slaves who were now producing for them and the world – for free. That’s where this insane wealth of the ruling class originated, and also some of the wealth of the English ruling class and the banks that made the IMF possible.

The IMF also induced inflation, and it also comes from the U.S. imperialist wars and proxy wars like the proxy war against Ukraine.

The U.S. Secretary of Defense 2022 report states right out of the gate that China and Russia are the main targets of the U.S. and China is the number one target – not because of a military threat – it states China’s threat is economic and, according to the Department of Defense, warrants war against China. And the plans also include Russia.

Last September, the U.S. held a meeting in India, pushing the Indian Middle East Corridor initiative with cooperation between Saudi Arabia and India and the U.S. with invites to Jordan. The destruction of Russia’s Nord Stream pipeline by the U.S. and the U.S. proxy war in Ukraine helped push the IMEC initiative, pushing an alternative hydrogen pipeline to replace the natural gas that Russia had provided to Europe. The pipeline flows from India to Saudi Arabia to Jordan to Haifa and occupied Palestine close to the West Bank and Gaza. The pipeline would then go to Greece to supply Europe.

It’s very interesting that before Oct. 7, the U.N. reported record-breaking violence with settler attacks against Palestinians in Gaza. And before Oct. 7, Israel’s Netanyahu presented a new map of Israel that eliminated Palestine.

But, in their haste for proxy war in Ukraine and funding of genocide in Gaza, the U.S. exposed itself and became isolated, especially in this African continent. Therefore, some are seeing Russia as an alternative. The African continent has experienced China and Russia as an alternative to the IMF and World Bank in building the infrastructure with no demands for austerity – that is the threat that the U.S. sees and does not mind playing with our lives by pushing World War III.

You might ask if it’s possible that there would be such a lack of basic morality to make such a threat against our lives, but what’s going on in Gaza makes clear the horrors of the U.S. The Biden and Harris administration funds and arms Israel. They have no limit in their tolerance for Israel’s most heinous genocide, which would not be possible if the U.S. was not on board.

One of the most trusted journals concerning health care and medical research, The Lancet, said a conservative estimate of the real number of folks dying is not 37,000. It’s more like 186,000 in Gaza.

And we know that the terror is also on this continent, coming from the same source.

Former President Obama fulfilled the U.S. imperialist dream of getting AFRICOM stationed on the African continent to supposedly fight terrorists.

What was the result? The number of extremist groups went up 400%, according to the Defense Department’s African Center for Strategic Studies.

This also echoes the 2017 U.N. report in the film “Journey to Extremism in Africa,” which states that government actions of repression – including the increased drone killings, killing of family members, and jailings and repression by the U S. and their collaborators – are the main motivation for recruitment into extremist organizations.

Many studies have correlated the lack of food and basic necessities of life as the greatest cause of internal conflict.

In 2018, the U.N. also reported that it would take just $175 billion per year for just 20 years to eradicate not only poverty on the entire continent of Africa but the entire world. So that’s just 17% of the U.S. yearly military spending of $1 trillion.

The fact is that AFRICOM’s war on terror, in addition to being a vital tool for U.S. imperialism, is also a self-perpetuating money machine for the ruling class, a huge buffet for the military-industrial complex and the politicians and corporations who directly and indirectly benefit from it.

Former President Obama’s father was Kenyan, so the contradiction of U.S. imperialist white supremacy in Black skin, which we know is a tactic of U.S. imperialism, is again being used by presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

Harris is a former District Attorney – encouraging and enabling police genocide in the U.S. that most acutely affects Black and Brown people — particularly in the Los Angeles Police Department. Harris is also a current supporter of Israel’s genocide.

But my ancestry knowledge of my Nigerian heritage does not allow that contradiction for me.

I am hoping this conference will be a qualitative change in our power. And increase the power of humanity organized with international collaboration to effectively fight our enemies who we have irreconcilable differences with. We have no interest or gain in the interests of the ruling class — and I like to say that our irreconcilable differences can also be expressed as the capitalist system vs. the winning socialist/communist solution.

John Parker is the coordinator of the Harriet Tubman Center For Social Justice in Los Angeles and a leading member of the Socialist Unity Party. Following is his presentation to the Conference for the Eradication of Colonialism.

From the Aug. 16 Vanguard newspaper in Abuja, Nigeria, on the International Conference for the Eradication of Colonialism, which was held in Abuja, Nigeria, from August 12-13, 2024:

“It pointedly reminded those who are free of the fact that there are at least 61 territories still under colonialism. …

“Berta Joubert-Ceci, who flew in from the United States, presented the case of the 3.3 million Puerto Rican people. The reception of her presentation indicated that the conference wants the 125-year colonization of Puerto Rico by the U.S. to be brought to an end.”

A Puerto Rico (PUR) without Puerto Ricans

“The yankees want the cage, but not the birds” – Pedro Albizu Campos

We are witnessing the deepening of a colonial process through neoliberalism by the United States in PUR that, if not stopped now, will completely displace the native population to create another entity with the substitution of our population … to the point of no return. They did it to Hawaii and Alaska. We don’t want it to happen in Borikén! 

But first, let’s briefly see these attempts of extermination and displacement throughout the years.

In 1934, after an island-wide agricultural strike, the then-U.S. chief of police Francis Riggs stated, “There will be a war to death against all Puerto Ricans.” 

In the same decade, Dr. Cornelious Rhoads, first Director of the Sloan Kettering Cancer Institute, stated to a friend while in PUR for “scientific” research: “I have done my best to further the process of extermination by killing off eight and transplanting cancer into several more.”

In the 1950s, the USA, as part of a birth control (eugenics) experiment, 1/3 of Puerto Rican women were sterilized. In the 40s, hundreds of families were displaced from Vieques to make room for a U.S. Naval storing and practicing range, leaving only 1/3 of the island for the population. Then, in the 60s, President Kennedy wanted to remove every person on the island, including their dead, emptying even the cemetery so there would be no reason for families to visit their deceased loved ones. And most recently, in the now-famous ex-governor Roselló’s Telegram chat, which once publicized, brought great outrage to the people, publicist Edwin Miranda said: “I saw the future, it was marvelous, there are no Puerto Ricans.”

How is this colonial deepening being accomplished now?

We are under a Process of Bankruptcy for an Odious or Illegitimate Debt under International Law. The government sold Bonds “triple tax free” that paid very high interest. Municipal bonds to finance operations, borrowing also to pay the interest. Not to develop the island’s economy. Vulture hedge funds bought at pennies on a dollar once rated downwards, expecting a massive return. The PUR government accumulated $74 billion in debt, which it could not pay. 

As a result, Obama’s U.S. Congress passed the PROMESA Law in 2016, imposing a dictatorial board that until now has put into practice a profound neoliberal process with austerity measures that affect every segment of our lives.

It reinforces the privatization of essential services that have already been in place by the local government’s lackeys.

Making these services very expensive and in some cases, unattainable for a vast segment of the population. In health care: It used to be a universal type, the Arbona System, but now has been privatized through insurance companies that open their own clinics and don’t allow PR’s recent medical graduates to work. Different level hospitals and clinics were closed. Loss of specialists, mostly due to migration to the USA, resulting in deteriorated health services in general.

In energy: After having a public entity that offered affordable electricity to the most remote areas in the difficult topography of the island, it has recently been privatized. Political abuse and corruption of successive administrations over the years destroyed this important agency. The new entities, Luma Energy (a quick deal merging USA Quanta Services and Canadian ATCO) for distribution and transmission, and Genera PR for generation. 

Some outrageous facts are that neither Luma nor Genera have to put one cent! The government had to give them $1,500 million … to start their businesses. They subcontract other companies, usually related to their parent company. For example, Luma’s parent company – ATCO & Quanta Services, or Genera PR – New Fortress Energy (gas). The result has been an increase in electric bills, frequent power outages, dismissal of knowledgeable workers under the union UTIER (which was also an attempt to destroy this militant union), and instead hire incompetent mostly foreign workers who are not familiar with PR topography.

In Education: Eugenio Maria de Hostos vs. Julia Keleher

De Hostos (“The Great Citizen of the Americas”), was a Puerto Rican educator, philosopher, intellectual, lawyer, sociologist, novelist, and Puerto Rican independence advocate. His educational program was highly regarded. Yet, instead of following his teachings, governor Roselló hired a USA education business “professional” (Julia Keleher) as Education Secretary in PR, who, after closing more than 100 schools, was charged with corruption and sent to a USA jail! The vast Education budget, a whopping $7 billion for 2022-23 meant to “strengthen education in PUR,” has instead been the source of historical corruption. The money has not gone to the badly needed schools’ infrastructure, teachers’ and other education workers’ salaries, nor educational materials. 

PUR for Sale!

Other policies and laws enacted by the acquiescent local PUR government, like Law 60, give tax incentives to foreign millionaires who move to PUR, consistent with the neoliberal aims, deprive the population of access to affordable housing, and push our people out of the islands, particularly those in the “productive and reproductive age” in their 20’s through 40’s. It also produces the selling off of PUR’s precious, important, and even historic real estate.

This Law 60 affords millionaires with a 4% corporate tax rate, 100% tax exemption on all dividends and interest income and 100% tax exemption on all capital gains. As a result, $35 billion in profits leave PUR per year!

Some examples of the effect of Law 60: In 2018, Brock Pierce converted a former monastery in the Old City of San Juan, Puerto Rico into his headquarters. John Paulson, took an 80% stake in an upscale hotel and condominium complex outside the capital, San Juan, in a bet that recent tax changes will lure rich financiers to the island. He stated, “The economy needs to reinvent itself, to shift from MANUFACTURING to SERVICES, and that is the reason for these tax changes.”

As a result of the uncontrollable luxury estate building and the rapid spread of short-term rental apartments, the affordable housing sector has greatly reduced and, as a consequence, families in PUR cannot find an adequate place to live, pushing them away from the PUR archipelago.

In terms of the destruction of the environment, there has been illegal dumping of toxic ashes buried and used for construction, illegal coastal construction, the cutting of mangroves, damaging coral reefs and turtle nests, cell phone antennas (due to privatization of the National Telephone Company … many companies have arrived, and each one puts its own antenna…)

In terms of the general SECURITY, there has been an increase in: general crimes, drug trafficking and mafia-related crimes, femicides, and widespread violence. Resulting in a deterioration of quality of life, increase in the cost of living and aggressive behavior.

Accelerated process of “deculturalization,” which detaches the population from its historical and cultural roots (trying to erase language, history, traditions, even our food habits) facilitates the migration, particularly to the U.S., where there are more Puerto Ricans than in our islands.

These effects have been carefully planned. In 2015 it was published in the Krueger Report, an IMF neoliberal prescription, “Puerto Rico – a way forward.”The 30-page report provides a detailed study of the economy of the colony and its practices for 10 consecutive years by Anne O. Krueger, Ranjit Teja, and Andrew Wolfe, former economists in none other than the International Monetary Fund. 

Some measures of this five-year plan are: 

• Elimination of the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, which it says is too high for PR and must be lowered until the situation of PR approaches that of the poorest state in the USA. 
• End to the year-end or Christmas bonus
• Holidays reduction from 30 to 15 days 
• Redefine overtime based on 40 hours a week and not as they do now, after 8 hours per day 
• “Reducing onerous requirements for proving just cause in layoffs”
• Reduction of the number of teachers and consolidation (closing) of schools; reduction of funding to the University of Puerto Rico, etc. 

It also includes privatization of public agencies such as the PUR Electric Power Authority, and other government agencies that are efficiently generating income as the State Insurance Fund.

THESE FACTS POINT TO THE URGENCY OF DECOLONIZATION NOW!

Berta Joubert-Ceci is a contributing editor at Struggle-La Lucha. Following is her presentation to the Conference for the Eradication of Colonialism.

In August of 1968, I was barely 19 years old and several months pregnant when I embarked on a trip with other activists to attend the protests at the Democratic Party Convention.  

It was a boring and long ride from Wilmington, Delaware, to Chicago, and I don’t remember much about the trip or even our sleeping arrangements on donated floor space — other than that we managed it — but I remember a lot about the streets of Chicago.

Like the thousands of other youth who had converged on Chicago, we were angry about the Vietnam War. The Pentagon was engaged in merciless carpet bombing and napalming villagers. The costs of the war were mounting along with the deaths of working-class GIs transported back home in body bags and unloaded on the tarmacs of military airports.  

We were equally ignited and inspired by the Black liberation movement expressed by the Black Panther Party during that period. The Chicago DNC took place just months after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, which sparked nationwide rebellions in major cities. 

The FBI’s COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) state repression against the Black movement was in full swing. And every bit of this was reflected outside and inside the convention.

While my politics were barely formed, my practical working-class instincts were polished. I quickly concluded that marching in the streets and fighting against the massive police repression was the best form of survival.  

The less radical and perhaps naive youth who remained stationary in Grant Park took the brunt of Mayor Daley’s police billy clubs. “Give peace a chance” was not going to cut it for either tear gas and police brutality, or for that matter, the thousands of fully armed National Guard and U.S. Army units that were called in to back up Chicago’s gestapo police force.

Our group endured tear gas, but fortunately, no one got cracked over the head by a police club or sent to the hospital. The repression that took place shocked the world and was described in the later “Walker Report” as a “police riot.”

Today, the rhetoric is similar. Chicago’s top cop, Superintendent Larry Snelling, has already proclaimed, “We’re not going to allow you to riot,” promising arrests and a police crackdown. Cook County judges have announced that they are clearing their schedules as part of Chief Judge Tim Evans’ order to prepare for mass arrests. 

The battle over the denial of permits for an accepted march route continues after U.S. District Judge Andrea Wood refused to force the city to alter the route proposed by the city officials. Protesters rightfully insist that the present route forces marchers into small side streets, creating unsafe conditions. Presently, the March on the DNC Coalition is being barred from using a stage or sound at Union Park.

Crisis for U.S. imperialism in 1968 and today

In both 1968 and 2024, the resistance of colonized and occupied people fueled an outpouring of protest and resistance. In 1968, it was the Vietnamese people; today, it is the resistance of the Palestinian people and the horror of the U.S.-funded genocide.

We would be remiss not to add to the above the continuing bloody U.S./NATO war in Ukraine on Russia, the not-so-cold war on China, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba, and all of the covert and overt schemes U.S. imperialism has cooked up in almost every part of the globe.   

None of the top Pentagon brass or capitalist bankers would want to publicly categorize either period as a crisis for the system. But they know it is so.

The Tet Offensive, launched in January 1968 on the Lunar New Year by the Vietnamese National Liberation Front, struck major cities in the southern part of Vietnam, even breaching the outer walls of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. 

The U.S. and the puppet South Vietnamese militaries suffered heavy losses. It proved that the liberation forces were far stronger than the Johnson administration claimed.

On Oct. 7, 2023, Palestinian liberation fighters stunned the world in a brazen and daring attack that broke through the “iron dome.”  For many of the young Palestinian fighters, it was the first time they had stepped foot on stolen land, having been confined their entire lives to the apartheid Gaza Strip, which was described as an open-air prison.

Forgotten economic crisis

March 1968 saw the largest speculative run on gold in history. Massive expenditures on the Vietnam War helped fuel inflation during that period. This crisis later became popularly referred to as stagflation, characterized by rising unemployment and rising prices.  

It ushered in one of the most pivotal changes for the capitalist world market in August of 1971 when Nixon held a secret meeting at Camp David with top representatives of the imperialist banking system that resulted in the unilateral delinking of the dollar from gold in the international arena. This action was tantamount to an economic coup against any country holding dollars.

Today, capitalist contraction continues. The chilling record drop in major stock markets on Aug. 5, 2024, due to a weak job market report, attests to this.  

Inside the the Conventions – 1968 and 2024

Though the circumstances were different, there are some similarities, but with one big difference. Considering that none of the capitalist candidates of 1968 represented honest and unabashed working-class interests, there was rigorous debate, which sometimes ended up with punches thrown and actual competition between different candidates.   

On March 31, 1968, Johnson announced that he would not seek a second term as president. This was a direct result of the Vietnam quagmire, as it was referred to at the time. Johnson then handed the baton to his vice president, Hubert Humphrey, to run for the presidency.  

It is not all that different from Genocide Joe Biden handing over his nomination to his vice-president, Kamala Harris. A little more on that later.  

Senator Robert F. Kennedy had already emerged as a major candidate in the primaries.  He had just won the huge California delegate prize. It was at a Los Angeles rally that he was shot right after declaring, “Now it’s on to Chicago to win there.” He died the next day, on June 6. This left Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy as the favorite of Democrats opposing the war.  

It should be noted that McCarthy’s anti-war opposition was rather milquetoast; it certainly wasn’t based on supporting the Vietnamese liberation struggle.  

In fact, most of the Democratic Party opposition, while pushed by the masses in the streets and by a working class weary of the war, was based on the fact that the Vietnamese people were breaking the back of the U.S. war machine. It was tactical and still predicated on U.S. imperialist interests.     

With all of its similarities, today’s DNC looks different from 1968. Vice President Kamala Harris was already crowned the winner virtually on Aug. 5. For all practical purposes, Harris will have no challengers.

Those outside the U.S. might peer at the DNC spectacle and wonder how something so autocratic and scripted could even remotely be considered democratic.

The 2024 convention will be held behind a giant barrier between eight and 10 feet high and non-scalable. The feds have already appropriated $75 million for security. So much for the Democratic Party being the party of the people.

But the echo of the streets, even if it’s faint, may still be felt on the conference floor. 

There is much trepidation that the uncommitted delegates, mainly from Minnesota and Michigan, will mount a protest. Given the extraordinary control and orchestration of the 2024 DNC, any form of resistance is a sign of the movement’s strength.

The DNC theater spectacle 

A seat at the table will cost you much more than an arm and a leg. According to Politico, prime seat packages run as high as $5 million, which published a breakdown of sponsorship levels obtained by its Playbook column. 

The Democratic Party announced its platform on July 13, and it’s another piece of theater. I would bet my meager Social Security check that most workers have not waded through the 80-page meandering, demagogic nonsense that is primarily a polemic against Donald Trump.

It has very little concrete connection for workers and the poor, who are weary of high prices and worried about the future, whether it’s racist police terror in the streets or at the border, or the worsening climate crisis. 

And on the question of Palestine, the platform reaffirms U.S. support for Israel. 

What trumps words (no pun intended) are deeds. On Aug. 13, Biden approved $20 billion in new weapons, including F-15 fighter jets, 120mm tank ammunition, tactical vehicles, AMRAAM anti-aircraft missiles, and high-explosive mortars. Talking peace is a smokescreen while they wage war.

The Democratic and Republican Parties remain imperialist war parties of the capitalist class. It is the Pentagon generals, the banks, and the obscenely wealthy members of the ruling class that determine the real and sometimes hidden program of war and plunder.

Hubert Humphrey, who lost to Nixon, reminisced that his mistake was capitulating to Johnson on the war plank (like Kamala Harris today, he pledged his support for the war then). But there is a small part of this history that needs to be underscored, and that is the role not just of Secretary of State Dean Rusk or National Security Adviser Walt Rostow, but of General Creighton Abrams, who was the commander of the U.S. forces in Vietnam who intervened on what the final wording of Humphrey’s platform would be.

You might ask yourself, what is a General doing poking himself into civil affairs, but it underscores who the real players are behind the curtain.

If we ended on this note alone, this would not only be a bad story but also untrue. The will of the masses of people, not only the youth in the streets or the working class of this country, but especially workers and the oppressed masses globally, will determine the ending.

This is true not only in some final sense but also in the coming week, regardless of how the corporate media frames the grotesque charade and spectacle before us.

When all is said and done, it is back into the streets where history is made! I intend to be at the 2024 Chicago DNC protests.

Make the Trumps pay reparations!

What does Trump mean by the term “Black Jobs”? The billionaire bigot has used the phrase repeatedly since his debate with Genocide Joe Biden on June 27.

Superstar gymnast Simone Biles fired back. She posted “‘I love my ‘Black Job’” on X while earning another three gold medals and a silver one at the Paris Olympics. Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, attacked Biles three years ago during the Tokyo Olympics. 

Trump used the term again while speaking at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Chicago on July 31. The political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal was president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists.

Trump claimed that “coming from the border are millions and millions of people who happen to be taking Black jobs. They’re taking the employment from Black people.” 

It wasn’t immigrants who shut down nine of the 10 General Motors plants in Flint, Michigan, impoverishing the Black-majority city. It was Michigan Governor Rick Snyder — not immigrants — who shifted the source of the city’s water supply to the filthy Flint River, poisoning thousands of children. 

The hundreds of thousands of Black people in prison weren’t railroaded by immigrants, either. It’s politicians like Joe Biden who are responsible for two million poor people in jail. Biden sponsored the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994.

Trump’s obvious aim is to divide and conquer. He wants to pit the Black community against immigrants while keeping both exploited.

Donald Trump didn’t even want to rent apartments to Black people. He and his daddy were sued in 1973 by the feds for massive housing discrimination.

Meanwhile, the wealthy and powerful keep themselves in power by pumping racism into the minds of millions of whites. Fox News is just the most obvious, recent example. 

Trump despises all working and poor people. To build Trump Tower on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, Trump hired Polish immigrants, many of whom were undocumented, to tear down an older building.

They were paid low wages and given hardly any safety equipment to protect them against asbestos. It’s unknown how many died of mesothelioma, a form of lung cancer.

Four centuries of exploitation

“Black Jobs” have existed in this country from before the Mayflower. Since the first enslaved Africans arrived in Virginia in 1619, the worst and most dangerous jobs have been reserved for Black and other oppressed peoples.

Right up to the Civil War, it was “Black Jobs” on the plantations that produced two-thirds of U.S. exports. Capitalism depended on enslaved Africans picking cotton for its textile mills.

Most steelmaking methods require coke, which is heat-treated coal. Apartheid hiring in U.S. steel mills meant the vast majority of coke oven workers were Black, who were 10 times as likely to die from lung cancer. 

Members of the Navajo Nation who were uranium miners suffered similarly high rates of lung cancers. Farmworkers, the majority of whom are undocumented, are plagued by cancers caused by pesticides.

Chinese workers were indispensable to building the first transcontinental railroad across the Sierra Nevada mountains in California. Over a thousand were killed because of dangerous working conditions.

By 1968, a quarter of all U.S. auto and steel workers were Black, twice their percentage of the total population. (“Organized Labor and the Black Worker, 1619-1981,” by Philip Foner.)

Since then millions of factory workers, many of whom were Black, have lost their jobs. Just in New York City, 900,000 manufacturing jobs were destroyed. Dozens of cities like Detroit were devastated by deindustrialization.

Black workers are often the first target of automation. Fifty thousand jobs held by Black coal miners were eliminated between 1930 and 1980. (“Black Coal Miners in America, Race, Class, and Community Conflict 1780-1980,” by Ronald L. Lewis.)

Twenty thousand Black elevator operators lost their jobs in New York City. (Local 32B-32J: Sixty Years of Progress.)

The Midwest was the industrial heartland of the United States. White families’ median income fell there between 1978 and 1982 by 7.1%. That’s a deep recession.

But Black families’ median income in the same region fell by 35.8% — five times as much. That’s a great depression. (U.S. Census historical income tables.) 

Black workers have never recovered from this tsunami. The largest employer of Black labor today is non-union, low-wage Walmart.

It’s because Walmart workers are poor that the Walton family is filthy rich with a $267 billion fortune. 

When will we be paid for the work we’ve done?

Simone Biles knows exactly what Donald Trump means by “Black Jobs” and the workers who hold them. Trump wasn’t referring to Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett who helped lead efforts to develop a COVID-19 vaccine. (Moderna tried to deny Corbett and other National Institutes of Health scientists credit by keeping their names off its patent application.) 

Nor was Trump thinking of the computer wizard Dr. Mark Dean, who holds 27 patents including three of the nine patents which made desktop computers available for personal use. Dean designed the ISA systems bus, which allows the linking of printers and modems with computers, and helped develop the color PC monitor. 

When Trump says “Black Jobs” he means the so-called menial workers, the ones who work in “dirty jobs” and clean up after all the Trumps.

During the COVID pandemic, these workers became known for what they really are: essential. They kept society running, something that banksters and real estate sharks like Trump could never do.

Just during the first year of the pandemic, over 3,000 healthcare workers died in the U.S. 

While operating and maintaining the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority’s subways, trains, and buses, 156 workers died of COVID-19.

John Tyson and other dead animal capitalists demanded that Trump issue an executive order keeping the meatpacking plants open. In the following months, over 59,000 meatpacking workers fell ill, and at least 269 died of the virus. The vast majority of these workers were Latinx, Black, and/or immigrants.

As the Staple singers asked in their great song, when will we be paid for the work we’ve done? 

Make the Waltons, the Trumps, and all the billionaire families that run the United States pay reparations!

The AI boom tumbled on Friday, Aug. 2, 2024, shaken by losses in Big Tech. The world’s 10 richest people — all men — lost just over $45 billion in the Aug. 2 market fall. 

Fortune magazine called it a “bloodbath,” adding that “the world’s 500 richest people have seen $134 billion wiped from their fortunes overnight.”

The following Monday, Aug. 5, a stock market crash swept the globe, starting in Japan. Wall Street’s “Magnificent Seven” lost $653 billion in that one day.  

In the previous year, the “Magnificent Seven” — Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, the semiconductor manufacturer Nvidia, Alphabet (the parent company of Google), Meta (the owner of Facebook), and Tesla, led by Elon Musk — were responsible for approximately 50% of the increase in the S&P 500 index.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite index gained over 70% since the end of 2022. 

By the morning of Aug. 2, the seven had fallen 11.8% from their peak the previous month, causing nearly $3 trillion in losses.

This was a rapid turnaround, the most significant market fall since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. AI mania has gripped the stock market since 2023, sending it to new highs. The media was abuzz: Is the AI bubble about to burst? Is this the beginning of a recession?

Inflation and recession

The global capitalist economy has been teetering between accelerating inflation and deep recession. It threatens to enter stagflation or recession. The question is not whether but when the recession will begin.

As anyone alive and working in the United States knows, inflation is much worse than the “official” estimates. This was confirmed by a group of economists from Harvard and the International Monetary Fund, headed by Larry Summers, Obama’s economic director and secretary of the treasury.

The official inflation numbers exclude rising home mortgage interest rates and credit card debt. When they included the cost of mortgage interest, auto loan interest, and credit card interest, the inflation rate reached 18% in November 2022, and today’s inflation rate is close to 8%. Inflation has not been stopped.

In the three months from April to June, total credit card debt rose to $1.14 trillion, an increase of $27 billion. That’s the highest level on record in Fed data dating back to 2003. Credit card interest rates are astronomically high.

Homelessness has reached record levels, with nearly a million homeless every night, many without shelter. This is the highest number of homeless individuals ever documented in the U.S.

Unemployment is also rising. The National Jobs for All Network reports that while the official unemployment rate for July 2024 rose to 4.3%, the real unemployment rate is much higher – 10%.

A report on “The effect of AI adoption on jobs” says that between 2000 and 2020, the number of AI-related jobs, including data scientists, computer programmers, software developers, and web designers, almost doubled.

The Center for Economic Policy Research report says that so far, most AI adoption has been in the service sector. The jobs most affected are warehouse work, salespeople, customer service, receptionists, bookkeepers, etc. 

AI adoption is limited in manufacturing, though AI robotics and automation are coming.

AI is massive data collection

AI (Artificial Intelligence) is a field of computer science focused on creating machines that can perform tasks that typically require human intelligence, systems that can reason, learn, and act autonomously. Massive amounts of data are collected, and algorithms are used to act on what is found in the data. 

Perhaps the best-known AI implementation is ChatGPT, a large language model (LLM) trained on massive datasets of text and code that understands and generates human-like text in response to a wide range of prompts and questions.

The development of AI has long been tied to DARPA and other military/government agencies, which have funded AI research, sometimes openly and sometimes secretly.

Military-industrial complex in Silicon Valley

The U.S. military-industrial complex is now centered in Silicon Valley. Within a relatively short period, Pentagon officials have created a vast infrastructure designed to provide funding support to defense tech companies.

According to a report by Roberto González for the Costs of War Project:

“Although much of the Pentagon’s $886 billion budget is spent on conventional weapon systems and goes to well-established defense giants such as Lockheed Martin, RTX, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Boeing, and BAE Systems, a new political economy is emerging, driven by the imperatives of big tech companies, venture capital, and private equity firms. As Defense Department officials have sought to adopt AI-enabled systems and secure cloud computing services, they have awarded large multi-billion dollar contracts to Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Oracle. …

“Booming demand for AI-enabled military technologies and cloud computing services is being driven by several developments. Perhaps most importantly, the easy availability of massive amounts of digital data collected from satellites, drones, surveillance cameras, smartphones, social media posts, email messages, and other sources has motivated Pentagon planners to find new ways of analyzing the information.”

The United States military has shifted toward AI and “data driven” warfare. A new revolving door is putting senior Pentagon officials into executive positions or as advisors to the Big Tech companies.

Over the past two years, global events have further fueled the Pentagon’s demand

for Silicon Valley technologies, including the deployment of drones and AI-enabled weapon systems in Ukraine and Gaza, as well as the Pentagon’s AI arms race directed against China.

González of the Costs of War Project “refutes the popular misperception that China is poised to surpass the U.S. in a global ‘AI arms race’ that will determine the future of geopolitics and global economic dominance. It does this by showing how the arms race narrative has been propagated by Pentagon officials and tech leaders who stand to benefit from increased sales of high-tech weapons, surveillance, and logistics systems enabled by AI. These myths and misperceptions risk diverting taxpayer funds towards research and development (R&D) projects that meet military needs, rather than civilian needs.” 

Palestinian resistance continues despite Zionist assassinations

As the genocide in Gaza marked its 300th day of bloodshed, Israel continues to demonstrate its intentions to prolong the genocide while provoking a possible regional war. 

In a series of assassinations in late July, Israel targeted and killed Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh and Hezbollah military commander Fouad Shukur. Mohammad Deif, a senior Hamas military leader and a founder of the Qassam Brigades, was also confirmed killed in an Israeli air raid in southern Gaza on July 13. 

These assassinations reveal a sense of desperation from the Netanyahu regime, as their campaign has failed to destroy the Palestinian resistance. More importantly, the assassinations demonstrate the regime’s total disinterest in achieving a ceasefire-hostage deal, given that Haniyeh was Hamas’ chief negotiator. 

The string of assassinations has also not affected the U.S. imperialists’ support — far from it. Washington has ordered its naval assets in the region to move into position expeditiously while also approving an additional $20 billion worth of tanks, jets, and missiles to Israel. This is on top of the $3.5 billion released to Israel just earlier this month in August. As a client state, Israel is powerless and cannot exist without the U.S. 

Meanwhile, there’s no relief for working-class people in the U.S. who can’t afford food and rent. The Guardian recently reported that, between 2014 and 2023, 11,500 people died unhoused just in Los Angeles County. Three thousand were seniors. This contrast in the allocation of resources makes Washington’s priorities clear. 

The question remains how Israel’s latest provocations will alter the political landscape of West Asia and affect ceasefire negotiations moving forward.

A path to peace? 

It’s important to highlight how central Haniyeh was to the negotiation process. He and his delegation were adamant that any deals made would need to include a full and complete end to the war, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip, and the relinquishing of control over the Rafah Crossing – all of which have been nonstarters for the Netanhayu regime since a ceasefire proposal was first put forward. 

What is made clear now is that the Israelis were never interested in negotiating to begin with and instead used the notion of a ceasefire-hostage deal as a stalling tactic. At the same time, they pursued their stated agenda of incapacitating Hamas and the Palestinian community both politically and militarily. 

Before the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, hopes for a hostage-ceasefire deal were at a standstill. In May of this year, Hamas, through its mediators in Cairo and Doha, had agreed in principle to a hostage-ceasefire proposal. However, negotiations quickly unraveled as Netanyahu doubled down on his commitment to “eradicate” Hamas from the Gaza Strip and continued with his siege of Rafah. 

The following month, in June, Hamas responded positively to a U.N.-backed ceasefire plan. Yet that same week, the Israelis responded by pressing on with their assault and embarking on yet another bombing campaign in Al-Mawasi, the only designated humanitarian “safe zone” by the Israeli military. 

The assassination of Haniyeh marks a dangerous new turn in the conflict. It not only places any hopes for a ceasefire deal on the back-burner, but it further escalates simmering tensions in the region. 

Because the assassinations of Haniyeh and Shukur took place within the sovereign borders of Iran and Lebanon, respectively, both nations are entitled under international law to respond however they see fit. Both the United States and Israel are keenly aware of this, which is why the U.S. has already preemptively dispatched warships and fighter jets to the region in anticipation of an Iranian response.

As of now, U.S. forces have been attacked at the Ain al-Asad airbase in western Iraq, while Hezbollah has claimed responsibility for a drone attack in northern Israel.

Notably, assassinations are one of Washington’s preferred tactics, going back many decades. Obama pioneered the use of drones in this regard, and we are only four years out from the Trump administration’s assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad, Iraq. 

That same month, January 2020, Iraq was rocked by massive protests that forced the country’s parliament to pass a resolution to expel all foreign troops from the country. The U.S. has still not complied, showing its imperial disregard for the sovereignty of both Iraq and Iran. 

A legacy of targeted assassinations

Make no mistake, the assassination of Haniyeh continues a long legacy of targeted killings by U.S.-backed Zionist occupation forces meant to disorient and demoralize regional resistance forces. Extrajudicial killings have been a hallmark of Israeli intelligence agencies going as far back as the beginning of the settler state. 

In 1972, Israel launched Operation Wrath of God in response to the righteous actions of Palestinian athletes — banned from that year’s Olympic Games held in Munich — who held Israeli athletes hostage, demanding an exchange for hundreds of Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners held in Israeli jails. 

Despite these actions being heralded as military successes and a show of might in popular media, such as Steven Spielberg’s 2005 dramatization of the events, the assassinations strengthened the resolve of the Palestinian people and the resistance.

It should go without saying that positions of leadership within Hamas are not without their occupational hazards. Since its inception, many of Hamas’ leaders have been assassinated while still in office. Hamas’ founder and spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, was assassinated in 2004 – and just 15 days later, Yassin’s successor, Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, was targeted and killed by the Israeli air force. An attempted assassination was also carried out on Khaled Mashal, the successor to al-Rantisi.

Similarly, Haniyeh’s predecessor and founding member of the Al-Qassam Brigades, Saleh al-Arouri, was assassinated by an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon earlier this year, in January.

Upon closer examination, it becomes apparent that Israel’s strategy of high-profile assassinations does very little to break the resolve of resistance groups on the ground, nor does it make very much sense strategically, as Hamas continues to demonstrate its ability to seamlessly transition between leaders if and when one is martyred. However, it is not out of the realm of possibility that these actions are simply meant to provoke a response from its neighbors and non-state actors alike.

Where things currently stand

Hamas recently announced that Yahya Sinwar is the new political bureau chief. As the leader of Hamas in Gaza, Sinwar has played a critical role in ceasefire negotiations and is believed to be one of the principal architects of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on Oct. 7, 2023. Because of this, Sinwar stands as a wanted man by the International Criminal Court and the Netanyahu regime, who’ve placed Sinwar at the top of their most wanted list.  

Sinwar’s appointment as head of Hamas’ political bureau not only places Gaza at the front and center of any future ceasefire-hostage negotiations but also demonstrates that despite Israel’s declared objective of wiping Hamas “off the face of the Earth,” the group remains resilient and united on multiple fronts. 

In recent days it has been reported that U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has pressured Sinwar to accept a deal on less than favorable terms, stating that Sinwar “has been and remains the primary decider when it comes to concluding the ceasefire,” and urged Hamas to meet to finalize negotiations scheduled for Aug.15. Hamas has responded to this by reiterating its support for the previous proposal put forth earlier this summer and stating that Hamas would “study” the invitation despite reports in the Western press claiming they had pulled out of negotiations entirely. 

U.S. President Joe Biden mumbles his way through diversions while increasing the arms shipments to Israel and sending an additional armada to the region while threatening Iran. He issued a joint statement with European allies that calls on Iran to “stand down” when it is Israel that is on the attack. 

This serves as a reminder that the genocide of the Palestinian people is being carried out with the explicit endorsement of the U.S. government, both militarily and financially.

Brooklyn, New York, Aug. 11 – A hundred people gathered in the Bay Ridge neighborhood to honor the late Ismail Haniyeh. The Palestinian leader was assassinated in Tehran by the Zionist apartheid regime on July 31. Three of his sons and four grandchildren were murdered in Gaza in an Israeli air strike in April. 

Haniyeh was born in 1962 in Gaza’s Shati refugee camp, where his family lived after being driven from their home in the occupied Palestinian city of Ashkelon in 1948. 

The vigil and Salatul Ghaib (a funeral prayer) was called by PAL Awda, New York / New Jersey: the Palestine Right to Return Coalition. 

 A leader of the Islamic Resistance Movement, known as Hamas, Haniyeh had been a key negotiator in the talks to stop the genocide being committed in Gaza by Netanyahu and Biden.

The foul murder of Ismail Haniyeh shows that the Zionist occupiers and its Pentagon backers want that genocide to continue.

Haniyeh’s assassination was as if Nixon and Kissinger decided to murder Lê Đức Thọ, the leading Vietnamese negotiator, at the Paris Peace Talks.

The vigil opened with a statement from PAL Awda: 

“We send our condolences to Palestine and Palestinians across the world, for whom this loss is a national and personal tragedy as much as it is a political and legal crime. The Honorable Ismael Haniyeh lived a life in sacrifice and service to Palestinians with profound love and humility. He endured the most difficult conditions, lived a life in struggle, and under constant threat of assassination for his sacrifice and service to protecting the lives and lands of Palestinians. A life he was forced to live by the criminal and sadistic zionist project which has perpetrated the worst crimes seen in modern history for 76 years. Despite this, and in a show of epic mercy, patience, and peacefulness, the Honorable Haniyeh spent decades trying to broker peace. 

“For all that he was, he was deeply beloved as a father, son and brother by Palestinians and all who met and worked with him. The Honorable Haniyeh was known for his depth of kindness and his affectionate demeanor. He truly embodied the traits of the most committed of freedom fighters and servants of the people. For this, he remains the last democratically elected leader in Palestine, to date.” 

The statement held “the entire U.S. ruling class responsible” for Haniyeh’s assassination. “While the ICC has issued seven charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity against Benjamin Netanyahu,” less than a week before the murder, “Washington shamelessly welcomed and honored him at Congress. President Biden, Vice President Harris and GOP candidate Trump all met with him privately.”

A message was read from Lamis Deek, a human rights attorney and leader in the Palestinian community, denouncing Haniyeh’s murder. Omowale Clay, chairman of the December 12th Movement, praised  Ismail Haniyeh as a leader dedicated to liberating Palestinians. Rabbi Weiss of Neturei Karta, who attended Haniyeh’s funeral in Qatar, condemned Zionism and its apartheid regime.

While an estimated 700 million people around the world have taken part in prayers to honor Haniyeh, corporate-owned social media in the U.S. censored publicity for the New York vigil.

The mourners marched a short distance through the community to a masjid, where prayers were held. Ismail Haniyeh will not be forgotten.

As the PAL Awda statement concluded, “In the words of the late Fred Hampton, Black Panther leader and Field Marshal of the Illinois Chapter who was murdered in 1969 by Chicago PD: ‘You can kill a revolutionary, but you can’t kill the revolution.’”

Defying news of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s election victory, verified by the U.S. National Lawyers Guild, among many others, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a press release on Aug. 1 which stated:

“Given the overwhelming evidence, it is clear to the United States … that Edmundo González Urrutia won the most votes in Venezuela’s July 28 presidential election.”

Following the White House statement, the U.S. media reported:

• CBS News: “U.S. Recognizes Opposition’s Edmundo González As Winner”;
• New York Times: “U.S. Recognizes Maduro’s Rival as Winner”;

A week later, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller, speaking in a press conference, retreated by offering a conflicting version of the U.S. position on the election:

Question: “Is the U.S. ready to recognize another interim president, similar to what happened earlier with Guaidó?”

Miller: “No, that’s not a step that we have taken as of yet.”

CBS, the New York Times, or any other U.S. corporate media did not report on that press conference. Despite the overwhelming evidence of a fair and transparent election, the U.S. government has still refused to recognize President Nicolas Maduro’s election.

They reported that they would not recognize the result even before the election. Many attempts were reported on election day to disrupt and discredit the secure electronic voting system. There was even a mysterious cyberattack that stalled the process.

Having lost the election, the opposition immediately began violent attacks to incite terror and confusion. They attacked symbols of the Venezuelan Revolution: schools and health centers in working-class areas, public bus stations and buses, offices of Chavista communes and parties, and statues of figures who had set the Bolivarian Revolution in motion (including a statue of Chávez as well as the Indigenous Chief Coromoto). At least two militants of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) – Isabel Cirila Gil from Bolívar state and Mayauri Coromoto Silva Vilma from Aragua state – were assassinated, and other Chavistas, police, and officials were brutally beaten and captured.

Every day since the election, hundreds of thousands of Chavistas have taken to the streets of Caracas and elsewhere. In each of these marches, the chant “no volverán” – they will not return – reverberated amongst the crowd. The oligarchy, they said, will not return.

Far-right politicians Edmundo González and María Corina Machado campaigned in opposition to Maduro’s government. A quick look at the background of the latest cast of U.S. puppets shows why they lost the election.

Carlos Ron, Venezuela’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and president of the Simon Bolivar Institute, spoke from Caracas on Aug. 7 in a People’s Forum broadcast titled “Venezuela’s Fight Against Coups, Sanctions & Hybrid Warfare.” Ron discussed the ramifications of the U.S. sanctions and the attack on Venezuela’s elections.

“First of all, when you try to look for the program that Gonzalez ran on, well – you can only find an English version and then you see that it’s proposing to privatize the oil industry which is not a small thing. Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world.” Think of the need of the hyper-militarized U.S. economy for fossil fuels to engage in global warfare. There’s no bombers that fly on solar energy.

“Then there’s the case of María Corina Machado, the U.S. choice for a presidential candidate. Machado hasn’t been eligible to hold public office since 2015. The main reason was her appeal for sanctions against her own country in 2014. As a member of the National Assembly, she allowed Panama to set her up as a permanent Panamanian representative before the Organization of American States so that she could ask for sanctions against Venezuela. This is illegal under the Venezuelan Constitution.”

A report in the Orinoco Tribune on Aug. 4 outlined Gonzales’ diplomatic career. From 1979 to 1985, under the regime of Venezuelan puppet ruler Carlos Andrés Pérez, Edmundo González worked in the Venezuelan Embassy in San Salvador. As an embassy official, he participated in the United States’ Plan Cóndor counterinsurgency project to eliminate revolutions across Latin America. In El Salvador, the aim was to destroy the Salvadoran popular armed revolution.

According to former FMLN Commander Nidia Díaz, during the late 1970s and early 1980s, the conspiracies to capture, torture, disappear, and kill revolutionaries and their sympathizers were planned in the Venezuelan embassy in El Salvador. During that period, the Salvadoran armed forces and the death squads killed 13,194 civilians, among them St. Óscar Arnulfo Romero, archbishop of the Catholic Church of El Salvador, and four nuns of the Maryknoll order.

The opposition program

The Gonzales/Machado campaign program was a program for privatization, returning expropriated property to the oligarchy, importing exploitative capitalist enterprises, and cutting back on social programs. It was the neoliberal fantasy that they were unable to sell to Venezuelans despite the economic hardship caused by the U.S. sanctions.

Carlos Ron said that when a government invests in social programs that transform society to improve life, nobody will support a neoliberal platform. During the last 25 years, Venezuela has gotten rid of illiteracy. Because of their relationship with Cuba, Venezuela was able to bring Cuban doctors to inner cities and to rural areas to give people health care for the first time in their lives. Venezuela, one of the harshest and most unequal societies before the Bolivarian Revolution when Hugo Chavez took office as President in 1999, became one of the most equal societies.

When U.S. sanctions on Venezuela caused food shortages, the country turned to its own agriculture. Today, a country that had imported 80% of its food is now producing the food that it needs locally. In most cases, the food is healthier because they can’t import the U.S. pesticides and chemicals that make food production more dangerous for consumption.

In a sign that Venezuela is recovering from the hyperinflationary crisis beginning in 2017, brought about by U.S. financial and trade sanctions, the Central Bank (BCV) published a report showing that monthly inflation in July was 0.7%, confirming the trend toward a price reduction.

Sanctions are warfare

On July 25, the Washington Post released the results of an investigation titled “The Money War: How four U.S. presidents unleashed economic warfare across the globe.”

The Post report reveals that Presidents Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden have placed some form of sanctions against a third of the countries around the world. “The United States is imposing sanctions at a record-setting pace again this year, with more than 60 percent of low-income countries now under some form of financial penalty, according to a Washington Post analysis.”

“Sanctions on Venezuela, for instance, contributed to an economic contraction roughly three times as large as that caused by the Great Depression in the United States.”

After the U.S. proclaimed Gonzales the winner, Panama’s President José Raúl Mulino followed suit and met U.S. General Laura Richardson of U.S. Southern Command. He proposed a regional summit of presidents who might support this intervention. Unsurprisingly, many countries in the region rejected Mulino’s proposal point blank.

“No country has the right to ‘foment actions’ that are not within the framework of respect for the self-determination of peoples,” said the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, or ALBA, whose members include Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Grenada, Nicaragua, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Venezuela. In a statement, the organization described Panama’s proposal as “interventionist,” with the aim of destabilizing Venezuela or even fomenting a coup in the country.

President Maduro defends his country

On Aug. 3, President Maduro said that if the U.S. government and its partners continued to intervene, Venezuela would give the oil and gas blocks that have already been signed over to the U.S. and other Western companies “to our allies in the BRICS.”

The BRICS nations have invested much in Venezuela’s oil and gas sectors. Venezuela and Bolivia want to join BRICS. Maduro said that the grouping, which includes Brazil, Russia, China, India, and South Africa, offers interesting economic opportunities.

China and Russia were among the first countries to congratulate Maduro on his election victory.

Russia has a long-standing military partnership with Venezuela. The Smolny training ship of the Russian Baltic Fleet docked in Venezuela’s La Guaira port on Aug. 5 as part of a “working visit.” The ship’s crew attended a wreath-laying ceremony at the Bolívar-Chávez Plaza and other events. The visit comes just weeks after two Russian military ships, including the Admiral Gorshkov – the most advanced frigate in the Russian fleet – anchored for four days at La Guaira. Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López said the visit was intended to strengthen military-technical cooperation between Caracas and Moscow.

U.S. financial giants and the opposition

One significant supporter of the opposition candidate revealed the hidden support of millions of U.S. dollars for an electoral coup. The Carter Center, which, until this year’s elections, found nothing to fault with previous elections, is no longer an independent observer.

Its current CEO, Paige Alexander, who was appointed after Venezuela’s previous election, comes from USAID/CIA. She has also served on the board of the Free Russia Foundation.

Now, just a few of Carter Center’s list of sponsors include the U.S. State Department, USAID/CIA, Belgium, the U.K. Development Office, Pfizer, Open Society, Coca-Cola, the Gates Foundation, the Turner Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Walton Foundation.

Proving that social media is a potent political weapon, Elon Musk – who had said of Bolivia, “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it” – weighed in on support for the overthrow of the Venezuelan revolution. On Aug. 8, President Maduro declared, “X out for 10 days! Elon Musk out!” He announced his decision to ban the social network temporarily and accused its owner of using it to promote hatred and violence after Venezuela’s presidential election.

On Aug. 6, Maduro publicly deleted the WhatsApp messaging app (owned by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta) during his weekly TV show and urged supporters to switch to Telegram.

A report by the New York Times on Aug. 4 gave a clue to the financial heft of foundations. The Gates Foundation’s resources dwarf those of most other big global foundations, and its annual budget exceeds that of the World Health Organization.

“Not unlike an undulating octopus, the foundation has its tentacles in a variety of global issues. … With offices scattered across the globe, it has built an enormous — and sometimes invisible — network of ties with governments, multilateral institutions, corporations, countries, universities, and nonprofits.

“In 2019, the foundation — whose influence, size and practices had already invited criticism about its approach being neocolonial, antidemocratic and too reliant on the idea that technology can solve all problems, reflecting Mr. Gates’s view.”

Despite all the powerful imperialist attacks wielded to sabotage its revolution, Venezuela’s people continue to build their society. They have spoken out to defend their progress.

We are told that a hallmark of “democracy,” capitalism style, is freedom of speech. Turns out though you’d better not speak up against the war machine, or else militarized SWAT teams will knock down your door, especially if you support Black liberation. 

That is what happened on July 29, 2022, to the African People’s Socialist Party — UHURU homes and offices in multiple cities. Then, it took nine more months to concoct the indictment of the UHURU 3, APSP Chairman Omali Yeshitela, Penny Hess, and Jesse Nevel, charging them with failing to “register as foreign agents” and conspiracy. The trial is scheduled for Sept. 3 in Tampa. An August 31 demonstration is planned for St. Petersburg, the site of one of the raided offices. 

If the issue really was a failure to register, the government had other legal avenues to notify alleged violators other than massive, excessively violent early morning raids using flashbang grenades at long-standing residential addresses. 

“The completely bogus government narration claims they “conspired with Russia to sow discord in the U.S. (18 U.S.C. § 371, 18 U.S.C  § 951). This a precedent-setting case that spells the end of the First Amendment by criminalizing dissenting speech and opinion. These racist charges imply that Black people are incapable of developing a theory, strategy, and practical programs for African liberation, as the Uhuru Movement has done over more than 50 years,” Uhuru responded to the indictments. 

At issue is the right of people in the United States to speak, write, and organize disagreement with the federal government’s policies and practices — particularly its foreign policy — and associate with co-thinkers internationally. 

International solidarity and anti-imperialist collaboration are growing in our globalized world. Instantaneous communication using webinars, meetings, conferences, social media, and communication chats potentially involves participants spanning continents. 

Don’t let the government use its massive anti-Russia propaganda to win this attack on all who fight for peace and just causes. Uhuru owns a 50-year history of exposing genocide against Black communities, international collaboration, and organizing. 

Find out how you can donate and support the UHURU 3 at https://handsoffuhuru.org/events/.

Kursk: A new grey area

Aug. 8 – For months, especially after the failure of the 2023 ground offensive, which prevented Ukraine from breaking through the Zaporozhye front in the direction of Crimea, Kiev has been looking for ways to extend the war to the territory of mainland Russia. 

The war is already actively present in the lives of the population of Donbass, which Kiev lost a decade ago, and which since the start of the Anti-Terrorist Operation in 2014 has looked to Moscow for security from Ukrainian aggression. 

Although not war, the conflict between the two countries has also marked the situation of the population of Crimea, protected from Ukrainian ground attacks, although not from drones or periodic missile attacks. 

Unable to resort to military means against the disloyal population, which since March 2014 has been overwhelmingly in favour of secession from Ukraine and joining Russia, Kiev has opted for collective punishment in the form of power cuts and in particular by blocking the Crimean-North Canal, the main source of water for the peninsula, destroying agriculture, one of the sources of employment and wealth in the area. 

Now, Kiev hopes to use more weapons and ammunition to show the people living in places like Sevastopol, Simferopol or Yalta the consequences of having rejected the coup d’état a decade ago and of having opted for Moscow at the time when the chaos in Kiev made separation possible.

However, the current situation is different from those attacks on people who identify themselves as Russian, who have obtained Russian citizenship, and who live in territories that have become part of the Russian Federation. Over time, and after months of pressure and lobbying, Ukraine has obtained explicit permission from the United States and other allies to use long-range weapons provided by the West against Russian military targets. 

At first, only border areas were mentioned, but the approach is increasingly ambiguous, and there are few Ukrainian actions that Washington is prepared to condemn. This week it has been seen that Kiev has carte blanche to extend the war, not only to Russian territory but to civilian villages without the slightest tactical, strategic, or logistical importance. 

And in addition to advancing on objectives that are important, especially the last gas pipeline that supplies gas to the European Union, Ukrainian actions openly seek to “make them feel what war is like.” Ukraine’s logic in dealing with civilians is one of revenge: It was Russia that started the war, therefore its population is as guilty as its government and must feel the consequences.

Months ago, President Volodymyr Zelensky had already prepared the ground for actions like those currently being carried out by Ukraine, claiming that “there are hardly any civilians” in the border area, which is blatantly false.

Shelling civilian areas

Much more is unknown than is known about the ongoing Ukrainian operations in Kursk, Russia, which have included shelling of civilian areas in Belgorod and attacks on Russian military bases, the latest in Lipetsk. Russian alternative channels, microbloggers as The Guardian has defined them to describe them as the best source for finding out the facts, remain highly critical of the actions of the Russian Ministry of Defense and the General Staff, accusing them of having been surprised by an action that should have been detected. 

These same sources confirm the Ukrainian advance on the areas through which it broke in on Aug. 6: that Ukraine is trying to avoid certain fortified areas, cut off the main supply route, and entrench itself in positions similar to those it usually uses in Donbass, that is, in residential buildings. 

And what is more, worrying for Russia is that Kiev’s troops are able, either by means of drones or by having gained access to security cameras on highways, as journalists such as Aleksandr Kots fear, to detect the movement of Russian troops. In the last few hours, Ukraine has been able to destroy a Russian armored column, causing losses of replaceable material and non-replaceable personnel. 

Russia has also demonstrated the destruction of a Ukrainian armored column, so the parties are accumulating losses in this fight that they will have to compensate for in the future.

“According to more reliable accounts from Russian military bloggers, the Ukrainian presence in a handful of villages was explained by the active use of reconnaissance groups in the Russian rear. Entering a village is not the same as controlling it,” wrote opposition journalist Leonid Ragozin, who summed up what is known about the situation perfectly, adding skeptically that “when the dust settles and the front line takes shape, the occupied area will be considerably smaller than the 350 square kilometers claimed by Agentsvo based on initial reports two days ago.” 

Regardless of the level of control, the reality is that Ukraine has managed to create a new grey zone of military operations in a place that Russia did not expect to have to defend.

Rybar, one of the most critical sources of Russia’s actions, published a video yesterday in which one could see the way in which Ukraine is fighting: Small mobile groups break into an area, one of them fixates the Russian troops and the rest advance in different directions, causing a problem and serious risk of being trapped for the Russian troops. 

This tactic is also harder to detect and cannot be destroyed with artillery as were the armored columns that were launched to the southern front to crash into the minefields and Russian artillery in Zaporozhye a year ago. 

Ukraine thus manages to bring the war to Russia in a way that it can repeat along the extensive Russian-Ukrainian and even Belarusian-Ukrainian border, causing casualties, losses and enormous nervousness among the Russian establishment. 

The fact that the Pyatnashka unit, formed in 2014 by Abkhaz as an international brigade of the first militia of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), has been withdrawn from the Donbass front may indicate two aspects. 

On the one hand, its presence would not be necessary if Russia had sufficient strategic reserves. On the other hand, Pyatnashka’s experience in the Donbass war, which has similarities to the way Ukraine is acting at the moment, means sending into that battle a unit that has become strong precisely in a conflict in which large formations were conspicuous by their absence and lighter mobile groups were key to resolving complicated situations.

Ceasefire mirage 

The current situation, with attacks in Russia, new bombings of the Energodar nuclear power plant in Zaporozhye, and the emphasis on rearguard attacks, make it clear that the recent optimism about the possibility of starting negotiations and seeking a ceasefire was the mirage it always seemed. 

The operation in Kursk and the cross-border attacks also show the change that has taken place in the war since 2022, when, after the lightning attack with which Ukraine managed to recover its lost territories in Kharkov, Kiev did not continue to attack across the border, a natural extension of its offensive. 

At that time, Ukrainian troops did not have the approval of their creditors and suppliers to invade Russia, although this possibility was already on the table. For example, Andriy Biletsky dreamed of it. Now, although in a sparse way that is possibly due to electoral needs, Washington has given Ukraine the green light “to defend itself” in the way it sees fit.

In this case, this defense involves not only attacking military targets but also purely civilian villages, where Ukraine feels no responsibility for the population, whose importance for Kiev decreases as one advances from the Dnieper to the south and east, something that is perfectly felt by those who have been attacked in Donbass and now also in Kursk. 

“Russian military bloggers report that the regular army defending the Kursk region from the Ukrainian advance is being joined by local militias, i.e., men with hunting rifles. This, and not popular discontent and internal strife, is what the policy of bringing war to the Russian doorstep is most likely to produce,” Ragozin commented. Instead of the destabilization that Ukraine hopes to provoke, the journalist expects Kiev’s actions to be perceived as “an invasion by NATO, not by Ukraine.”

In Ukraine, born out of the “revolution of dignity” and the Maidan coup, defense is often carried out with the participation of units of questionable taste. The importance of the use of drones in this war has already become clear and this operation, whatever its real objectives, was not going to be an exception. 

In this case, the Nightingale battalion stands out in this task, a thinly veiled reference to Nachtigall, the Nazi unit led by Roman Shujevich during the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. The battalion is led by Yehven Karas, one of the most radical leaders of the extreme right and whose associates have never hesitated to take justice into their own hands and kill for ideological reasons. 

Without any need to hide, Ukraine sends to Kursk, the scene of the first battle that stopped the ground advance of the Nazi killing machine, a unit whose name pays homage to those who collaborated with that regime.

Translated by Melinda Butterfield 

Source: Slavyangrad.es 

https://slavyangrad.es/2024/08/10/una-nueva-zona-gris/