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Only “niggers” have the right to employ the example of George Floyd to fight oppression.   And, “there are no niggers in Cuba!”  So proclaimed someone who identified himself as a “nigger” to a group of us at George Floyd Square on Saturday afternoon, July 31.

Until 1989 that terrible Berlin Wall angered many an East German. The small part of Germany it helped preserve for 28 years was always the butt of anger, sarcasm, vituperation and resistance in one form or another.

“All progress in capitalist agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the worker, but of robbing the soil.” (Karl Marx)

One and a half years since the beginning of the pandemic in Brazil, it is possible to better evaluate some of its effects. The most visible immediate aspect of the pandemic has certainly been the sudden suspension of in-person activities and the temporary closure of schools and universities.

Diverse international groups along with the U.S. State Department have taken notice of Rodrigo Duterte’s record of killings and wanton defiance of universal norms of justice. Duterte’s regime might claim to honor the right to life, liberty, and security of persons guaranteed by the UN Declaration of Human Rights and other Covenants; but its practice consistently defiles those norms. Mass media and internet platforms cannot keep up with the regime’s punitive outrages.

The following essay examines the different reactions to radical and reactionary protest, and situates them in a broader historical context. In doing so, we find that the capitalist state will tolerate reactionary violence to a large extent since it represents no threat to capitalist property relations. In contrast, when faced with radical (and particularly socialist) movements capitalist states engage in much more severe repression.

This guide is designed to help understand the central ideas in Kohei Saito, Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism: Capital, Nature, and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy. New York: Monthly Review, (2017)

On July 22, U.S. President Joe Biden and his Vice President Kamala Harris released a “fact sheet” on U.S. “measures” against Cuba. The release from the White House said that Cuba was a “top priority for the Biden-Harris administration.”

Georgina Orellano, secretary-general of the Association of Women Sex Workers of Argentina (AMMAR), says that “the pandemic has highlighted the inequality” in society and deepened the problems faced by sex workers. Sex work, which is not recognized in Argentina, has become more precarious, she says.

On 25 February 2021, the Chinese government announced that extreme poverty had been abolished in China, a country of 1.4 billion people. This historic victory is a culmination of a seven-decade-long process that began with the Chinese Revolution of 1949.

In 2020, the U.S. government perpetually wavered in acknowledging COVID-19 as a real danger. We lived through screens, bombarded by commercial messages professing how corporations were here for us, how we were in this together, that we should be optimistic. This is strange, indeed, but to be more specific about a pandemic’s root causes would not sell products and would not reassure people to go back to normal.

Esther Bejarano’s death hits hard, leaving a painful gap in Germany’s anti-fascist scene. Most media and many politicians voiced their praise and mourning—after almost totally ignoring her in life and attacking and trying to squelch organizations she was active in, as an avowed Communist.

After legally receiving a Christmas gift of 24,000 euros from her party, Annalena Baerbock somehow neglected to report it in her tax returns. No big deal, some might think, but after the scandals about Christian Democrats nobly enriching themselves when purchasing face-masks, and two far bigger scandals hanging over the head of the Social Democrats’ chancellor candidate Scholz (currently still Finance Minister), the squeaky clean reputation of the Greens had been a major asset. No longer!

Don’t speak ill of the dead, they say, but if I were to choose candidates for a Hall of Evil Fame, I’d have to ignore such advice; the late Donald Rumsfeld would be close to the top of my list.

With deep sadness and respect, Organizing Upgrade is sharing a few more tributes to movement elder Betita Martinez, who died June 29. In her 95 years she lived many lifetimes, and brought her commitment, wit and political clarity to several of the most significant social movements of our day.

This small island of 11 million people has created five vaccine candidates and sent its medical workers through the Henry Reeve International Medical Brigade to heal people around the world.

The Cuba “protest-story” is not a single incident. Similar foreign interference happened in other countries. The Cuba-protest-incident is not going to be last attempt by the Empire.

The campaign to overturn Peru’s presidential election results is one of “unconventional warfare.”

This is not a natural death, but the institutional murder of a gentle soul, committed by an inhuman state.

Neo-colonialism, Nkrumah noted, seeks to fragment Africa, weaken African state institutions, prevent African unity and sovereignty, and thereby insert its power to subordinate the aspirations of the continent for pan-African consolidation.