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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/25407

On January 29, the White House issued an official statement declaring a national emergency in the United States because, it claims, “the policies, practices, and actions of the Government of Cuba constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States, to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”

According to the statement, the Cuban government “aligns” itself with hostile countries, terrorist groups, and “malign actors adverse to the United States,” which the White House considers to include Russia, China, Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah. Several analysts believe that these justifications do not imply that Cuba is a threat to US national security.

However, beyond the reality behind this or that suspicion, the Trump administration, based on these justifications, has decided to economically suffocate the Cuban government, which, since 1959, the year the Revolution triumphed, has been considered by Washington a fundamental target to be eliminated.

Cuba is currently subject to the longest economic and commercial blockade in contemporary history, imposed unilaterally by the United States. It has been condemned and rejected dozens of times by the almost absolute majority of the world’s countries in the United Nations.

Now Washington seeks to further suffocate Cuba’s small economy, which, in its own way, has managed to withstand punishment from the most powerful country on the planet for more than 60 years. According to the statement, the alleged threat from the small Caribbean country authorizes US authorities to impose new tariffs (the amount is not specified) on products from countries that sell or offer oil to Cuba.

Trump’s goal is clear: to overthrow the government in Havana. Following the White House announcement, Trump told the press: “It looks like it won’t be able to survive. Cuba won’t be able to survive.”

Rejection and condemnation by Cuban authorities

The measure has been strongly rejected by the Cuban authorities. The country’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, said: “Under a false and empty pretext, sold by those who make politics and enrich themselves at the expense of our people’s suffering, President Trump intends to suffocate the Cuban economy by imposing tariffs on countries that sovereignly trade oil with Cuba. Didn’t the Secretary of State and his harlequins say that the blockade did not exist? Where are those who bore us with their false stories that it is simply an ‘embargo on bilateral trade’?”

He added: “This new measure highlights the fascist, criminal, and genocidal nature of a clique that has hijacked the interests of the American people for purely personal gain.”

For his part, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez posted on X that Cuba does not pose a threat to the United States: “To justify [the new measures, the United States] relies on a long list of lies that seek to portray Cuba as a threat that it is not. Every day, there is new evidence that the only threat to peace, security, and stability in the region, and the only malign influence, is that exerted by the US government against the nations and peoples of Our America, which it seeks to subjugate to its dictates, strip of their resources, mutilate their sovereignty, and deprive them of their independence.”

Rodríguez also pointed out: “The US also resorts to blackmail and coercion to try to get other countries to join its universally condemned policy of blockade against Cuba, threatening those that refuse with the imposition of arbitrary and abusive tariffs, in violation of all free trade rules. We denounce before the world this brutal act of aggression against Cuba and its people, who for more than 65 years have been subjected to the longest and cruelest economic blockade ever imposed on an entire nation and who are now promised to be subjected to extreme living conditions.”

A new economic threat to Cuba’s partners

The measure seeks to encourage countries that still offer aid to the blockaded island to reconsider their position regarding the revolutionary government. Even prior to the invasion of Venezuela on January 3, Cuba had lost its main energy partner when Washington imposed a naval blockade on Venezuela. Cuba is now experiencing an energy crisis as a result of the US economic blockade, which has intensified after Washington forced the Venezuelan authorities to cut off the supply of hydrocarbons to Cuba.

Read more: Trump’s ultimatum to Cuba: no fuel until surrender!

Among the countries that collaborate with Cuba on energy matters is Mexico, which many analysts believe is the main target of Washington’s “warning”. Russia and China could also be affected if they decide to continue their collaboration with Cuba.

For now, Claudia Sheinbaum, president of Mexico, has said that aid to Cuba will continue in such a way that it does not “put Mexico at risk”. She said she will request more information from the US State Department on the scope of this measure, but that she will not abandon the “tradition of solidarity and respect” that Mexico has maintained with all Latin American countries. “The application of tariffs could trigger a far-reaching crisis, affecting hospitals and food supplies, a situation that must be avoided in accordance with international law,” said the president.

Indeed, within the framework of this new form of US foreign policy, Cubans will undoubtedly be the most affected. The civilian population could find itself in dire straits without transportation and electricity, which compromise the most fundamental aspects of people’s lives.

This was stated by Jorge Legañoa, president of Prensa Latina: “What is the goal? The goal is genocide of the Cuban people, and if the tariffs are implemented, the effect would be to paralyze electricity generation, transportation, industrial production, agricultural production, the availability of health services, water supply … in short, all spheres of life.” 

The post The US is using “blackmail and coercion” to intensify the blockade, says Cuba appeared first on Peoples Dispatch.

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/25442

This week, Jacobin made a shocking announcement: Chris Brooks, a disgraced UAW official who was forced out of the union over illegal conduct and corruption charges, would begin as a new labor columnist for the publication. “Very happy to have a labor organizer and strategist as a columnist for Jacobin,” wrote Jacobin editor Micah Uetricht on twitter

The hiring was certainly unusual for any publication attempting to maintain journalistic credibility with its readers. Not only was Brooks ousted from office, but court documents filed in federal court revealed that he repeatedly lied to the union members about efforts to purge union democracy activists.

​However, nowhere in Brooks’ inaugural column titled “Four Lessons From the UAW’s Turn Toward Class Struggle” is his ouster from the UAW over his illegal conduct ever mentioned. This, even though it was covered by major publications includingthe Detroit Free Press, Reuters, and even Brook’s hometown paper, The Chattanooga Times Free Press.

​Instead, Jacobin gave a platform to a corrupt union official to repair his legacy without ever having to address the very serious allegations of corruption, dishonesty, and retaliation, or the violation of federal law that forced him out of union office. A review of Brooks’ record of dishonesty and lying to union members shows that he is someone whose reputation would damage the credibility of any publication.

​In his column for Jacobin, Brooks argues for instilling "discipline" and firing any union activists who disagree with Shawn Fain's decisions. Brooks writes that “The US Supreme Court in Finnegan v. Leu explicitly ruled that the right of union leaders to remove staff and appoint others (absent a collective bargaining agreement or individual employment contract that states otherwise) who they believe can best effectuate the will of the membership is a fundamental principle of union democracy.”

​However, Brooks didn’t target appointed union staffers from the old UAW regime. Instead, he targeted President Fain’s running mates, who had been elected to serve alongside him: UAW Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock and UAW Vice President Rich Broyers.

Indeed, as Brooks concedes in his piece, there was very little purging of the old guard of the UAW as Fain was able to make deals with the union careerists. Instead, the illegal and duplicitous efforts of Brooks targeted committed union democracy activists, who insisted that Fain live up to the ideals of union democracy on which he was elected.

Brooks Lied About Engineering Purge of Union Democracy Activists

In 2020, the UAW entered into a federal consent decree when more than a dozen top UAW officers, including two former UAW presidents, Dennis Williams and Gary Jones, were convicted of embezzling from the union and taking bribes from employers.

To settle federal charges, the UAW agreed to a consent decree that included reforms to be overseen by federal Judge David Lawson, a former union-side labor lawyer appointed to the bench by President Bill Clinton in 2000. Lawson appointed Neil Barofsky as the federal monitor overseeing the consent decree and providing status updates to the court. Barofsky is a progressive watchdog who won accolades for taking on Wall Street and the Obama Administration during the bailout.

As part of the consent decree, the UAW agreed to require all major contracts issued by the union go through an open-bid process, in which at least three contractors must bid before a contract is approved. For years, union members had complained that the lack of an open-bid process had led to them being ripped off, as UAW officers awarded contracts to their political cronies, not based on merit.

As Secretary-Treasurer, Margaret Mock repeatedly fought with UAW President Shawn Fain as he attempted to side-step the open-bid reforms and reward his political cronies.

Violating Consent Decree to Give $500,000 No-Bid Contract to DC Media Firm

In December of 2023, she angered UAW Communications Director Jonah Furman by refusing to award a $500,000 no-bid contract to a politically connected DC consulting firm for billboards and media buys to support union organizing at Volkswagen in Chattanooga.

Given that the no-bid contract was for $500,000, a significant expenditure for any union, Mock denied the request until more dialogue within the union could be had about whether the expenditure should be approved.

Union organizers debated whether spending $500,000 was an effective use of organizing resources, especially given that the no-bid contract was awarded to a media firm, Conexión, with little experience in union organizing. The firm was founded by Adrian Saenz, who served as the White House’s Director of Public Engagement under President Biden, and was staffed primarily by DC-based Democratic Party officials.

Furman also grew frustrated with Mock after she refused to approve a no-bid contract for Feldman Strategies, a communications firm founded by DC political operative Andrew Feldman. The federal consent decree was very clear that the union should solicit at least three bids before approving any contract, unless the union found a reason to grant a special exception.

Eventually, after a six-week debate within the union, both no-bid contracts were approved in February.

Fabricating the UAW Compliance Director’s Report

In February of 2024, UAW President Shawn Fain led an effort to remove Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock from her duties overseeing 11 departments within the UAW. To justify Mock’s demotion, then-UAW Compliance Director Maria Schroeder prepared a report accusing Mock of politicizing the expenditure approval process. The report from Schroeder persuaded the UAW International Executive Board to vote to demote Mock.

However, the federal monitor found that the report contained multiple fabrications. Mock was not even informed of the charges against her before being called into the executive board’s meeting.

The compliance director’s report, fabricated by Brooks and Furman, completely blindsided Mock, “who had received no advance notice that these allegations were to be levied against her at the IEB meeting and was not allowed to participate in the investigation into her that resulted in the Report,” wrote UAW federal monitor Neil Barofsky.

Schroeder claimed that her report, which was used to justify Mock’s demotion, was entirely independent with no input from UAW President Shawn Fain or his top staff. However, an investigation by federal monitor Neil Barofsky found that hundreds of text messages between top UAW staffers had been deleted and that UAW Chief of Staff Chris Brooks had lied to the federal monitor, a serious and illegal offense.

In an attempt to hide their work from the union’s membership, the federal monitor accused UAW President Shawn Fain of deleting at least 123 text messages from his phone during the period when union officials were orchestrating the demotion of Margaret Mock.

Even more shocking, all text messages on UAW Compliance Director Marin Schroeder's phone were deleted from the period between November 25, 2023, and March 23, 2024, when the plan to remove Mock was hatched.

According to the monitor’s report, neither Schroeder nor Fain could explain why so many of their text messages had been deleted. At one point, Fain told the federal monitor that someone might have broken into his office and deleted the messages.

However, not all UAW staffers deleted their messages. UAW Chief of Staff Chris Brooks and former UAW Communications Director Jonah Furman continued congratulating one another in writing for secretly orchestrating the illegal demotion of Mock.

According to the monitor’s report released in December, “text messages between Brooks and Communications Director Jonah Furman showing that they (a) had editorial control over the Special Compliance Report, (b) used that control to insert false and inflammatory allegations against Mock that Fain later used to justify the retaliation against her.”

After their plan to demote Mock was successfully executed in February, Brooks texted Furman to brag about it, according to the federal monitor’s report released in December.

“Can I just take a moment and say: my strategy was flawless this week. Like everything went perfectly to plan,” texted Brooks. “It feels really good. Like how [I] imagine it feels to epically dunk on another player in basketball.”

In December, as part of a deal to avoid legal charges just after the federal monitor’s report was released, Brooks was forced to resign from the UAW. Union democracy activists are also leading an effort to bar Brooks from the UAW due to his conduct.

Union Organizing Suffered from Brooks’ Purges

In Brooks’ piece for Jacobin, he offers advice to organizers on how to win. However, interviews with UAW organizers reveal that the purges he instituted hurt the tremendous union organizing momentum that the union had following the “Stand Up Strike” and successful union organizing drive at Volkswagen in Chattanooga.

Brooks has also overseen a series of dramatic and unexpected defeats for the UAW's organizing department.

Two years ago, the UAW announced a massive effort to unionize non-union employers following the publicity generated during the “Stand Up Strike.” So far, though, the UAW has failed to deliver much-anticipated victories after winning at Chattanooga Volkswagen in 2024, with 72% of workers voting in favor of the union.

In May of 2024, after filing for a union election with more than 70% of workers signed up at Mercedes in Alabama, the UAW lost the election by a margin of 44%-56%. In August, the UAW won a narrow vote at BlueOval Kentucky by a margin of 526-515, with 41 ballots still currently being challenged, a margin that many union organizers said was too narrow at a time when other unions are winning at similar manufacturing plants by much larger margins.

The recent lopsided, more than 2-1, defeat of the UAW at a Hard Rock Casino in Rockford, an employer where two other unions won easily earlier in the year, raises troubling questions about what is happening inside the UAW. The union has faced massive turmoil and infighting, leading many veteran organizers to leave, only to be replaced by much younger, inexperienced organizers.

“They value loyalty above all else, and that’s why they are losing,” one UAW organizer told Payday Report.

UAW organizers have reported that union busters have used Brooks's role to lie to union members and undermine their organizing efforts.

Jacobin Gaslights the UAW’s Rank-and-File

Even though Brooks’ illegal and dishonest conduct was widely covered in major publications across the United States, the left press, other than Payday Report,  hasn’t written a single article about what occurred. For years, many in the labor press had praised Brooks, and for those invested in hero-worshipping Chris Brooks, it would be embarrassing to admit they were wrong.

Instead, Jacobin has given the disgraced union official a column to gaslight the UAW’s rank-and-file because, ultimately, it would hurt Jacobin’s reputation to admit that they were wrong.  When reached for comment, Jacobin did not respond.

So far, Brooks’ attempt to gaslight and refuse to address his illegal conduct that led to his ouster from the UAW appears to be working.

“This from [Chris Brooks] is an incredibly lucid and honest analysis of his experience helping transform the UAW,” wrote noted Rutgers labor studies professor Eric Blanc on Twitter. “Lots of urgent lessons here for the rest of organized labor.”

​Indeed, there are many lessons to be learned from Brooks’ tenure at the UAW about how top-down control and purges undermine union democracy movements. But so far, publications like Jacobin have been unwilling to have an honest conversation about the problems that have stifled union organizing within the UAW.

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For anyone who wants a truly progressive Democratic Party, Gavin Newsom is bad news.

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Sauce: Tower Of Fantasy
Characters: Anka, Gray Fox

In de West-Nigeriaanse staat Kwara zijn minstens 75 maar mogelijk zelfs 170 moslims gedood door terreurgroep Boko Haram. De slachtoffers weigerden zich aan te sluiten bij de extremistische groepering, zegt een lokale bestuurder.

Vema’s EMH technology stimulates reactions in ophiolites and iron formations to provide a steady, high-density energy source.

Da Piero Fedeli

Quando CasaPound si schiera per il Sì, non è un endorsement: è un avviso di pericolo.
Tipo il teschio sulle bottiglie di veleno.

“Chi ama l’Italia vota Sì”, dicono loro. Detto dai nostalgici di un regime che l’Italia l’ha portata alla rovina, alle leggi razziali e alla guerra persa: è come se Jack lo Squartatore aprisse un corso di educazione civica.
Parlano di Costituzione antifascista con la stessa credibilità con cui un piromane fa il vigile del fuoco.

Grazie davvero a CasaPound per la chiarezza: se i neofascisti, insieme al solito caravanserraglio di reduci, affaristi e urlatori seriali, tifano compatti per il Sì, allora il No smette di essere un’opzione. Diventa igiene costituzionale.

#casapound #referendumGiustizia

@news @politica

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/33806511

• Urban households in developing countries are burning plastic waste in their homes to dispose of waste and as a cooking fuel to a greater extent than realized, according to a new study.
• Researchers surveyed urban households in 26 Global South countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, revealing that this practice is widespread in some regions — particularly in parts of sub-Saharan Africa.
• Data suggest that urban households are burning plastics as fire starters, as a secondary fuel source and due to no alternatives to waste disposal.
• The burning of plastics is linked to serious health risks as well as environmental pollution. The authors urge further studies, along with targeted solutions to support marginalized communities with better fuel alternatives for cook fires and for plastic disposal.

In the first weeks of January, forty-seven years after a general strike initiated the Iranian revolution, working people across Iran forced their way back into international headlines. Precarious youth with no future, women emboldened by years of feminist struggle, small business owners crushed by inflation, Kurds, mothers of murdered activists, and retirees rose up as soaring prices and falling wages made survival harder by the week. The economic crisis worsened through the fall, especially with the United States reimposing snackpack sanctions in late September. While regime-linked firms and banks were insulated from the crisis, most households faced higher food prices, shrinking incomes, and savings that were being eaten away by inflation.

This anger from below broke into the open and the regime moved quickly to contain it. Security forces answered demonstrations with mass arrests and live fire. According to the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), by the thirty-sixth day of protests 6,842 people had been killed — including 146 children — more than 26,000 arrested, and over 11,000 injured across 207 cities nationwide.

Alongside this repression, officials deployed a narrative weapon. Alarmed by a movement that grew out of economic grievances and began to question the regime itself, Iranian officials rushed to brand the protesters “foreign agents.” In fact, on X, Khamenei insisted that “this sedition was designed abroad and run from abroad,” rejecting any account of the unrest as a response to declining living standards and political repression imposed by the regime itself.

Despite their sharp rivalries and very different positions of power, both the Iranian regime and U.S. imperialism responded to the uprising in ways that ultimately converged. In Tehran, officials answered demands for bread and freedom with bullets, mass arrests, and a media campaign that branded demonstrators as “seditionists” and agents of the CIA and Mossad, smearing truck drivers and students into supposed shock troops of foreign powers. In Washington, Trump looked at the same crowds and did not see workers and youth risking their lives against a dictatorship, but an opening to weaken a rival state.

His administration tightened sanctions that had already slashed wages and emptied shelves, betting that harsher misery might crack the regime. When this pressure-cooker strategy failed to bring the clerics to their knees, the White House shifted to aircraft carriers, missile threats, and talk of ‘all options on the table,’moving the center of gravity from the streets of Ahvaz and Mashhad to the corridors of the Pentagon. In both cases, the concrete experience of people fighting over prices, jobs, and repression was pushed into the background, replaced by a script in which only governments, generals, and negotiating teams appeared as the real actors.

A Social Crisis in the Making

The latest protests are part of a cycle of revolts that began with the “Bread, Work, and Freedom” demonstrations in late 2017, when the working class reemerged as a political force in response to rising food prices, unpaid wages, and the collapse of the reformist promises of the Rouhani government, whose pact with the devil in the nuclear deal only meant “sanctions relief” for the ruling elite by stabilizing the profits of state-linked capital and commercial sectors, without improving the daily living conditions of the majority.

Then, in 2018, Trump’s “maximum pressure” sanctions became the context in which the regime made the working class pay for imperialist pressure through increases in fuel prices, subsidy cuts, and wages crushed by inflation, a course that exploded into the November 2019 national fuel protests. Three years later, the crisis of livelihoods and the crisis of legitimacy converged openly in the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising of 2022.

Between these explosions, the working class has continued to organize—in the strikes of Haft Tappeh workers, the national mobilizations of teachers and retirees, the struggles of Tehran bus drivers, and the repeated strikes of contract workers in the oil and petrochemical sectors—often through informal coordinating bodies and nascent forms of self-organization that revive, in embryonic form, the idea of workers’ councils (shoras).

From these accumulated experiences of revolt and workers’ action, a broader social movement has emerged that confronts the regime. It still lacks coordination, organization, and a unified set of demands, but it is rooted in an intolerable social situation and shows no signs of disappearing.

In the context of a society that has gradually gained confidence in its own capacity for resistance, the crisis in Iran has not abated but has intensified, as the 12-day war with Israel in June 2025 disrupted trade and finance, and the reimposition of UN sanctions in September triggered a new round of economic shock therapy overseen by the so-called reformist wing of the regime, represented by Pezeshkian, which shifted the costs of the crisis to the population through subsidy cuts, rising energy prices, currency collapse, and wages crushed by inflation.

The social divide is reflected in everyday life,as reported by international media on families forced to sleep on rooftops after renting out their homes and households buying cooking oil on credit, while the regime’s elites ensure a comfortable life for their children in the very “Western” countries they claim to despise.

The Art of Bourgeois Containment in Iran

This contrast between misery and privilege has its roots in the counterrevolutionary outcome of the 1979 revolution. From its inception, the Islamic Republic took shape as a project to stabilize capitalist rule by thwarting the development of workers’ power and independent organization that had begun to emerge through the shoras.

These council-like bodies, initiated by oil workers, came to coordinate the general strike that overthrew the deeply unpopular, U.S.-backed dictatorship of the Shah. They were then systematically dismantled as clerical rule consolidated amid a political vacuum.

The consolidation of clerical rule was not just an internal process. Despite the Islamic Republic’s “anti-imperialist” rhetoric, many popular accounts of the revolution obscure how the imperialist powers, after losing their client regime, acted to contain the danger of a workers’ revolution and ultimately accommodated the new clerical state as a bourgeois lesser evil.

Episodes such as the Iran-Contra scandal—in which Washington covertly supplied weapons to Tehran while publicly presenting it as an enemy—revealed how quickly “anti-imperialism” gave way to quiet cooperation once the priority shifted to blocking revolutionary instability in the region.

That counterrevolutionary logic did not end with the consolidation of the clerical regime. It continues to determine how power is exercised today. The Trump and Khamenei regimes occupy opposite positions in the world system: one as the head of an imperialist power and the other as the ruler of a subordinate and sanctioned capitalist state. However, this difference does not prevent them from sharing a common concern today: the fear of a popular uprising that could escape their control in Iran and threaten the social order from which they both benefit.

Perhaps it is this fear that drives the regime to resort to brutal repression to protect itself at all costs, and which also explains Trump’s hesitation to commit to open confrontation in a country marked by vivid memories of U.S. intervention and a long tradition of popular uprisings.

This is also reflected in the nervous diplomacy of the Gulf monarchies, which are quick to warn against “destabilization,” and in Netanyahu’s oscillation between belligerence and moderation, aware that a regional war could trigger unrest not only in Iran but throughout the region.

Beyond the current regional crisis in the Middle East, Trump faces a deep social crisis of his own making at home. The historic mobilizations against ICE that erupted in Minneapolis and spread to other cities following the killing of two activists by federal immigration agents have revealed how fragile the social order within the United States itself has become.

The situation appears to have cornered Trump and has already forced him to fire one of his key political allies, Greg Bovino, general commander of the U.S. Border Patrol. This internal instability helps explain Trump’s caution toward any course of action in Iran that could further destabilize an already explosive social situation in his country.

Although Trump’s internal crisis has reduced his room for maneuver, it has not stopped Washington’s efforts to exploit the current confrontation with Iran to its own advantage, especially at a time when U.S. authority is eroding globally. However, Trump has so far oscillated between rhetorical threats, military demonstrations, and signs of possible negotiation, rather than a coherent campaign. As in the recent escalation against Venezuela, coercion and spectacle are being used to mask the absence of a long-term solution to the contradictions currently facing U.S. imperialism, contradictions that have their origins both in the long-term crisis of capitalist profitability and in the rise of rival powers such as China.

Alongside Trump’s shifting arsenal of maneuvers, a parallel ideological offensive is brewing, as the media and political elites peddle prefabricated answers about what should happen in Iran. For some, the solution is the restoration of the monarchy or some kind of regime under Reza Pahlavi: not the empowerment of the masses, but the replacement of the clerical elite with a royal one, anchored in networks of exiles and foreign patronage.

Monarchical restoration is sold as “freedom.” But every time “freedom” has been imposed from above in the region, it has meant foreign-backed rule and repression. In Iraq, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein led to occupation and civil war. In Libya, NATO’s removal of Muammar Gaddafi brought militias and lasting instability.

Iranian monarchists are asking Iranians to forget their own history. In the 1920s, Reza Shah came to power with British backing to crush strikes and peasant revolts that spread in the wake of the Russian Revolution. In 1953, a coup backed by the CIA and MI6 restored his son Mohammad Reza Shah to power to block a mass movement fighting to nationalize Iranian oil. What followed was not democracy, but twenty-five years of dictatorship enforced by prisons and the CIA-trained SAVAK. Today, the same solution is being recycled. Reza Pahlavi has no popular mandate within Iran; his support comes mainly from sectors of the diaspora and foreign political circles.

Behind the resurgence of the sun and sword flag, therefore, lies a family project: not self-government for those who are now fighting, but a transition from above designed to contain the independent organization of workers, women, and youth. The monarchist project is not the only false solution being promoted. A second version of the same logic appears in proposals put forward by leading human rights NGOs and European officials.

While monarchism offers a king in exile, this current offers a transition managed by diplomats and courts. Both reduce a social uprising to a problem of governance and legality—calling for the terrorist designation of the IRGC, tougher sanctions, and a negotiated settlement through international law—while shifting the struggle from the hands of those on the streets to institutions whose priority is to preserve the existing economic order and their own geopolitical influence.

Others defend the current government in the name of opposition to the United States, treating repression as something that must be accepted. This logic also appears in debates within the pro-Palestine movement, where some currents present Iran as a progressive regional force simply because it appears to “confront” the United States and Israel. Yet, condemning this massacre does not require supporting foreign intervention. It requires supporting those within Iran who are risking their lives to change society themselves.

There is no doubt that imperialist and Israeli intelligence agencies seek to intervene in the crisis in Iran. But the protests cannot be reduced to the Mossad or the CIA. The effect of doing so is political: a social uprising rooted in inflation, unemployment, and state violence is reconfigured as an external conspiracy, and the independent action of workers, women, and youth disappears from view.

The Only Way Forward

If the protests in Iran arise from inflation, repression, and the problems of everyday life, then their outcome cannot be determined without those who are already risking their lives in the streets. This is precisely what the dominant proposals seek to prevent: whether through monarchical restoration, diplomatic transition, or repression justified in the name of “anti-imperialism,” each functionally blocks the transformation of a revolt into an independent class force.

These attempts to manage the crisis in Iran from above are part of a broader context: an era of wars, sanctions, and authoritarian turns in which class struggle—which is becoming a more active feature of the political situation—has begun to reappear on the scene. Even in the imperialist centers, where the ruling classes seek to discipline populations through repression and racism, revolt has begun to seek collective forms. In Minneapolis, outrage over state violence and deportations was organized across neighborhoods and workplaces, turning fear into mass mobilization and provoking a political crisis from below. In Italy, port and transport workers used strikes and blockades to oppose the genocide in Palestine, disrupting “normality” and demonstrating that solidarity can become a material force.

These experiences do not offer a model to be imitated, but they point to a common logic: when repression closes the streets, the struggle seeks other levers: withdrawal from work, collective coordination, mutual protection networks. It is not unreasonable to think that, under much harsher conditions, something similar could emerge in Iran. In the face of scattered protests and brutal repression, the need to unite struggles, defend each other, and continue the revolt could revive, out of necessity, the spirit of the shoras.

In a region marked by genocide in Palestine and violent repression of the Kurds in Syria, this is the only internationalism that makes sense: not alliances between states, but unity among the exploited and oppressed across borders. Against imperial domination and against regimes that repress in the name of “resistance,” the rebirth of self-organization—widespread and extending beyond any particular sector—is the only force capable of confronting dictatorship, war, and exploitation at the same time.

The real question, then, is not which ruler or diplomatic formula will replace the current one, but who will decide. Will the next chapter be written by Trump’s generals, European diplomats, and the IRGC, or by the masses themselves? Iran’s freedom will not be brought about by foreign capital or new strongmen. It can only be won by Iranian workers and youth organized from below.

The post Between Social Revolt and Geopolitical Crisis: Who Will Decide Iran’s Future? appeared first on Left Voice.

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Het vliegverkeer op de internationale luchthaven van Berlijn is tijdelijk stilgelegd vanwege ijzel. Dat is te lezen op de website van de luchthaven. Er kunnen hierdoor geen vliegtuigen meer landen of opstijgen. Het is onduidelijk wanneer het vliegverkeer wordt hervat.

Het vliegverkeer op de internationale luchthaven van Berlijn is tijdelijk stilgelegd vanwege ijzel. Dat is te lezen op de website van de luchthaven. Er kunnen hierdoor geen vliegtuigen meer landen of opstijgen. Het is onduidelijk wanneer het vliegverkeer wordt hervat.

By Diario Red – Feb 2, 2026

The ideological and media consensus in global geopolitics has been imposed through moralistic narratives used to justify invasions, abductions, and wars under the cover of a supposed political authority rooted in religious convictions. To that end, they have built an apparatus of thought and storytelling so that the rest of the planet submits through sheer subjugation, but also through fear, in an increasingly insecure and uncertain world.

This closely resembles what the Panama Papers and the Pandora Papers revealed at the time: a way of managing the global economy by political powers entrenched in tax havens—hideouts of the worst mafia networks—shielded by financial and oligarchic groups in nearly every country in Latin America. What happened after the media scandal regarding the Panama Papers? Nothing. In reality, we were left with a spectacle that was immediately blocked by the global media apparatus. No new regulations or controls were implemented to prevent this type of economic—and arguably moral—crime.

Hence, the revelations of the so-called “Epstein Files” expose the true face of these figures of the global right wing. They are not only men with enormous economic and political power but also “moral leaders” who have sought to impose a way of life through supposedly democratic regimes in order to establish models of coexistence based on the market, fame, and spectacle and above the institutions of the state.

Beginning with the man who now seeks to govern the planet, Donald Trump, all those mentioned in the emails released by the US Department of Justice have either denied or remained silent in the face of photographs and emails containing evidence of their participation in acts of pedophilia, business meetings, and parties in mansions and excessively luxurious yachts.

Explosive New Epstein Files Reveal Trump Raped 13-Year-Old Girl

In the case of Latin America, the link between former Colombian president Andrés Pastrana and Jeffrey Epstein is based on flight records and recently declassified testimonies confirming that there was a personal and logistical relationship between the two. Pastrana has denied this. The former president appears on Epstein’s flight manifests on several occasions in the early 2000s. Pastrana admitted to having traveled to Havana, Cuba, in March 2003 at the invitation of Fidel Castro, using Epstein’s transport for the Nassau–Havana leg of the trip. But there is more: the 2025 and 2026 files include a photograph of Pastrana alongside Ghislaine Maxwell (Epstein’s accomplice), both wearing Colombian Air Force uniforms. Maxwell testified before the courts that they became friends due to their shared passion for piloting helicopters and that she even flew a Black Hawk helicopter in Colombia.

From Mexico, the files implicate powerful former presidents such as Carlos Salinas de Gortari; the country’s wealthiest man, Carlos Slim; and the owners of the television monopoly, Emilio Azcárraga and Ricardo Salinas Pliego. However, there is an even more revealing detail: the files link Trump to the legendary Sinaloa Cartel.

Regarding Trump, the new files contain thousands of references and emails from Epstein. They show that the US president spent hours in his house with victims, along with records placing him as a passenger on Epstein’s private plane on at least eight occasions during the 1990s. The videos are the most conclusive proof of his participation in acts that constitute crimes without a statute of limitations and they reveal his true moral condition. Trump now maintains that everything “is a hoax” and that it the files are a Democrat conspiracy intended to undermine the “successes” of his government.

Steve Bannon, Trump’s former strategist, is also named numerous times in the files. Bannon exchanged hundreds of friendly text messages with Epstein up until shortly before Epstein’s death in 2019. In one of the messages, they discussed a documentary film intended to help clean up the financier’s reputation and coordinated a political influence campaign in Europe. Is this not also the way the Latin American right has operated, with some of its leaders linked with businesses closely tied to drug trafficking?

Another character who represents this right wing is Howard Lutnick, Trump’s current secretary of commerce. The files contain evidence that Lutnick was invited by Epstein to his private island in 2012. Although Lutnick claims to have cut ties years ago, his wife accepted invitations to family lunches aboard Epstein’s yacht.

The list does not end there. José María Aznar, former prime minister of Spain and a leading figure in training Latin American right-wing movements, is mentioned at least three times in the newly declassified files. Will he now step forward to deny it publicly or claim that there is a supposed conspiracy against him by the left?

The question that arises at this moment is: what other military incursion, bombing, abduction, or invasion will they use to distract us from what the files reveal? If these files had been released in December, the Trump regime surely would have bombed Caracas earlier.

Trump ‘Compromised by Israel,’ New Epstein Files Claim

(Diario Red)

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

OT/CB/SL

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