News Roundup - Uhuru trial outcome, the pitfalls behind negotiations, and who is running the United States?
Uhuru 3 - Anti-colonial free speech
Uhuru 3, longtime activists for the liberation of African working class face a split verdict by a jury in Florida
The Uhuru 3 consists of longtime activists who build on-the-ground programs which directly improve the conditions of the African and black working class in the United States, and work towards the liberation of the African working class worldwide. They continue the work of the Black Revolution of the Sixties to fight colonialism and imperialism.
The Uhuru 3 include Chairman Omali Yeshitela of the African People's Socialist Party, Chairwoman Penny Hess of the African People's Solidarity Committee and Chair Jesse Nevel of the Uhuru Solidarity Movement. Chairwoman Penny Hess and Chair Jesse Nevel build solidarity with the African People's Socialist Party among the white community and raise reparations used to fund social programs.
The FBI charged them with bogus & ridiculous claims of them becoming Russian agents after 2015, despite them being political activists in the US for decades – over 60 years in the case of Chairman Omali Yeshitela. He was involved with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) during the Civil Rights Movement, and has tirelessly contributed to the African working class his whole life.
The Uhuru 3 and a former Uhuru member have just been found not guilty by a jury in Florida on the charge of being foreign agents.
But they are currently found guilty by the jury on a conspiracy charge – so-called conspiring with Russia to sow division and discord in the United States. They plan to appeal. Attorney Leonard Goodman for Penny Hess stated in response to the conspiracy charge that it penalises acts of speech. (I hope to write in more detail on that later, as well as the whole case.) Everything that the Biden Department of Justice and FBI called "overt acts" and charged them for were actually acts of speech – speeches, articles, tours, etc. These should nominally be protected by the First Amendment in the United States' constitution.
This case has HUGE, HUGE implications.
The FBI raided the houses and offices of Uhuru in 2022 and charged them under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) in 2023.
I started volunteering for Uhuru in 2023 after I heard about this case, knowing that it was likely going to be a very bad precedent, and also because the work and theories of Uhuru deeply resonated with me. Lo & behold, barely a year later in 2024, the FBI more than doubled the amount of dissidents it has charged under the same Foreign Agents Registration Act.
This includes raiding the houses of Scott Ritter & Dmitriy Simes and charging them under FARA, as well as two RT contributors and Tenet Media. The plan is clear – it is to silence dissidence.
The current split verdict (not guilty on the foreign agents charge but guilty on the conspiracy charge) decreases the maximum sentencing from 10-15 years of jail to 5 years. Chairman Omali Yeshitela said previously about the 10-15 years maximum sentencing that at his age, 82 years old, it was basically a life sentence.
Follow more updates on Hands Off Uhuru website and their newspaper The Burning Spear.
(I am a writer & proofreader for The Burning Spear. I am working as part of their team on one of the daily extended court report summaries, not yet released.)
Spear staff
After a total media blackout on the case in the wake of the FBI unveiling its charges in 2023—besides some independent media coverage like through Glenn Greenwald and Tucker Carlson's shows—now finally other "mainstream media" (a.k.a empire mouthpieces) are covering it because they put the spin of "charged with being guilty of conspiring with Russia".
But Uhuru continues to use its own media and build momentum on the ground. Their supporters packed the court day after day during the trial.
Defence Minister of China remains steadfast on negotiation, for Ukraine and Gaza
But I wonder if you would say that the "conflicts" in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, etc. ended through negotiation
RT
“To resolve hotspot issues such as the crisis in Ukraine and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, promoting peace and negotiation is the only way out. There is no winner in war and conflict, and confrontation leads nowhere,” Dong said, calling on all countries to promote “peaceful development and inclusive governance.”
The more acute the conflict, the more we cannot give up dialogue and consultation. The end of any conflict is reconciliation.
According to Dong, in order to solve regional tensions, neighboring countries should “seek strength through unity,” and on the global scale, nations should “never interfere in other countries’ internal affairs, never violate other countries’ rights and interests.”
“Major countries must take the lead in safeguarding global security, abandon a zero-sum mindset, and refrain from bullying the small and the weak,” he stated.
I agree with these principles... in principle... But what's happening in Ukraine and Gaza are not at all conventional conflicts whereby neighbours just have a few border disputes with each other.
It's an Israeli genocide in Gaza, and a Western war against Russia through installation of the Ukrainian puppet regime.
The defence minister says that all conflicts end in negotiation.
Well, the empire have casted the invasions by US, various allies & NATO across Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and more as "conflicts", but I don't recall these ending in negotiations.
The US withdrew its sorry ass out of Afghanistan after 20 years of occupation and growing opium:
RT
RT
As many users commented, this was kind of a weird headline/agenda from the UN Office of Drugs and Crime by the way – trying to blame a lack of heroin for people getting overdoses?
A report released on Wednesday by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) assessed the impact of a ban on opium cultivation, production, processing and trade which the Taliban reintroduced in April 2022. It came too late to affect the harvest that year, but the crackdown caused output to shrink 95% in 2023, it said.
It reminds me of this passage written by pioneering journalist Wilfred Burchett on the American war against Vietnam, from Chapter 8 of Grasshoppers & Elephants: Why Viet Nam Fell (shared via George Burchett in the People's Information Bureau):
President Johnson's reaction to all this was astonishingly close to that predicted by Nguyen Duy Trinh. At a TV press conference on February 2, the President backed away from all his previous proposals and called for "reciprocity" in exchange for a bombing halt, something which he knew in advance was unacceptable to Hanoi. He spoke of "mutual steps" of de-escalation, but the point was that Hanoi was not bombing the United States—it was the U.S. that was bombing North Viet-nam.
Palestinians from Gaza aren't bombing Israel – it's Israel that's bombing Gaza.
And the Ukrainian regime began bombing the Donbass from 2014 after they refused to accept the installed regime from the US-backed coup.
The U.S. is financing Ukraine's and Israel's wars, and providing weapons & training for Israel and Ukraine.
For peace, self-determination, dignity and prosperity for Palestinians, Ukrainians and Russians, we first need the aggressors to withdraw – i.e. Israel and the US and the collective West.
If that's not happening yet, armed resistance against the colonial empire is allowed in the face of imperial aggression, and I will support it with my work – as does Uhuru and others.
I understand that armed resistance is a path of escalation, and I also feel deep pain for these extraordinary and utterly unnecessary mass losses of life and deep physical and psychological trauma. But what else are you supposed to do when under attack? Kneel and surrender? No way. You fight.
Russia already tried to pursue negotiations with Ukraine in the Minsk I & II Agreements, and with the negotiations in Istanbul 2022 in which Boris Johnson was sent as a messenger to call Zelenskyy to pull out of, in favour of more fighting. With the Minsk Agreements, the former leaders of France and Germany who were previously part of forming the Minsk Agreements have since come out and said they weren't serious about following it, instead using it as time to arm Ukraine.
This is why Russia, while still remaining open to negotiations as always, has said that negotiations are unlikely to be serious and actually enforced and followed through on Ukraine's part, unless they happen with the backers of the regime in Kiev — the West.
As for Palestine, Palestine has been failed so many times by negotiations.
Op-Ed video: How the Oslo Accords perpetuate Israeli occupation - Middle Eastern Eye
The international community's continued support for a two-state solution perpetuates Israeli occupation rather than facilitating peace, argues David Hearst.
Norway, Oslo and the Palestinians: A rotten history - Middle Eastern Eye
Nearly 30 years after the Oslo Accords, Norway remains an active contributor to the oppression of Palestinians, having abetted Jewish colonisation of their country since 1947.
To sum up, negotiations are important but it can't be used to hide the realities of what is actually happening, otherwise they are likely to fail in their aims.
Glenn Greenwald – Does it actually matter who is president and vice president of the United States?
With Biden's glaring, vulnerable inability after the debate with Trump, and Harris working around the clock to get elected as president, who is actually running the United States?
The US has no functional president and has not had one for months, and it's barely noticeable and barely matters because there's a permanent unelected machine that runs the government.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) September 9, 2024
I hate how the innards of the public debacle and theatre that is the American presidential election cycle have permeated media everywhere. So I want to highlight a very important point by journalist Glenn Greenwald.
Greenwald pointed out the fact that neither US president Joe Biden nor US vice president Kamala Harris is at the helm of the US government at the moment, while the US is making major public decisions like allowing Ukraine to strike Russia with long-range missiles.
Biden was thrown off the Democratic Party nomination for president in the 2024 US election after a debate with former US president Donald Trump, due to the former's very apparent significant cognitive decline that was so clearly undeniable. This was despite the media protecting Joe Biden for months and trampling on everyone's accusations, observations and concerns—even as he introduced Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy as Russian president Vladimir Putin in a major event with NATO and EU leaders, and tonnes of other gaffes.
RT
The most recent one is Biden absent-mindedly putting on a Trump 2024 hat – you gotta see the transcript and watch it to believe it.
NEW: Full exchange of the incident leading up to Joe Biden putting on a Trump 2024 hat.
Biden: "Sure, I'll autograph [a hat]."
Man: "You remember your name?"
Biden: "I don't remember my name... I'm slow."
Man: "You're an old fart."
Biden: "Yeah, I'm an old guy... You would know a lot about that."
...
Biden: "I need [the Trump] hat."
Crowd: "Put it on!"
Biden: *Puts the hat on.*
Man: "I'm proud of you now."
Video: kelseysimmers94 on TT.
[Transcript by Colin Rugg on X]
NEW: Full exchange of the incident leading up to Joe Biden putting on a Trump 2024 hat.
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) September 12, 2024
Biden: "Sure, I'll autograph [a hat]."
Man: "You remember your name?"
Biden: "I don't remember my name... I'm slow."
Man: "You're an old fart."
Biden: "Yeah, I'm an old guy... You would… pic.twitter.com/yQcCXmtzIZ
And who could say that Kamala Harris is working around the clock on anything other than getting elected? Despite Congress representative (and suspected CIA asset — more on that another time) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez claiming that Harris was working around the clock on a ceasefire in Gaza at the Democratic National Convention, which was pointedly refuted by her fellow Congress representative Ilhan Omar.
“working tirelessly for a ceasefire is really not a thing and they should be ashamed of themselves”
— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) August 21, 2024
cc @AOC https://t.co/iC8Z0G34ij
"It's just hard to stomach AOC, of all people, lie: about what Kamala Harris has been doing in regard to securing a cease-fire deal." https://t.co/zZcRw8EHDc
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) August 22, 2024
The public approval of the US to allow Ukraine to strike Russia with long-range missiles—as well as the training by the West that would be needed to operate such missiles, as highlighted by Russian Federation President Putin—is huge & consequential.
But with Biden having a great degree of difficulty understanding or grasping what's going on around him, and Harris spending all her time on getting herself elected, they're clearly not the ones making these decisions.
Rather, as always, it's a permanent faction of faceless puppeteers of the empire.
