The US government allocates millions of dollars to obstruct Cuban medical cooperation

Statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs denounces and strongly condemns the United States government’s recent aggression against Cuba through a USAID program to finance projects and seek information to discredit and sabotage Cuba’s international health care cooperation in dozens of countries, benefitting millions of people. This plan joins the disgraceful pressure exerted on several governments to hamper Cuban cooperation, and previous attempts with the same purpose such as the special “parole” program meant to rob human resources trained in Cuba.

Brexit crisis deepens: The Queen’s active role in the right wing coup

The British people took to the streets of London to vent their anger at Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s decision to prorogue the dysfunctional Westminster Parliament. The Queen’s assent was given on August 28 in a secret meeting held at Balmoral in Scotland with Jacob Rees-Mogg, Baroness Evans, the Leader of the Lords, and Mark Spencer, the Chief Whip. MPs have also reacted with indignation, comparing the move to a coup d’état. Only six Cabinet ministers, together with Johnson, according to the Telegraph, knew of the secret plans to suspend Parliament for a month, beginning in the second week of September. Thousands of people made their way to Parliament Square at short notice, advertising their efforts with the social media hash tag #StopTheCoup. In addition, a petition against Johnson’s plan had already exceeded 1.3 million signatures at the time of publication, as the public outrage rumbled on. A petition earlier this year demanding the British government reverse its course on Brexit received more than 4.5 million signatures in just three days.  It is not simply that it is rule by executive fiat, but that the chaos and illegal maneouvres are demonstrating that these political institutions are not consistent with the needs of the times. Two views.

The war on innocence: Palestinian children in Israeli military court

By RAMZY BAROUD*

The process in which Palestinian children are callously arrested –
infographic prepared by the moqawama website to visualize the scene | Click to enlarge

On July 29, 4-year-old Muhammad Rabi’ Elayyan was reportedly summoned for interrogation by the Israeli police in occupied Jerusalem.

This Day. 400th Anniversary of US slavery

Four hundred years ago, a Portuguese ship named the São João Bautista traveled across the Atlantic Ocean carrying a load of captive Africans from Angola, in southwestern Africa, to the “New World.” Seized by two English pirate ships, the captive Africans ended up in the British colony of Virginia, founded just 12 years earlier, the first permanent English settlement in North America established by the Virginia Company of London in 1671. Only twenty survived the journey. Jamestown, Virginia soon became one of the main areas for the arrival of enslaved Africans. The sale of the 20 Africans to the owners of tobacco fields began the Atlantic slave trade on which the United States was built.

The man who weaponizes and loses everything

Many news outlets documented that Putin’s Russia weaponizes everything, including humour, health information, giant squids, robotic cockroaches, tedium and postmodernism.

Event. 24th Annual Toronto-Cuba Friendship Day

Celebration of Cuban Culture

Saturday, August 24 — 2:30-5:30 pm
Rotunda, City Hall, 100 Queen St. W.
Organized by Canadian-Cuban Friendship Association Toronto; Association Juan Gualberto Gómez of Cubans in Toronto and Latin American and Caribbean Solidarity Network (LACSN).

A fist raised and a knee taken: US gold medalists protest racism, social injustice

“Somebody has to talk about the things that are too uncomfortable to talk about. Somebody has to stand for all of the injustices that are going on in America and a president who’s making it worse,” said hammer thrower Gwen Berry

Olympic fencing medallist Race Imboden took a knee in protest during his team’s foil medal ceremony at the Pan American Games in Lima, Peru on August 9, 2019

American gold medalist fencer Race Imboden took a knee and hammer thrower Gwen Berry raised her fist – as other politically-engaged athletes have done in the past – during the playing of the US national anthem at the Pan American Games in Lima, Peru, to protest social injustice and to call attention to their country’s racism, mistreatment of immigrants, and ongoing gun violence epidemic.

XVIII Pan Am Games: A world away

By TONY SEED

First published on Amateursport.wordpress.com on August 10. 2019

Do you remember the Pan-American Games in 2015 in Toronto? It was a festival of sport and friendship of more than 6,000 young athletes from the Americas with venues throughout Southern Ontario. To raise the army of volunteers needed for various tasks, more than 60,000 people came forward to be selected, and of these only a third were chosen. Canada organized a delegation of its top athletes, who finished second in the medal standing. The Rogers Centre was packed for the closing ceremonies. The hosts built more than ten new facilities and 15 others were remodelled, to inspire the crowds that filled them. The privately-owned Hamilton Tiger Cats even finally walked away with a new stadium paid for by public tax dollars and renamed after some coffee chain owned in Brazil.

Canada restores a portion of its embassy services in Cuba

Despite the return of some services, all active applications were transferred from Havana to Mexico City

This Day. The Haitian Revolution

Artist | Ulrick Jean-Pierre

A date to remember – 22 August 1791. Organized rebellion to slavery in Haiti predates the outbreak of the Haitian Revolution. For example, from 1751 until his capture and execution by immolation in 1758, Francois Makandal, a vodoun priest, led a sustained guerilla campaign. The strength of his organization rested on the unity of various maroon (escaped slaves) communities: a unity forged by Makandal on the ideological and philosophical basis of African religions, traditions, values and motifs. Poignantly, the catalyst for the Haitian Revolution 33-years later was the actions of another vodoun priest Dutty Boukman. The Haitian Revolution was the seminal event in the struggle against slavery.

Food shipment destined for Venezuela seized due to US blockade

(August 7) – Venezuela’s Vice-president Delcy Rodriguez denounced Wednesday that a ship containing 25 thousand tons of soy-made products has been seized in the Panama Canal due to the U.S. blockade while calling on the United Nations to take action against the “serious aggression” that impede Venezuela “right to food”.

Are Israel’s spies stealing your data?

By KATHERINE BARNETT 

Graduates of Unit 8200, a technology-focused division within Israel’s military, are involved in major spying controversies.

What’s behind this Canadian Zionist’s provocative publicity stunt at Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock?

Canadian Lauren Isaacs caused much resentment among Palestinians (and the entire Muslim world) when she unfurled a “Herut Canada” flag at the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem in June. In response, she claimed she was just visiting Jerusalem with her mom. But behind her apparent touristic naivety lies a right wing Canadian organization with an explicit objective. 

By PETER LARSEN*

A Jewish Canadian tourist in Israel feigned surprise at the hostile reaction from Palestinians and Muslims from around the world, after she posted on line a picture of herself holding up a Zionist flag on June 11th in front of the 1400-year-old Dome of the Rock, an important symbol of the Muslim religion in Jerusalem.

Montreal professor exposes extremist ideology behind anti-communist Ottawa monument

Minister Jason Kenney (far right) signs agreement with Chair of Tribute to Liberty Ludwik Klimkowski to fund anti-communist monument with public funds, on “Black Ribbon Day” in Ottawa, August 23, 2013. Tribute to Liberty has been unable to get public support to build the monument that would commemorate those who fought with the Nazis and were defeated by the Soviet Union. (CIC)

(July 25, 2015) – The Montreal daily newspaper Le Devoir recently carried an article by University of Montreal History Professor Yakov Rabkin in which he points out that the Harper government’s ill-conceived plan to build a “monument to victims of communism” next to the Supreme Court building in Ottawa is much more than just cynical political manoeuvring for the coming elections. The article makes a well-reasoned argument that this project, which is being so fervently pushed in spite of opposition from all sides, is part of the Harper Conservatives’ ongoing attempts to manipulate the collective social memory to suit their own extremist ideology.

Disinformation about invasion of Poland

By HARDIAL BAINS

September 1 marks the anniversary of the invasion of Poland by the Hitlerites in 1939. Instead of condemning the Nazis, reactionary forces such as the Harperites use disinformation to rehabilitate the reputation of Nazi war criminals and to cover up who were the victims of fascism in whose name the peoples of the world declared “Never Again!” At this time of year, they use the anniversary of the German-Soviet non-aggression pact signed on August 23, 1939 to claim that this was an act of appeasement, not a tactical move for the Soviet Union to buy time to arm itself for an inevitable confrontation with the Nazis. The disinformation is also used to suggest that it was the Soviets and not the Nazis who invaded Poland in September 1939 and started the war in Europe. This is to hide the fact that it was the European powers that actively appeased the Nazis and permitted the invasion of Poland, while the Soviets fought to defend that country and its people at every turn. Ultimately, this disinformation about the causes of World War II is to justify and commit similar crimes in the present.

Warsaw Uprising: Polish authorities’ political amnesia

By VALÉRY VRUBLEVSKY

People light flares as they observe a minute of silence to mark the 75th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising against the Nazi German occupiers during World War II on August 1, 2019, in the Polish capital Warsaw | Janek Skarzynski/AFP

Poland is suffering political amnesia. The condition gets acute any time one mentions the mass crimes committed against Polish nationals. There is a plethora of examples to prove the case. The Volyn massacre is the most illustrative one. Ukrainian nationalists brutally tortured and killed dozens of thousands of old men, women and children. For all that, the Polish government supports the successors of Stepan Bandera who have seized power in Ukraine.

There is another example – the pogroms in Wola that took place during the Warsaw uprising (Wola – a district of western Warsaw). German fascists killed around 60,000 Poles in two days (August 5-6, 1944) – the largest single massacre in WWII.

75th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising: The treachery of historical falsifications

When a city of almost one million people was nearly obliterated from the face of the earth

By DOUGAL MACDONALD

Monument in Warsaw, inaugurated in 1989, to those who fought in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising.

Much has been written by historians about the Warsaw Uprising in Poland which took place from August 1 to October 2, 1944, during the Second World War [1]. Much of it is false. The main aims of the past and modern falsifiers of the history of the Warsaw Uprising have been to attack the Soviet Union and its great leader, Joseph Stalin, to whitewash the Polish reactionaries and their modern-day descendants, and to try to pretend that the innumerable Nazi war crimes which were committed against the Polish people were a mere historical footnote. But the facts of history are stubborn things and they do not change just because of the scribblings of reactionary historians.

74th anniversary of nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

No More Hiroshimas! No More Nagasakis!

Today marks the 74th anniversary of the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On the morning of August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atom bomb that exploded above the Japanese city of Hiroshima killing about 140,000 people in the initial blast, in total more than 237,000. Three days after the Hiroshima bombing, the United States dropped another atomic bomb on the southern Japanese city of Nagasaki killing 8,500 people and eventually resulting in the deaths of more than 70,000 people due to exposure to radiation and injuries.