UK Social Struggles Newswire Archive
Uzbekistani Repression Benefit
26-09-2005 13:08
Cuba under threat from US aggression...
26-09-2005 13:04
For 44 years Cuba has suffered attempted invasions, terrorist attacks and a vicious and illegal economic blockade by the US. Despite this, the country's many achievements, including its renowned health and education services, have survived. Whatever your views on Cuba, its people do not deserve such aggression. I urge all readers to call on the British government to separate itself from such threats by sending a clear message to the US and the Cuban people that it would not support US military action against the country.I (along with others) am dedicated to the idea that every country has a right to self-determination. That when a people, such as the people of Cuba, decides to kick out a dictator, as they did to Batista in January 1959, they have a right to organize their freedom anyway they want.
The 'free-loading' capitalist class of the United States don't see it that way. They think that Cuba is theirs - just as they think that every country in Latin America and everywhere else is theirs to plunder.
Whenever a North American capitalist is in trouble, the United States sends its gunboats and armed soldiers to strong-arm anyone who doesn't like being exploited by some American businessman. That's the American way!
Prior to the 1959 revolution Cuba was used as a 'sporting house' and a 'playground' for North American tourists. Brothels, gambling casinos, big hotels, plantations, and factories were all owned and controlled by American businesses. Cuban men, women and children were there to be controlled and to labour so that the exploiters could send their profits to banks within the United States (USA).
Batista, the dictator of Cuba at that time, acted like a hired gun of the United States. He made sure that any Cuban worker who even thought of organizing a union disappeared, rapidly. His job was to keep the Cuban people in their place, on their knees, for the North American capitalist class... Then something happened.
Fidel Castro, Che Guevara (an American Doctor) and other young Cuban rebels decided to try and take back Cuba for its people. And they did - with the support of the overwhelming majority of the Cuban people, who wanted to get the foreign capitalists out of their country. On New Year's Day, 1959, the July 26th Movement took their country away from the 'Yankee' imperialists.
Then they set about taking back their land and turning it over to the Cuban peasants and workers. They closed the brothels and gambling casinos, took the plantations and factories out of the hands of North American robber barons, and stopped the northward drift of profits.
Then, for all Cubans, they set up free medical care, free public education through college, and free childcare. They began to build housing, roads, and airports and nationalized the banking system. They made Cuba a nation of proud, educated and rightly militant people.
Imperialism (UK & USA) hates that kind of thing as it could catch on in other countries within the Western Hemisphere. If one group of workers threw out their capitalist government, then every other small country could do likewise. Even workers within the imperialist countries could get wise and start thinking about a real democracy within their own countries!
Can you imagine the working class voting for their own hours and wages? Can you imagine workers voting to build hospitals and repair schools instead of bombs and tanks?
And the working class voting against bombing Panama or Iraq, saying they had nothing to gain by murdering men, women and children in another country?
Instead, the workers of imperialist countries vote for puppets who go to Washington D.C. and work for their bosses. They have the choice of voting for Candidate #1, who will do what he or she is told to do, or Candidate #2, who will do what he or she is told to do.
Every once in a while there comes Candidate #3, who promises to work for the "people" and then does what he or she is told to by the ruling class. That's the kind of "democracy" in practice in the United States.
In Cuba, workers bypassed that kind of 'democracy' and set up their own kind of government. In fact, when the United States invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban people voted with their guns and drove out the invaders. That was democracy - an event very similar to our own "Boston Tea Party" on Dec. 16, 1773 - a struggle that eventually eliminated control by the British monarchy.
Once again, the U.S. imperialists are on a rampage against Cuba. They have tried everything to choke the life out of that country. Now they want to tighten their fingers around the throat of the Cuban people.
Please go to your search engine and key in Cuba Solidarity Campaign or Hands Off Cuba.
Thanks so much for reading.
progress?
26-09-2005 01:01
National Demonstration to Stop the War, London, 24 September 2005.
25-09-2005 19:23
Peace and Liberty
25-09-2005 18:27
The Peace and Liberty march organised by The Stop the War Coalition and the Muslim Association of Britain attracted 10,000 people across communities, races, ethnicities, cultures, religions, sexes and ages illustrating how values of justice and democracy can unite across differences.Fit Team vs the Grey Bloc.
25-09-2005 00:41
What happened at the Corporate Pirates Trial? - report-back
24-09-2005 19:36
Update on the results of the Corporate Pirates trial last week plus a report on the motivations and political significance of the action undertaken and the subsequent trialReinventing Dissent: The Story of Resistance against the G8 Summit
24-09-2005 02:26
Bloody Mossad
23-09-2005 13:07
Killing Iraqi intellectuals, bombing mosques and churches to create sectarian violence like Lebanon and many more crimes under the patronage of America and USA to make Iraqi resistance ugly and cruel! Why these two Britons (Mossad agents?)End Terrorism: Ask Questions
23-09-2005 11:13
On Wednesday 27th July I went to Al-Khader, southwest of Bethlehem, where three family homes had just been demolished. I had been taking part in a house-rebuilding project in Anata in East Jerusalem, and that morning we’d received a call telling us about Al-Khader and jumped into taxis as quickly as we could. Unfortunately, the bulldozers had come and gone by the time we got there. I remember, when we arrived, seeing an old woman sitting alone on what remained of her house, crying and hitting her hands together. As we got nearer I saw that a whole family were sitting on the rubble – women and men and lots of young boys, just sitting there in silence. A few of us went over to speak to them and take photos and give sweets to the children – I think we mostly felt pretty awkward and useless. I know I felt utterly at a loss when, in response to my request for a photo, one woman simply spread her hands as if to say “I’m sitting on the ruins of my house, what difference does it make?”
Lobby time for Tarmac?
23-09-2005 08:23
subMedia releases 'George Bush Don't Like Black People' Video
22-09-2005 18:28
http://submediatv.com) has released a music video to accompany the track 'George Bush Don't Like Black People' by the legendary K.O.
Al Qaeda, "yes we did it"
22-09-2005 17:11
As the super storm Rita rolls towards Texas this week, Al Qaeda has claimed responsibilty...Iraqis demonstrate against British troops in Basra
22-09-2005 11:57
BASRA, Iraq (AFP) - Hundreds of Iraqis, including policemen in uniform, protested against the presence of British troops in the southern city of Basra after a police station was stormed to free two British soldiers.Israeli Anarchists Occupy Main Settler-Road in the West Bank
22-09-2005 09:18
21th bulletin of the Basque Observatory of Human Rights
21-09-2005 17:08
The subjects we have included in this issue:- Cutbacks on the right to demonstrate
- Conclusions on the Jarrai-Haika-Segi trial
- Behatokia addressed the UN Human Rights Sub-commission on the issue of antiterrorist measures and human rights
- Greater distances and more accidents caused by the policy of dispersal
- Iñaki de Juana Chaos: arbitrary incarceration
Iraq-Israel oil pipeline 'to reopen'
21-09-2005 15:32
Israel's finance minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, predicted yesterday that the British-era oil pipeline from Iraq's northern oilfields through Jordan to the Israeli port city of Haifa would be reopened.