Earlier this year, the Zionist entity’s highest court ended the exemption from military service offered to ultra-orthodox, or Haredi, citizens of “Israel.” With a few long-standing exceptions, military service has been compulsory for non-Arab citizens of “Israel” since the imperialist outpost’s founding in 1948.

“Israeli” law does not expressly prohibit Arab people from serving in the Zionist military. However, the “Israeli” occupation force, commonly referred to as the IDF, has maintained a ban on Arab military service within its regulation. As second-class citizens, the ability to join the military is just one of many restrictions that the Arab community within the 1948 borders faces. 

Nonetheless, compulsory military service is a subject of great pride for Zionist Jewish citizens. Many wear it as a badge of honor. For some, their IDF service is their identity. 

The emphasis on Jewish military service is simply an extension of Zionism’s broader ideology and purpose. It would be impossible for the Zionist entity to protect U.S. imperialist interests in the region without a strong and ideologically fascist military. 

As such, the IDF has historically allowed very few populations within the 1948 borders to be exempt from military service. Until recently, the most significant of these narrow exemptions was the one that applied to Haredi Jewish men. Historically, Haredi men could avoid military service entirely if they remained enrolled in yeshiva, a traditional Jewish educational institution. 

This is no longer the case. Under the high court’s decision, nearly 63,000 eligible Haredi Jewish men will have to report for military service as the Zionist genocidal war in Gaza rages. The Zionist high court did not attempt to conceal its motives, stating in its decision: 

“In these days, in the midst of a severe war, the burden of inequality is more acute than ever — and requires the promotion of a sustainable solution to this issue.”

The message is clear. The Zionist entity is facing an unprecedented protracted struggle in Gaza, a growing conflict with Hezbollah, and a potential full-scale war with Iran. Frankly, the morality of whether Haredi Jews should have to serve is irrelevant and should not be a concern for socialists and anti-imperialists. 

The entire IDF is an illegitimate occupying force. The individuals allowed to participate in that occupying force are really of no consequence to the millions of Palestinians fighting for their mere existence. 

However, this development does have broader political implications worth analyzing. First, the end of the Haredi exemption could mark the end of Netanyahu’s political alliance with the religious Zionist right-wing, upon which his most recent rise to power was entirely dependent. With Netanyahu’s military now drafting Haredi men into service, this coalition could fracture, further destabilizing internal Zionist politics and presenting an opportunity for the Axis of Resistance to continue to strike against the imperialist outpost. 

Second, the rationale behind the move clearly demonstrates that resistance against occupation is never futile. No matter the odds against them when facing a well-funded and well-equipped Zionist military, the Palestinian people, supported by the Iraqi Islamic resistance, Yemen, and Hezbollah, have persevered in their militant resistance against the apartheid regime. This resistance is thinning the Zionist will and striking blows against “Israel’s” strategic ability to continue to fight wars on multiple fronts of resistance. 

The U.S. wants us to believe that its empire, including its Zionist arm, is inevitable and impervious. Luckily, the Palestinian people and the broader Axis of Resistance have shown us that this is not the case. If it weren’t, the Zionist military wouldn’t have broken with 76 years of tradition to draft ultra-orthodox Jews into the IDF terror force. 

When people are occupied, resistance is always justified. 

Lev Koufax is an anti-Zionist Jewish activist. 

Hoy les quiero informar que la huelga de los trabajadores de Suiza Dairy que comentábamos las últimas dos semanas, ha terminado con una gran victoria.

Y esto es muy importante en esta colonia porque día a día estamos recibiendo azote tras azote neoliberal por parte del imperio estadounidense a través de la Junta de Control Fiscal que su Congreso nos impuso en el 2016 y que ha sido una verdadera dictadura en contra de los mejores intereses del pueblo. Esta Junta, actuando por encima del gobierno local, ha favorecido tanto las privatizaciones de los servicios esenciales, como la invasión de capitalistas extranjeros que han venido a robar terrenos y recursos que son patrimonio del pueblo. 

Así, que una victoria del pueblo trabajador sobre una compañía como Suiza Dairy, cuyos dueños son el Grupo Gloria del Perú, es un gran precedente para la lucha por nuestra independencia y nuestra soberanía. 

Cuando ese Grupo Gloria despidió a más de 400 trabajadores y utilizó a la Fuerza de Choque para arrestar a más de una docena de trabajadores y trabajadoras, el sindicato, en vez de replegarse,  continuó sus piquetes frente a los portones y recibió mucha solidaridad activa de organizaciones del pueblo y de otros sindicatos. Estos a su vez, publicaron una declaración conjunta anunciando un boicot de los productos de la Suiza Dairy, y lo hicieron a través de una conferencia de prensa frente a COSTCO, que es el tercer minorista más grande del mundo. 

Estas acciones en conjunto, obligaron al patrono a volver a la mesa de negociaciones y acceder a las  exigencias del sindicato. La Suiza, aumentará su aportación al plan médico y los trabajadores despedidos regresarán eventualmente a su lugar de trabajo.

Sean las luchas laborales, ambientales, educativas, económicas, en contra de la privatización y la Junta de Control Fiscal, o por la más crucial, por la independencia de la nación, está claro que la consigna es y será: ¡Lucha sí, entrega NO!

Desde Puerto Rico, para Radio Clarín de Colombia, les habló, Berta Joubert-Ceci

When Canada took the field on July 25 to face off against New Zealand on the first day of the Paris 2024 Olympic women’s soccer competition, history was made: Canadian midfielder Quinn became the first out trans nonbinary Olympian to take part in consecutive Olympics. Quinn came out as nonbinary ahead of the 2021 Tokyo Games, becoming the first openly trans Olympic competitor. To mark the moment, they posted on Instagram, 

I don’t know how to feel. I feel proud seeing ‘Quinn’ up on the lineup and on my accreditation. I feel sad knowing there were Olympians before me unable to live their truth because of the world. I feel optimistic for change. Change in legislature. Changes in rules, structures, and mindsets. Mostly, I feel aware of the realities. Trans girls being banned from sports. Trans women facing discrimination and bias while trying to pursue their olympic dreams. The fight isn’t close to over… and I’ll celebrate when we’re all here.

Quinn is not the only nonbinary athlete competing in Paris. In early August, they will be joined by US 1500-meter runner Nikki Hiltz, who qualified for the Games in spectacular fashion, bursting past the leaders of the pack in the final stretch of the race. Afterward, they said, “All the LGBT folks… you guys brought me home that last hundred [meters]. I could just feel the love and support.” Hiltz added, “This is bigger than just me. It’s the last day of Pride Month… I wanted to run this one for my community.”

Now Hiltz will be running for their community in the Olympics, and very much against the grain when one considers the retrograde approach that the transphobic World Athletics, the global governing body for track and field, has taken when it comes to trans participation. In March 2023, it issued new guidelines that, in essence, banned transgender women athletes from participating in World Athletics events: The group “agreed to exclude male-to-female transgender athletes who have been through male puberty.”

World Athletics is headed by former Olympian and International Olympic Committee member Sebastian Coe, who emphasized the desire to assure “the integrity of the female category in athletics” and stated, “We will be guided in this by the science around physical performance and male advantage which will inevitably develop over the coming years.” Implicit in his official statement was a two-prong admission: (1) this policy targeted trans women, and (2) there is currently no scientific consensus—rooted in systematic, independent research—that justifies the exclusion of trans athletes. It’s just a vibes thing.

What about the International Olympic Committee? Back in 2021, months after trans athlete Laurel Hubbard represented New Zealand in weightlifting—and the world kept on chugging along—the IOC issued a “framework on fairness and non-discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sex variations” that, on its surface, sounded promising. The framework appeared to be rooted in inclusion (“Everyone, regardless of their gender identity, expression and/or sex variations should be able to participate in sport safely and without prejudice”), non-discrimination (“Eligibility criteria should be established and implemented fairly and in a manner that does not systematically exclude athletes from competition based upon their gender identity, physical appearance and/or sex variations”), and the assumption that no one was inherently advantaged by gender (“No athlete should be precluded from competing or excluded from competition on the exclusive ground of an unverified, alleged or perceived unfair, competitive advantage due to their sex variations, physical appearance and/or transgender status”). IOC President Thomas Bach said about trans inclusion policies: “You have to make a scientific evaluation. You have to consult with everybody concerned.”

But then, cowering behind a wall of nice-sounding words, the IOC did not defend or protect transgender athletes. Rather than assuming authentic leadership, the self-proclaimed “supreme authority” of the Olympics punted responsibility to international sports federations to craft their own policies. That’s exactly what the federations did, starting with swimming and athletics, which developed policies that violated the spirit of the IOC’s statement. Neither policy is rooted in independent science research. This bastion of ill-conceived chicanery explains why we will see no trans women athletes at the Paris Olympics, or any Olympics for the foreseeable future.

Satoko Itani, a gender-studies specialist at Kansai University in Japan, told us, “Excluding trans women in order to supposedly eliminate male privilege and to ‘protect’ women’s sports, ignores the fact that there are so many other forms of male privilege that are actually hindering women’s participation, from unequal opportunities for women and girls to the abuse that they suffer to sexual harassment.” They noted, “Unlike the fledgling and inconclusive science that anti-trans forces are marshaling to exclude trans women athletes, an abundant body of research exists on these other issues.”

Travers, a professor of sociology at Simon Fraser University, said that these rules do more than marginalize trans girls and women at all levels of sports, from elementary school to the Olympics. They also feed a far greater right-wing current in the United States and around the world. Trans athletes are their stalking horse, but their goals extend well beyond that. “Female eligibility policies delegitimize trans identities, but that’s not all,” Travers told us. “They have also become instruments to mobilize conservative and fascist movements both in the United States and across the globe. This is part of a process where they are using state power to eliminate all obstacles to the operation of racial capitalism and target people who are racialized, poor, disabled, LGBT, and undocumented.” They added, “In the United States, this is taking the form of eliminating legal protections for all marginalized people as well as the transformation of educational institutions to eradicate critical content, the maintenance of horrific border and immigration systems, and the prioritization of the needs of capital over climate change.”

This nexus of fascism, the Olympics, and anti-trans ideology recalls one of the darkest periods of Olympic history: when Nazis, notorious for their anti-queer persecution, convinced World Athletics (then called the International Amateur Athletic Federation) and the IOC to instigate sex-testing policies. Nazi sports doctor Wilhelm Knoll barraged the sports bodies with letters demanding “that all female participants in the Olympic Games should have their gender checked beforehand by a specially-commissioned doctor.” As Michael Waters notes in The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports:

Reading between the lines of these letters, underscores the truth: there was no coherent ideology or intellectual idea behind Knoll’s push for sex testing. For as adamant as he was, that the Olympics needed to regulate athletes on the basis of their bodies, he seemed to spend shockingly little time, considering what those regulations would look like. He simply hadn’t thought it through. Instead, Knoll’s push for sex testing could be seen as a reactionary measure, colored, almost entirely by his own anxieties about masculinity and femininity—and, perhaps, not incidentally, by his commitment to eugenics. 

Despite the dearth of scientific evidence, the Nazis teamed up with Olympic powerbrokers to ram ahead with gender surveillance in sports. “The stature of the Olympics would,” writes Waters in The Other Olympians, “become the ideal vector” for evidence-free sex testing. The anxieties that fueled this push actually started with high-profile cases of trans men, but they remain in full force today, powered by the fierce backlash against trans women in sport and society. 

Returning to Paris, it’s impossible not to root for Quinn and Hiltz. After qualifying for the 2024 Games, Hiltz said, “I’m just looking forward to keep showing up as myself and keep taking up space.” The runner added, “I use they/them pronouns, and people stumble all the time. But it’s like, ‘You can’t really ignore me anymore, because I’m a two-time, back-to-back champion. I’m here, get-it-right’ kind of vibe.” Hiltz is correct. They have long gone for the gusto. Now they go for the gold.

Source: Edge of Sports

A rally held on July 22 near the official residence of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass protested sales of Palestinian lands stolen by the Zionist regime. Organizers of the event include Al-Awda, Unmute Humanity, Yalla Indivisible Co., Justice 4 Palestine, Free Democratic Palestine Movement, and Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice among many others.

The theft of Palestinian lands – particularly in the West Bank – is just one component of the occupation of Palestine which the International Court of Justice has now (finally) declared illegal. The Zionist entity simply declares properties – which may include agricultural lands or even homes occupied by Palestinian people – to be owned by the state. Recently the properties have been sold throughout the United States, often at synagogues, and when activists show up to oppose the land thefts they are accused of antisemitism.

The People’s Power Assembly in Baltimore protested against one such sale in that city, and another demonstration took place at a sale in Kew Gardens, Queens, New York.

During a sale at a Los Angeles synagogue on June 23, pro-Palestinian protesters were assaulted by Zionist thugs who were waiting for them.

Mayor Bass and some LA City Council members, as well as Gov. Gavin Newsom and President “Genocide Joe” Biden, all quickly labeled the protesters as antisemitic after they were assaulted. But there was no worshiping happening on the day of the real estate sale. It was simply sales of property illegally seized by a U.S.-backed genocidal occupier.

In addition to the slander of antisemitism against the protesters, L.A. council member Katy Yaroslavsky proposed granting a million dollars to fund deeper collaboration between the Los Angeles Police Department and former Israeli storm troopers.

The response by the city council, the mayor, and others in the context of the genocide in Gaza, aroused a great deal of anger. Activists who went to the city council meeting that followed the violent attack on the protesters forced the million-dollar grant proposal to be held back. Organizers who demonstrated July 22 are now pushing for Mayor Bass to retract her claims of antisemitism against the protesters and end the sales of stolen land in Los Angeles. The struggle will continue at city council meetings and in the streets of Los Angeles. 

After connivance in the brutal assassination of Haiti’s President Jovenel Moïse three years ago and then imposing its first feckless de facto Prime Minister Ariel Henry and now his equally subservient successor, Garry Conille, U.S. imperialism in cahoots with the Haitian oligarchy is presently working to set in place a Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) with the same actors and sectors from Haiti’s political landscape that it has been using for decades.

The puppet-master’s principal goal is to put in place an “elected” (in fact, selected) politician who will sign the Global Fragility Act (GFA) bilateral agreement (for which Haiti is the test case), which will tighten Washington’s neocolonial grip on Haiti and sharpen the exploitation and economic enslavement of its people. The sell-outs of the Transitional Presidential Council (CPT), in their cowardice and greed for power and money, are too happy to comply.

This electoral process is in no way intended to create a more democratic, peaceful, progressive, humane, or just society. Far from it. Like a magician’s trick, it is merely a way of making us accept the unacceptable: yet another rotten client regime tailor-made to serve the needs of foreign capitalists and their local oligarchy allies, incapable of implementing any truly popular or equitable policies.

The Haitian people, particularly Haitian youth, will not be guaranteed any future, because imperialism never has and never will promote a national development program capable of meeting people’s immediate needs.

Sure, they might bring in a few more sweatshops in which the starving, teeming underclass might find an irregular job in poor conditions sewing clothes or assembling electronics for a slave-labor wage of $5 a day. After all, that is the GFA’s whole raison d’être: to find workers to replace those lost in China, with which the U.S. is preparing to go to war.

But the U.S. client regime in Haiti will not offer any fulfilling or enriching employment, training, or university courses that could uplift our people, so the people’s plight will continue to worsen as it has for years.

In short, the ballyhooed elections will be nothing more than a scam to parachute in new neocolonial overseers and “legalize” their rule while deepening the Haiti masses’ impoverishment and servitude. Worse yet, the foreign and local bourgeoisies will accuse their victims of being responsible for their own pauperization and the ensuing social woes.

Underdevelopment’s barbarity generates violence and terror. We have seen it shred Haiti’s collaborative culture and social fabric by making people do desperate and even criminal acts to survive. If the transnational ruling class and its local subordinates had even a drop of concern for the Haitian people, they would have acted differently. They would have upheld, as the unenforced 1987 Haitian Constitution so piously, hypocritically, and ironically does, the most fundamental human rights to food, shelter, healthcare, education, and a decent life for every human being. They could and should have given our fellow citizens the hospitals, clinics, schools, sanitation, roads, electricity, jobs, and public services – particularly in the ghettos and working-class neighborhoods – to make life bearable, peace obtainable, and dreams possible.

Instead, the ruling classes – owners of banks, factories, land, big commerce, and ports – used the state power that they bought to tax, terrorize, massacre, and oppress the Haitian working class, while embezzling millions from public funds like the $13 billion given to the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (CIRH) after the 2010 earthquake, the PetroCaribe fund, the National Education Fund (FNE), and the Social Security fund, leaving the Haitian masses to their own devices. They literally pushed Haiti’s proletariat and peasants into insecurity and desperation.

Haiti’s oligarchy, secure in their high-walled mountain fortresses with swimming pools, tennis courts, shooting ranges, and helicopter pads, will never make a mea culpa, much less a self-criticism, for treating the ghettos’ residents worse than animals and forcing them into (then blaming them for resorting to) self-destructive means of survival that include banditry and kidnapping.

That is why the only recourse of these anti-national bourgeois traitors is to strengthen the police and invite in (for the third time in three decades, again, unconstitutionally) foreign armies, which today are under Kenya’s purported leadership. At the end of August, soldiers from Jamaica will join them, according to U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Dennis Bruce Hankins. Meanwhile, the oligarchs and their politicians, following Washington’s cues, laugh and scoff at the proposal by the armed groups – which were spawned by the ruling classes’ cynical policies – to even have a seat at the table where Haiti’s future is being decided. The ruling class will only accept the armed groups’ complete, unconditional surrender or annihilation.

This unachievable goal will only fuel a further bloody escalation of violence and insecurity, which will be fantastically more costly than simply providing services and support to the poor.

Some have been distracted by the latest scandal in the halls of power: a vulgar, verbal altercation – which reportedly almost came to fisticuffs – between current Prime Minister Conille and former Prime Minister Claude Joseph at the private residence of CPT member Louis Gérald Gilles. This was simply a falling out among thieves. It was an argument between the corrupted, on behalf of their corrupters, over who would get what in the plundering of state coffers. None of those present at that meeting, or any of the CPT traitors, give a damn about Haiti or its people, only their own pockets.

It is up to the deprived population of impoverished working-class neighborhoods, hungry to define their priorities, to make their demands prevail, and to organize themselves to change their destiny. It’s a question of survival or death!

To reclaim Haiti’s future, there is an urgent need for workers and young people, supported by the revolutionary intelligentsia in Haiti and its diaspora, to unite in order to sweep away this system, these imperialist agents who create the policies of poverty and austerity, in Haiti… and also Kenya. The people must not give up. They must stay the course against imperialist domination, against the entire political class that has turned its back on the needs of millions of poorly housed, poorly fed, and poorly educated families, citizens unable to meet their daily needs.

If ever there was a chance for a second social revolution in Haiti, it is now. There is not one legitimate, elected Haitian official that the imperialists can pretend to defend. Both North American and European imperialisms are collapsing. Biden, Trudeau, and Macron all have approval ratings at around 30% or below. They are dramatically losing their wars in Ukraine, Gaza, Yemen, and the Sahel. Even their proxy, Kenya, is hobbled by debt and mass protests.

Let Haiti’s popular masses join those in Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali, and increasingly Kenya, Chad, Benin, and Sudan in holding high the torch of rebellion, saying no to imperialism, and reclaiming their self-determination, just as our ancestors did.

Source: Haïti Liberté

The Third Plenum of the Communist Party of China ended last week.  The Third Plenum is a meeting of China’s Communist Party Central Committee, composed of 364 members, which discusses China’s economic policy for the next several years.  As China is a one-party state, in effect this sets out the policies of the government and, in particular, that of President Xi.

What did we learn from the Third Plenum about China’s economic policies?  Not very much that we did not already know. According to the state media release, the Plenum agreed that economic policy should concentrate on achieving a new round of “scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation,” Chinese-style. In the next decade, “education, science and technology, and talents are the basic and strategic support for China’s modernization.”

So it appears that the CPC leaders are looking to sustain economic growth and meet all their proclaimed social objectives through what they have called ‘quality growth.’  The expansion of the economy, mainly through using plentiful labor from the countryside coming into the cities to work in manufacturing, property development, and infrastructure, is over.  It has been over for some time.  Urbanization is slowing.

Instead, the Chinese economy has rocketed upward mainly from a massive increase in productive investment in industry and export-oriented sectors.  But that, too, has reached somewhat of a peak since the Great Recession of 2008-9.  The global economic slowdown and stagnation in the major economies since then – what I have called a Long Depression – have also affected the rate of economic growth in China.  World trade growth has stagnated and so has China’s share.

China’s real GDP growth has slowed since the Great Recession, although the economy is still expanding at around 5% a year, more than twice as fast as the US economy, the best-performing of the top seven capitalist economies.

But other causes of slowing growth include the relative exhaustion of labour from the rural areas and also the expansion of unproductive investment in real estate, which eventually ended in a property bust that is still being managed.  As I have argued in many previous posts, this was the result of the huge policy mistake that the Chinese government made back in the 1990s in trying to meet the housing needs of a fast-urbanizing population through the private sector: i.e. homes to buy, financed by mortgages and built by private developers.  This housing model used in the West triggered the global financial crash in 2008 and eventually led to a similar property slump in China.

But the key issue for the Third Plenum is the ‘demographic challenge’.  China’s population, like many others, is set to fall over the next generation, and its working-age population will also drop.

Economic growth and further improvements in living standards will increasingly depend on raising the productivity of the labor force.  I have argued in previous posts that this is perfectly possible to achieve.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas shows that China’s ‘total factor productivity’ (which is a crude measure of innovation) is growing at 6% a year, while it has been falling in the US.  Slower growth but still much faster than G7 economic growth and based on technological success.

But Western media and mainstream economists continue to argue that China’s economy is in deep trouble.  Here is the assessment of the UK’s Financial Times:

“China’s growth is too slow to provide jobs for legions of unemployed young people. A three-year property slump is hammering personal wealth. Trillions of US dollars in local government debt are choking China’s investment engines. A rapidly ageing society is adding to healthcare and pension burdens. The country has continued to flirt with deflation.”

I could deal with these issues one by one.  But I have already done so in many previous posts.  Suffice it to say that the size of youth unemployment is a serious challenge.  There is a sharp mismatch between young graduate students looking for well-paid high-tech jobs, while available employment is still concentrated in lower-paid less skilled work.  This is a problem in many economies, including the advanced capitalist economies.  The solution, it seems to me, is in the expansion of high-tech sectors, but also in re-training for other jobs.

2) the property slump has been severe.  It is no bad thing, however, for property prices to fall sharply so that housing becomes more affordable.  The solution from here must be an expansion of public housing, not more private development.

3) as for the debt issue, it’s true that China leverage ratios have surged in past decades, but they are manageable, especially as most of the debt is concentrated in local government sectors and so can be bailed out by central government.  And China has a state banking system, state-owned companies and massive FX reserves to cover any losses.

China: debt to GDP

4)  Apparently falling consumer prices in China is a bad thing, according to the FT.  But is it so bad that basic purchases get cheaper?  Is it better to suffer the inflationary spike that consumed Western economies and households in the last two years?

The other critique continually hammered by the likes of the FT and Western economists is that: “Beijing pledged to reorientate its growth model away from an over-reliance on investment and exports towards household consumption. This, western governments have long hoped, would help reduce China’s huge trade surpluses and invigorate global demand.”  But “Not only has China failed to deliver on its rebalancing pledges, it has actually regressed.”  The FT is upset that “The plenum communique does not pledge to boost consumer spending or rebalance the economy away from investment and exports.”

The FT then goes on to blame China for the US tariff war likely to be accelerated if Donald Trump rewins the presidency in 2025.  “Xi and his politburo should realize that China’s trade imbalances are becoming an ever more incendiary issue. Its monthly trade surplus reached an all-time record in June. The resurgence of Donald Trump, who imposed hefty tariffs on Chinese imports during his term as US president, should give real pause for thought.”  China is apparently at fault for the trade war, not U.S. government attempts to curb Chinese export success and technology advances.

Once again, the Western media and economists argue for a ‘rebalancing’ by which they mean a switch to a consumer-led, private sector-led economy from the current investment-led, export-oriented, state-directed one.  “The Chinese economy is foundering,” said Eswar Prasad, professor of trade policy at Cornell University and former head of the International Monetary Fund’s China division. “More stimulus to pep up spending and economic overhauls to revive private-sector confidence in China are urgently needed,” he said.

But for me, trying to boost consumer spending and expand the private sector is just not what the Third Plenum should aim for.  Actually, the Third Plenum release reminds us that China still has planning, not the centralized one of the Soviet Union, but ‘indicative planning’ with targets set for many sectors.  The release said that “We must summarize and evaluate the implementation of the “14th Five-Year Plan” and do a good job in the early planning of the “15th Five-Year Plan.”

China is fast developing a ‘new economy’ based on high-value-added tech sectors. These sectors have significantly outpaced headline GDP growth in recent years. Between 2017 and 2023, the new economy grew by an average of 10.2% per year, far faster than the 5.5% average overall GDP growth.

As a piece in the Asian Times put it: “A common narrative bandied about by the Western business press is that China’s subsidized industries destroy shareholder value because they are not profitable – from residential property to high-speed rail to electric vehicles to solar panels (the subject of the most recent The Economist ‘meltdown’).  But what China wants from BYD and Jinko Solar (and the US from Tesla and First Solar) should be affordable EVs and solar panels, not trillion-dollar market-cap stocks. In fact, mega-cap valuations indicate that something has gone seriously awry. Do we really want tech billionaires or do we really want tech?  Value is not being destroyed; it’s accruing to consumers ins lower prices, higher quality and/or more innovative products and services.”

This is very visible in environmental investment.  China’s carbon intensity has dropped at an unprecedented pace.

As the Asian Times writer put it: “what is economic success, what is value creation? Maybe, just maybe, it’s the approach that delivers the most tangible improvements in people’s lives, instead of trillion-dollar companies and billionaire CEOs.”

At the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit in Washington, the focus was on Ukraine. In the Washington Declaration, the NATO leaders wrote, “Ukraine’s future is in NATO.” Ukraine formally applied to join NATO in September 2022, but soon found that despite widespread NATO support, several member states (such as Hungary) were uneasy with escalating a conflict with Russia. As early as NATO’s 2008 Bucharest Summit, the members welcomed “Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO.” However, the NATO council hesitated because of the border dispute with Russia; if Ukraine had been hastily brought into NATO and if the border dispute escalated (as it did), then NATO would be dragged into a direct war against Russia.

Over the last decade, NATO has expanded its military presence along Russia’s borders. At the NATO summit in Wales (September 2014), NATO implemented its Readiness Action Plan (RAP). This RAP was designed to increase NATO’s military forces in Eastern Europe “from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south.” Two years later, in Warsaw, NATO decided to develop an enhanced Forward Presence (eFP) in the Baltic Sea area with “battlegroups stationed in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland.” The distance between Moscow and the border regions of Estonia and Latvia is a mere 780 kilometers, which is well within the range of a short-range ballistic missile (1,000 kilometers). In response to the NATO build-up, Belarus and Russia conducted Zapad 2017, the largest military exercise by these countries since 1991. Reasonable people at that time would have thought that de-escalation should have become the priority on all sides. But it was not.

Provocations from the NATO member states continued. After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the NATO countries settled on a course of fully backing Ukraine and preventing any negotiations toward a peaceful settlement of the dispute. The United States and its NATO allies sent arms and equipment to Ukraine, with U.S. high military officials making provocative statements about their war aims (to “weaken Russia,” for instance). Ukrainian discussions with Russian officials in Belarus and Turkey were set aside by NATO, and Ukraine’s own war aim (merely for Russian forces to withdraw) was ignored. Instead, NATO countries spent billions of dollars on weapons and watched on the sidelines as Ukrainian soldiers died in a futile war. On the sidelines of the NATO summit in Washington, Royal Netherlands Navy Admiral Rob Bauer, who is the chair of NATO’s Military Committee, told Foreign Policy, “The Ukrainians need more to win than just what we have set up.” In other words, the NATO states provide Ukraine with just enough weapons to continue the conflict, but not to change the situation on the ground (either by a victory or a defeat). The NATO states, it seems, want to use Ukraine to bleed Russia.

Blame China

NATO’s Washington Declaration contains a section that is puzzling. It says that China “has become a decisive enabler of Russia’s war against Ukraine.” The term “decisive enabler” has attracted significant attention within China, where the government immediately condemned NATO’s characterization of the war in Ukraine. China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said that NATO’s statement “is ill-motivated and makes no sense.” Shortly after Russian troops entered Ukraine, China’s Wang Wenbin of the Foreign Ministry said that “all countries’ sovereignty and territorial integrity should be respected and upheld.” This is precisely the opposite of cheerleading for the war, and since then China has put forward peace proposals to end the war. Accusations that China has supplied Russia with “lethal aid“ have not been substantiated by the NATO countries, and have been denied by China.

Lin Jian asked two key questions at the July 11, 2024, press conference in Beijing: “Who exactly is fueling the flames? Who exactly is ‘enabling’ the conflict?”. The answer is clear since it is NATO that rejects any peace negotiations, NATO countries that are arming Ukraine to prolong the war, and NATO leaders who want to expand NATO eastwards and deny Russia’s plea for a new security architecture (all of this is demonstrated by German parliamentarian Sevim Dağdelen in her new book on NATO’s 75-year history). When Hungary’s Viktor Orban—whose country holds the six-month presidency of the European Union—went to both Russia and Ukraine to talk about a peace process, it was the European states that condemned this mission. Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, responded with a harsh rebuke of Orban, writing that “Appeasement will not stop Putin.” Alongside such comments come further promises by the Europeans and the North Americans to provide Ukraine with funds and weapons for the war. Strikingly, the new NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte even allowed Ukraine to use an F-16 jet from the Netherlands given to Ukraine when Rutte was the prime minister of that country to strike Russian soil. That would mean that weapons from a NATO country would be used directly to attack Russia, which would allow Russia to strike back at a NATO state.

NATO’s statement that characterizes China as a “decisive enabler” permitted the Atlantic alliance to defend its “out of area” operation in the South China Sea as part of its defense of its European partners. That is what permitted NATO to say, as outgoing Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in a press conference, that NATO must “continue to strengthen our partnerships, especially in the Indo-Pacific.” These Indo-Pacific Partners are Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea. Interestingly, the largest trading partner of three of these countries is not the United States, but China (Japan is the outlier). Even the analysts of the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank have concluded that “a delinking of global production processes and consumption from China is not in sight.” Despite this, these countries have recklessly increased the pressure against China (including New Zealand, which is now eager to join Pillar II of the AUKUS Treaty among Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom). NATO has said that it remains open to “constructive engagement” with China, but there is no sign of such a development.

This article was produced by Globetrotter. 

As Israel’s genocidal campaign against Palestinians continues, so does the theft of Palestinian land. Real estate events that sell off illegal settlements acquired through settler violence in the West Bank happen in the U.S. with the aid and permission from local elected leaders.

On June 23, there was a sale of Palestinian land in Los Angeles, California. The promotional materials included a photograph that looked a lot like Gaza’s shores. According to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that fits the image of Zionists wanting to clear out the land for more settlers – an ethnic cleansing operation of murder and starvation against the entire population of Gaza and the West Bank.

Although the sale was held at Adas Torah synagogue, it was not a worship service. It was a venue hosting the My Home in Israel real estate agency, which promotes prospective home ownership in Israel (occupied Palestine).

Yet, pro-Palestinian protesters at the real estate event were met with violence from Zionists while the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) stood by and offered them no protection. The corporate media vilified the protesters and inaccurately labeled them as anti-Semitic terrorists preventing worship in a synagogue. The Zionists present attacked the media as well. An open letter by the human rights group Unmute Humanity encouraged CBS News to end its complicity in the lies and distortion of events: “Contrary to your report, the peaceful demonstrators, which included Palestinian and many Jewish community members advocating for the basic human rights of Palestinians, were not blocking the synagogue. Instead, they were brutally attacked by a pro-Israel mob explicitly calling for the genocide of Palestinians. This included people being forcefully pushed, sprayed with mace, verbally assaulted, and harassed as they were followed to their cars. Ample video documentation supports these claims.”

The real estate event hosted by the synagogue advertised land sales in Palestine through My Home in Israel. This organization is notorious for supporting illegal settlements, not only here in Los Angeles, but nationally in the U.S. and internationally. The occupation in Palestine took effect in 1948, and for the past 75 years, the occupation has grown more complete with settlements and theft of Palestinian homes.

On its website, My Home in Israel brags about the astronomical rise in home prices, “Israel’s housing market has seen a significant shift, with the number of new homes sold reverting to levels last seen five years ago, yet at prices that are 40% higher … Overall, 23,250 new homes were sold in the first quarter of 2024 … The market’s return to five-year-old sales figures, coupled with a significant rise in prices, highlights the dynamic nature of Israel’s housing market as it adapts to changing economic conditions and demand.”

That “dynamic nature” of economic conditions and demand are exactly what was planned. According to a United Nations report on March 8, as of September 2023, there were approximately 700,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

“The West Bank is already in crisis. Yet, settler violence and settlement-related violations have reached shocking new levels, and risk eliminating any practical possibility of establishing a viable Palestinian state,” U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk said. Turk stated that the use of settlements on occupied land amounted “to a war crime under international law.”

Those shocking levels of Israeli violence took off in the year prior to September 2023, just about one month before the united Al Aqsa Flood military response by a united Palestinian force, including Hamas, began on October 7th. Another UN report stated that violence from Israeli settlers had displaced over 1,100 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since 2022. The report documented approximately three settler-related incidents per day resulting in the emptying of five Palestinian communities, six were rendered half-empty and seven more have lost a quarter of their population.

Peace Now is an Israeli rights group that monitors illegal Israeli settlement expansion. The group noted that Israeli land seizures in the Palestinian territory this year are the greatest, by far. “The size of the area designated for declaration is the largest since the Oslo Accords, and the year 2024 marks a peak in the extent of declarations of state land. Since the beginning of 2024, Israel has declared 23,700 dunams (5,855 acres) of the West Bank as State Lands.”

Once property is designated as state land, Israel no longer recognizes it as privately owned by Palestinians. Regarding the land theft declaration on June 25th, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who also holds a position in the Defense Ministry stated on social media, “Building the good country and thwarting the establishment of a Palestinian state. MTA is meeting this morning to approve over 5,000 housing units,” he wrote, using an acronym for The Higher Planning Council.

The ad in the Jewish Journal for the Los Angeles event on June 23rd states, “Come and meet representatives of housing projects in all the best Anglo neighborhoods in Israel.” – the use of “Anglo” with the implication of better neighborhoods is fitting for a country that practices apartheid, white supremacy and genocide.

“My Home in Israel” real estate events are also happening on the East Coast. The PAL (Palestinian Assembly for Liberation) Law Commission filed cease-and-desist letters to the real estate company that hosted My Home in Israel events and to the synagogues that rented the company space. The tour visited Teaneck, New Jersey; Lawrence, New York; Brooklyn, New York; and Toronto and Montreal in Canada.

Lamis Deek, an attorney with the PAL Law Commission, filed complaints with the Attorneys General of New York and New Jersey requesting that these sales events cease, as they are in violation of international law. “Imagine seeing your family’s lands being sold online while you helplessly watch. This stirs a rage and a pain that is indescribable. It’s an injustice that should shock the conscience and mobilize authorities and attorneys to action.”

One week after the June 23rd real estate event by My Home in Israel, over 20 organizations including Jewish, Palestinian, human rights and anti-racist organizations demanded that LA City Council members vote against a resolution that was introduced by Councilwoman Katy Yaroslavsky that would provide $1 million of public funds to racist Zionist vigilante groups such as Magen Am that are composed of former IDF and US military soldiers. Magen Am boasts of its law enforcement connections: “If, G-d forbid, an incident occurs that requires immediate attention, Magen Am is able to push it all the way up the chain of command. We have direct connections at the FBI and Local law enforcement, including the LAPD, Sheriff’s Department, DA’s office and the US Attorney’s office.” The action or rather inaction of the LAPD on June 23rd confirmed that Magen Am’s claims of law enforcement support were quite credible.

The proposal was supposed to provide funding to protect pro-Israel Zionists from violence, but the reality is that even mainstream media outlets have clearly reported that the majority of the violence that took place at the UCLA encampment in May and at the Adas Torah  Palestinian land auction event was clearly committed by pro-Israel counter-protestors.

According to the Los Angeles Times the proposal by the council member was intended to mirror Governor Gavin Newsom’s California State Nonprofit Security Grant Program . While funding from Newson’s program won’t be available until the fall, Yaroslavsky’s proposal would have expedited funding. After protest of the plan, the Councilwoman modified the proposal to provide protection for all houses of worship but increased the funding proposal from $1 million to $2 million.

Mayor Karen Bass immediately vilified pro-Palestinian protesters for simply protesting against genocide and labeled their actions as “anti-Semitism.”  Additionally Bass appeared at the Simon Wiesenthal Center with a further condemnation and promises of public funding. .

Black misleadership politics was in full effect after June 23rd. It is especially sad when Black politicians do not remember that our history in the U.S. is a long history of the theft of our land, enforced by Jim Crow’s twisted legality, which looks like Israeli apartheid and the Zionist vigilantes that Biden, Bass, and Newsom want to hire to keep us silent.

But the action at City Hall sent that proposal packing to another day. Bass and her colleagues will have to answer to the people. We won’t be silent.

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. He accompanied former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark on many anti-war delegations abroad. Parker was only 18 when he organized his first union election–at a small steel plant in New Jersey. Having authored a $15 minimum wage ballot initiative in 2014, his organizing efforts helped to push the city to act on the minimum wage increase proposals in Los Angeles. John Parker is a member of the Black Alliance for Peace. 

Source: Black Agenda Report

Statement from the Coalition to March on the DNC.

Genocide Joe Biden has stepped down from running for president as the Democratic Party nominee. His decision doesn’t change the policies of Democratic Party leadership, specifically their support of the genocide in Palestine, so our movement must continue to apply pressure. On August 19 we will march on the DNC for Gaza regardless of who gets nominated for the presidency.

Democratic Party leadership switching out their presidential nominee does not wash the blood of over 50,000 Palestinians off their hands. Biden’s entire administration, together with high-ranking members of the Democratic Party from all over the country, spent the last ten months wholeheartedly supporting the genocide in Gaza with our tax dollars. It is a matter of historical urgency that all organizations who fight for the rights of working and oppressed people in the U.S. join us in this demonstration to stand in solidarity with Palestine.

We have already united over 100 organizations from all over the people’s movements in this coalition. These diverse groups are not in the coalition just out of a moral obligation. They recognize the links between the Palestinian liberation struggle and their own struggles. They also recognize that Democratic Party higher ups often neglect their communities in favor of serving the rich and powerful. When it comes to police accountability, immigration, labor, reproductive and LGBTQ rights, and many other demands of working and oppressed people, those responsible for the genocide, and not just Biden, are often obstacles to progress in the same movements they paid lip service to in order to boost their campaigns.

Our coalition is making real preparations to march in the tens of thousands. We are negotiating with the city for permits that respect every protester’s right to be within sight and sound of the United Center on August 19th and 22nd. We are printing signs and recruiting volunteers. We are scheduling buses, plane tickets, and carpools. We are raising funds and gathering materials. We will have a family-friendly protest of tens of thousands of people on August 19th because our reasons for marching have not changed. This protest is about more than the name at the top of a ballot. It is about stopping the most horrific crime against humanity we have seen this century.

When it comes to the genocide in Gaza there is no difference between Biden, Harris, or any of the likely candidates for the nomination. They are all complicit. This is why the coalition will still be marching on the DNC in the tens of thousands. We plan to have the largest march for Palestinian rights in Chicago’s history as we demand an end to the genocide and an end to U.S. aid to Israel.

All power to the people! Free Palestine!

Get PDF here

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