• Revolutionary Cuba Delivers Marching Orders To The US Left Popular Resistance

It has been jarring coming back to the US where the confusion about who is the aggressor in the Ukraine conflict is so profoundly deep and expansive among so much of the population, but particularly among the alleged left. Jarring after spending a week in Revolutionary Cuba to witness the 2022 May Day Celebration in the country. The first since the pandemic and since the 2021 US- right-wing supported protests that spawned the failed #SOSCuba campaign, more than 6 million Cuban workers participated in May Day celebrations across the country, with the vast majority of them parading jubilantly, defiantly, and triumphantly through Revolutionary Square.

I saw with my own eyes the celebration of worker solidarity and the indefatigable defense of the Cuban Revolution as waves of workers walked with signs and costumes and Cuban flags past the iconic images of Ernesto “Che” Guevara on the Ministry of the Interior building with the words he may be most famous for accompanying his image, “Hasta La Victoria Siempre,” or “Always onwards onto victory,” and another of Camilo Cienfuegos on the adjacent Telecommunications Building with the words “Vas Bien, Fidel,” or “You are doing well, Fidel,” underneath the image. Any picture or video captured of the May Day 2022 parade would reflect an unabated stream of masses of people holding banners, waving flags or scarves, and dancing to a vibrant live band between the billboards on one building at the entrance to the Plaza that read “Cuba vive y trabaja (Cuba lives and works)” and the imposing 109-meter tall José Marti memorial that overlooks the plaza. For a little over two hours, Cuban workers celebrated their country, their revolution, and their socialism, and they were especially jubilant when the announcers acknowledged the union or the company or the banner they carried, and they blew kisses and shouted “gracias” and “Bloqueo no! Cuba sí!” at the members of the foreign delegations that were in the stands as spectators.

The article goes on for a while discussing Cuba, then:

I felt that international left forces were given our marching orders from the political and ideological leaders of the country that continues to defend its revolution against US imperialism and aggression. The remarks from Cuban leaders and the panel discussions in the breakout sessions all conveyed the message to respect the diversity of culture and traditions in uniting in solidarity to defeat imperialism for all humanity. It seemed as though the call from the political leaders of Cuba was not just to focus on ending the blockade against Cuba, but to refocus our efforts on ending imperialism, because it is imperialism that ties all oppressed peoples around the world together, so only defeating imperialism will free us all, regardless of whatever cultural or traditional difference we may have. Not that some of us needed those marching orders, since many of us were even in Cuba because we are not just anti-war, we are ANTI-IMPERIALISTS, and we understand that it is imperialism that is the primary contradiction, the one connective tissue that causes all of our oppression and injustice the world over.

But I came back to a country where imperialism is a word and a concept that is grossly misunderstood, and the role of the US in conflicts the world over, and in Ukraine especially, is twisted into a macabre fairy tale narrative of “the US is good,” and whomever the US says is “bad” is vilified even by some on the so-called Left.

This well-oiled propaganda machine that has turned neo-Nazis in Ukraine into brave fighters and defenders, and that has reduced the former Soviet Red Army’s defeat of Nazi Germany into a crossed-out footnote in history that we are now told doesn’t mean what we think it means has clouded the minds of some on the US Left, but not in Cuba. Wherever I went in the country and was able to talk to regular Cubans or hear Cuban elected officials from small towns to larger cities speak, the violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty by the US-backed coup in 2014, the threat to Russia’s sovereignty by the expansion of NATO to former Warsaw Pact countries on Russia’s border, and the eight-year civil war against ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine that the US and NATO have armed, were all issues that were raised as the causes of the war. Whenever the issue was discussed by anyone in Cuba, words like “US war,” “US imperialist war” and “US proxy war” were used frequently by the Cuban common person and elected officials alike.

If we on the left in the US want to end the blockade against Cuba, end the repression of left movements in the Global South, if we want to end the repression and exploitation of Africa, and bring about justice for nations looted in the global human trafficking crime against humanity, we must also not be defeated by the false imperialist propaganda about Cuba coming from the United States. We must be united and remain strong in our efforts to defeat IMPERIALISM, because that is the primary contradiction for all of us, and its demise is the only hope for humanity.

Extra

• Trump weighs in on Texas school shooting RT

“If the United States has $40 billion to send to Ukraine, we should be able to do whatever it takes to keep our children safe at home,” Trump said on Friday in a speech at the National Rifle Association (NRA) convention in Houston. “We spent trillions in Iraq, trillions in Afghanistan, we got nothing.

“Before we nation-build the rest of the world, we should be building safe schools for our own children in our own nation.”