Month: December 2021

Biden has recently come up with a travel ban which has been labelled by the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres as a “travel apartheid” against people in these already struggling African economies. He says these bans are deeply unfair, punitive, and ineffective, and instead suggest the use of increased testing and proper saftey measures. This ban applies to the countries that detected and reported the virus, but they are being punished for their discovery according to World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Ghebreyesus also claims there is no scientific proof that the virus originated from South Africa. The main concurn with the new Omnicron vairent is that it has very fast and easy trasmission, but even the existing vairents are often bypassing vaccines. US politian Raul Paul condemned the authoritarianism of the bill and stated that it would not work. The bill recived bi-partisan support from both republicans, democrats, and independents. According a poll by Hill-HarrisX poll, Seventy-eight percent of Republicans, 88 percent of Democrats, and 82 percent of independents support Biden’s travel ban to contain the highly contagious omicron variant of coronavirus. The countries which are currently targetted are South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique, and Malawi. Many of these are developing countries in poor shape, many of them rely on trade and travel, and restricting travel will hurt their already struggling economies. The travel ban can also negativly effect the econmies of the western powers by effecting their imports. What is even worse is it restricts the freedom of movement and travel for many people. While we can understand the need for some lockdowns and restrictions, this is too far as it can limit the travel of healthy people, and can limit the access of supplies to these struggling regions which in many cases are not able to do it on their own. In addition, the Omicron virus has not quite as strong symptoms as other varients, and the strain on the economy for these places (with releaivly young people who will not be as effected) and the lack of supplies to stop the virus, would be worse than the people of these countries than just some more people getting the virus. A lot of innocent people are being punished, and it is not like these are the only countries which have it, Europe and even the US itself has the new varient, yet you do not see travel bans to these regions, which leads us to think that the omicron is not really that big of a deal for them. This is not the 1st time the US has done travel bans like this, during the Trump era, the “Muslim Ban” was a ban on people travelling to a large list of countries with Islamic majorites.

Today, 14 December 2021, is national teacher day in Palestine. Teachers are responsible to influence the newer generations are prepare them to build the future. Palestinian teachers are in a struggle, but they continue to spread their message and work against all Danger’s to the Palestinian people, and continue to help protect the Palestinian people depite internal struggles and Zionist occupation. Teachers work against the Zionist threat by working with the Palestinian people and trying to instil the values of solidarity and freedom and how people must fight and sacrafice for it. Teachers are an important building block for the Palestinians and are a vital part for the resistance against the Zionists and restoration back to Palestinian land. Fadi Abu Shkhaydam did operation in Bab al-Silsila on 21 November 2021 showing the importance of teachers to the Palestinian movement. With issues like the Zionist occupation of Al-Quds (Jerusalem), teachers must double down on their efforts. and implement the ideas of liberation and right of return to the Palestinian people.

It is shameful that many teachers in the West are not teaching these ideas. In the United States, many people are ignorant of the conflicts which the US are in, and are not taught about them and instead are just taught propaganda because they know that if the truth were taught to the people in these countries, many of them would be terrified and start to fight back. We must all do our part in education everyone about these topics so they are able to help bring peace and justice around the world. People in imperialist countries are often not well educated and in some cases intentionally ignorant or complicit on many conflicts, and this is what we must change. The imperialist education systems are to blame for either not talking about conflicts and trying to make the oppressors look like they are doing good things. In the US, political topics are mostly only covered in secondary school after the kids have already been indoctrinated in primary school.

The Capitol Police have arrested protestors in Washington D.C. who were representing a movement named #UniteThePoor who were fighting for more rights and benifits for poor.

Here is a Tweet describing the situation.

 

VIDEO: More than 70 activists including an interfaith coalition of clergy with the Poor People’s Campaign @UniteThePoor were arrested on Pennsylvania Avenue near the Capitol this afternoon in a protest for wage, voting, and immigration issues faced by low-income workers. pic.twitter.com/Of8m7cPehh

— Ford Fischer (@FordFischer) December 14, 2021

 

The protesters also wanted help for people without healthcare, people who need child care, and immagrants. The protestors are tired of slow legislation and are trying to push the Build Back Better Act before new year as just the beginning of their goals.

The police stood off against the protest while the protesters were claiming that they were fighting for the children and that this was a peaceful protest and not like the January 6 protest where a bunch of Trump supporters raided the capitol.

The protest was peaceful, they did not intentionally hurt anybody, they were non-violent trying to create a better future for minorities. According to PressTV, a police spokesman claimed that the protestors were  allegedly crowding, obstructing or blocking the streets.

We will have to see what happens to the protestors, but this is a clear example of the police in the US shutting down protests they do not like and a form of censorship in a country which claims to support free speech.

Israel’s growing presence in the Gulf region is a threat to the region. Historically many of the gulf countries were the ones against Israel. But recently, Brahmin and the United Arab Emirates have normalised relations with the Zionist regime. This has multiple potential issues with it. One of them Is that Israel sides with the US on many issues and will increase United States presence in the region. The United States has a bad track record when it comes to respecting human rights in the region and generally does it to take advantage of the countries so it can secure oil shipments from the middle east. Another issue is that Israel is very Iranophobic, Israel is very against Iran, Israel can use their relations with the gulf countries to limit Iran’s access to the gulf region, which is very important for Iran and where a large amount of shipping happens. The previous maximum pressure strategy did not work, so the United States and Israel are working to push Iran into even bigger restrictions not considering the people who live in Iran. Another issue is that of Palestine, part of what was reducing the amount of trouble Israel was able to get away with the pressure from neighbouring countries. Now that Israel has normalised relations with them, they will be able to do more bad things to Palestine. This is a back stab against the Palestinian people in favour of complying with pressures from the United States. The Palestinians are in a dire situation and without pressure, Israel has little reason not to try to take more of their land. Israel is one of the biggest human rights abusers in the world, they kill and wrongly imprison people every day, by normalising relations with Israel, they are allowing that to happen more. While the strain of relations on Iran is part of a political struggle, strain of relations on Israel is about human rights. We also will need to worry about a domino effect. If some countries normalise relations it may create pressure on more countries to also normalise relations and to sandwich Palestine, Iran, and others that go against their wishes.

There are still a large amount of people, likely 8-12% of the US who believe Biden was not legitimately elected and think violence is a good solution to the problem. They want to bring back the leader who was openly racist and talked about doing mass deportations and who put sanctions back in Iran destroying progress on the nuclear deal, worsening the economy of both countries, and increasing world tensions.

Some sources are claiming that Trump’s new rise will be through ”subversion” rather than violence and by bringing back Trump and other right wing people in power meaning that even if Trump were not directly in power in an election, he would have indirect power. Trump has already expressed interest to run again in 2024 and with his popularity in the republican party and the mistakes of Biden, it is not impossible that such a thing can happen. Cover Cleveland famously served 2 separate terms. Trump is a symbol of hate in the United States, and with a polarised enough public, his potential can be very powerful. Trump largely uses blame tactics to gain popularity, in 2016, he largely blamed immigrants, in 2020 he used civil rights groups (like Black Lives Matter and Anti-Fascist Action) and crime as the blame for problems, and now in 2024 he is going to take advantage of Biden’s poor handling of the situations to try to get back into office. Hate is a sad reality in the United States, and hate and a cult of personality like people have with Trump, and having a poor alternative can lead to people like Trump coming back to power and trick people into thinking he was a good leader, when he was indeed among the worst. This is similar to what got Hitler into power. The lack of good politicians in significant positions is frightening as who knows what bad things the leaders of the United States can do next instead of focusing on their own issues.

It is up to the people to educate themselves and to bring about change and end hate and bad leadership. Unless the people are educated, people like Trump and to a lesser extent Biden will continue to stay in power despite not being good leaders. If Biden was a good leader and people knew that they were, then Trump would not still have so much power, as we have seen Trump is a bad leader. We must also partially blame the education system in the United States, at a young age they are taught that the United States is good before they learn critical thinking or political theory or political science and they grow up being ignorant leading to situations like this, and half of them do not even vote, and when they do it is more often for horrible choices. Ignorance is one of the biggest enemies of freedom and equality. This is why we support neither Biden, nor Trump.

It is no secret that there is currently an inflation issue within the US. The prices keep rising on many goods which adds more strains to consumers who are already suffering the consequences of the pandemic. Biden is claiming that we are currently at the peak and that the new Build Back Better act, which is an act which is supposed to increase taxes on the wealthy and increase some forms of social service and climate protection, but according to Vox, the bill is likely not as strong as Biden wanted it to be and even what is in the bill may have a hard time of passing. The inflation has had noticeable effects on food and fuel, which are every day necessities. Biden is hoping to reduce the prices of fuel again, but we will need to see how that turns out. Some analysts are claiming that the low interest rates are what is causing the inflation and that the government are keeping them intentionally low. Inflation had been growing since the pandemic started, but started accelerating later from 4% in October 2020 to over 6%, which is generally higher than the average income increase level, which is often around 3%. Some things, like housing are expected to decrease though. .It is also known that minimum wage has been standing still for decades and is not a much as it had been many decades ago. Even outside of the giant inflation growth within the last few months, wages have not been keeping up to inflation in many cases. Other things such as Biden’s handing of guns and crime was also not well approved.

We think it is largely because of corporate greed that this is happening. It is in corporation’s best interests to try to make more money, many of them already have near monopolies in industries, so they can use this power to try to increase prices, knowing consumers have little other choice. The companies often have little incentive to pay their employees more and in fact want to keep them struggling so then they are more dependent on work. They complain that they need to raise prices and not pay workers much to stay in business, while at the same time their shareholders and executives earn millions in profits. This is an example of hypocrisy in the current system which effects every day people in favour of a rich minority. We should not let this happen, if we let this happen, we let them know that they can win and do this more in the future, but we as the world need to stand together to make sure that this does not happen, and that it will not happen again. It effects everyone, not just people in the United States, as if a country the size of the United States has a financial crisis, it can effect other countries as well by raising the cost on many materials. We cannot let the US corporations take advantage of the people like this, it is up to us to stop it, we have already seen that the government cannot be trusted to help these issues, especially the republicans, who often go out of their way to reject any bills which are meant to reduce inequality. If people refuse to support companies raising prices, then they have to reduce prices again, and the producers of the materials and resources required to make those products will also have to reduce their prices

The chant Down with America is often a softer translation of the Persian saying ( مرگ بر آمریکا) which more directly translates to Death to America, a saying that commonly is used to show discontent for the government of the United States. The term generally does not refer to the every day people of the United States or the Americas, but instead to the government and polices in the US which cause harm.

The term “Down with” in general is pretty popular in some protests and means that something is bad, and that you want it to fall and fail. The same thing can be said about the US Empire, which is already starting to crumble such as with the withdrawal of the US from Afghanistan and many other developments against the West. Had the US Government not involved itself into so many conflicts, they would not be so disliked. It would be great to put an end to all the horrible actions of the United States and instead try to solve their own issues. We have no problem with a prosperous United States so long as that prosperousness is achieved through ways, which does not violate the rights of others, including the people who live in the US, and so long as they also do not use their prosperousness to do the bad things.