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August 2024

Suspending Israel From The United Nations

Israel’s devastating onslaught on Gaza, now approaching the one-year mark, and increasing settler outrages in the West Bank are giving fresh urgency to moves to suspend the Jewish state from the United Nations General Assembly. Palestinian civil society has long been calling for such a step, and the Gaza war, along with the two major pronouncements from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) about Israel this year, have given the initiative new traction. The idea is to use the same mechanism against the Jewish state that was used in 1974 to freeze apartheid South Africa’s participation in the General Assembly. The action contributed to the white minority government’s isolation and its eventual collapse.

An Arms Embargo On Israel Is Not A Radical Idea, It’s The Law

As Israel launches its largest military assault in the West Bank in twenty years, I cannot stop thinking about the people I met in the occupied territory. I think of the mother in Jenin who was on the phone with her two sons seconds before their house was burned in an Israeli raid. I think of the wife of a man who was being held in an Israeli prison without charge or trial asking me, “Is there anything you can do? My husband is dying.” I think of the farmer who gifted me a melon even though he could barely put food on his own table and I was there only for a short period of time, traveling and volunteering with Faz3a, an international protective presence organization.

Palestinians Seek Review Of Case Charging Biden With Enabling Genocide

August 30, San Francisco – Palestinians, Palestinian Americans, and Palestinians human rights groups are urging the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to review their lawsuit charging President Biden and his aides with enabling Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Last month, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit affirmed the decision of a lower court, which dismissed the case on jurisdictional grounds even as it said Israel’s assault “plausibly” constituted genocide. In an en banc petition filed late yesterday, the plaintiffs argue that courts have a constitutional duty to assess the legality of the Biden administration's actions.

Activists Target Logistics Firms Facilitating Israel’s Genocide In Gaza

Israel’s Ministry of Defense acknowledged a landmark on August 26: The Israeli military had received its 500th airlift of supplies from the United States since the attack by Hamas and other Palestinian militants on October 7, 2023. According to the ministry, those flights and more than a hundred sea shipments have delivered over 50,000 tons of military equipment, including armored vehicles, munitions and ammunition, “crucial for sustaining the [Israeli military’s] operational capabilities.” A month earlier, on July 31, activists organized a related “celebration” at the headquarters of cargo airline Atlas Air in White Plains, New York.

Build Global Mass Opposition To The New Cold War

The following is the text of a speech given by Friends of Socialist China co-editor Carlos Martinez at an online meeting of the Scottish Trade Union Peace Network on 22 August 2024. Carlos discusses the nature of China’s foreign policy, dealing with common criticisms such as that China seeks to “undermine democracy” in Taiwan, that it is an aggressive and expansionist power in the South China Sea, and that its nuclear arsenal poses a serious threat to world peace. The speech goes on to analyse the theoretical basis and economic underpinnings of China’s foreign policy, observing that China’s rise “has never been based on dominating the land, labour, resources and markets of the rest of the world. It has never been driven by the expand-or-die logic of capital.”

Thousands Of People In US Send 800 Tons Of Urgently Needed Flour To Cuba

On August 30, US-based activists delivered 800 tons of flour to Cuba via the “Let Cuba Live: Bread for our Neighbors” campaign. This campaign has been months in the making, with the US-based Peoples Forum raising hundreds of thousands in donations, and intends to offset the effects of the deadly regime of US sanctions and the blockade against Cuba. Over 1,300 people donated to the campaign. “The concept of the campaign is simple: Cuba is our neighbor, and we can’t let our neighbors go hungry,” said Manolo De Los Santos, Executive Director of The People’s Forum. “This hunger is imposed directly by the White House, and Biden could end it right away by allowing Cuba to trade freely.”

Edmundo González Disobeys Public Ministry’s Third Summons

The former Venezuelan presidential candidate for the extreme-right Unitary Platform, Edmundo González, disobeyed for the third time the summons of the Public Ministry (MP), where he had been called to testify as a person under investigation for several crimes. Edmundo González was supposed to go to the Attorney General’s Office at 10 a.m. (Caracas time) this Friday. González has been accused of usurpation of functions, forging of public documents, incitement to disobedience of laws, cyber crimes, criminal association, and conspiracy. Currently, the MP is investigating the extreme-right politician for the publication of alleged voting records on the webpage resultadosconvzla.com.

AI Surveillance As A Tool Of State Repression

AI technology poses a significant threat to communities that are struggling for liberation. The technology is used to create large surveillance networks accessible to police, military, and private companies. Frequently this technology is installed without the consent or knowledge of the people it surveils. In the United States, AI technology is used to surveil Black and Brown communities and target people for arrest. Abroad it is used for bombing campaigns and genocide. In August 2023, a GPS tracker was found on a vehicle registered to one of the codefendants known as the Traverse City 3, a trio of queer activists.

Ballot Initiatives Activate Voters, Change The Landscape

As we head into the Fall and the critical final stage of the 2024 election, a large contingent of voters are grappling with feelings of fear, uncertainty, and disillusionment. While the recent shift in the presidential race has helped galvanize a new generation of voters and evoke a sense of hope and excitement, it hasn’t quieted all of the anxieties that have built up over the last several years. We are mobilizing people to vote at a time when more than 80% of adults in the US don’t believe their elected officials care what they think and alarmingly, roughly one-third of Americans say an authoritarian leader or military regime would be a good way of governing.

Pesticides Make Living In Farm Towns As Risky As Smoking

People who don’t farm, but live in U.S. agricultural communities where pesticides are used on farms, face an increased cancer risk as significant as if they were smokers, according to a new study. The study, published July 24 in the journal Frontiers in Cancer Control and Society, analyzed cancer incidence data from nearly every U.S. county and looked at how that data corresponded to federal data on agricultural pesticide use. Researchers reported that they found the higher the pesticide use, the higher the risk for every type of cancer the researchers looked at. “Agricultural pesticide use has a significant impact on all the cancer types evaluated in this study (all cancers, bladder cancer, colon cancer, leukemia, lung cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and pancreatic cancer."

US Leads Way In Public Spending On False Climate Solutions

Among the world’s wealthiest countries, the U.S. leads the way in spending public money on so-called climate “solutions” that have been proven to “consistently fail, overspend, or underperform,” according to an analysis released Thursday by the research and advocacy group Oil Change International. The group’s report, titled Funding Failure, focuses on international spending on carbon capture and fossil-based hydrogen subsidies, which continues despite ample data showing that the technological fixes have “failed to make a dent in carbon emissions” after 50 years of research and development.

Apache Stronghold On Journey Of Prayer To The Supreme Court

On July 11th, 2024, the Apache Stronghold started the journey of prayer to the Supreme Court to stop the shattering of human existence and to protect Mother Earth. We have traveled, held ceremonies and gathered prayers from Tribes, Communities, Churches, and people in support of saving Oak Flat and religious freedom and protections for all. We began in the Northwest, Westcoast, South, mid-west to the East to gather in Washington DC at the Supreme court on September 11. We are appealing a lower court ruling that would have allowed the total destruction of Oak Flat by allowing the land to be transferred to Resolution Copper, a foreign owned company, owned by BHP and Rio Tinto.

She Was Brutally Killed Before She Could Write Her Story

On 8 August 2024, a 31-year-old doctor at the RG Kar Medical College in Kolkata (West Bengal, India) finished her 36-hour shift at the hospital, ate dinner with her colleagues, and went to the college’s seminar hall to rest before her next shift. The next day, shortly after being reported missing, she was found in a seminar room, her lifeless body displaying all the signs of terrible violence. Since Indian law forbids revealing the names of victims of sexual crimes, her name will not appear in this newsletter. This young doctor’s story is by no means an isolated incident: every fifteen minutes, a woman in India reports a rape. In 2022, at least 31,000 rapes were reported, a 12% increase from 2020.

‘Democracies’ Attack Journalism As They Attack Democracy Itself

The nations of the collective west love to brag and to praise themselves as being democracies. They say they abhor authoritarian, autocratic governments and constantly condemn anyone they don’t like as belonging to that club. In reality, the word democracy is used to fool the gullible into accepting actions and policies they ought to reject and also as a weapon meant to disguise evil intent. But the facade is cracking as the dictatorial tendency becomes harder to hide. Here in the United States, Kamala Harris became the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee after wealthy donors orchestrated a coup against the sitting president they put into office four years earlier.

‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 328: West Bank Invasion Called ‘A War’

The Israeli army’s large-scale military assault on the northern West Bank entered its second day on Thursday, August 29. Dubbed “Operation Summer Camps,” the Israeli army has deployed three separate brigades to invade the northern West Bank cities of Jenin, Tulkarem, and Tubas, respectively. The primary targets of the attack are the armed resistance groups that have grown and developed in the north over the past three years, including the Jenin Brigade, the Tulkarem Brigade, and the Tubas Brigade. The Israeli army radio reported on August 28 that the operation in the northern West Bank is the largest of its kind since Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, and is expected to last for several days.

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! 

Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

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