https://bit.ly/2Tkvci6

http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/home.htm

HAVANA, March 4 (Xinhua) — Cuba on Monday condemned a new measure by the United States to tighten its six-decade trade embargo against the island.

The measure essentially allows Cuban exiles in the United States to launch lawsuits against Cuban companies operating in properties that were nationalized or confiscated after its 1959 revolution.

“I strongly reject the U.S. State Department announcement to allow lawsuits under Title III of the Helms-Burton Act against list of Cuban companies arbitrarily sanctioned by (Donald) Trump administration,” tweeted Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez.

Starting March 19, U.S. courts can process lawsuits against more than 200 Cuban businesses blacklisted by Washington for having ties with the island’s military and intelligence services.

The U.S. State Department on Monday granted a 30-day waiver for suits involving all other companies not blacklisted, which makes those companies and their investment on edge.

The “thirty-day waiver granted for all other cases is (an) unacceptable threat against the world,” added Rodriguez.

If Title III was fully implemented, it would dampen the foreign investment Cuba seeks to develop its economy, and lead to years of litigation in U.S. courts.

“The U.S. State Department’s decision is a hostile and irresponsible act that seeks to tighten the blockade and strangle the Cuban economy. It’s a measure that has opposition in the world and the United States itself, whose business owners are against the embargo and favor trade with Cuba,” said Rodriguez.

He sought to reassure foreign companies and investors that operate in the country, saying “you have the backing of Cuban laws, the international law and laws of your own countries.”

Recent U.S. presidents have suspended this section of the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, but Trump won office in part with the votes of Miami’s Cuban expatriate community, by pledging to stiffen sanctions against the island.

U.S.-Cuba relations have backslid since Trump took office, rolling back the detente initiated by his predecessor Barack Obama and reverting to Cold War rhetoric, but maintaining the restored diplomatic ties.

http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/home.htm

DEFEND ILHAN OMAR

By Jerry Goldberg

As an activist from a Jewish background, I completely defend Ilhan Omar’s remarks pointing to the role of AIPAC, the Zionist lobby in Washington, of paying politicians (both Republicans and Democrats) to attack those who stand up in defense of Palestine and especially who want to criminalize those who advocate the boycott and divestment movement from Zionist Israel.

Attacking Zionism and its US lobby AIPAC (American Israel Political Action Committee) is not in any way anti-semitic. Judaism and Zionism are not the same. Zionism in its modern incarnation since Theodore Herzl, is a racist, pro-colonial ideology, that was embraced by imperialism beginning with the Balfour declaration in 1917, when it coincided with western imperialism’s desire to have a garrison state and outpost in the Middle East to guarantee the robbery of Arab oil and resources. That is why Israel is always on the wrong side of every progressive struggle worldwide, even embracing apartheid South African with its Nazi leaders.

Jews never embraced Zionism and had no interest in migrating into Palestine, until they were essentially forced into Palestine when the United States closed its borders to Jewish refugees from the Holocaust. The imperialists conveniently and cynically saw the opportunity to use Jewish refugees with no where else to go as their shock troops in their war against the Palestinian people to create the illegal state of Israel. And U.S. imperialism funds Israel to this day as its military outpost in the Middle East.

It is unfortunate that main stream Jewish leaders embrace Zionism and have brainwashed too many Jewish youth and others in the US into equating the racist Zionist ideology with the Jewish religion. Many of these so-called leaders turned their backs on defense of the Black liberation movement in the US when its leaders understood the connection of the Palestinian struggle to the struggle for liberation of oppressed people in the US and worldwide.

However, as an activist for 50 years, I am encouraged that the real role of Israel as a racist, imperialist outpost is now understood by more and more activists, including young progressive Jewish activists.

I fully defend Ilhan Omar and all those who stand up for the liberation of all oppressed people. I have every confidence that Israel’s days as an apartheid state are limited, and a free Palestine that embraces all its people will ultimately emerge victorious.

http://www.hondurassolidarity.org/

https://afgj.org/

https://bit.ly/2H1YbAq

Saturday, March 16, 12pm
White House, Washington, D.C.
Click this link to sign on as an endorser, volunteer, or transportation organizer!
On Saturday, March 16, thousands of people will march in Washington, D.C. against the Trump administration’s effort to engineer a coup in Venezuela and a new devastating war there. The aggressive policy against Venezuela repeats the ugly pattern of wars for regime change in the oil-rich countries of Iraq and Libya. National Security Advisor John Bolton is reading from the same script, declaring a “troika of tyranny” in Latin America (like the “axis of evil”) as a precursor for regime change first in Venezuela, and then Cuba and Nicaragua. Trump has always said that the “mistake” of the Middle East wars was that the U.S. didn’t “take the oil.”

It is time to stand up and with a clear voice say NO to the newest example of the “Monroe Doctrine,” which the U.S. government has used for over two centuries to repeatedly invade Latin America and Caribbean, control its politics and extract its resources.

SIGN PETITION: https://bit.ly/2Hhdx3n

Stone Creek Coffee Worker’s Union

To be delivered to Eric Resch, Owner, Stone Creek Coffee, Drew Pond, Co-Owner, Managing Director

Venceremos!

Tiocfaidch ar la!

Venceremos!