… on a quiet day, I can hear her breathing

Tag: Cuba

  • This May Day, workers mobilized for Palestine

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    Original article by Natalia Marques republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

    Student workers of Columbia organized in UAW 2710 participate in May Day rally. Photo: Wyatt Souers

    On International Workers’ Day, workers around the world continued to join hands with the student movement to stand with Palestine

    On May Day, workers around the world mobilized for the liberation of Palestine. “This May Day, workers of the world are called to declare their solidarity with Palestine, to denounce the Israeli Genocide, and to call for an end to all aggressions in the region and to all wars,” wrote the International People’s Assembly.

    “Beyond the call for a ceasefire we must say no to the transportation of arms and arms caches to Israel. Workers in all industries – especially workers in the transport sector – that can withhold their labor in order to halt the continued slaughter of the people of Palestine are emphatically called to do so!”

    The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa released a statement calling on workers around the world to mobilize for Palestine. “The working class are the creators of wealth, and it is the united power of the working class that has the power to overthrow hateful, brutal regimes like Apartheid Israel,” wrote the union. “On this Workers Day, we call on workers of the world to unite in defense of Palestine so that its people can be free, from the river, to the sea!”

    “The working class in South Africa must celebrate the defeat of Apartheid, because its destruction was due, largely to the unity of workers, who used their labor power to collapse the system through rolling mass action, strikes and protest,” the union added.

    Several Palestinian union formations have called the people in the world to action against the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza. This includes the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions, which in March called on US unions in particular to “be our voice and advocate inside and outside America.”

    “What our people are experiencing and what workers and unions in particular, are exposed to is the most horrific catastrophe known to humanity in recent decades,” the PGFTU wrote. “We ask that you convey our message and give voice to the suffering of hungry, starving workers and their families—not just to the American people, not just to your unions, but to the entire world.”

    Palestinian trade unions have also responded in support of the student movement for Palestine that has taken the world by storm. “The Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) in Palestine extends our deepest solidarity to you, the revolutionary youth who are changing the world,” reads a statement of support from a prominent Palestine farmworkers’ union, addressed to the students movement around the world that is taking action in solidarity with Gaza. “We write to you from Palestine to tell you that your actions are resonating across oceans. In you, we see the echoes of our struggle, the echoes of our resistance, and the echoes of our hope.”

    “Our people, along with all the workers and free people of the world, commemorate the first of May this year, at a time when they are subjected to the most brutal and fierce campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing, surpassing in savagery and bloodiness the fascists and the Nazis, at the hands of a group of murderers calling themselves an army for an invasive replacement entity, under the leadership, partnership, support, cover, and complicity of the American administration and the colonial Western imperial powers, the enemies of humanity,” wrote the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in a pre-May Day statement. “We send a salute of respect and pride to the university students all over the world, especially to the students at American universities, who are protesting against the crimes of the occupation and the support of the American administration for it, and who demand a halt to the aggression against the Palestinian people.”

    Within the student movement in the US, university workers are mobilizing their unions to stand with their students in solidarity with Gaza. On April 29, within the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at the City College of New York in New York City, university workers organized under the Professional Staff Congress (PSC-CUNY) held a town hall meeting to deliberate on how to use their labor power to support the five demands of the student encampment. The members attending the town hall organized a wildcat sick-out, in which union members will call in sick en masse to disrupt business as usual at the larger City University of New York (CUNY) system. Workers in the United States face a variety of strike prohibitions, including a nationwide ban on striking for political reasons rather than economic issues such as wages and benefits under the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947.

    Nevertheless, the PSC faculty at the town hall voted overwhelmingly to stage a sick-out. “At UT Austin, faculty did a one day job action in support of their students. Palestinian trade unions, National SJP, and National Faculty for Justice in Palestine have called for a mass job action on May 1st,” faculty wrote in a statement. “Our students are taking incredible risks to support the Palestinian people. They have asked for our help. We must stand ready to struggle alongside them, and to take these risks.”

    Workers organized with the United Auto Workers, which also represents many graduate student workers across the country, staged a rally in Washington Square Park on April 26 in support of their students staging Gaza Solidarity Encampments at NYU, Columbia, and the New School.

    Workers engaged in mass mobilizations around the world on May 1.

    Thousands took to the streets in major US cities including Washington, DC and Los Angeles. In DC, demonstrators marched to the Gaza Solidarity Encampments at George Washington University.

    ‼️🇵🇸A massive May Day march in Los Angeles takes the streets for Palestine! pic.twitter.com/YfDrwNiBis

    — Party for Socialism and Liberation (@pslnational) May 1, 2024

    ✊🏽🇵🇸RIGHT NOW: A massive May Day march is en route to the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at George Washington University pic.twitter.com/esXOVUrhqv

    — Party for Socialism and Liberation (@pslnational) May 2, 2024

    In New York City, unions such as the United Auto Workers and the New York Taxi Workers Alliance expressed explicit support for the Palestinian cause in a march of 20,000, which ended at the New York University Gaza Solidarity Encampment.

    Havana, like every year, was flooded with huge crowds on May Day as President Miguel Diaz-Canel sent an explicit message in support of Palestine and the pro-Palestine student movement. “All our solidarity with the students in the United States, who have taken the side of justice, have come out to support the cause of the Palestinian people, and are brutally repressed on their own university campuses. Today our [May Day] is also going through Palestine,” Diaz-Canel wrote.

    In Bogota, President Gustavo Petro made a special announcement during the May Day celebration in front of thousands of Colombians: the nation would officially cut all diplomatic ties with Israel.

    Original article by Natalia Marques republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

  • A proud history of solidarity

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    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/proud-history-solidarity

    BROTHERS IN ARMS: Fidel Castro welcomes Yasser Arafat on his visit to Cuba in November 1974 Photo: Liborio Noval/Granma.cu

    Cuba has stood unswervingly by Palestine since 1947 guided by its own rejection of imperialist lawlessness, writes BERNARD REGAN

    On January 12 2024 Cuba announced its intention to support the request of the Republic of South Africa to initiate proceedings against Israel in the International Court of Justice.  

    South Africa’s charge is that Israel is guilty of committing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza. 

    Cuba has a long record of supporting the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination. This record even pre-dates the 1959 Revolution.  

    In November 1947 Dr Ernesto Dihigo speaking on behalf of Cuba at the United Nations said that Cuba denounced the violation of international law by the United Kingdom. “The Balfour Declaration, in our opinion,” he said, “ is completely without legal value, since the British government offered in it something that it had no right to dispose of, because it was not its own.”

    The Cuban revolutionaries saw Palestine as part of the fight against colonialism, neo-colonialism and imperialism.  

    On June 18 1959, just a six months after the birth of the Revolution, Che Guevara and Raul Castro visited Al Burajj Refugee camp in Gaza, then under the control of the Egyptian government of Gamal Nasser.  

    Che and Raul were touring countries at the forefront of the struggle against imperialism, talking to leaders and discussing how unity could be built across the continents.

    Che reaffirmed Cuba’s support for Palestine at the UN general assembly on December 11 1964, making an excoriating critique of the role of US imperialism and extending solidarity, among others, to the “Arabs of Palestine.” He attacked the role of US imperialism in blocking the rights of peoples to self-determination and for interfering in the internal and sovereign affairs of countries across the continents.

    …

    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/proud-history-solidarity

  • Common Dreams

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    Some articles at Common Dreams

    Demonstrators wearing orange jumpsuits and hoods over their heads rally outside the White House in Washington, D.C. on January 11, 2019 to demand the closure of the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.  (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

    22 Years, 4 Presidents, and Just 1 Conviction Later, Dozens Still Jailed at Guantánamo

    Chlöe Swarbrick, then a Green Party Auckland Central candidate, attended an election night celebration on October 17, 2020 in New Zealand.  (Photo: Phil Walter/Getty Images)

    Watch New Zealand MP’s ‘Absolutely Brilliant’ 80-Second Takedown of GDP

    Dr. Ashraf al-Qidra speaks during an October 26, 2023 press conference as he holds a list of 6,747 people killed by Israeli air and artillery strikes on the besieged Palestinian enclave since October 7.  (Photo: Palestine Ministry of Health Gaza/Facebook)

    Israel’s Campaign in Gaza Fits the Legal Definition of Genocide

    Common Dreams

  • Coming soon :: Focus on Cuba

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    I did promise you a short series of a week [ed:month] [ed: no. a week] or so on wealth and inequality. That was a month or so ago. That’s difficult because you just have to search for it. The Occupy protesters were exactly right – it’s all for the 1%. The 1% own just about everything, governments suck up to the 1%, the 1% avoid paying tax, Giddeon Osborne goes to the 1% shindig at [ed: to] help them avoid tax, the UK government actually employed tax evader Philip Green … There is so much online about rich scum being rich scum. I apologise that I haven’t done anything about rich scum ruling the planet but it’s so obvious. It’s probably 0.01% never mind the 1%. Look just search for wealth inequality or distribution in a search enjin.

    Anyway, I’m going to do a bit about Cuba.

    Cuba has a fantastic health service despite being subjected to crippling sanctions by the US for decades. Cuba trains so many doctors and other medical professionals who often [ed: that might be always] go to assist in disasters, etc.

    Somehow the UK Solidarity Campaign – as well I am sure as other countries – were able to bypass those sanctions. I am proud to [ed: have] played a small part in the UK Cuba Solidarity Campaign – which involved individuals and trade unions – and we were able to send ambulances and medical supplies to Cuba. I’ve heard stories of Cubans saying to tourists “Thank you. You’re from ~wherever~. Your* ambulance saved my mum”. The ambulances are not repainted, they’re ambulances.

    President Obama is going to visit Cuba in a month or so as part of his visit of South American nations.

    *I edited You’re to Your for grammatical correctness

    7pm 21/2/16

    One slight mistake there. I called Philip Green a tax evader. Tax evasion is illegal. Tax avoidance is legal tax evasion so Philip Green should properly be called a tax avoider.

    One way to consider the 0.01% is that they are the 1% of the 1%.

    ed: It should be recognised that rich scum’s wealth is unearned. Rather wealth grows wealth. Very little research reveals that the rich are getting richer over the past two or three decades.

  • Politics news allorts

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    Commentary and analysis on recent UK politics events.

    Fidel Castro peers out of the bars of Nelson Mandela's former cell on Robben Island during a recent visit.
    Fidel Castro peers out of the bars of Nelson Mandela’s former cell on Robben Island during a recent visit.

    There’s a very good article about the sanitization through political values of Nelson Mandela and the South African campaign against Apartheid at politics.co.uk. I’ll quote some but urge you to read the whole article.

    …

    For decades, Cuba supported the armed struggle liberation movements in South Africa, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Angola and Mozambique. In 1961, when Che Guevara attended a summit in Geneva as industry minister, he attacked “the inhuman and fascist policy of apartheid” and demanded the expulsion of South Africa from the UN, all decades before Britain could bring itself to challenge the racist government.

    The climax of the decades-long campaign came when Cuba supported liberation forces in Angola against South African interference. In the 1988 battle of Cuito Cuanvale, a victory celebrated across southern Africa, South African soldiers were defeated a volunteer Cuban army , dragging PW Botha and FW de Klerk to the negotiating table.

    Mandela described Cuba as “our friend”, a country which “helped us train our people, who gave us resources that helped us so much in our struggle”. He added: “The defeat of the racist army at Cuito Cuanavale has made it possible for me to be here today. What other country can point to a record of greater selflessness than Cuba has displayed in its relations with Africa? For the Cuban people internationalism is not merely a word but something that we have seen practiced to the benefit of large sections of humankind.”

    When challenged on his friendship with Castro by Clinton, Mandela replied: “We should not abandon those who helped us in the darkest hour in the history of this country.”

    …

    Welfare reforms cut food budgets to as low as £20 a week – survey

    Low-income households spend an average of £2.10 per person per day on groceries, having cut their daily food budget drastically since the summer, according to the latest instalment of a survey on the impact of welfare reform.

    The detailed survey of more than 87 families found that a third said they now spent less than £20 a week on food, partly to cope with spiralling gas and electricity bills, while more than half said they had no money left once bills were paid.

    A combination of shrinking incomes and rising living costs, coupled with high personal debts meant the “reality of everyday life has got tougher” for low-income families since April when a series of welfare changes, such as the bedroom tax, were introduced, the report said.

    …

    Former spy chief quits Cambridge college ahead of Iraq war revelations

    Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6, has resigned as Master of Pembroke College, ahead of the potential release of his account of the events leading to the Iraq war

    …

    Sources close to Dearlove have spoken about how he feels Chilcot should recognise the role played by Blair and his spokesman Alastair Campbell in the reports which suggested Saddam could use chemical weapons to target British troops in Cyprus – a claim which put Britain on a path to war in Iraq.