VASSAL STATES

The disturbances in Cuba were marked by unprecedented violence and vandalism, jeopardizing the lives of hundreds of Cubans, including peaceful demonstrators and revolutionaries who took to the streets in response. However, the mainstream media have tried to deem the protests as peaceful to legitimize the narrative that the Cuban government, which does allow the right to demonstrate peacefully, was repressing those who do not support the revolution.

P. GREANVILLE—The materials featured below is the work of great political didacts, people of great talent as filmmakers, and political analysts. Patricio Guzman, the Chilean documentarian and author of The Battle of Chile (BOC), filmed literally in the teeth of Chile’s bloody counter-revolution, its precious stock smuggled out of the country with the aid of a brave antifascist, none other than Harald Edelstam, the Swedish ambassador (who had already gained distinction in WW2 by rescuing Jews and many antifascists from the Nazis), needs little introduction. The documentary, needless to say, made on the mythical shoestring, and eventually completed with the aid of Cuba, is a masterpiece of astute and accurate storytelling. Indeed, Guzman’s small team seems to be everywhere something critical is happening: in the copper mines where the workers are wrongheadedly siding against the government; inspecting the critical truck owners strike that selfishly and myopically paralyzed the country at a decisive moment (an ominous sign that, as Communist party leader Luis Corvalán feared, the middle and lower-middle-classes had not been fully won to the revolutionary project); or inside the Chilean Congress itself, where one naked betrayal after another seals the fate of Chile according to plans already drawn up in the late 1960s (we now know for a fact) in the US White House and America’s sordid intelligence and military precincts in conjunction with the traitorous Chilean oligarchy.

GILBERT MERCIER—As far as military tensions in the region, there are many countries besides Syria where conflicts between Iran-supported groups and US-supported proxies are simmering, or full blown. The US does its work, not only via Israel in the entire region, but also Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in Yemen, and presently Turkey in Syria. Right now conflicts are active in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Palestine, but something could ignite in Lebanon at any time. 

Iran views itself as the lead supporter of the resistance movement, not only through its support for regional allies like Hezbollah and Bashar al-Assad, but also beyond the Middle-East, for Maduro in Venezuela.

RICK STERLING—There are important facts which western media stories typically leave out or distort. Here are some reasons why the Bab al Hawa border crossing should NOT be renewed.

* The aid is supporting Syria’s version of Al Qaeda, Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS). They control the region on the Syrian side of the crossing. They are the foreigners and hard-core extremists who invaded Idlib from Turkey in 2015 plus those who left Aleppo and other cities when the militants were defeated by the Syrian army. Even if the United Nations inspects all the trucks going into Idlib province in northern Syria, the truck deliveries are ultimately controlled by HTS (formerly called Jabhat al Nusra).

* The aid is effectively supporting the partition of Syria. Idlib province, and the militants which govern there, seek to separate permanently from Syria. They are attempting to Turkify the region through sectarian education, promoting the Turkish language and even using Turkish currency.

* The aid violates the United Nations Charter which says all member countries shall refrain from threatening the territorial integrity of another member state. Turkey and the USA are the major violators, since they have military troops illegally occupying Syrian lands. But it is a shame for the United Nations to be complicit through the authorization of aid to the breakaway Al Qaeda dominated region.

Jimmy Dore sounds the alarm about an illegal act (yet another!) by the US government, this time to silence Iran and other governments regarded as purveyors of “inconvenient truths” by Washington. It’s obvious the United States in its imperialist oligarchic form clearly does not adhere to international standards of civilised behaviour. No wonder most decent, educated people around the globe, and a significant number of Americans, see our government as an outlaw regime with no real semblance to an actual democracy.