Ending the Gaza healthcare horror (and the US one) requires working class power / by W. T. Whitney

_{^{The infant intensive care unit of Kamal Adwan Hospital. Image: Abdulqader Sabbah/Anadolu via Getty Images}}

_{South Paris, Maine}

U.S. laws require healthcare practitioners and anyone else to report to “the state” their suspicion of abuse of any child they’ve encountered. But the state abuses too.

The Lancet medical journal, published in Great Britain and read throughout the world, recently condemned the Israeli state and the “ongoing Israeli military assault on Gaza” for causing “an unprecedented rise in maternal deaths, miscarriages, and stillbirths.”

Lancet asserts that the “violence is not just a consequence of the military assault—it is a deliberate outcome of policies that restrict access to health care.” And a “blockade, now in its second decade, and ever-tightened over the last few months, has compounded the suffering, with dire implications for future generations.”

Lancet’s report refers to “humanitarian catastrophe … the onset of famine … deterioration of maternal health services … [and the] near-total collapse of the health-care infrastructure.” It points to “a tragic surge in preventable maternal and neonatal deaths.”

Lancet adds that:

“Prenatal care is virtually non-existent in Gaza. The rise in premature labor is staggering, often triggered by the chronic stress of displacement, malnutrition, and the trauma of witnessing air strikes. As hospitals struggle to keep up with mass casualties, maternity wards are becoming non-functional. In some cases, women have had to deliver babies outside, in unsanitary conditions, without the assistance of midwives or doctors.”

The “targeting of maternity hospitals and the blockade that limits essential medical supplies … from entering Gaza have turned pregnancy into a life-threatening condition for thousands of women.”

Women “are forced to carry pregnancies through conditions unfathomable to the human conscience.” The report cites malnutrition … a profound moral failure of the international community … [and] violation of international law.” “Humanitarian principles dictate that civilians, particularly children and pregnant women, must be protected,” the report states. Moreover, “The world cannot remain silent any longer. The time for action is now—to restore access to health care, to protect women and children, and to uphold the sanctity of life.”

The enabling role of Israel’s partner in crime receives no mention. The United States supplies the tools for killing – the bombs, guns, ammunition, and planes.

Citing mothers, nurses and physicians, Gaza journalist Taghreed Ali points out that expectant mothers are experiencing more miscarriages, premature deliveries, and stillborn births than before. He notes an increased incidence of newborns born with congenital abnormalities.

These include deformed or absent limbs; neurologic malformations, especially hydrocephalus; cardiac defects; and digestive problems. Possible causes, according to experts whom he consulted, include:

malnutrition of mothers; no pre-natal care; stress provoked by the bombings, shooting, and forced moves to new localities; gases produced by explosions; self-administration of inappropriate medicines necessitated by the absence of care; and inhalation of dust from explosions and collapsed buildings. Ali tells of expectant mothers buried in rubble for hours and later giving birth to babies who died or were malformed.

In this war and earlier Gaza wars, Israel’s military violates international humanitarian law by using artillery shells containing white prosperous. A pregnant woman exposed to this incendiary agent risks delivering a baby with congenital abnormalities, according to Lancet.

Aggravating the lack of care for sick or malformed babies has been the denial of access to specialty services outside of Gaza. Israel continues with its lockdown of Gaza’s borders.

The Israeli state’s trashing of healthcare in Gaza parallels the sorry state of healthcare fostered by governments in power in the United States. Israeli and U.S. political leaders share an easy tolerance of preventable dying.

In his recent comprehensive analysis, reporter Peter Dolack asserts that U.S. healthcare “is by far the world’s most expensive while providing the worst results among the world’s advanced capitalist countries.” The system is “designed to extract maximum profits rather than deliver health care.” U.S. residents “live the shortest lives and have the most avoidable deaths … More than 26,000 die in the United States yearly because of a lack of health insurance.”

Powerbrokers in both countries are dismissive, it seems, of healthcare for the poor, marginalized, and forgotten, and of their health. Such evident cruelty betokens an oppression that is widespread in both situations. Meanwhile, both leadership classes shore up power and privileges. This is one area of struggle.

Another is the decades-long striving of Palestinians to restore land and liberty. Any headway with struggle along such lines promises to fire up oppressed peoples throughout the Middle East – and not so much minders of the region’s status quo. According to academician Jason Hickel, “A liberated Middle East means capitalism in the core really faces a crisis, and they will not let that happen, and they’re unleashing the full violence of their extraordinary power to ensure it doesn’t.”

Under these circumstances, Israeli and U.S. strategists are looking ahead and seeking to waylay progressive change, while tuning into their counter-revolutionary instincts. They apparently have latched onto a notion of power put forth earlier by one of their ideological enemies. According to Lenin (State and Revolution), “The state is a special organization of force; it is the organization of violence for the suppression of some class”.

It’s a frame of mind that, reasonably enough, would have the victims of oppression in both the Middle East and United States casting about for ways for their own class to achieve political power.

Meanwhile, the Communist Parties of Palestine and Israel, and their allies, meeting virtually on October 7, agreed that, “Only by establishing a sovereign Palestinian state will there be peace and stability in the region.” Beyond self-determination, they also called for cessation of the siege on Gaza and the relief of suffering.

_{W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.}

Puerto Rico Elections show upswing of popular and independence forces / By W.T. Whitney

_{^{Supporters of Country Alliance. Photo: Patria Nueva PR}}

_{South Paris, Maine}

The special significance of elections taking place in Puerto Rico on November 5 was evident beforehand. A commentator detected from opinion polls that, “This election already is historic. It already marks a before and an after.”

For the first time ever, a gubernatorial candidate of the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP) was successfully challenging the candidates of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party (PNP) and the pro-commonwealth Popular Democratic Party (PPD). The two parties have ruled the roost in Puerto Rico for decades.

As of November 6, with 91 precincts having reported, PNP candidate Jenniffer González was leading with 39% of the votes. Juan Dalmau, the PIP candidate for governor, had gained 33% and PPD candidate Jesús Manuel Ortiz only 21%. Conservative candidate Javier Jiménez of Project Dignity obtained 7% of the vote.

Preliminary results of voting for the resident commissioner show the PPD candidate with 44.4% of the vote followed by 35.7% for the PNP candidate and 9. 5% for Ana Irma Rivera Lassén of the MVC. The resident commissioner is Puerto Rico’s sole member of the U.S. Congress. He or she has no authority to vote on legislation.

The results of past voting for governor show a trend. Candidates of the PNP and PPD parties together shared 95% of the vote in 2012, 81% in 2016, and 65% in 2020. “These political parties have basically collapsed over the past ten years,” says Rafael Bernabe, gubernatorial candidate the Working People’s Party in 2012 and 2016.

The PIP has broadened its appeal. Its candidates for governor moved from 2.5% of the vote in 2012 to 2.1% in 2016, and up to 13.5% in 2020. That party is heir to a legacy of serious U.S. repression from police and the FBI directed at both the PIP and former Nationalist Party.

The improved electoral showing this of the PIP is due mainly to a creative work-around of the U.S. government’s prohibition of coalitions being utilized in Puerto Rican elections. By late 2023, the PIP and the Citizens’ Victory Movement (MVC) had joined in an alliance called the Country’s Alliance (Alianza de País).

The two parties created an arrangement whereby each partner would put forth its own candidate for all offices being contested, including governor and resident commissioner. The stipulation was that only one of the two candidates for each office is actually seeking votes. The other does not do so and has no intention of serving in office.

For example, PIP candidate [WW1] for governor Juan Dalmau received votes from MCV backers and they did not vote for the MCV candidate. Likewise, Ana Irma Rivera Lassén, the MCV candidate for resident commissioner (and general coordinator of the MVC) would gain PIP votes for her candidacy and none from her own party.

The MVC, formed in 2019 and joined by the Working People’s Party and the Hostosian National Independence Movement, claims in its Party program an “Urgent Agenda … [dealing with] the rescue of public institutions; social, environmental and economic reconstruction, and decolonization of Puerto Rico.”

The MVC, whose candidate for governor in 2020 took 14 % of the vote, proposes reforms addressing a wide range of social problems and relief of class and identity-based oppression. Its program emphasizes the importance of competence, efficiency, and freedom from U.S. interference in achieving these gains. The PIP, founded in 1946, has long advanced Puerto Rico’s struggle for national sovereignty while also pushing o for social reforms. The two parties are as one in fighting the corruption that they say permeates the PNP and PDR alike.

The PIP and MVC are each seeking a “constitutional assembly on status.” As described by Rafael Bernabe, the delegates to such an assembly would study, debate, and decide on future relations with the United States. The options would be independence, statehood, or commonwealth. The U.S. government characterizes the latter as “free association.” It represents the status quo. Bernabe insists that, “the process of self-determination … should start with us.”

Any political change on the way now in Puerto Rico is responding to a step-wise process that led to disaster. The downhill course began with the U.S. government in the 1990s having withdrawn tax incentives aimed at stimulating new industry. Businesses and factories disappeared; income from taxation decreased and so too much of the government’s social programming. Public borrowing spiked to replace the lost income. The accumulated debt was unpayable

In 2016 the federal government created its Financial Oversight and Management Board in order to deliver austerity and privatization to the island’s economy. Public expenditure for human needs was put on a short leash. Grief multiplied, and more so with the ravages of Hurricane Maria in 2017. The newly privatized electrical generation system has never fully recovered.

A recent New York Times report describes an island in “ruins,” specifically with “[s]huttered schools, crumbling roads, a university gutted by budget cuts, a collapsing health system and relentless blackouts.”

This report concludes with commentary from analyst Jenaro Abraham, taken from NACLA.org: “As the naked interests of U.S. imperialism have become more evident, the conditions for political unity were forged … [The Alianza] is the product of the experiences anti-colonial movements have long endured under the brunt of U.S. imperialism…. [They have] compelled the PIP and the MVC to partake in a shared strategy that places … differences aside in service of a more immediate shared goal: uprooting the bipartisan pro-colonial stranglehold over Puerto Rico’s government.”

At difficult time for Cuba, UN General Assembly again condemns US blockade / By W. T. Whitney

_{^{The United Nations General Assembly has voted to condemn the United States’ embargo on Cuba for the 32nd consecutive year. On Wednesday, 187 countries voted in favor of lifting the decades-old sanctions; only the U.S. and Israel voted against the nonbinding resolution}} _{^{| via Democracy Now!}}

_{South Paris, Maine}

By a 187-nation majority, The United Nations General Assembly on October 30 voted to approve a Cuba Resolution calling for the “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba.” The United States and Israel voted no; Moldova abstained.

The same motion has been approved overwhelmingly every year since 1991. No vote took place in 2020 because of the Covid-19 pandemic. For over 20 years, only Israel and the United States have voted down the Resolution; annually one or more states have abstained.

In remarks to the Assembly’s delegates, Cuban Foreign minister Bruno Rodríguez explained that the U.S. economic blockade restricts Cuba’s importation of goods and access to international financial resources, also that shortages hurt every aspect of Cubans’ lives. Cuba’s foreign ministry on September 12 issued a comprehensive summary of adverse effects of the blockade.” Appearing here, it supplements this report.

The UN vote this year has special significance. It took place immediately following both Hurricane Oscar, which devastated eastern Cuba, and an island-wide electrical outage lasting several days. Its cause was lack of oil for generating electricity, restrictions on the shipping of petroleum products, and limited access to international financing, all owing to the blockade.

Now is an extraordinarily difficult time for Cubans and their government. Basic supplies and materials needed for day-to-day functioning are not readily available. Money is short and inflation mounts. The twin culprits are a fall-off in tourism, Cuba’s main source of foreign currency, and U.S. designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism. The latter entails regulations that persuade international financial institutions and corporations to steer clear of Cuba.

Every year in preparation for its vote on the Resolution, the General Assembly arranges for two days of discussion of the Resolution’s pros and cons. Perhaps reflecting extra stresses weighing on Cuba, commentary during this year’s discussion period came from an unprecedently large group of delegates.

In brief interventions, 59 of them offered reasons why the Resolution should pass; almost 30 international organizations or alliances did likewise. These included the Group of 77 and China, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM).

The speakers made frequent reference to the SSOT designation and to Title III of the U.S. Helms-Burton law (which discourages foreign investment in Cuba). Many of them variously denounced the blockade as violating international law and Cubans’ human rights, for inhibiting Cuba’s development, and for sticking around as a Cold War left-over. Several delegates extolled South-to-South cooperation and multipolarity. Others offered thanks for Cuba’s assistance during the Covid-19 pandemic

Meanwhile, U.S. activists and organizations, rallying against the blockade and in defense of Cuba, joined in vigorous demonstrations taking place in Washington DC, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and elsewhere.

The International US-Cuba Normalization Coalition Committee on October 27-28 again staged its annual “24 Hour Global Picket” to accompany the UN vote. The effort made for a continuous presentation of commentary, advocacy, video presentations, and music from 61 countries. Hats off to Vancouver-based activists Tamara Hansen and Alison Brodine, and others, for devising a remarkable phenomenon.

One oddity of the discussion on the Cuban Resolution was the contrast between multiples viewpoints offered by nations of the Global South and silence from their northern counterparts, specifically Japan, Canada and all European nations, save Hungary. (The U.S. representative did speak). The divide may represent dismissal of the proceedings by nations identifying with U.S. interests, or a fundamental cleavage within the community of nations, or both.

A standout anomaly was that of Argentinian foreign minister Diana Mondino having been fired from her job shortly after she voted in favor of the Cuban Resolution. Her boss, extremist rightwing President Javier Milei, was displeased.

After the vote in New York, China’s ambassador in Cuba issued a statement qualifying the result as a “just call from the international community that must be applied immediately and effectively.” He added that, “It’s disappointing and outrageous that the United States voted against the Resolution while refusing to end its sanctions against Cuba and insisting on including Cuba on its list state sponsors of terrorism … [And besides] China and Cuba are good friends, comrades and brothers.”

How US imperialism causes death and destruction in Gaza and Lebanon / By W. T. Whitney

_{^{Smoke billows over southern Lebanon following Israeli strikes, as seen from Tyre, southern Lebanon on 23 September, 2024 (Reuters)}}

_{South Paris, Maine}

The Israeli military’s horrendous massacres in Gaza extend now to Lebanon. Housing, schools, and hospitals are destroyed. Residents of Northern Gaza are being herded south, again. People starve. The U.S. government supplies the bombs, planes, and weapons.

The war’s continuation relates to U.S. strategic interests in the region and U.S. pretensions to world domination. War and humanitarian catastrophe will end with stopping U.S. assistance. Some of the war’s critics present views and emphases that distract and offer little toward ending it.

They commonly ascribe the carnage to the expansionist nature of Zionism. For a century and more, Zionism has indeed visited grief and loss upon Palestinians. But criticizing that record is more likely to reinforce intransigence than alter the course of events.

Highlighting unprecedented humanitarian disaster will not by itself stop the killing, or bring about repair. It needs to be the object of international consensus and cooperation, as mediated through the United Nations. Underfunding and Security Council vetoes are impediments.

Peace advocates may insist that the more humanitarian norms are violated, the more impactful moral, legal, and/or ethical criticism will be and the more telling will be personal witness or civil disobedience. Without mass pressure to accompany expectations, they become wishful thinking.

The war won’t end just because the war should end. It continues as long as vital interests are being served. Israel’s interests are her own. Criticism from afar is likely ineffectual. U.S. interests do warrant attention, because the war serves U.S. purposes.

According to peoplesworld.org, “Israel is completely dependent on the U.S. It would be incapable of carrying out its campaigns of aggression without U.S. help.”

The United States is bound to Israel. The two major political parties support military aid for Israel. Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed the U.S. Congress on July 24 to rapturous applause. The U.S. tie to Isreal is worth a lot.

U.S. commitment to Israel, and to assisting with Israel’s war, is measured in money: $251.2 billion (adjusted for inflation) in military aid to Israel during 66 years, $18 billion in the year prior to October 2024, and $20 billion approved by President Biden in August 2024 and being voted on in Congress in November. These are funds “that Israel must use to purchase U.S. military equipment and services.”

Commitment is such that U.S. military aid flows despite the Leahy Act (1997) requirement to “vet any foreign military unit to ensure it has a clean human rights record before it can receive U.S. assistance.”

Support for Israel is a crucial part of U.S. strategy for the entire Middle East. That strategy is one aspect of U.S. plans for arranging international affairs to its liking. U.S. backing of Israel and its war coincides with U.S. imperialist purposes.

Formerly, U.S. reactions to the Holocaust were foremost in determining U.S. support for a Jewish state. Later, relations with Israel took on an additional transactional aspect. The U.S. government would indeed support Israel’s dealings with Palestinians. But Israel would facilitate U.S. policy objectives for the Middle East.

They are: control and supervision of the region’s production and distribution of oil and natural gas, maintenance of the Middle East role as “transit hub connecting Europe, Asia, and Africa,” military force ready to intervene against so-called terrorism, and pushback against “the influence of rival great powers.”

There are other favors. Israel serves as proxy warrior for the United States, for example, in Syria and Iraq, and in the UN General Assembly provides a yearly vote for the U.S. economic blockade of Cuba (there’s usually only one other such vote).

Israel furnishes U.S. rightwing allies in Latin America with military aid, training and equipment. Israel offers attractions: a proposed canal through the Negev Desert bypassing Egypt and offshore deposits of oil and natural gas.

A side note: money is also the measure of U.S. commitment to imperialism. Because imperialism involves conflict, military capabilities are crucial, and they cost. Overall U.S. military spending is exorbitant, dwarfing outlay for the U.S. population’s social needs. In the government’s discretionary budget for fiscal year 2023, military funding amounted to 62% of the $1.8 trillion total; 38% sufficed for everything else, including housing, education, healthcare, and restoration of infrastructure.

Another side note: unfathomable human suffering will not likely deter United States from enabling Israeli massacres in Gaza. The U.S. government has returned to a nuclear arms race. Doing so signals tolerance for the worst kind of catastrophe. According to the New York Times: “General Dynamics will have “produced 12 nuclear ballistic missile submarines by 2042 — a job that’s projected to cost $130 billion … [and] the United States is set to spend an estimated $1.7 trillion over 30 years to revamp its [nuclear] arsenal.”

The U.S. government, with Israel’s help, pursues a new kind of imperialism. Distant from enslaved labor, die-offs of indigenous peoples, and occupation of foreign territories, it relies on debt dependency and cheap labor. Under neoliberalism, wealth is still being drained from the world’s peripheral regions to metropolitan centers.

Conflict remains. Rival powers are ever threatening, and the United States needs a hard-boiled and militarily competent factotum at its side. The U.S. government pays in-kind, with bombs, guns, planes and missiles.

Neither war nor U.S. weaponization of Israel will end soon. What happens will depend on priorities serving U.S. imperialism. U.S. young people and others actively demanding justice for Palestinians would do well, it seems, to prepare themselves for the long haul. They are looking at U.S. imperialism now and would come to understand its origins and know what needs to be done.

They would learn, first, that capitalism consolidated, turned aggressive, and then thrust modern-day imperialism upon the world. They would study worker exploitation and how it led to the profit-taking abundance fueling the growth of capitalism. They would explore division by social class, the necessary condition for exploitation.

Others, socialists in particular, reversed this sequence, and it doesn’t matter. Beginning with Marx and Engels’ reflections on the factory system under capitalism, they learned that workers lose out on the surplus value of the labor they provide. The inquirers became familiar with labor mobilizations and working-class struggles for political power. They arrived at Lenin’s Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916), a study of capitalists monopolizing and making war.

In Cuba’s report, US blockade comes off as weapon of war / by W.T. Whitney

_{^{Image credit: Prensa Latina}}

_{South Paris, Maine}

Cuba’s foreign ministry annually reports on the U.S. economic blockade of Cuba and its recent impact mostly in order to enlighten delegates of the United Nations General Assembly prior to voting on a Cuban resolution. For 31 consecutive years the General Assembly has overwhelmingly approved a resolution claiming “the necessity to put an end to the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba.”.

On September 12 in Havana, Cuba’s foreign minister Bruno Rodríguez held a press conference to introduce “Knock Down the Blockade – CUBA’S REPORT March 2023 – February 2024.” Providing information on blockade workings and the damage it causes, the 65-page Report is comprehensive and detailed.

Rodríguez cast the blockade as “the most comprehensive, far-reaching, and prolonged coercive economic measures [ever] applied against any country.” The yearly reports tally economic losses from blockade effects the year before and cumulatively since the blockade’s onset. The figures this year, cited by Rodríguez, are $5.057 billion and $164.14 billion, respectively. With inflation, the latter amount is $1.499 trillion.

Why the blockade has lasted for over 60 years is not clear. The linkage of planned healthcare difficulties and food shortages with the likelihood of some Cubans dying is reminiscent of war. The United States has trouble ending its wars.

The Report covers U.S. legislation, regulations, and policies reflected in the blockade. Three categories get top billing: requirements imposed by U.S legislation, regulations stemming from executive orders, and the designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism (SSOT).

The Cuba Democracy Act of 1992 requires that ships docking in Cuba don’t visit U.S. ports for six months afterwards, that companies abroad tied to U.S. corporations don’t trade with Cuba. The 1996 Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act enables the heirs of the former owners of properties nationalized by Cuba’s government to utilize U.S. courts to secure compensation from the third-country investors and companies presently involved with the properties. Consequently, many prospective investors are now hesitant about doing business in Cuba.

Regulations put in place by the U.S. government’s executive branch have long restricted U.S. travel and commercial arrangements with the island. One galling regulation disallows products from abroad containing more than 10% U.S. components from being exported to Cuba. The Trump administration issued dozens of new regulations restricting U.S. travel to Cuba, and they continue. Regulations requiring “specific licenses or permits” and payments “in cash and in advance” diminish food imports from the United States, approved under legislation in 2000.

The SSOT designation entraps international banks and financial institutions in a system that already restricts the dealings of international corporations and traders with Cuba. According to the Report, the SSOT label “has brought about serious difficulties to our country’s financial and banking transactions, foreign trade, sources of income and energy, [and] access to credit.”

The U.S. offers its Visa Waiver Program to the travelers of 42 countries. Persons visiting Cuba are ineligible, because of its SSOT designation. Travelers protecting their waivers stay away from Cuba. Tourism takes a hit.

Indeed, “[t]he US government has used tourism, the main source of income for the country, as a political weapon against Cuba.” In 2023, Cuba … received 2,436,980 international visitors, which represents … 57 per cent of the figure achieved in 2019.”

The Report contains dozens of illustrative examples of harm, shortages, and/or diminished imports bedeviling agencies, activities, and individuals within the various sectors of Cuba’s economy. These are the education, sports, culture, biotechnology, and transport sectors, and the mining, energy, healthcare, agricultural, and food sectors.

According to the Report, “The US blockade against Cuba violates International Law. It is contrary to the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations. It constitutes a violation of the right to peace, development and self-determination of a sovereign State.”

The blockade continues despite appeals to fundamental principles. A journalist in Havana portrays a “humanitarian crisis throughout Cuba.” Describing “hungry people scavenging through dumpsters and panhandling,” he indicates that, “With pharmacy shelves barren, the price of medicines on the black market has slipped beyond the reach of much of the population. Without money to repair old infrastructure, hundreds of thousands now live without running water.”

Humanitarian disaster in Cuba, the product of prohibitions and restrictions applying to Cuba’s healthcare, food, and agricultural sectors looks to be purposeful rather than accidental.

Highlighted in the Report are shortages of spare parts for intensive care units and operating rooms, spare parts for a device that encapsulates medicines and fills vials, blood gas analyzers, reagents to diagnose immunodeficiency diseases, drugs used to treat cancers, new equipment for neonatal care.

Now 51% of drugs on a “national list of essential medicines … are not available … surgeries have dramatically decreased.”

Food production is down due to shortages of the “fuels, oils and lubricants needed to operate the existing agricultural machinery” and “a shortage of antibiotics, antiparasitic medications, vitamin supplements.” Significant too are: a “deteriorated fleet of agricultural equipment,” loss of “capacity to refrigerate 26,360 tons of products,” and “limited access to fertilizers and pesticides.”

According to Cuba’s Report, “The historical yields of several crops have deteriorated by almost 40 per cent … [leading to] a remarkable decrease, as compared to 2022 figures, in products such as rice, beans, bread, coffee, cooking oil, soybean yogurt, meat products, powdered milk, sugar, as well as in medical diets. As compared to 2019, the production of rice, egg and milk has decreased by 81 per cent, 61 per cent and 49 per cent respectively.”

The president of the Cuban Association of Animal Production indicates that, “The blockade makes it impossible for cooperatives and farmers to have access to inputs, such as spare parts for machinery, tractors, harvesters and other means of transportation that remain paralyzed and are obsolete, as well as raw materials and other products that would otherwise make it possible to use idle land for production.”

One assumes that, what with an intended humanitarian crisis, at least some Cubans are going to die due to the blockade. What one side intends – restrictions, prohibitions, and shortages – becomes coercion for the other side. Coercion bearing the risk of death, whether of one Cuban or more, is war, or something like it.

The object of U.S. policy toward Cuba was clear in 1960, and remains so. In his famous memo a year after the victory of Cuba’s Revolution, State Department official Lestor Mallory writes of a “a line of action … [that would] bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”

To remove a governing system not to its liking, the U.S. government could have turned to diplomacy or to a coup mediated through proxies or agents. It opted for force, with lethal possibilities.

War against Cuba manifests in the U.S. feat, through its blockade, of helping to force a million Cubans out of the country – 10% of the population. It’s a re-worked version of aggressors’ “drain the swamp” theory.

Prospects for ending the blockade correlate with why it exists and its warlike characteristics. Many U.S. wars seemingly possess a momentum of their own, for instance, the still-unsettled Korean war, U.S. troops still in Iraq, and the prolonged U.S. debacle in Afghanistan. Regime-change in Cuba is a long-term objective. For those in charge and the dominant U.S. media, getting rid of socialism is worth any amount of waiting.

In Bolivia gigantic march reveals socialist divide, elections are ahead / By W. T. Whitney

_{^{Hundreds of people take part in the so-called ‘March to Save Bolivia’ against leftist leader Luis Arce, on September 17, 2024. [Photo by Aizar Raldes / AFP]}}

_{South Paris, Maine}

Beginning on September 17, marchers proceeded north for 118 miles from Caracollo in Oruro department to La Paz, Bolivia’s capital city, arriving there on September 24. Numbering from 5000 to 15,000 – estimates vary – they were supporting former President Evo Morales. They called their march a “National March to Save Bolivia; for Life, Democracy, and Revolution.” The had signs saying “Evo President” and “Lucho Traitor” – in reference to current Bolivian president Luis Arce.

The Movement against Socialism (MAS) Party, the party of both presidents, has split into two warring factions. Arce served for 12 years under Morales as minister of the economy and finances. Morales served three presidential terms, from 2006 to 2019. He had led a federation of unionized coca growers, was Bolivia’s first indigenous president, and been president of MAS since 1998.

Protesting shortages of food, fuel, and dollars and demanding that Morales be president, the marchers twice encountered resistance from hundreds of Arce loyalists. Security forces made arrests and dozens were wounded.

Meetings and attempts at dialogue in La Paz were inconclusive. Morales was no-show at one meeting. Speaking out elsewhere, he revived an old demand, insisting that Arce change his “corrupt, drug-trafficking, and racist” ministers if he wants to continue governing.”

The Arce government sought to forestall new mobilizations that might “prejudice the normal development of the country.” A Morales spokesperson confirmed that highway blockades would resume on September 30. His forces for two years had been carrying out blockades, strikes, and demonstrations – with 200 days of blockades in 2023.

On learning that the government would replace Justice Minister Iván Lima, the Morales side called off further blockades. Morales announced that “extreme poverty has returned and blockades will make it worse.” He also prioritized fire-fighting. The Morales side demanded that marchers who had been arrested be released.

Meeting in El Alto on September 27, the “Unity Pact” – the name given to government supporters – heard from social movement groups. Concerned about shortages, along with Morales’s partisans, they demanded a “response and solution” from the government. Arce, who was present, charged that he was being forced to resign.

If he did so, the Constitution would require that Senate President and Morales ally Andrónico Rodríguez be installed as temporary president. Then will come elections set for August 17, 2025, and Morales would be running.

From Cochabamba, Morales proposed a “great national meeting on October 12 where we will be making other decisions.” He accused Arce of “selling out to the rightwing, seeking to diminish the state, and following recommendations of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.”

In late 2019 Morales, having won the first-round in presidential voting, was heading for a fourth term. Then came a U.S. assisted coup; he was deposed and went into exile. The responsible parties were big landowners, oil and natural gas empresarios, and assorted racists in Santa Cruz and other eastern departments. Jeanine Áñez became provisional president. She’s now in prison,

From exile, Morales named Luis Arce as the MAS candidate in presidential elections in 2020. He scored a 55% plurality. Morales returned to Bolivia and signs of division emerged. Arce maintained popular support for a while, helped along by a successful response to an uprising in October, 2022 carried out by reactionaries in the eastern departments.

At a MAS Party Congress in October 2023, delegates expelled Arce from the party and endorsed Morales as a presidential candidate for the upcoming elections. The Constitutional Court ruled in December 2023 that Morales may not serve another presidential term.

In May, 2024, another MAS Congress took place, with a different set of delegates. It backed Arce as presidential candidate and named Grover García, government office-holder and former union leader, as president of the MAS Party to replace Morales.

President Arce blames Evo Morales’s ambition: “[T]he personal and individual appetite of one person cannot drag the Bolivian people into again violating the Constitution.” Arce’s approval rating fell from 42% to 22% between January and September, according to one poll. “The main reason is the economic; basically the increase in prices,” the report says.

Deterioration from an earlier state of affair is remarkable. From 2006 on, the MAS-led government carried out reforms that uplifted one of the most poverty-stricken populations in the Western Hemisphere.

According to one summary, Bolivia became a “Plurinational State” representing 36 indigenous cultures. Land was redistributed and the production of oil, natural gas, and electricity nationalized. The minimum wage and per capita income each tripled; roads, schools, and hospitals were built. The elderly, mothers, and children received generous social support. Health care expanded and schools multiplied. The economy grew at twice the average rate of Latin American countries. International currency reserves mounted to US$15 billion in 2014.

Then natural gas production fell. International reserve funds were down to US$139 million in 2024. According to a BBC report, these were the sources of funds used by governments under Morales and Arce to pay for social programs, including fuel subsidies. Now income from natural gas exports, paid in dollars, is short, more so because fuel imports are paid for in dollars. Bolivia imports 56% of the gasoline and 86% of the diesel fuel it uses.

Dollars were in short supply to pay for the needs of Bolivian society. Borrowing shot up. But shortages persist, and inflation. Foreign debt as a portion of GDP rose from 10% in 2008 to 30% in 2022.

Economics is not the whole story. According to one account, “The main cleavage between Arce and Evo is the increasing inequality of state resources between the factions they represent.” Informal employment in Bolivia is high. But “the government’s executive branch employs half a million people … Control over people and agencies represents power that is available to the Arce administration and not to the other side.

For commentator Luis Vega Gonzalez, racial identity is a factor. On one side of “the abyss that separates them” are the Morales forces who are largely indigenous. On the other side are the “white mestizos represented by those who govern in conjunction with those whose power comes from perks.”

He adds that, “[I]n three years the Indians were displaced from power … the economy was handed over to the market … and the collective aspirations of the plurinational state had to be replaced by individual entrepreneurship and social climbing.”

US misperceptions about Russia feed into war-making in Ukraine / By W.T. Whitney

_{^{Waving a Russian flag, Moscow, September 2023 Stringer / Reuters}}

_{South Paris, Maine}

Indian peace advocate Bharat Dogra recently noted the near impossibility of raising the “issue of improving relations with Russia or stopping the disastrous, destructive Ukraine war.”He sees the Ukrainian people as “victims of an entirely avoidable proxy war that started way back in 2014 with a USA-instigated coup in Ukraine.” He condemns “[t]he mobilization of almost the entire military might of the West and the NATO to encircle and defeat Russia.”

Russia “has to be considered … in an unbiased way,” he insists. U.S. publicists have created “the devilish image of Putin” and “policymakers are forced to respond not to realties but to the false notions.”

The U.S. people and many public officials may indeed be uninformed generally about realities in Russia. The situation would be due to U.S. government actions, recent educational trends, and biases of a subservient media.

In penalizing Russian media personnel, the U.S. government interferes with the transmission of news from Russia to the United States. FBI agents recently raided the homes of Scott Ritter and Dimitri Simes. Ritter is a former United Nations weapons inspector who writes for the Russian news service Russia Today (RT). Simes, a U.S. resident born in Russia, hosts a Russian television talk show. They allegedly violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act

The Justice Department on September 4 indicted RT employees Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva under the same charge and issued sanctions against RT editor Margarita Simonyan and several colleagues. The New York Times in 2022 reported that its own journalists and those of other U.S. news outlets were being withdrawn from Russia.

On September 16 Rachel Maddow interviewed former Democratic Party presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on MSNBC. One topic was Russian interference in U.S. elections. Asserted Clinton: “I think it’s important to indict the Russians [and] I also think there are Americans who are engaged in this kind of propaganda. [Perhaps] they should be civilly or even in some cases criminally charged.”

Schools and universities have skimped on teaching and research about Russia. An academicians’ group in 2015 reported that Russian studies in universities were in “unmistakable decline in interest and numbers in terms of both faculty and graduate students.” Enrollment levels are presently down by “30 to 50 percent.” College and university students studying Russian dropped 20% between 2007 and 2016.

According to the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, “U.S. policy toward Russia has largely ignored such crucial factors as Russia’s history, culture, geography, and security requirements—as they are seen from Moscow.”

Dogra laments that, “the space for hearing and considering differing points of views [is] shrinking fast in the West,” adding that, “[m]ature democracies are supposed to be keen to hear to hear all points of view, including those of opponents.”

The U.S. people, he notes, don’t realize that“Putin tried repeatedly earlier to avoid conflict and to find a place of self-respect for Russia within Europe, … [and] made huge investments in ensuring cheap energy supply to Europe. … [H]e repeatedly pleaded with the West to honor commitments made earlier regarding not moving the NATO and its weapon systems too close to Russia … [and] took the Minsk accords very seriously.”

Dogra asks, “What kind of democracy is this, what kind of free media? What is wrong with people hearing the views of a leader even though he is widely regarded to be hostile by the West?”

Opinion polls have demonstrated high approval ratings for Putin. The U.S. and European public, says Dogra, ought to appreciate the successes of Russian governments under his leadership. They need “to examine his role as a national leader of Russia, whether he has been good for Russia and for the welfare of Russian people.”

In the 1990s, “western advisers had been active in Russia, leading to sale of Russian assets to private businesses, including foreigners as well as Russian oligarchs, at cheap rates, resulting in huge profits for a few but also in terrible disruptions in the economy.” Life expectancy plummeted.

Dogra highlights a “remarkable recovery in terms of human development indicators, to the extent that some of these are now better than or almost equal to those of the USA.”He cites data:

· In 2021, child mortality under five years of age per 1000 live births “was 5.1 in the Russian federation, while it was 6.2 in the USA,” down from 20 deaths and 8 deaths, respectively.

· “Infant mortality under 1 year of age per 1000 births in Russia declined in a big way,” from 19 deaths in 2000 to 4.8 deaths in 2023, the comparable U.S. figures being 7.2 and 5.4, respectively.

· UN data indicates that, “In the case of maternal mortality rate (reported per 100,000 births), this declined … in Russia” from 52 in 2000 to 14 in 2020, “while that of the USA actually increased from 12 to 21” in those years.

· “During 2000-2019 according to UN data the life-expectancy in the Russian Federation increased significantly from 65.3 years to 73.2 years.”

· “The increase of income or GNI per capita in Russia during this period was very significant—from $1710 in year 2000 to $4450 in 2005 to $9980 in 2010 to $11,610 in 2021. The literacy rate for the Russian Federation is around 99% … The Human Development Index of Russia has improved from 720 in 2000 to 822 in 2021”.

There are two conclusions. One, U.S. citizens certainly need to know more about Russia. Two, information blockade accompanies the supplying of weapons as the U.S. prolongs Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Dogra presumes that with more U.S. appreciation of realities in Russia, U.S. prolongation of the war might lose its appeal. He overlooks key factors: the economic boost provided by war-spending, U.S. habituation over a century to anti-Russian hostility, the official view that Russia is ganging up with China against the U.S. and Europe, and the distracting effect of war in the face of seemingly unsolvable U.S. problems. These include an economy mired in debt, apparently intractable inequalities, and a dysfunctional system of democratic governance.

Haiti has disturbed U.S. ruling class for two centuries; Springfield is latest flare-up / By W. T. Whitney Jr.

_{^{Haitian Revolution: Attack and take of the Crête-à-Pierrot (March 24, 1802). Original illustration by Auguste Raffet, engraving by Ernst Hébert. | Public Domain}}

_{Reposted from Peoples World}

Republican presidential and vice-presidential candidates expressed horror a couple of weeks ago on apparently learning from social media that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating dogs and cats, “eating people’s pets,” as Trump put it. The reports, as we all know now, were false, but their fallout was quite real. Bomb threats followed, schools and public buildings closed down, and longtime African-American residents felt threatened.

A bit of backstory: Springfield’s economy lost jobs and industries over the years. Some 15,000 Haitians arrived, eager to work. Industry expanded, but social service providers were stressed. Most of the Haitians in Springfield are there under Temporary Protected Status. That governmental designation enables migrants forced out of their counties by serious crises to enter the United States legally.

The bizarre twist of political behavior stems in part from the migrants being Haitian. Haitians and their nation have been problematic for the United States’ ruling class for more than two centuries.

The fact of migration itself does not account for the exaggerated hostility, though. Almost nothing of that order happens to the one-third of New York state residents and 40.9% of Miamians who are immigrants, or to the foreign-born residents of nine other urban areas in the United States who comprise from 21.1% to 39.1% of the several populations.

Stresses and frustrations associated with Springfield’s economic decline logically enough could have stimulated hostility toward migrants, if we look at what has happened historically in other communities. But economist Franklin J. James rejects the idea “that immigration hurts U.S. natives by reducing job opportunities …[and] that immigrants displace natives from jobs or reduce earnings of the average worker.”

Being Black may indeed invite hostility in a racist society, however. But the disconnect is sharp between the rarity of unbounded disparagement at high political levels and the large numbers of African-descended people who never experience the like from anybody. Opportunities abound. In 2019 Black people made up from 21.6% to 48.5% of the populations of 20 U.S. cities. That year nine Ohio cities, not including Springfield, claimed between 32.0% and 11.2% Black people. In 2024, 17.4% of Springfield residents are Black.

The scenario in Springfield may itself have been toxic: A large number of Black people from abroad arrived together on an economically depressed small city. But Somali migrants arrived in Lewiston, Maine under similar circumstances, and their reception was different.

They showed up in 2001, and a year later numbered 2,000 or so. In January 2003, an Illinois-based Nazi group staged a tiny anti-Black rally; 4,500 Mainers joined in a counter-demonstration.

As of 2019, according to writer Cynthia Anderson, “Lewiston … has one of the highest per capita Muslim populations in the United States, most of it Somali along with rising numbers of refugees and asylum-seekers from other African nations.” Of Lewiston’s 38,404 inhabitants, 10.9% presently are “Black or African American.” Blacks are 1.4% of Maine’s population.

Anderson reports that with the influx of migrants, Lewiston “has struggled financially, especially early on as the needs for social services and education intensified. Joblessness remains high among the older generation of refugees.”

Lewiston is Maine’s poorest city. For generations, massive factories along the Androscoggin River produced textiles and shoes, but they are gone. The city’s poverty rate is 18.1%; for Blacks it’s 51.5%. In 2016, 50% of Lewiston’s children under the age of five lived in poverty.

Citing school superintendent Bill Webster, an AP report indicates “immigrant children are doing better than native-born kids” in school, and are “going off to college to get degrees, as teachers, doctors, engineers.”

Analyst Anna Chase Hogeland concludes: “The Lewiston community’s reaction to the Somalis demonstrated both their hostility and reservations, as well as the great efforts of many to accommodate and welcome the refugees.” Voters in Lewiston are conservative; the majority of them backed Donald Trump in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.

The circumstances under which the two cities received Black immigrants differed in two ways. A nationwide upsurge in racist rhetoric and anti-immigrant hostility worsened conditions for migrants in Springfield. Lewiston’s experience had played out earlier.

Additionally, immigrants arriving in Springfield qualified for special attention. The aforementioned political candidates could have exercised their anti-migrant belligerence in many cities. They chose Springfield, presumably because the migrants there, objects of their wrath, are Haitian. Why are Haitians vulnerable?

**A mural painted on an alley wall this month in Springfield, Ohio. | Carolyn Kaster / AP**

Black people in what is now Haiti boldly rebelled against enslavement on French-owned plantations. Remarkably, they expelled the French and in 1804 established the independent nation they called Haiti.

Ever since, the United States has spelled trouble for Haiti. Pre-eminent abolitionist Frederick Douglas pointed out in 1893 that, “Haiti is black and we [the United States] have not yet forgiven Haiti for being black.” Long after “Haiti had shaken off the fetters of bondage…we continued to refuse to acknowledge the fact and treated her as outside the sisterhood of nations.”

Scholar and activist W.E.B DuBois, biographer of abolitionist John Brown, explains that “there was hell in Hayti (sic) in the red waning of the eighteenth century, in the days when John Brown was born … [At that time] the shudder of Hayti was running through all the Americas, and from his earliest boyhood he saw and felt the price of repression—the fearful cost that the western world was paying for slavery.”

DuBois’s reference was to the U.S. slavocracy and its encouragement of collective fear among many white people that Black workers—bought, owned, and sold—might rise up in rebellion. They did look to the example of Haiti and did rebel—see Herbert Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts.

In the United States, from the Civil War on, the prospect of resistance and rebellion on the part of Black people has had government circles and segments of U.S. society on high alert.

That attitude, applied to Haiti, shows in:

S. instigation of multi-national military occupations intermittently since 2004.
Coups in 1991 and 2004 involving the CIA and/or U.S.-friendly paramilitaries.
Backing of the Duvalier family dictatorship between 1957 and 1986.
The brutal U.S. military occupation of Haiti between 1915 and 1934.
S. control of Haiti’s finances and government departments until 1947.
No diplomatic recognition of Haiti from its beginning nationhood in 1804 until 1862.
S. economic sanctions against Haiti for decades, until 1863.

Says activist lawyer Bill Quigley: “U.S.-based corporations have for years been teaming up with Haitian elite to run sweatshops teeming with tens of thousands of Haitians who earn less than $2 a day.”

Ultimately, it seems, threads of governmental callousness, societal disregard for basic human needs, and outright demagoguery coalesced to thrust Springfield and Haitian migrants into the national spotlight. Molelike, the anomalous and little-acknowledged presence of Haiti asserts itself in the unfolding of U.S. history.

As with all op-eds and news-analysis articles published by People’s World, this article reflects the views of its author.

_{We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today. Thank you!}

Abuse against Haitians in Ohio: examined with reference to Lewiston, Maine / By W.T. Whitney

_{^{Members of the Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio, from left, Lindsay Aime, James Fleurijean, Viles Dorsainvil, and Rose-Thamar Joseph, stand for worship at Central Christian Church, on Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024.Jessie Wardarski/AP/AP}}

_{South Paris, Maine}

Republican presidential and vice-presidential candidates expressed horror on learning from social media that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio were eating dogs and cats, their pets. The reports were false. Bomb threats followed, schools and public buildings closed down. Longtime African-American residents felt threatened.

Springfield’s economy had lost jobs and industries. Some 15,000 Haitians arrived, eager to work. Industry expanded but social service providers were stressed. The Haitians are in Springfield mostly under Temporary Protected Status. That governmental designation enables those migrants forced out of their counties by serious crises to enter the United States legally.

The bizarre twist of political behavior stems in part from the migrants being Haitian. Haitians and their nation have been problematic for the United States.

The fact of migration itself does not account for the exaggerated hostility. Almost nothing of that order happens to the one third of New York state residents and 40.9% of Miamians who are immigrants, or to the foreign-born residents of nine other urban areas in the United States who comprise from 21.1% to 39.1% of the several populations.

Stresses and frustrations associated with Springfield’s economic decline logically enough could have stimulated hostility toward migrants. But economist Franklin J. James rejects the idea “that immigration hurts U.S. natives by reducing job opportunities …[and] that immigrants displace natives from jobs or reduce earnings of the average worker.”

Being Black may indeed invite hostility in a racist society. But the disconnect is sharp between the rarity of unbounded disparagement at high political levels and the large numbers of African-descended people who never experience the like from anybody. Opportunities abound. In 2019 Black people made up from 21.6% to 48.5% of the populations of 20 U.S. cities. That year nine Ohio cities, not including Springfield, claimed between 32.0% and 11.2% Black people. In 2024, 17.4% of Springfield residents are Black.They showed up in 2001 and a year later numbered 2000 or so. In January 2003, an Illinois-based Nazi group staged a tiny anti-Black rally; 4500 Mainers joined in a counter-demonstration.

**_{^{The Many and One rally in Merrill Gym on Jan. 11, 2003, sent a strong, unified message far and wide. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College, Lewiston, Maine.}}**

The scenario in Springfield may itself have been toxic: a large number of Black people from abroad descended together on an economically depressed small city. But Somali migrants arrived in Lewiston, Maine under similar circumstances, and their reception was different.

As of 2019, according to writer Cynthia Anderson, “Lewiston … has one of the highest per capita Muslim populations in the United States, most of it Somali along with rising numbers of refugees and asylum-seekers from other African nations.” Of Lewiston’s38,404 inhabitants, 10.9% presently are “Black or African American.” Blacks are 1.4% of Maine’s population.

Lewiston is Maine’s poorest city. For generations massive factories along the Androscoggin River produced textiles and shoes, but no more. The city’s poverty rate is 18.1%; for Blacks it’s 51.5%. In 2016, 50.0% of Lewiston’s children under five lived in poverty.

Analyst Anna Chase Hogeland concludes that, “The Lewiston community’s reaction to the Somalis demonstrated both their hostility and reservations, as well as the great efforts of many to accommodate and welcome the refugees.” Voters in Lewiston are conservative; they backed Donald Trump in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.

Ever since, the United States has spelled trouble for Haiti. Preeminent abolitionist Frederick Douglas pointed out in 1893 that, “Haiti is black and we [the United States] have not yet forgiven Haiti for being black.” Long after “Haiti had shaken off the fetters of bondage … we continued to refuse to acknowledge the fact and treated her as outside the sisterhood of nations.”

Scholar and activist W.E.B DuBois, biographer of abolitionist John Brown, explains that “There was hell in Hayti (sic) in the red waning of the eighteenth century, in the days when John Brown was born … [At that time] the shudder of Hayti was running through all the Americas, and from his earliest boyhood he saw and felt the price of repression —the fearful cost that the western world was paying for slavery.”

DuBois’s reference was to the U.S. slavocracy and its encouragement of collective fear among many white people that Black workers – bought, owned and sold – might rise up in rebellion. They did look to the example of Haiti and did rebel – see Herbert Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts. In the United States, from the Civil War on, the prospect of resistance and rebellion on the part of Black people has had government circles and segments of U.S. society on high alert.

That attitude, applied to Haiti, shows in:

· U.S. instigation of multi-national military occupations intermittently since 2004.

· Coups in 1991and 2004 involving the CIA and/or U.S.-friendly paramilitaries.

· Backing of the Duvalier family dictatorship between 1957 and 1986.

· The brutal U.S. military occupation of Haiti between 1915 and 1934.

· U.S. control of Haiti’s finances and government departments until 1947.

· No diplomatic recognition of Haiti from its beginning nationhood in 1804 until 1862.

· U.S. economic sanctions against Haiti for decades, until 1863.

Says activist lawyer Bill Quigley: “US based corporations have for years been teaming up with Haitian elite to run sweatshops teeming with tens of thousands of Haitians who earn less than $2 a day.”

Call to action: Biden must end the designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism / By W. T. Whitney Jr.

_{^{An American classic car makes its way down a street in Havana, Cuba, Nov. 11, 2023. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa, File)}}

_{Reposted from Peoples World}

Ignacio Ramonet, academician and former editor of Le Monde diplomatique, has written an open letter to President Joe Biden. It offers nations, organizations, and individuals a golden moment for getting rid of a critical piece of the U.S. system of economic blockade of Cuba. Ramonet argues in the strongest possible terms that the U.S. President must end the U.S. designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism (SSOT) and do it now.

Ramonet, originally from Spain, has long lived and worked in Paris, where he prepared. He teaches at Paris Diderot University and formally at the Sorbonne. In 2006, Ramonet praised Fidel Castro’s legacy in a series of articles in Foreign Policy journal. His book My Life: A Spoken Autobiography, written with Fidel Castro, appeared in the same year. It’s based on more than 100 hours of interviews with Castro.

The Casa de las Americas in Havana has sent out to the world an invitation for any and all to endorse Ramonet’s letter. Casa says:

“Our dear friend Ignacio Ramonet sent us this open letter to the President of the United States. Casa de las Americas supports this noble initiative and invites writers, artists, cultural promoters, academics, activists and social fighters, members of non-governmental organizations, and people sensitive to the daily suffering of the Cuban people to support it with their signatures.”

“Cuba’s income per person is probably 1/3 or 1/4 of what it would be without the bloqueo,” writes economist Jeffrey Sachs. The SSOT designation does its bit toward assuring that grim outcome. It provides for penalties against international financial institutions that handle Cuba’s borrowing and commercial transactions overseas, ones that involve dollars, which is usually the case.

Now is a crucial time. The SSOT designation is the one part of the far-reaching U.S. system of sanctions and commercial blockade that does not require action by the U.S. Congress to end or modify it. The U.S. president has sole responsibility for either authorizing or withdrawing the SSOT designation.

President Donald Trump reinstated the designation on January 12, 2021, within days of leaving office. President Obama had removed it in 2015. Right now, Biden could remove Cuba from that list of supposedly terrorist-sponsoring nations before a new president is installed, and without pain. The inevitable howls of outrage from defenders of U.S. domination of Cuba will bother neither him–who will be gone–nor the new administration–that was not there.

The point is that now is the time for a major campaign to persuade many individuals and organizations to sign on to Ignacio Ramonet’s open letter. The project would be part of a major push to get the job done.

After all, the U.S. State Department did remove Cuba from its list of countries “not cooperating fully” in U.S. anti-terrorism efforts in May 2024.

Here is what you do to sign on:

First, read Ramonet’s letter. It’s accessible at this link.
Second, access the Casa de las Americas invitation to endorse it. Do that by going to the same link.
Third, go to page three of the same communication to indicate who you are and the name of your group.

A job well done.

Honduras – next in line for US-imposed coup / By W.T. Whitney

_{^{Image: Honduras: Background and U.S. Relations | CRS Report}}

_{South Paris, Maine}

After narrowly losing elections in 2013 and 2017, Xiomara Castro and her social democratic Freedom and Refoundation Party (Libre) won the next set of elections such that, as of January 2022, she was Honduras’s new president. The defeated National Party had presided over worsening corruption, electoral fraud, poverty, and violent repression for 12 years – President Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH), for eight of them.

The U.S. government played a part in the military coup that in June 2009 removed President José Manuel Zelaya. He is President Casto’s husband and longtime “coordinator” of the Libre Party. Now the United States is promoting another coup.

Interviewed by media outlet HCH TV on August 28, U.S Ambassador in Honduras Laura Dogu stated that, “We are very concerned about what has happened in Venezuela. It was quite surprising for me to see the Minister of Defense (José Manuel Zelaya) and the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (General Roosevelt Hernández) sitting next to a drug trafficker in Venezuela.”

The seat-mate was Venezuela’s Minister of Defense Vladimir Padrino López. The occasion was the World Cadet Games of the International Council of Military Sports taking place in Caracas from August 16 on. The U.S. government had charged Padrino López with “conspiring with others to distribute cocaine” and on March 26, 2020 announced bounties for his capture and that of 14 other Venezuelan officials facing drug-related charges.

Responding, Castro immediately declared that “Interference and interventionism by the United States … is intolerable.” Denouncing “U.S. violation of international law,” she canceled Honduras’s 114- year-old extradition treaty with the United States. Honduras has extradited 40 or so individuals to the United States over 10 years for prosecution on drug-related causes. JOH, the best-known of them, was recently sentenced to a 45-year prison term.

Slippery slope

On August 29, President Castro told reporters, “I will not allow extradition be used as an instrument for blackmailing the armed forces … Yesterday they attacked the head of the armed forces and the minister of defense in our country… [such an] attack weakens the Armed Forces as an institution and makes the upcoming process of elections [in 2025] very precarious.”

In a television interview , Foreign Minister Eduardo Enrique Reina indicated Dogu’s comments could set off a “barracks coup” aimed at removing General Roosevelt Hernández. Schisms do exist. A year ago, for example, General Staff head José Jorge Fortín Aguilar’s warned four retired military chiefs to desist from their anti-government activities.

Reina claimed that the extradition treaty, long used as a “political tool to influence the country internal affairs,” could be used “to bring Roosevelt Hernández or Secretary of National Defense José Manuel Zelaya Rosales to trial in the United States, in order to disrupt the Libre Party’s electoral plans.”

Primary elections take place in April 2025 and elections for president and Congress on November 30, 2025. The Libre Party is vulnerable.

The attorney general is investigating secretary of Parliament and Libre Party deputy Carlos Zelaya following his recent acknowledgement that two narco-traffickers in 2013 offered him money for the Libre Party’s election campaign that year.

Implicated in other drug-related crimes, Carlos is the brother of former President José Manuel Zelaya and brother-in-law of President Castro. On August 31, Carlos Zelaya and Defense Minister José Manuel Zelaya each resigned. The latter is Carlos’s son; he and the former president share the same name.

President Castro replaced the resigned defense minister with lawyer Rixi Moncada. She is running for president in the 2025 elections. As such, she would “continue reshaping Honduras’s economic and financial apparatus to fit with the people’s revolution,” according to an admirer.

The situation for Castro and the Libre Party deteriorated even more after September 3 with wide publicity given to a video showing Carlos Zelaya conferring in 2013 with the narco-traffickers. Obtained by InSight Crime and allegedly leaked by the U.S. government, the video is accessible here. It shows the drug-traffickers “offering to give over half a million dollars” to the Libre Party. They mention “previous contributions” to former President José Manuel Zelaya.

On September 6, President Castro condemned Carlos Zelaya’s meeting with narco-traffickers where they “discussed bribes” as a “deplorable error.”  That day opposition politicians demanded her resignation. They were leading “more than a thousand Hondurans” in a march through Tegucigalpa.

Fallout and implications

The Libre Party’s loss of political power would jeopardize the already precarious lives of most Hondurans. Government data show a poverty rate of 73.6% in 2021 that fell to 64.1% in 2023. According to UNICEF, “Deprivations are highest in nutrition, followed by deprivations in sanitation, education, water, and overcrowding, respectively.” UNICEF reports that, “The homicide rate was 38.1 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2022, the highest in Central America and the second highest in Latin America.”

Honduran writer, lawyer, political commentator, and Libre Party partisan Milson Salgado outlines programs introduced by the Xiomara Castro government that promote national development and social rescue.

He cites these: public enterprises recovered from privatization; “high social investment … in the construction of hospitals, repair of educational centers, construction and reconstruction of recreation centers;” extension of the electricity network; and new highways.

The Castro government has funded rural development, provided “educational scholarships at all school levels,” “support[ed] the agricultural sector with loans at the lowest interest rates in history,” provided financial relief for small farmers, “recovered “65,000 hectares of forest,” and provided support for the elderly and disabled.

The U.S. – assisted coup in progress in Honduras is remarkable in two ways. First, it illustrates U.S. reliance on drug war as justifying military and other interventions in targeted Latin American countries. Salgado notes that the United States has “no interest in the fight against narco-trafficking other than to use it selectively as a weapon for blackmailing governments, countries, and people.”

As regards Colombia, the U.S. government invoked the pretext of narco-trafficking as cover for its direct role in combating leftist insurgents. In Peru, a burgeoning drug trade recently prompted the United States to send in troops, most likely out of solicitude for natural resources on tap there. Exaggerated concern about narco-trafficking in Venezuela has rationalized various kinds of U.S. intervention directed at regime change.

Secondly, U.S. strategists altered the device called lawfare that Latin American coup-plotters rely on these days to remove governments not to their liking. That happened in Paraguay, Brazil, Peru, and Ecuador through perverse manipulation of legal norms.

The U.S. gets credit for innovation. Treaties of extradition are legal instruments that, under international law, enable one country to ensure that its criminals staying in another country can be returned for prosecution. It’s a regular legal process that the United States has adapted for Honduras to bring about regime change there.

In any event, government supporters are planning a “big national mobilization” in Tegucigalpa on September 15 “in support of Honduras’s leader, in defense of the homeland’s independence and the building of democratic socialism, and in condemnation of interventionist activities.”

US Intervention and Neoliberalism Aggravate Political Upheaval inBangladesh / By W. T. Whitney Jr.

_{^{Anti-government protestors march towards Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s palace as army personnel (C) stand guard in Shahbag area, near Dhaka university in Dhaka on August 5, 2024. Protests in Bangladesh that began as student-led demonstrations against government hiring rules in July culminated on August 5, in the prime minister fleeing and the military announcing it would form an interim government | Photo by Munir Uz Zuman/AFP via Getty Images}}

_{South Paris, Maine}

Weeks of student-led and often violent protests forced the resignation and exile on August 5 of Bangladesh’s prime minister Sheikh Hasina. Demonstrators were reacting to inflation, unemployment, governmental and banking corruption and a quota system that preferentially opens up government jobs to descendants of people participating in the national liberation struggle. Brutal police repression and killings recalled Bangladesh’s long history of recurring coups, protests, and lethal violence.

Sheikh Hasina’s Awami alliance won a large parliamentary majority in elections taking place in January 2024, and she remained as prime minister. She had served as such from 1996 to 2001 and again from 2008 on. Sheikh Hasina faced little opposition in the low-turnout election. The large Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) did not participate.

Her political party harks back to the Awami League, the central protagonist to the liberation struggle that in 1971 turned the former East Pakistan into an independent nation. Sheikh Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was an Awami leader and Bangladesh’s first president. He and most of his family were killed in a coup in 1975.

Here we consider economic factors contributing to people’s distress and dissent and the U.S. role in the country’s difficulties.

Indian economist Prabhat Patnaik suggests that Sheikh Hasina’s government was oblivious to both the country’s changing economic situation and deterioration of living conditions. He points out that until recently, “growth in Bangladesh’s garment exports [had been] so rapid that it was even suggested that within a very short time Bangladesh would be meeting as much as 10 per cent of the world’s garment demand.” In 2022-2023 that industry provided Bangladesh with 84.58% of its export earnings.

Now production and export are reduced. Patnaik points to “the rise in imported fuel prices after the start of the Russo-Ukraine war [that] has contributed to a serious foreign exchange shortage, given rise toprolonged power cuts, and also caused a rise in the price of power that has had a cost-push effect on the economy as a whole.”

Factors contributing to inflation include “depreciation in the exchange rate vis-à-vis the dollar” and “the growing fiscal squeeze that the government is compelled to enforce within a neoliberal setting.” The government is unable “to insulate the people from the effects of inflation.” Additionally, “A rise in the minimum wage, as a means of compensating workers in the face of inflation, is…[impossible] within the neoliberal setting;” “export markets” would suffer.

Patniak’s report appears in People’s Democracy, the website of the Communist Party of India (M). He suggests that, “The transcendence of neoliberalism requires the mobilization of people around an alternative economic strategy that gives a greater role to the State, focuses on the home market, and on national control over mineral and other natural resources.”

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus now heads a make-shift government backed by Bangladesh’s military. The army chief and representatives of three political parties are meeting to form an interim government made up of “advisors.” Preparations for elections are underway.

The Awami League is not participating. Patnaik observes that, “if the Awami League is not allowed to contest the elections that are to be held, then the right-wing parties would emerge as the main beneficiaries of the political upheaval; Bangladesh would be pushed to the right to the delight of imperialism and the domestic corporate oligarchy.”

The U.S. government is paying attention. Assistant Secretary of State Donald Lu visited Bangladesh on May 17. Interviewed, he indicated that discussions covered Bangladesh’s role in U.S. strategy for the Indo-Pacific region. He denied reports that the United States wants to build anairbase in Bangladesh.

The US Department of State on May 20 announced sanctions against retired Army General Aziz Ahmed on grounds of “significant corruption.” Its statement testified to “U.S. commitment to strengthening democratic institutions and rule of law in Bangladesh.”

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina spoke at a meeting May 23 of leaders of political parties making up the Awami League. She reported that a foreign country, unnamed, was seeking her approval for an airbase to be built in Bangladesh and would reward her by protecting her tenure in office. The proposal, she said, came from a “white skin country.” She insisted that, “I do not want to gain power by renting or giving certain parts of my country to anyone.”

Hasina’s hold on power was insecure. At a follow-up meeting on June 4 independent Awami League candidates and heads of political parties associated with the League joined in vigorously disputing the results of the January, 2024 elections.

Hasina had earlier predicted that, “if the (opposition) BNP came to power, it would sell the island to the US.” She was referring to St. Martin’s Island, located in the Bay of Bengal at the southernmost tip of Bangladesh. It sits eight km west of the Myanmar coast.

In 2003, American ambassador to Bangladesh Mary Ann Peters rejected speculation about a U.S. airbase in the country. In Parliament on June 14, 2023. Deputy Rashed Khan Menon, president of the Workers Party –Bangladesh’s largest Communist Party– asserted that, “The US wants Saint Martin’s Island and they want Bangladesh in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad). They are doing everything to destabilize the current government.”

The Bay of Bengal is crucial to marine commerce in the entire region. An Indian observer notes that, “The island is ideally positioned to facilitate surveillance in the Bay of Bengal which has gained strategic significance due to China’s assertive push in the Indian Ocean region.” A Myanmar analyst refers to China as “the most influential foreign actor in Myanmar [and] the biggest investor” there.

The U.S.-promoted “Quad” alliance, aimed at China, includes India, Japan, Australia and the United States. The U.S. government has long pressured Bangladesh to join, while China has urged Bangladesh to maintain its non-aligned status.

In his remarks, Menon condemned the visa policy announced by the U.S. State Department on May 24, 2023 as “part of their ‘regime change’ strategy.” The U.S. government would withhold visas from Bangladeshis (family members too) viewed as “undermining the democratic election process in Bangladesh.”

Menon had more to say: “”During our Liberation War, [the United States] dispatched the Seventh Fleet, aiming to strip us of our hard-won victory. Amidst a severe famine, they rerouted a grain ship from the Indian Ocean, a calculated move to disrupt Bangabandhu’s administration.

Their clandestine influence was also involved in the assassination of Bangabandhu. Now, they are repeating such tactics, doing all within their power to undermine the existing government.” (“Bangabandhu” is the honorific of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Sheikh Hasina’s father.)

Under Sheikh Hasani’s leadership, U.S-Bangladesh relations have cooled, mostly in response to U.S. accusations of human rights abuses and U.S. economic sanctions. Visiting China on July 10 and seeking $20 billion in new loans, Hasani signed 28 bilateral agreements centering on trade and investments. Through its Belt and Road Initiative, China has upgraded the country’s infrastructure.

Bangladesh, it seems, is a small country attached to a worldwide economic system serving big powers but always close to social and economic catastrophe. Its plight is not unique.

Patnaik elaborates upon the theme: “Because of the world capitalist crisis, many third world countries pursuing neoliberal policies are being pushed into economic stagnation, acute unemployment and burgeoning/ external debt, which are going to make their prevailing centrist regimes that maintain a degree of autonomy vis-à-vis imperialism, unpopular; but this creates the condition for right-wing regimes supported by imperialism to topple these centrist regimes and come to power.”

In an authoritarian turn, security forces of the new government on August 22 arrested and detained Workers Party president Rashed Khan Menon, along with other cabinet ministers of the Sheikh Hasina government. They were blamed for deaths resulting from street protests prior to August 5. His defenders see a “political vendetta” on the way.