Tense confrontations are escalating in Los Angeles’ residential neighborhoods. In just the first two weeks of May, incidents in South Central include a raid near Exposition and Arlington.

According to witnesses, ICE agents arrived in force, shutting down the entire block with at least eight vehicles, including trucks and unmarked cars. Officers in full tactical gear, wearing bulletproof vests, detained at least five individuals.  

Neighbors reported hearing a detained individual shouting for a lawyer, while others described a heavy police presence nearby, including armored trucks.

Forcible removals and warrantless searches

In a separate incident, residents reported that a neighbor, sitting in her car, had her window broken by ICE agents who forcibly removed her.  

This writer, a member of the Community Self-Defense Coalition, witnessed another incident in South Central Los Angeles during a community self-defense patrol. Law enforcement, including West Covina Police and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents, entered a family’s home without a warrant. Minors were forced to provide DNA swabs without parental consent, and property was seized before a warrant was produced, at least three hours after the raid began.

The government continues to criminalize basic constitutional rights, break laws requiring warrants, terrorize families, and rely on intimidation. 

The raid is part of a broader escalation in immigration enforcement, with federal agencies increasingly collaborating with local police — a violation of California’s sanctuary city laws. Members of the Community Self-Defense Coalition, a grassroots network that monitors and challenges illegal ICE operations, witnessed and documented unlawful tactics. 

The Community Self-Defense Coalition has gained international attention for its efforts in organizing neighborhood patrols, providing know-your-rights education, and mobilizing rapid response teams during ICE raids. During these patrols, coalition members distribute literature and encourage residents to document the raid with cell phones, creating a visible counter-presence to law enforcement.

State repression and growing resistance

To discourage the fightback against the government’s fascist repression, the state is redefining constitutional rights in a way that denies the well-established principles of free speech and assembly. The FBI is now being redirected against immigrant communities, while white-collar crimes and criminals (think Elon Musk) are deprioritized.

Despite increasing repression, the coalition reports that its numbers have grown since May 1 (International Workers’ Day), with more militant patrols forming in heavily targeted neighborhoods and on college campuses.  

The Community Self-Defense Coalition will continue to do its work to push back fascist attacks of the Trump administration, which is a continuation of the previous administration’s genocidal police attacks and ICE deportations targeting primarily Black and Brown communities, and increasingly now, anyone in solidarity with the people of Palestine.

Palestine solidarity and campus protest

On May 15, the 77th anniversary of the Nakba — the mass slaughter of 15,000 Palestinians as over 400 Palestinian villages were depopulated or razed, removing more than half the Palestinian population from their homeland in 1948 — UCLA students and coalition member Maggie Vascassenno participated in a demonstration organized by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). The action occurred despite the university’s criminalization of pro-Palestine activities, which led to students and professors being subject to deportations and detentions.

Vascassenno described the action:  

“Today, at UCLA, Students for Justice in Palestine organized a powerful event to illustrate the loss that was Nakba. First they set up at Dickson N, then when the cops started creeping in, the organizers quickly moved the crowd to a new location, where they built a community with boxes and painted banners, and they planted an orange tree. It was Jaffa, and it was beautiful, until the cops started surrounding us, then we rushed down the long steps, carrying what we could and went to the final site, named Gaza, where again we were rapidly dispersed. Throughout the event, students recited the words and remembrances of Palestinian survivors of the original Nakba.” 

That fighting spirit will continue to grow from Los Angeles to Palestine.

May 16 — Four hundred fifty members of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen went on strike at 12:01 a.m. today against New Jersey Transit. The railroad workers, who belong to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, have been without a wage increase since 2019 despite prices and rent going through the roof.

NJ Transit engineers are being paid $10 less per hour than other engineers on Amtrak, Long Island, and Metro North railroads. The strikers often use the same tracks, serve the same stations, obey the same signals and follow the same rules as their Amtrak counterparts, yet they are paid far less.

On the final day, union negotiators held a 15-hour bargaining session with management, but the railroad bosses refused to budge.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, apologized to the over 100,000 railroad commuters affected by the strike, blaming the workers for the shutdown. It’s Murphy and his corporate backers who have forced these workers to strike.

Murphy doesn’t have to worry about frozen wages and rising rents. In 2024, the former Wall Street bankster reported income of $1.4 million, double his take from the year before.

While management claims the union demands are unaffordable, they spent $500 million on their lavish new headquarters. Just the $53 million spent on interior decoration could have paid for the engineers’ demands twice over.

Murphy and NJ Transit management are refusing to bargain in good faith because they fear being forced to give wage justice to other railroad workers, too.

The union members I met today in front of Pennsylvania Station in New York City were strong and confident. Railroaders remember how Congress schemed with the freight railroads in 2022 to stop a strike.

The struggle of the NJ Transit engineers shows the way forward for millions of other workers at Amazon and Walmart. Victory to the strikers!

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

Following the broadcast of the Round Table on Friday, May 9, dedicated to the 18th Conference Against Homophobia and Transphobia, the Miami press took excerpts from the program and began a campaign to manipulate its content.

Several digital media outlets financed by the US government echoed the action and replicated it. These are the same media outlets that have never spoken out against the blockade or said a word against the vote that the United States and Israel cast together every year at the UN to maintain it, in disregard of the will of almost all nations.

To keep our people and the revolutionary LGBTIQ+ activists informed, in response to this manipulation, we are publishing below the full text of the words of Dr. Mariela Castro Espín, Director of the National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX), during the exchange of ideas at the Round Table.

Randy Alonso: Each of the 18 editions of the conference against homophobia and transphobia has included, in addition to the defense of these rights, the defense of other rights, even beyond our borders.

“The rights of the Palestinian people have been defended. The rights of the Cuban Five Heroes to return to their country have been defended. The right of Óscar López Rivera to return freely to his Puerto Rico has been defended. And that is why I would like, Mariela, to open our Round Table by talking about what this 18th edition of the Conference Against Homophobia and Transphobia is about.”

Mariela Castro: Well, first of all, we are continuing with the slogan Love is the law. We are celebrating that love is the law for all families, and we continue to celebrate it, educate, communicate, and contribute to the processes of cultural transformation of our people, as evidenced in the new Constitution of 2019 and the Family Code, because, if we compare it with the 1976 Constitution and the 1975 Family Code, we can see very clearly how the revolutionary process has contributed to the cultural enrichment of our people in order to advance in closing the remaining gaps in equity, to advance in meeting people’s needs, as they are identified through consensus building to determine important changes in policies and in our laws.

“This is the first thing we are working on. That is, to continue working with our people to understand, read, and interpret the meaning of normative texts in their proper context, starting with the Constitution, because sometimes interpretation leads to the violation of rights.

“So this is a way of contributing to that process of guaranteeing or effectively exercising the rights of all people, with special emphasis on LGBTIQ+ people, especially those for whom these actions are specifically intended, that is, so that all families understand their responsibilities according to what has been established, to everything that is being instituted as humanist values of the revolutionary process.

“Before, they used to say, ‘Well, they didn’t do it before.’ No, before we were learning, before all societies were transforming, they were integrating new elements for the advancement of society itself.

“But as we understand more, as scientific institutions contribute elements of analysis to political decision-making, well, these elements that were not understood before are being introduced. And this was true globally, not just in Cuba.

“Now, as you rightly said, our activism is not only oriented toward looking selfishly or seeking very specific reforms for certain social groups, which is a bit what capitalism has tried to do: that everyone fight for their specific rights and not for general rights.

“The world’s problems belong to everyone. The problems of humanity affect LGBTIQ+ people, and the problems of LGBTIQ+ people affect all of humanity. Therefore, all transgressions, discrimination, social exclusion, and social injustices must be viewed in an integrated manner.

“Capitalism, and especially neoliberalism, insisted heavily on the social segmentation of different groups of popular struggles. Why? So that they would not unite in understanding the need for systemic change, as did the first Latina activists who stood out in those famous Stonewall protests in New York, which later led to the development of activism and struggle.

“In this sense, those comrades fought against the capitalist system, they fought against capitalist oppression, and attempts have been made to sugarcoat them and make them very superficial so that the next generation who identify with these struggles will also be very superficial. And that is what we defend: the depth of popular struggles, of struggles for social justice. And this year, of course, we dedicate it to them.

“Last year, it went to Palestine, to the struggle of the Palestinian people, and we were convinced that this year we would not have to talk about the struggle of the Palestinian people because victory would have been achieved and respect for the sovereignty of this people would have been achieved. Well, it’s quite the opposite, it’s worse. With impressive impunity, imperialism continues to use the Zionist entity entrenched in the same occupied territories that they identify as the State of Israel to achieve complete and total ethnic cleansing and impose a vacation spot in Gaza because they like that wonderful place on the Mediterranean.”

Randy Alonso: Something more or less similar to what Hitler’s fascism wanted to do to the Jewish people themselves.

Mariela Castro: Exactly. Well, there is no Jewish people, there is a Jewish religion. There were actually many people of the Jewish religion in Europe who were used and victimized in an exaggerated way, using biblical myths to lead them to occupy Palestinian territories.

“Of course, at that time, imperialism was led by the United Kingdom, then by the United States, in order not to lose geopolitical control of the Bosporus Strait and the Red Sea.

“In other words, they didn’t want to lose their colonial power, so they established a very brutal neocolonial power that got worse over time, using people who initially came from Europe.

“They are not Hebrews, they are of the Jewish religion, and many are also Christians, but they are not Hebrews, nor are they Semites, and above all, what they imposed was a Zionist power that distances itself from the values of the Jewish religion, because it is not the same thing.

“Zionism is a political supremacist movement that emerged shortly before Nazism and was closely linked to the persecution of Jewish families. It is closely linked to all the worst aspects of Nazism and fascism, which are now resurging with great force.

“That is why this year we are drawing attention not only to one place, Palestine, but to all of humanity. In other words, we are focusing on the historic anti-imperialist, anti-fascist, and anti-colonial struggles, which also include the situation in Cuba, which has been suffering for more than 60 years from economic, financial, and commercial blockade and many other forms of aggression by imperialism.”

Source: Cubadebate, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English

A partir de la emisión de la Mesa Redonda del pasado viernes 9 de mayo, dedicada a las 18vas Jornadas contra la Homofobia y la Transfobia, medios de la prensa miamense tomaron fragmentos del programa e iniciaron una campaña de manipulación de su contenido.

Varios medios digitales financiados por el gobierno estadounidense se hicieron eco de la acción, y la replicaron. Estos son los mismos medios que nunca se han pronunciado contra el bloqueo ni han dicho una palabra contra el voto que cada año en la ONU emiten juntos Estados Unidos e Israel para mantenerlo, en menosprecio de la voluntad de casi todas las naciones.

Para mantener informados a nuestro pueblo y al activismo LGBTIQ+ cubano revolucionario, en respuesta a esta manipulación, publicamos a continuación las palabras in extenso de la Dra. Mariela Castro Espín, Directora del Centro Nacional de Educación Sexual (CENESEX) durante el intercambio de ideas en la Mesa Redonda.

Randy Alonso: Cada jornada que se ha desarrollado a lo largo de 18 ediciones contra la homofobia y la transfobia ha tenido, además de la defensa de esos derechos, la defensa de otros derechos, incluso más allá de nuestra frontera.

“Se ha defendido el derecho del pueblo palestino. Se ha defendido el derecho de los Cinco Héroes cubanos a regresar a su país. Se ha defendido el derecho de Óscar López Rivera a regresar a su Puerto Rico de manera libre. Y por eso me gustaría, Mariela, abrir nuestra Mesa Redonda hablando sobre a qué se dedica esta 18.ª edición de las Jornadas contra la Homofobia y la Transfobia”.

Mariela Castro: Bueno, en primer lugar, seguimos con el lema El amor es ley. Estamos celebrando que para todas las familias el amor es ley y lo seguimos celebrando, educando, comunicando, contribuyendo a los procesos de transformación cultural de nuestro pueblo, evidenciados en la nueva Constitución de 2019 y el Código de las Familias, porque, si lo comparamos con la Constitución de 1976 y el Código de Familia de 1975, se puede apreciar muy claramente cómo el proceso revolucionario ha contribuido a ese enriquecimiento cultural de nuestro pueblo para avanzar en las brechas de equidad que van quedando, para avanzar en la atención a las necesidades de las personas, en la medida en que se van identificando mediante la construcción de consensos para determinar cambios importantes en las políticas y en nuestras leyes.

Esto es en lo primero que estamos trabajando. Es decir, continuar trabajando con nuestro pueblo en comprender, leer, interpretar en su justa medida el sentido de los textos normativos, empezando por la Constitución, porque a veces la interpretación lleva a que se vulneren los derechos.

“Entonces, esta es una manera de contribuir a ese proceso de garantía o ejercicio efectivo de los derechos de todas las personas con énfasis especial en las personas LGBTIQ+, máxime por las cuales, bueno, a las que se les dedican especialmente estas acciones, es decir, a que todas las familias comprendan sus responsabilidades según lo que está establecido, a todo lo que se está instituyendo como valores humanistas del proceso revolucionario.

“Antes decían: “Bueno, antes no lo hicieron”. No, antes estábamos aprendiendo, antes las sociedades todas estaban transformándose, estaban integrando nuevos elementos para los avances de la misma sociedad.

“Pero en la medida en que vamos comprendiendo, en que las instituciones científicas aportan elementos de análisis a la toma de decisiones políticas, bueno, pues se van introduciendo estos elementos que antes no se comprendían. Y así era a nivel global, no solo en Cuba.

“Ahora, como tú bien decías, nuestro trabajo de activismo no solamente se orienta hacia mirar de manera egoísta o de búsqueda de reformas muy específicas para determinados grupos sociales, que es un poco lo que ha intentado el capitalismo: que cada cual luche por sus derechos específicos y no por los derechos generales.

“Los problemas del mundo son de todas las personas. Los problemas de la humanidad afectan a las personas LGBTIQ+ y los problemas de las personas LGBTIQ+ afectan a toda la humanidad. Por tanto, todas las transgresiones, las discriminaciones, las exclusiones sociales, las injusticias sociales deben verse de manera integrada.

“El capitalismo y especialmente el neoliberalismo insistió mucho en la segmentación social de los diferentes grupos de luchas populares. ¿Para qué? Para que no se unieran en comprender la necesidad del cambio de sistema, como hicieron las primeras activistas latinas que se destacaron en aquellas famosas protestas de Stonewall en Nueva York y que generaron después desarrollos de activismos y de acciones de lucha.

“En este sentido, aquellas compañeras luchaban contra el sistema capitalista, luchaban contra la opresión capitalista y han tratado de edulcorarlas y ponerlas muy superficiales para que las próximas que se identifican con estas luchas sean también muy superficiales. Y eso es lo que nosotros defendemos, la profundidad de las luchas populares, de las luchas por la justicia social. Y este año, por supuesto, se lo dedicamos.

“El año pasado, fue a Palestina, a la lucha del pueblo palestino y teníamos la convicción de que ya este año no tendríamos que hablar de la lucha del pueblo palestino porque ya se habría logrado la victoria y se habría logrado el respeto a la soberanía de este pueblo. Bueno, pues es todo lo contrario, es peor. Con una impunidad impresionante sigue el imperialismo utilizando al ente sionista enclavado en los mismos territorios ocupados en lo que ellos identifican como Estado de Israel para lograr una limpieza étnica plena y total, e imponer un lugar de vacaciones en Gaza porque les gusta ese lugar maravilloso en el Mediterráneo”.

Randy Alonso: Algo más o menos parecido a lo que el fascismo de Hitler quería hacer con el propio pueblo judío.

Mariela Castro: Exacto. Bueno, no hay un pueblo judío, hay una religión judía. Realmente eran muchas personas de religión judía europeas que ellos las utilizaron y victimizándolos de una manera exagerada y utilizando mitos bíblicos para llevarlos a ocupar territorios de Palestina.

“Por supuesto, en aquel momento un imperialismo liderado por el Reino Unido, después por Estados Unidos y para no perder el control geopolítico del estrecho de Bósforo y del Mar Rojo.

“O sea, no querían perder su poder colonial y establecieron un poder neocolonial muy brutal que con el tiempo fue poniéndose peor, utilizando personas que fueron inicialmente desde Europa.

“No son hebreos, son de religión judía, y muchos cristianos también, pero no son hebreos, ni son semitas, y sobre todo, lo que impusieron fue un poder sionista que se distancia de los valores de la religión judía, porque no es lo mismo.

“El sionismo es un movimiento supremacista político que nació un poco antes del nazismo y estuvieron muy estrechamente relacionados en la persecución de familias judías y están estrechamente relacionados con todo lo peor del nazismo, el fascismo que ahora resurge con gran fuerza.

“Por eso este año llamamos la atención no solamente hacia un lugar, Palestina, sino a toda la humanidad. Es decir, centrarnos en las históricas luchas antiimperialistas, antifascistas, anticoloniales, en la que también está la situación de Cuba, que sufre hace más de 60 años el bloqueo económico, financiero y comercial y muchas otras formas de agresión por parte del imperialismo”.

Source: Cubadebate

Speaking to Congress after 100 days in office, President Donald Trump claimed that the new tariffs on imports are about reindustrialization, “making America rich again and making America great again,” he said.

Every declining empire built upon exploitation and conquest has clung to the dream of reviving the former glory and splendor of its golden age of robbery and oppression in one final, desperate attempt.

Executive orders and oligarchic rule

To impose the tariffs, the Trump administration has turned to oligarchic rule, the authoritarianism of the billionaires. Tariffs are a form of taxation that the Constitution explicitly reserves for Congress. Usurping the authority of Congress by invoking emergency executive powers to impose tariffs is part of Trump’s mode of autocratic governance, including defiance of judicial rulings and aggressive actions against immigrants and political opponents. 

Why do Trump and his gang of billionaire oligarchs think that tariffs are necessary to encourage “reindustrialization”? 

The decay of the profit motive

The root cause is the decay of capitalism’s core engine — the profit motive. At one time, the profit motive was the driver of economic development; now it has become an obstacle. Monopolies stifle competition, and filling shareholders’ pockets takes priority over expanded production, so unstable financial speculation now dwarfs productive industry. 

Profit maximization has driven globalization. Banks and monopoly corporations often move production to countries with low wages to increase profit margins.

The monopolistic dominance that once secured U.S. global supremacy is now paralyzing its capacity to compete. Even the capitalist class acknowledges that the profit-driven system cannot generate reindustrialization on its own, revealing a fundamental flaw in the capitalist system.

Tariffs: An admission of failure

The goal of reindustrialization through tariffs is not a solution but an admission of failure. It reveals that capitalism can no longer be fixed through its own mechanisms. 

The reality is that capitalism’s decline is irreversible. No amount of government intervention by Trump (or anyone else) can resuscitate a mode of production that prioritizes the extraction of profit over renewal, over developing and building what’s needed.

Capitalism’s fixation on profits has undermined its productive foundations.

What real reindustrialization would require

To “Make America Great Again,” to reindustrialize and develop what’s needed, would require policies and actions that are exactly the opposite of what Trump is doing. 

Reindustrialization would require an expanding workforce, not Trump’s anti-immigrant purge.

Reindustrialization requires skilled workers. The Reagan administration made substantial cuts in federal education spending, laying the groundwork for the neoliberal reforms of the Clinton administration, whose privatization mandates and emphasis on market-based solutions accelerated the erosion of the public education system.

The reindustrialization campaign pushed by the Biden administration led to Taiwan-based TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, announcing in April 2024 that it would establish manufacturing facilities in Arizona. While there was a great deal of publicity when it was announced, the project remains in development with no certainty when production will begin. 

The company has had difficulty finding skilled local workers, leading to delays in the project’s timeline. To mitigate the skilled labor shortage, TSMC has brought in over 1,000 experienced workers from Taiwan to assist with the installation. Approximately 50% of the current workforce setting up the Arizona facility are Taiwanese workers. 

The company has instituted a local educational program in reading and math for the tech skills required. The Arizona Academic Standards Assessment, or AASA, results show that only 40% of the students in the public school system passed the reading (English Language Arts) test, only 32% passed the basic math test.

The alternative: Production for need, not profit

Reindustrializing and building what’s needed would require a system driven by production based on needs, not on profit — socialism.

On April 28, the governments of Russia and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea) confirmed the intervention of the North Korean military in Russia’s war with the NATO-backed fascist regime in Kiev. As part of the operation, several thousand DPRK special forces troopers assisted Russian efforts to retake Ukraine-occupied territory in the Russian state of Kursk. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin thanked “North Korean friends [who] acted in the spirit of solidarity, justice, and true camaraderie.” Putin further commented that the DPRK troops defended Russia as if it were their own homeland. The DPRK followed up with its own statements, not only confirming the deployment but providing some political perspective. 

Pyongyang framed the Ukrainian regime as “neo-Nazi” and described the North Korean military’s role in frustrating “an adventurous political and military attempt of the Western forces and the Ukrainian authorities” to change the momentum of the war. 

The Ukrainian offensive into Kursk began in August 2024. While claiming to be fighting a defensive war, Ukraine justified the incursion as creating leverage for peace talks. In reality, all the Ukrainian offensive accomplished was the sacrifice of life, destruction of expensive equipment, and to signal an escalation to Russia in an already bloody and dangerous war. Ukraine occupied between 100 and 400 square miles of Russian territory in Kursk until a successful Russian counter-attack in April 2025. 

Reports of Ukrainian abuses in Kursk

Russian citizens in Kursk have reported widespread abuses by Ukrainian forces, including the execution of unarmed prisoners, destruction of religious sites, and the shelling of residential areas. A resident of Sudzha told Russian war crime investigators, “Ukrainian armed forces tried to kill all of us, ordinary Russian people. I think this is just Nazism, genocide. I still can’t get it into my head. I’ll tell you honestly, I saw someone who came to kill. They came to exterminate the Russian people, just kill people.”

At the time the Ukrainian offensive began, U.S. corporate media noted that the incursion relied heavily upon Western tanks, artillery, and armored vehicles. The West continues to provide ample evidence that this war in Ukraine has been a U.S. imperialist provocation against Russia from the outset. 

As of April 26, Russian forces had retaken the vast majority of the occupied Kursk territory, including the strategic city of Sudzha. Soon after Putin’s announcement of North Korean support, footage was released showing Russian and North Korean soldiers embracing after liberating a village near the aforementioned Sudzha.

RU POV : The Russian Ministry of Defense has published footage of Russia soldier and North Korean soldier hugged each other after the liberation of a settlement near Sudzha.
byu/dmcsclgt inUkraineRussiaReport

The imagery of soldiers from the two countries struggling together against a NATO-backed white supremacist Ukraine rang similar to scenes of the Soviet liberation of Warsaw and Berlin towards the end of World War II. 

The United States and South Korea, of course, swiftly condemned the DPRK’s assistance to Russia as “a criminal act” and “inhumane and immoral.” The U.S. State Department even went as far as to say that the DPRK’s support for Russia is responsible for prolonging the war. This is the same State Department that,  by its own admission, has provided at least $66.5 billion in military assistance to Ukraine since 2022. The equipment provided with State Department funds included hundreds of artillery pieces, air defense systems and missiles, tanks, armored vehicles, small arms, and aircraft. 

It is laughable for the State Department to lecture North Korea on the alleged prolonging of the war when the war would never have happened without NATO provocation and U.S. military aid. The DPRK did not launch a fascist coup against a democratically elected government (that is, the U.S.-backed Maidan coup in Kiev in 2014). The DPRK did not relentlessly bomb the Donbass region for a decade. Ukraine and its NATO backers did that. 

The State Department’s moral superiority about the DPRK’s solidarity with Russia is particularly rich considering a March 29 report from the New York Times detailing the U.S. military involvement in Ukraine since the beginning of the war. The report essentially confirms the reality many have known for three years – the U.S. military has directed the war effort against Russia in Ukraine from the start. This war, often framed as Russia’s “invasion of Ukraine,” is in truth a NATO-U.S. campaign to weaken, isolate, and ultimately destroy the United Federation of Russia. 

Resistance against imperialism

North Korean participation in the defense of Kursk is not a collaboration of authoritarian governments, and it certainly isn’t responsible for the long and bloody conflict. However, the DPRK’s intervention in the war is a stunning demonstration of solidarity between the two countries. The collaboration between the two countries against imperialism and fascism reaches back 80 years to when the Soviet Red Army, in collaboration with the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army led by Kim Il Sung, liberated the Korean peninsula from imperial Japanese occupation. The two countries have maintained close diplomatic, cultural, military, and economic ties since.

As long as the United States and its allies insist on unleashing imperialist war across the world to create new markets and exploit more workers, there will be countries and people who stand up and resist. That is exactly what Russia and the DPRK are doing, and what the people of both countries have done since they defeated fascism and imperialism on their respective fronts of World War II. 

Right now, Burkina Faso sits again on the frontlines against U.S./Western imperialism. 

Prior to 2022, Burkina Faso was completely under the control of French neocolonial rule and oppression. The Burkinabe government — previously under the rule of Paul-Henri Damiba, a high-ranking officer of the Burkinabe military — allowed France to plunder the country for natural resources, including gold and uranium. 

Under France’s “supervision” the military was not allowed to procure weapons to defend the country from attacks. Burkina Faso had to borrow weapons and ammunition from neighboring countries in order to respond to attacks by groups like the Nusra Front and Islamic State. 

As a result, response times exceeded 72 hours before a counterattack could be mounted to defend the villages and people of Burkina Faso. France would also dictate if and when the Burkinabe military could respond and defend its territory. 

This humiliating pattern of neocolonial domination was broken in September 2022 when Field Artillery Captain Ibrahim Traoré led a military coup ousting Damiba and many other French-backed officers and politicians. After the ousting of these puppet figures, Ibrahim Traoré and the new revolutionary government of Burkina Faso set out to erase all remnants of French rule. 

They nationalized the country’s gold mines and set up its own gold refineries. Ibrahim Traoré personally ensured that education and health care for all people of Burkina Faso were accessible. The government also modernized the country’s infrastructure. 

From modernizing the Thomas Sankara International Airport in Ouagadougou to paving fresh roads and purchasing state-of-the-art agricultural and medical machinery and equipment, the revolutionary government has invested the country’s newfound wealth back into the people. 

These great strides were met with an outpouring of love from not only the people of Burkina Faso, but the greater community of the Black diaspora. 

However, the West has not sat idly. U.S. General Michael Langley, the head of AFRICOM, declared Ibrahim Traoré a threat to the people of Burkina Faso. Langley lied, saying Traoré was using the country’s wealth for himself. The lie is meant to justify the schemes meant to create instability in Burkina Faso. 

There have been multiple coups and assassination attempts against Ibrahim Traoré. Most recently, the intelligence services uncovered and foiled a coup attempt that was meant to take place on April 16. The coup was organized by current and former members of the Burkinabe military and government alongside the Islamic extremists whom the West backs. 

After the coup was foiled, the government accelerated the necessary steps to reach a long-lasting, self-sustaining national defense industry. They have built factories to produce all forms of military hardware. These improvements in national defense have shortened response times to attacks to 18 hours at most. 

Also, following the failed coup, the people of Burkina Faso took to the streets on April 30 to show massive support for Ibrahim Traoré and the revolutionary government. 

Burkina Faso has also gone about creating stronger alliances with its Sahel neighbors, namely creating the Alliance of Sahel States with Mali and Niger. Ibrahim Traoré has made it his mission to, in his own words, “finish what Thomas Sankara started.” 

The Russian government has taken steps to aid in the defense of Burkina Faso and its new government, with the countries entering into mutual aid pacts and Russian military assets deployed to help defend government officials and buildings. 

Ibrahim Traoré is a guiding light to all revolutionaries and a true leader for the Global South and Black people everywhere. 

Power to Ibrahim Traoré and the Revolutionary government!
Rest in Power Thomas Sankara!
Long live the people of Burkina Faso!
Long live International Solidarity!

May 10 – “More than 25 million Soviet people died during World War II. Yet many Russian families still commemorate the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany on May 9,” Deutsche Welle wrote yesterday on social media, sharing one of its articles in what could be considered the strangest message on a day of contrasts, manipulation of reality, and widespread propaganda. 

The German outlet saw no need to explain why it considers it a contradiction that families in a former Soviet republic like Russia celebrate victory in a conflict that destroyed their country, caused millions of victims, and provoked a total mobilization against a war of annihilation in which Germany’s ambition was to hold territory, enslave the portion of the population needed to act as a slave working class, and expel or exterminate the rest.

The demonization of May 9 celebrations, an active policy in the European Union and Ukraine since 2014, despite the fact that those countries had participated in the commemorations in previous years, predates the Russian intervention [in Ukraine]  in 2022. But the effort to counteract Victory Day with Europe Day saw its clearest example yesterday of the political use of images and the attempt to keep open a political divide that Brussels hopes to maintain beyond the war. “War criminal Putler,” read a huge sign hanging in the museum in Narva, Estonia, so that it could be seen from the Russian side. 

Days earlier, Russia had placed several giant screens on its side of the river so that the Russian population of the Estonian city could watch the May 9 parade. To the chagrin of the authorities, hundreds of people gathered on the riverbank to watch the Victory Day concert broadcast from the Russian side.

From the celebration of the common victory—where a troop parade in Moscow was even seen, with the Ukrainian flag taking equal prominence with the Russian one—the event has shifted to proclaiming Russia’s failure in organizing the event by mocking the supposedly low-profile of those attending. However, the images that emerged yesterday from Moscow and Lviv, where Ukraine had counter-scheduled the Victory Parade with a tribute to itself attended by European Union leaders, told a very different story.

Without even bothering to show a minimally aesthetic photograph in a monumental city, [former Estonian Prime Minister and current EU representative] Kaja Kallas published her message of European unity in the form of a line of representatives from the member states and a wreath-laying ceremony in a cemetery littered with red and black flags, used today by the Right Sector and in the past by its ideological ancestors, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). Meanwhile, in Moscow, Vladimir Putin appeared accompanied by Xi Jinping, leader of the world’s second-largest power, and surrounded by leaders from countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe. 

This clear geopolitical message of a diversity currently lacking in European Union diplomacy, withdrawn inward and surrounded by the fanaticism of its representatives, was also sent by the Russian media. The presence of choirs from Indonesia, India, China, South Africa, Tanzania, and Zambia in the version of “Sacred War,” one of the anthems commemorating the Second World War, sends a similar message, one more in keeping with the existing multipolar world, in which the EU, the United States, and Canada continue to pretend they can mock other countries and leaders from the moral high ground.

Yesterday showed a Russia that has lost virtually all of its European allies, with the exception of Slovakia and Serbia, whose leaders defied Kaja Kallas’s order not to go to Moscow, but which maintains diplomatic appeal in the Global South. The relative success of the meeting—and not the failure predicted by people like [Ukrainian Interior Ministry advisor] Anton Gerashchenko, who camouflaged what were simply their wishes in their analysis—is what has sparked the wave of demonization of the event. 

“Creating a fatal problem for themselves—suffering massive losses—and then declaring themselves ‘victors.’ This is the usual and inescapable cycle of Russian history. In the mid-20th century, they supplied the Nazis with resources, helped them rebuild their army, colluded to divide Europe, and lost more than 20 million lives. Today they celebrate. And they have voluntarily taken the place of those same Nazis, now in the 21st century,” [Ukrainian politician] Mikhail Podolyak wrote yesterday. The deliberate distortion of history is blatant.

However, in a propaganda struggle, reality is less important than rhetoric, and the fact that media outlets and citizens continued to post messages on social media during the military parade is of little importance to those seeking only to impose a narrative. Suddenly, the country that has legally banned symbols of victory over fascism —millions of Ukrainians fought in the Red Army and partisan units whose monuments have been vandalized and demolished first by the far right and then by the state—and has exalted as heroes for the freedom of the homeland the small minority who fought side by side with Nazi Germany in groups like the OUN-UPA or the SS Galizien Division, has become the ultimate authority denouncing Russian revisionism. 

By banning symbols of victory and the army that caused the greatest number of casualties to the invading German army, Ukraine chose in 2015 to exclude itself from the celebration that had until then been a common one. Now, while many of the former Soviet republics participate in the May 9 celebrations in Moscow (whether with the presence of their political leaders, the parade of their troops, or both), Kiev demands recognition of the supposedly immense role that the Ukrainian nationalists played in the victory.

It does so by demonizing initiatives such as the Immortal Regiment, a parade to honor family members or friends who fought in the war, which has been exported to other countries and which Ukraine has sought to denounce as Russian interference or the propaganda use of a victory to which it apparently has no right. Ukraine celebrated Victory Day yesterday by arresting an elderly woman who came, carrying a portrait of her father, a war veteran, to pay tribute to those who gave their lives in the war. Unlike the handful of people who did the same in cities like Odessa, who carried only flowers and no flags or symbols, the detainee in Kiev was wearing a partisan cap from which she had not removed a banned symbol, the hammer and sickle, which since 2015 has been equivalent in Ukraine to the Nazi swastika.

In the same social media post, Mikhail Podolyak, an advisor to [Head of the Ukrainian President’s Office] Andriy Yermak, falsely claimed that Russia had disrupted communications across European Russia to prevent the thinly veiled attacks President Volodymyr Zelensky had threatened. Anton Gerashchenko, an advisor to the Interior Ministry under Arsen Avakov and one of the men who introduced Azov as a police battalion into the National Guard, echoed the same sentiment. “During the parade, there are snipers on every rooftop in Moscow. There have been jokes that Putin is using Xi Jinping as a kind of air defense, and that is why he was so anxious about Xi’s arrival,” he wrote on social media, deliberately confusing the protection of high-profile guests and the responsibility to take an obvious threat seriously with irrational fear. 

Xi Jinping’s visit was never in doubt, despite Ukraine’s obvious attempt to frighten potential parade guests by creating the impression that Russia would be unable to maintain security in the heart of its capital. Only Viktor Orban [president of NATO-member Hungary] and Ilham Aliyev [president of Azerbaijan] succumbed to fear and canceled their visits—a poor example of a threat that shouldn’t have gone unnoticed.

Several media outlets reported yesterday that Vladimir Putin had been accompanied by four Great Patriotic War veterans who are over 100 years old, a fact that serves as a reminder that the Second World War is gradually ceasing to be a living memory and becoming the memory held by generations who were not there to fight in it. The loss of these voices with the moral authority that comes with having participated in the events places a greater responsibility on those charged with safeguarding that memory, from the families who each year parade through Russian city centers with portraits of their parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents, to the historians and politicians, whose temptation to manipulate memory for political ends is evident. 

The struggle over discourse that took place yesterday, the European Union’s attempt to redefine May 9 as “Europe Day”—also changing the definition of Europe from a continent to a political bloc with the right to admission—and the demonization of the collective celebration of the victory over fascism were just another episode in the continental rupture, the Western attempt to maintain power and the narrative, and the prelude to a political and geopolitical confrontation that will continue no matter what happens in the coming months on the Ukrainian front.

Translated by Melinda Butterfield

Source: Slavyangrad.es

Jace Carter addressed the Baltimore Hands Off Our Students Protest & March that gathered at Penn Station, April 27, 2025. Over a hundred students from many of the area campuses attended.

Good afternoon, sisters, brothers and siblings. My name is Jace, and I’m with the People’s Power Assembly, an organization that has been fighting against racist police terror and for the rights of poor, working-class people since the murder of Trayvon Martin in 2012. 

We were also on the frontlines after Freddie Gray’s murder by the Zionist-trained BPD during the Baltimore Uprising in 2015. And on this, the 10th anniversary of Freddie Gray’s murder, and today in particular (April 27) being the day of his funeral, I stand here today to say it’s still: All night, all day, justice for Freddie Gray!

All night, all day, justice for Freddie Gray!

All night, all day, we will fight for Freddie Gray!

I am also, unfortunately, a recent graduate of Loyola University Maryland, a liberal institution that is very anti-worker and very deep in the pockets of the capitalists. Shame! In November of 2023, the People’s Power Assembly marched across the Evergreen Quad in solidarity with the students who had newly formed the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter at Loyola. The administration had the audacity to call Loyola Police on this demonstration to break it up, calling it an “unauthorized gathering,” claiming that we “didn’t have the proper permits and approvals,” and whatnot. 

After this demonstration, the administration threatened leaders within this SJP chapter with expulsion if they did not immediately disband the chapter. Shame!

I am deeply ashamed to have been part of an institution that prides itself on how many community partnerships it claims to have, and also claims that its student body doesn’t live in that infamous “bubble” that was mentioned earlier. The people I went to this shameful institution with called our York Road neighbors, and I quote, “dirty, homeless druggies,” and are deathly afraid to walk York Road at any time of day out of “fear.” Call it what it is, it’s outright racism!

I was also part of a social justice organization on campus as a work-study student my senior year, where I actively witnessed my best friend and roommate, who also worked there, get her wages repeatedly stolen by her supervisor. I ended up resigning my position in disgrace because when I tried to call this shameful shit out, I was considered crazy. 

I say all this to say that as blood brothers, sisters and siblings in the struggle, especially to my fellow student organizers and activists, I continue to stand in solidarity with you all, fighting against your oppressive institutions, and we will continue to fight like hell to make our demands fully enacted! 

And one last thing that I want to say (this is a very short speech) is that Mahmoud Khalil should be home today with his wife and newborn son, and not sitting in an ICE detention facility 1,400 miles away in Louisiana! 

Free Palestine! Long live the student intifada! Till victory!

77th anniversary of the Zionist ethnic cleansing 

May 10 — Hundreds of people marched today in the Brooklyn, New York, neighborhood of Bay Ridge to commemorate the 1948 slaughter of Palestinians that established the Zionist regime. These atrocities are called the Nakba, which means catastrophe in Arabic.

The founding of apartheid “Israel” resulted in 531 Palestinian villages being wiped off the map. Among the thousands of Palestinians killed were the 140 murdered in the village of Deir Yassin on April 9, 1948.

Many of their bodies were thrown down wells. Among the killers was the future Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, who led the terrorist Irgun gang, a Zionist Ku Klux Klan.

Today’s action was called by PAL Awda, the Palestinian Assembly for Liberation, and was endorsed by 40 other organizations and individuals. People gathered on Brooklyn’s Fifth Avenue, in the heart of the Palestinian Community in Bay Ridge.

Speakers denounced the continuing mass murder in Gaza, which continues with the U.S. bombs supplied first by Biden and then by Trump. The genocide in Gaza and the West Bank is an attempt to complete the Nakba, targeting the families of those driven from their homes in 1948. 

People marched through the neighborhood, carrying Palestinian flags and chanting, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” They were greeted by families on their stoops and flying Palestinian flags from windows.

Demonstrators blocked the entrance of a Citibank branch, forcing it to shut down for the day. Citi, a financial octopus with assets of $1.7 trillion, helps finance the genocide in Gaza. 

Between October 2023 and January 2025, Citibank underwrote $2.9 billion in bonds to the Zionist regime. Citi, which has more branches in occupied Palestine than any other outside bank, also financed the Zionist state’s $2.5 billion purchase of 25 U.S.-made F-35 jet fighters. These supposedly “most advanced fighters in the world” now rain U.S.-made missiles on families sleeping in tents.

Omowale Clay, chairperson of the December 12th Movement, reminded marchers of how Citibank also helped finance the old apartheid regime in South Africa. Africans overthrew apartheid, and so will the Palestinians.

A speaker from Planet over Profits pointed out that Citibank also lends billions to Big Oil and other fossil fuel capitalists who are cooking the earth. The demonstration, more than a block long, marched back to Fifth Avenue, which is lined with Arabic stores and restaurants.

All over the world, people are commemorating the Nakba and condemning the genocide in Gaza. Palestine will win!