Russian troops march in the 2015 Moscow Victory Day Parade / credit: Vitaly V. Kuzmin
Editor’s Note: The following is the writer’s analysis.
The United States has been accusing Russia of preparing to invade Ukraine, while it continues to build a U.S. military presence in the Black Sea. Warmongering and fearmongering rhetoric began to dominate the public discourse, as media, politicians and military experts have been warning of an “imminent” Russian invasion that could have grave consequences for global peace and security. But does the Kremlin really intend to fight a war against the NATO-backed eastern European country?
According to reports, Moscow has deployed thousands of troops and military equipment to western Russia’s regions that border Ukraine. At the same time, U.S. navy ships Mount Whitney and Arleigh Burke recently entered the Black Sea, while the 9th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron’s B-1B Lancers soared over eastern Europe during a NATO fighter integration mission through the region.
The USS Arleigh Burke ship sailed through the Black Sea on November 25 / credit: U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa
Moreover, a Russian Aeroflot airliner flying from Tel Aviv to Moscow was forced to change altitude over the Black Sea because a NATO CL-600 reconnaissance plane crossed its designated flight path. These actions would be the equivalent of Russian naval ships and fighter jets entering the Gulf of Mexico.
As usual, though, the Kremlin’s reaction was weak.
“Just because an air incident over the Black Sea’s international waters has been prevented, this does not mean the U.S. and NATO can further put lives at risk with impunity,” said Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.
Just because an air incident over the Black Sea’s Int waters has been prevented, this does not mean the US and NATO can further put people’s lives at #risk with impunity.
However, such a statement is unlikely to provoke fear in NATO’s headquarters.
Crossing Russia’s Red Line
Russian President Vladimir Putin has pointed out the deployment of certain offensive missile capabilities on Ukrainian soil is Moscow’s “red line.”
Yet, the United States has demonstrated it does not take Russia’s threats and boundaries seriously.
“I don’t accept anybody’s red lines,” U.S. President Joe Biden said on December 4.
U.S. President Joe Biden (left) and Russian President Vladimir Putin (right) convened a virtual summit December 7, 2021, to discuss Ukraine, NATO’s eastward expansion, the Iran nuclear deal and resetting diplomatic relations / credit: Twitter/WhiteHouse and President of Russia
The two leaders then held a “virtual summit” on December 7. Shortly after their discussion, the U.S. Congress removed sanctions against Nord Stream 2, Russian sovereign debt and 35 Russians from the draft defense budget. Such actions demonstrate the two leaders have reached certain deals not only on Ukraine, but on energy issues as well. However, tensions between Moscow and Washington, which seem to be an integral part of a new Cold War era, are expected to remain high for the foreseeable future.
Map of Europe, with Belarus, Russia and Ukraine highlighted / credit: BBC
What’s the Possibility of War?
Ahead of the talks between Putin and Biden, the Russian leader clarified his call for new security guarantees.
Putin said Russia would seek “concrete agreements that would rule out any further eastward expansion of NATO and the deployment of weapons systems posing a threat to Russia.” Even if the United States provides such guarantees—which does not seem very probable given that such a move would be interpreted as a concession to Putin and a sign of weakness—it is not probable Washington would implement the deal.
U.S. officials already have declined to rule out dispatching U.S. forces to eastern Europe, although at this point it is highly uncertain if the U.S. troops could be deployed to Ukraine. Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov has called on the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom to dispatch their military personnel to the former Soviet republic, even though the eastern European nation is not part of NATO.
“Those troops should be stationed in places where Russia can see them,” Reznikov stressed. Meanwhile, Denis Pushilin, leader of the Russia-backed self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic that declared independence from Ukraine in 2014, said he would request Russia’s assistance in case the situation in the region escalates.
Indeed, a potential deployment of NATO troops in Ukraine would prevent a Russian intervention, given Moscow would be unlikely to confront NATO troops. Russia’s policy makers are quite aware any incursion into Ukrainian territory would result in severe anti-Russia sanctions, which could potentially include actions against Russian oligarchs and energy producers, as well as disconnect Russia from the SWIFT international payment system used by banks around the world. On the other hand, given the United States has the upper hand vis-à-vis Moscow, it is entirely possible some sanctions will be imposed, even if Russia does not invade Ukraine. The West also can deploy troops to Ukraine to prevent what they would call a potential Russian invasion, and there is very little the Kremlin can do about it.
Map of the Donbass War, involving two self-proclaimed republics splitting off from Ukraine beginning in 2014. This maps shows 2014 areas of fighting, and which sides had de facto control of particular regions / credit: ZomBear/Marktaff
Hypothetically, Russia could recognize the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and Lugansk People’s Republic, and build military bases on their territories, but such a move is unlikely to have an impact on Ukraine’s goal to restore sovereignty over the coal-rich region. From the legal perspective, the Donbass, as well as Crimea, is part of Ukraine, and no foreign actors would condemn Ukrainian attempts to return the regions under its jurisdiction. Still, unless its gets the green light from Washington, Kiev is unlikely to launch any large-scale military actions against Russia, or Russia-backed forces. Moscow, for its part, is expected to continue preserving the status quo. Supporters of the notion that Russia is keen on invading Ukraine fail to explain what the Kremlin’s motive for such an action would be.
Energy Deals
However, Moscow achieved its goals in 2014 when it incorporated Crimea, which has significant offshore gas and oil reserves into the Russian Federation. That year Russia tacitly supported the creation of the Donbass republics that reportedly have 34.4 billion tons of coal reserves. Since Moscow, through its proxies, already controls the Donbass coal production and export, capturing the other energy-poor regions of Ukraine would represent nothing but an additional cost for Russia.
Nonetheless, Western and Ukrainian media continue to spread rumors of an “imminent” Russian invasion. Ukrainian military officials claim Russia could start its campaign against the former Soviet republic in February—in the middle of winter when troops are up to their knees in snow. Meanwhile, Oleksiy Arestovych, the head of the Office of the Ukrainian President, recently suggested his country could “fire missiles at the Russian Federation, in case the Kremlin starts a full-scale war against Ukraine.”
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, on the other hand, openly said in case of a potential conflict between Russia and Ukraine, Minsk will support its ally, Moscow. At the same time, Belarus announced joint military exercises with Russia along its border with Ukraine. Plus, Lukashenko promised to visit Crimea soon, which would be Belarus’ de facto recognition of the Kremlin’s incorporation of Crimea into the Russian Federation.
His visit, whenever it comes, undoubtedly will have a serious impact on relations between Belarus and Ukraine. Kiev fears Belarus could take part in what they perceive would be a Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the country’s authorities have taken Lukashenko’s threat very seriously. According to reports, citizens of Ukraine already started preparing to defend the Ukrainian capital against an invasion, whether it may come from Russia or Belarus.
One thing is for sure: Unless Kiev starts a massive military campaign in the Donbass, or engages in a serious provocation against Russia, the Kremlin is unlikely to start a war against Ukraine. And even if a war breaks out, Russia’s actions are expected to be very calculated, limited and carefully coordinated with its Western partners, as part of moves toward a “stable and more predictable relationship” between Moscow and Washington.
Nikola Mikovic is a Serbia-based contributor to CGTN, Global Comment, Byline Times, Informed Comment, and World Geostrategic Insights, among other publications. He is a geopolitical analyst for KJ Reports and Enquire.
Top, left to right: Mumia Abu Jamal, Julian Assange and Alex Saab. Bottom, left to right: Leonard Peltier, Rev. Joy Powell and Veronza Bowers / photo illustration: Multipolarista
Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in Multipolarista.
The United States constantly accuses its adversaries of holding political prisoners, while insisting it has none of its own. But for its entire history, the U.S. government has used incarceration of its political opponents as a tool to crush dissent and advance the interests of economic elites.
Well-known cases are those entrapped or framed in U.S. national security state sting operations, or imprisoned with extreme sentences for a minor offense because of their political activism, such as Black revolutionary George Jackson.
Each period of struggle by the working class and oppressed peoples against ruling-class control results in some activists locked up for their revolutionary work. “Political prisoner” has often meant those revolutionaries jailed for fighting their national oppression, as is the case with a great number of Black Panthers.
In contrast, a century ago, most political prisoners in the United States were Marxists, labor organizers, and anti-war activists, such as Joe Hill, Eugene Debs, and Big Bill Haywood.
Today, the U.S. national security state considers its most dangerous enemies those who expose its crimes at home and abroad.
There are also many thousands of incarcerated people who never received a fair trial, or were innocent of the crimes they have been jailed for. A high percentage of them are non-white, peoples subject to second-class citizenship in the United States. A number are executed, such as Troy Davis, or spend their whole lives in prison.
While the United States represents just over 4 percent of the world’s population, it holds approximately 20 percent of its prisoners. Black people are imprisoned at five times the rate of whites.
The following list of political prisoners currently detained by the U.S. government categorizes them into seven groups:
national security state employees and reporters locked up for publicizing blatant government criminality
representatives of foreign governments that Washington seeks to overthrow who were imprisoned for “violating” illegal unilateral U.S. sanctions
Black, Indigenous, and Latinx revolutionaries fighting for the rights of their peoples
Arabs and Muslims targeted after 9/11
prisoners detained in the Guantánamo torture center without charges
women locked up for defending themselves against violent attacks
environmental activists
1. Journalists and National Security State Employees Exposing Illegal U.S. Surveillance Operations and War Crimes
A number of whistleblowers in the United States have previously been imprisoned or are wanted. These have included:
Julian Assange is a renowned journalist and editor of WikiLeaks who was arrested in 2019 in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he had political asylum since 2012. In April 2022, a British judge ordered Assange extradited to the United States to face up to 175 years in prison for publishing truthful information about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The United States has indicted Assange under the Espionage Act, even though he published the same information as did the New York Times and Washington Post.
Researcher Mark Weisbrot explained in 2017, “Julian Assange is a political prisoner. … His crime, and that of WikiLeaks, has been the practice of journalism, and particularly in defense of human rights and civil liberties. … Assange and WikiLeaks’ real offense was to expose the crimes of the most powerful people in the world.”
Daniel Hale has been imprisoned since 2019. He was sentenced to 45 months for releasing documents showing U.S. military drone strikes in Afghanistan largely killed innocent people. Hale participated in the drone program while in the Air Force and NSA from 2009 to 2013, and later became an outspoken critic and a defender of whistle blowers.
Hale is believed to have been the source material for The Drone Papers. The documentary National Bird documents whistleblowers in the U.S. drone assassination program. For his truth-telling, Hale received the Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence and the Blueprint for Free Speech International Whistleblowing Prize. Chris Hedges has written about his case.
Joshua Schulte, a former hacker employed by the CIA, was blamed for releasing two billion pages of secret CIA data, known as Vault 7, to WikiLeaks. Vault 7 programs were CIA techniques used to compromise Wifi networks, hack into Skype, defeat anti-virus software, hack Apple and Android smartphones in overseas spying operations, turn internet-connected televisions into listening devices, and commandeer the guidance systems in cars.
Schulte has been imprisoned since 2018 and faces up to 80 years, in brutal conditions similar to those endured by Assange today.
Ana Belén Montes was a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) analyst who alerted Cuba of U.S. plans of aggression. She was arrested in 2001, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit espionage, and was held in solitary confinement in Fort Worth, Texas for most of her 21 years behind bars.
Montes told the judge, “I consider that the policy of our government towards Cuba is cruel and unjust, deeply unfriendly; I considered myself morally obligated to help the Island defend itself from our efforts to impose our values and our political system on it. We have displayed intolerance and contempt for Cuba for four decades. We have never respected Cuba’s right to define its own destiny, its own ideals of equality and justice. I do not understand how we continue to try to dictate. … how Cuba should select its leaders, who its leaders should not be and what laws are the most appropriate for that nation. Why don’t we let them decide how they want to conduct their internal affairs.”
2. Foreigners Imprisoned for ‘Violating’ Illegal U.S. Sanctions on Their Countries
Mun Chol Myong is a North Korean was extradited and imprisoned in the United States on March 20, 2021. Mun was arrested in Malaysia in May 2019 after a Washington, DC judge issued a warrant for his arrest. His supposed “crime” of conspiracy and money laundering in fact consisted of supplying needed goods to the DPRK by circumventing U.S. sanctions on the country.
A top Justice Department official claimed foreigners who have never been in the United States can be extradited to it for violating domestic laws. The United States has enforced a blockade against North Korea since 1950, the start of the U.S. war on Korea, designed to cripple its economic and social development.
Alex Saab, a Venezuelan diplomat, was jailed on June 12, 2020 in Cabo Verde on orders of the United States. He was then seized by U.S. agents and brought to a Miami prison on October 16, 2021.
As a diplomat, Saab has immunity from detention based on the UN Vienna Convention of 1961. The UN Human Rights Commission and other international human rights defenders have denounced his extradition. The National Lawyers Guild calls for Saab’s immediate release.
Simón Trinidad (Ricardo Palmera) was a long-time leader in mass movements for social change in Colombia, and is a top negotiator for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). In 2003, he was sent to Ecuador to make contact with UN official James Lemoyne, as part of efforts to revive peace talks with the Colombian government, and begin communication on the exchange of prisoners of war.
He was captured in Ecuador in 2004 and then extradited to the U.S. on charges of narco-trafficking and kidnapping, and subjected to four separate trials, due to repeated mistrials. Ultimately, he was sentenced to 60 years at the Florence “Supermax” prison in Colorado.
Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer and deputy chair of the board of Chinese tech giant Huawei, was imprisoned in Canada in 2018 on a U.S. extradition request, after Washington accused her company of misleading British bank HSBC over its business dealings in Iran, thereby violating its illegal unilateral sanctions. Meng was released in September 2021.
3. Fighters for Their People’s National Oppression Against Second-Class Citizenship
Many Black political prisoners in the United States were targets of the police state’s Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) in the 1960s and ’70s, when the FBI sought to destroy the movement for Black freedom.
As journalist Glen Ford explained, “If you attempt to lead Black people on an independent political path, the U.S. state will seek to neutralize you, imprison you, or kill you. If you exercise your right to defend yourself, and your people, from the oppressive arm of the state, they make you into an outlaw, and hunt you down.”
The FBI said it goals in COINTELPRO were to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize,” adding that “no opportunity must be missed to exploit through counterintelligence techniques … for maximum effectiveness … and a final goal should be to prevent the long range growth of militant black organizations, especially among youth.”
This police state operation against Black liberation resulted in at least 38 Black Panther Party members being killed, including Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, with hundreds more imprisoned on frame-up charges for their armed self-defense actions, several for more than 45 years.
Mumia Abu-Jamal is the most prominent former Black Panther political prisoner. In 1981, COINTELPRO style, he was sentenced to death for the murder of a Philadelphia cop. Judge Albert Sabo, who ruled in his case and in his appeals, was heard by a court reporter to state “I’m going to help them fry the ni**er.” Black jurors were excluded. Witnesses were bribed and threatened to lie on the stand. Documents were hidden in the state prosecutor’s office.
Leonard Peltier was an activist in the American Indian Movement (AIM) whose goal was to organize Indigenous communities to stand up for their rights. Sentenced to life as a result of a COINTELPRO operation, he has been imprisoned for 46 years for killing two FBI agents. Peltier participated in the AIM encampments on the Pine Ridge Reservation, where a 1975 shootout instigated by the FBI occurred.
Some 64 Native Americans, most with ties to AIM, were murdered. Their deaths went uninvestigated by the FBI. Evidence exonerating Peltier in the FBI case was withheld by the FBI. In his appeals, the government admitted it had no evidence he killed the two FBI agents, suppressed evidence proving this, and fabricated other “evidence.”
The other AIM members tried for the killings were exonerated in trial by reason of self-defense. One prosecutor admitted, “Your honor, we do not know who killed those agents. Further, we don’t know what participation, if any, Mr. Peltier had in it.”
Amnesty International, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, the American Association of Jurists, and 54 Congresspeople, among many others, have called for his freedom. The film “Incident at Ogala,” produced by Robert Redford, and the best-selling book “In the Spirit of Crazy Horse: The Story of Leonard Peltier and the FBI’s War on the American Indian Movement” made the case widely known. More information can be found at the websites whoisleonardpeltier.info and Peltier’s Prison Writings.
Mutulu Shakur, of the Republic of New Afrika movement, participated in presentations to the UN on discrimination experienced by Black communities, and by 1970 a target of the FBI’s COINTELPRO infiltration. He helped free Assata Shakur from prison in 1979, and she now has a bounty on her head.
In 1988 he was convicted of conspiracy related to a 1981 robbery where a guard and two police officers were killed, and sentenced to 60 years. At no time did the evidence show that Mutulu Shakur killed anyone.
He was also convicted for aiding in the prison escape of Assata Shakur, who has asylum in Cuba.
At two trials the evidence indicated others were responsible for the deaths (one became a government witness in return for a sentencing deal). The remaining defendants were acquitted for the murder allegations. More information can be found at mutulushakur.com and the Jericho Movement.
Jamil Abdullah al-Amin (H. Rap Brown) was chairman of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and a Black Panther leader. FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover himself named H. Rap Brown – along with Stokely Carmichael, Elijah Muhammad, and Maxwell Stanford – as targets of COINTELPRO.
In a October 1971 standoff with police, he was shot and seized, and spent five years in Attica prison. From 1992 to 1997, the FBI closely surveilled Al-Amin, generating pages of 44,000 documents. In 2000, two sheriffs came to Al-Amin’s store with a warrant for failure to appear in court for a case later thrown out. Both were shot and one killed. Al-Amin was sentenced to life without parole, even though Otis Jackson confessed to the shootings. More information is available at whathappened2rap.com.
Veronza Bowers was an organizer in the Black Panther Party in the late 1960s. He has been imprisoned for 49 years for the murder of a U.S. park ranger, on the word of two government informers. There were no eye witnesses and no other independent evidence. See more at veronza.org and prisonersolidarity.com.
Ed Poindexter and Mondo we Langa (who died in prison in 2016) were leaders of the Black Panthers in Omaha, Nebraska in the 1960s, and targets of COINTELPRO. Both men were given life sentences on charges of killing a policeman. They were convicted on the testimony of a teenager who was beaten by the police and threatened with the electric chair if he did not incriminate Poindexter and Mondo.
Amnesty International has identified them as “prisoners of conscience.” Poindexter has been imprisoned for 52 years. The book “FRAMED: J. Edgar Hoover, Cointelpro and the Omaha Two story” and the documentary “Ed Poindexter & Mondo We Langa” offer more information.
Kamau Sadiki (Freddie Hilton), was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army, and close to Assata Shakur. He has been imprisoned since 2002, for a 1971 murder of a police officer. Back in 1971, two witnesses failed to identify Kamau from a line-up, and there was no physical evidence that implicated Sadiki, so the case was closed.
In 2002 Kamau was re-arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment for the killing – only after he refused to work with the government to induce Assata Shakur to leave Cuba for another country, where they could seize her. See more at freekamau.com.
Joy Powell organized protests against police brutality and corruption, demanding accountability for its victims, which led her to be targeted by the Rochester Police Department. In 2006, Powell was convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to 16 years for burglary and assault. No evidence or eyewitnesses linked her to the crime.
Alvaro Luna Hernandez (Xinachtli) is a Texas activist for Chicano rights and against police brutality. He was continually targeted by the police, who in 1996 attempted to arrest him on a spurious robbery charge that was later dismissed. The police used violence to arrest him, and Hernandez was sentenced to 50 years in prison on trumped up charges of threatening a sheriff while resisting arrest. More information can be found at freealvaro.net and prisonersolidarity.com.
more than half of all alleged terrorism cases involved the use of paid informants who were usually responsible for concocting the plots in collusion with the FBI. Sensationalistic media coverage of the most high-profile cases almost never made mention of the fact that these terrorist conspiracies were the work of FBI informants.
…
the FBI has built a network of more than 15,000 registered informants whose primary purpose is to infiltrate Muslim communities to create and facilitate phony terrorist plots so that the bureau can then claim it is winning the War on Terror … the FBI engaged in a witch hunt, convicting hundreds of Muslims on pretext terrorism charges, even though the government knew that the defendants were not in communication with international terrorists, had not injured a single person or piece of property, and had no means to carry out a terrorist attack even if they wanted to.
For the government to tell the truth about the convictions would have undercut their own prosecutions, and exposed hundreds of Muslim convictions for the sham they were. No matter how innocent the government knew the defendants to be, it apparently decided that they had to publicly treat the defendants as the worst of the worst, or lose the fear factor which they had used so effectively to enact harsher laws.
Holy Land 5: Shukri Abu-Baker and Ghassan Elashi of the Holy Land Foundation were each sentenced in 2008 to 65 years in prison. Three others were sentenced to 13-20 years: Mufid Abdulqader, Mohammad El-Mezain (released and deported to Turkey in 2022) and Abdulrahman Odeh (released in 2020). All were imprisoned for giving more than $12 million to charitable groups in Palestine which funded hospitals and schools and fed the poor and orphans.
The U.S. government said these groups were controlled by Hamas, which it lists as a terrorist organization, even though it is the elected government of Gaza. Some of these charitable groups still received U.S. funds through USAID as late as 2006.
Testimony was given in the case by an Israeli government agent whose identity and evidence was kept secret from the defense. This marked the first time in U.S. legal history that testimony has been allowed from an expert witness with no identity, therefore making them immune from perjury. The book “Injustice: The Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five” details the case.
Aafia Siddiqui is a U.S.-educated Pakistani neuroscientist who came to the United States in 1990, then returned to Pakistan with her family in 2002. In 2003, she was kidnapped by U.S. and Pakistani agents and held in Bagram Air Base through 2008. She was convicted of attempted murder of her U.S. interrogators in Afghanistan in 2008—though she was the person shot—and sentenced to 86 years in prison in Fort Worth, Texas. The weapon she allegedly fired in the interrogation room did not have her fingerprints, nor was there evidence the gun was fired.
Four British parliamentarians wrote to President Barack Obama that “there was an utter lack of concrete evidence tying Dr Siddiqui to the weapon she allegedly fired at a U.S. officer,” and that she should be freed immediately. Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark described Aafia’s plight as the “worst case of individual injustice I have ever witnessed.” More information is available at aafia.org and aafiamovement.com.
5. Arab/Muslim Prisoners Tortured and Locked Up Without Trial at Guantanamo
Since 2002, a total of 779 Muslim men and boys as young as 10 have been seized and held at Guantánamo, a military base in Cuban territory that is illegally occupied by the United States.
Washington claimed the prisoners are outside U.S. and international law, and thus do not have the rights of POWs. Nearly all of the prisoners were held without charge or trial. Many were tortured to produce a compliant “learned helplessness” – the goal of former U.S. slave-breaking.
Some detainees were even tortured to death. In 2003, 23 prisoners attempted suicide in a mass protest against their abuse.
The torture was directed by two psychologists, James E Mitchell and Bruce Jessen.
By any definition of political prisoner, most political prisoners in Cuba are at the U.S. military-torture center at Guantanamo.
Today there are still 36 prisoners, only 11 of whom have been charged with war crimes, while just two have been convicted – and by “military commissions,” which Amnesty International declared do not meet fair trial standards.
Another 20 have been approved for release but remain locked up. Five detainees are “forever prisoners,” held without charge or trial, but not to be released. The websites closeguantanamo.org and witnessagainsttorture.com and films The Report and The Mauritanian provide more information.
6. Women Fighting Patriarchal Sexist Violence
Nearly three in 10 women in the United States have endured male physical violence or stalking by a partner. Nearly one in five women are raped in their lifetime. Almost four women are killed a day by a male partner.
Half of all women murdered are killed by men they know intimately, yet hundreds of women are in prison for killing their abuser in self-defense.
The U.S. legal system treats these as individual cases, not for what it is: the systematic patriarchal violence against women as an oppressed group.
Marissa Alexander, a Black women from Florida, was sentenced to 20 years in 2013 for firing a warning shot inside her home to ward off her brutal husband, against whom she had an order of protection. Her affirmation that Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law applied to her because she was defending herself was rejected. The same year, George Zimmerman was found not guilty of murdering Trayvon Martin based on that same law. National protests finally freed her in 2017.
Fran Thompson was an environmental activist in Nebraska. She has been in jail for 30 years for murder, sentenced to life without parole. She had defended herself, killing a man who was threatening to sexually assault her after he broke into her home. She was also targeted because of her environmental work, and was not allowed to plea self-defense.
Thompson had taken on the prosecutor and local government during her activism, having organized against two big projects, an egg factory and a nuclear waste facility, which would have brought the county big profits.
Maddesyn George has been imprisoned since July 2020. She was given a 6.5-year sentence for defending herself from sexual assault by a white man. She is a member of the Colville Confederated Tribes.
A number of environmental activists, animal rights supporters, and water protectors have challenged corporate abuses and have been jailed.
During the original so-called Green Scare, in the 1990s to early 2000s, the U.S. government sought to squash animal rights and environmental activism, acting in the interest of corporations that profit from damaging the earth.
A more recent series of jailings have specifically targeted people protesting against pipeline construction.
The following are political prisoners:
Joseph Mahmoud Dibee, a member of Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front was arrested in 2018 for his participation in setting fire to a slaughterhouse. Between 1995 and 2001, a group of Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front supporters caused more than $45 million in damages in a series of arsons. Dibee is imprisoned awaiting sentencing.
Marius Mason (formerly Marie Mason), a member of the Earth Liberation Front, was arrested in 2008 for an attack on a lab building at Michigan State University that was creating genetically modified organisms, with funding from mega-corporation Monsanto, the producer of Agent Orange.
Mason was also sentenced for damage to commercial logging equipment. No one was harmed by these actions. Mason’s 22 year-sentence is the longest yet for any of the Green Scare cases of those committing crimes against property of corporations.
Jessica Reznicek, of the Catholic Workers Movement, took action in 2016 to stop the environmentally destructive Dakota Access Pipeline by dismantling construction equipment and pipeline valves and setting fire to construction machinery. She would have been handed three years, but was sentenced to eight, with the added sentence for terrorism, even though no person was physically harmed.
Reznicek’s actions against private property were “calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government,” meaning a person who takes direct action against an energy company can be treated as an enemy of the state. Reznicek explained, “What we did do was fight a private corporation that has run rampant across our country seizing land and polluting our nation’s water supply.”
The United States Government Has Political Prisoners
This list belies the myth that the United States has no political prisoners.
Political prisoners have no shared ideology. Standing for justice does not necessarily mean that one defends their political views; it means that one demands their freedom because they have been unjustly incarcerated.
Many hundreds of thousands of people have been unjustly incarcerated in the United States, but in these cases, it is clear that they were detained because of their political beliefs and activism, and that by definition makes them political prisoners.
Cuban medical brigade doctors in 2020 holding a portrait of Fidel Castro
Cuba, like every other country on the planet, is struggling with the impact of COVID-19. 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. Meanwhile, the United States hardens a cruel and illegal blockade of the island, a medieval siege that has been in place for six decades. In April 2020, seven United Nations special rapporteurs wrote an open letter to the United States government about the blockade. “In the pandemic emergency,” they wrote, “the lack of will of the U.S. government to suspend sanctions may lead to a higher risk of such suffering in Cuba and other countries targeted by its sanctions.” The special rapporteurs noted the “risks to the right to life, health and other critical rights of the most vulnerable sections of the Cuban population.”
On July 12, 2021, Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz-Canel told a press conference that Cuba is facing serious shortages of food and medicine. “What is the origin of all these issues?” he asked. The answer, he said, “is the blockade.” If the U.S.-imposed blockade ended, many of the great challenges facing Cuba would lift. Of course, there are other challenges, such as the collapse of the crucial tourism sector due to the pandemic. Both problems—the pandemic and the blockade—have increased the challenges for the Cuban people. The pandemic is a problem that people all over the world now face; the U.S.-imposed blockade is a problem unique to Cuba (as well as about 30 other countries struck by unilateral U.S. sanctions).
Origin of the Protests
On July 11, people in several parts of Cuba—such as San Antonio de los Baños—took to the streets to protest the social crisis. Frustration about the lack of goods in shops and an uptick in COVID-19 infections seemed to motivate the protests. President Díaz-Canel said of the people that most of them are “dissatisfied,” but that their dissatisfaction is fueled by “confusion, misunderstandings, lack of information and the desire to express a particular situation.”
On the morning of July 12, U.S. President Joe Biden hastily put out a statement that reeked of hypocrisy. “We stand with the Cuban people,” Biden said, “and their clarion call for freedom.” If the U.S. government actually cared about the Cuban people, then the Biden administration would at the very least withdraw the 243 unilateral coercive measures implemented by the presidency of Donald Trump before he left office in January 2021; Biden—contrary to his own campaign promises—has not started the process to reverse Trump’s designation of Cuba as a “state sponsor of terrorism.” On March 9, 2021, Biden’s spokesperson Jen Psaki said, “A Cuba policy shift is not currently among President Biden’s top priorities.” Rather, the Trump “maximum pressure” policy intended to overthrow the Cuban government remains intact.
The United States has a six-decade history of trying to overthrow the Cuban government, including using assassinations and invasions as policy. In recent years, the U.S. government has increased its financial support of people inside Cuba and in the Cuban émigré community in Miami, Florida; some of this money comes directly from the National Endowment for Democracy and from USAID. Their mandate is to accelerate any dissatisfaction inside Cuba into a political challenge to the Cuban Revolution.
On June 23, Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez said that the Trump “measures remain very much in place.” They shape the “conduct of the current U.S. administration precisely during the months in which Cuba has experienced the highest infection rates, the highest death toll and a higher economic cost associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Costs of the Pandemic
On July 12, Alejandro Gil Fernández, Cuba’s minister of economy and planning, told the press about the expenses of the pandemic. In 2020, he said, the government spent $102 million on reagents, medical equipment, protective equipment and other material; in the first half of 2021, the government spent $82 million on these kinds of materials. This is money that Cuba did not anticipate spending—money that it does not have as a consequence of the collapsed tourism sector.
“We have not spared resources to face COVID-19,” Fernández said. Those with COVID-19 are put in hospitals, where their treatment costs the country $180 per day; if the patient needs intensive care, the cost per day is $550. “No one is charged a penny for their treatment,” Fernández reported.
The socialist government in Cuba shoulders the responsibility of medical care and of social insurance. Despite the severe challenges to the economy, the government guarantees salaries, purchases medicines and distributes food as well as electricity and piped water. That is the reason why the government added $2.4 billion to its already considerable debt overhang. In June, Cuba’s Deputy Prime Minister Ricardo Cabrisas Ruíz met with French Minister of Economy and Finance Bruno Le Maire to discuss the economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. France, which manages Cuba’s debt to the public creditors in the Paris Club, led the effort to ameliorate the debt servicing demands on Havana.
Costs of the Blockade
On June 23, 184 countries in the UN General Assembly voted to end the U.S.-imposed blockade on Cuba. During the discussion over the vote, Cuba’s Foreign Minister Rodríguez reported that between April 2019 and December 2020, the government lost $9.1 billion due to the blockade ($436 million per month). “At current prices,” he said, “the accumulated damages in six decades amount to over $147.8 billion, and against the price of gold, it amounts to over $1.3 trillion.”
If the blockade were to be lifted, Cuba would be able to fix its great financial challenges and use the resources to pivot away from its reliance upon tourism. “We stand with the Cuban people,” says Biden; in Havana, the phrase is heard differently, since it sounds like Biden is saying, “We stand on the Cuban people.”
Cuba’s Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz said that those who took to the streets on July 11 “called for foreign intervention and said that the [Cuban] Revolution was falling. They will never enjoy that hope,” he said. In response to those anti-government protests, the streets of Cuba filled with tens of thousands of people who carried Cuban flags and the flags of the Cuban Revolution’s 26th of July Movement. Cruz said, “The people responded and defended the revolution.”
Manolo De Los Santos is a researcher and a political activist. For 10 years, he worked in the organization of solidarity and education programs to challenge the United States’ regime of illegal sanctions and blockades. Based out of Cuba for many years, Manolo has worked toward building international networks of people’s movements and organizations. In 2018, he became the founding director of the People’s Forum in New York City, a movement incubator for working-class communities to build unity across historic lines of division at home and abroad. He also collaborates as a researcher with Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and is a Globetrotter/Peoples Dispatch fellow.
Colombian presidential candidate Gustavo Petro (right) announced in March Afro-Colombian activist Francia Márquez as his vice-presidential running mate on the Pacto Histórico ticket / credit: Twitter / Francia Márquez
Recent polls indicate left-wing presidential candidate Gustavo Petro and his running mate, Francia Márquez, are the most popular candidates in Colombia. But they appear to fall short of the 50 percent of potential votes required to win the first round of the presidential election on Sunday.
Onlookers say their popularity might explain a surge in death threats against the candidates. The ticket is striking: Petro is a former guerilla-turned-elected-official while Márquez is an award-winning Afro-descendant activist. The pair have inspired people in the country, which has been torn apart by decades of paramilitary violence, partly due to being tied politically, militarily and economically to the United States. Plus, state-sanctioned violence and dozens of deaths at the hands of police during last year’s nation-wide strike remain fresh in the national memory.
The situation has gotten so dangerous, the candidates have been seen at campaign events flanked by bodyguards holding bulletproof shields, as the Washington Post recently reported.
“The U.S. will not be happy with their victory because they will challenge U.S. military ties and ties with NATO,” said Dan Kovalik, professor of international human rights at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. Such a break could devastate U.S. hegemonic relations in the Western Hemisphere, which the United States has long related to as its “backyard.”
Just a week ago, the United States invited the Colombian defense minister to Washington to announce the country as a “major non-NATO ally.” This comes after $4.5 billion in arms and military training have been poured into Colombia through the United States’ Plan Colombia, which claims to go after the illicit drug trade. However, many activists say small-time farmers have suffered while the flow of drugs have not stopped.
Kovalik pointed to another time a leftist was almost elected. Jorge Eliécer Gaitán was assassinated during his second presidential run in 1948. That set off “La Violencia,” a 10-year period that ended with at least 200,000 people dead.
Meanwhile, six years after peace accords were signed with paramilitary groups, more than 1,000 social leaders have been killed, a statistic that disturbs many activists.
Even with a Petro-Márquez victory, security for the candidates could be dicey after entering office, given how closely linked the paramilitaries, the military and economic elites are in Colombia. A Márquez advisor, Hildebrando Vélez Galeano, told Toward Freedom the campaign had received information paramilitary groups were planning to murder the candidates. He referred to the police and military as “mafia controlled.”
Earlier this month, a military analyst and former colonel was accused of violating the Colombian constitution when he condemned Petro’s candidacy. The constitution bars members of the military from expressing political opinions.
“It’s because of Petro’s commitment to use the power of the state to go after these Uribistas,” said Ajamu Baraka, a campaign advisor. In mentioning Uribistas, Baraka referred to the presidency of Álvaro Uribe, a right-winger who militarized the police and ramped up the war against farmers and activists of Indigenous and Afro-descendant backgrounds. Petro recently mentioned that, if elected, he would hold accountable those who have been threatening his and Márquez’s lives.
Teri Mattson, a U.S. activist who hosts CodePink’s “What the F Is Going On In Latin America and the Caribbean” YouTube show, was denied entrance into Colombia on Sunday to serve as an election observer. She was deported to the United States the following day.
“I would not be surprised if that was orchestrated to say, ‘It’s getting very chaotic and the government will need to suspend the election,'” Mattson told Toward Freedom.
A few other election observers have been denied entrance, too, including Argentinian Alejandro Rusconi.
BREAKING: Official electoral observer @ale_rusconi —invited by the @CNE_COLOMBIA ahead of Sunday's election — has been denied entry to Colombia without explanation. CNE Magistrate @LuisGPerezCasas has said: "This is not good for [Duque's] government, nor for democracy." pic.twitter.com/9zGUyhE2Ge
— Progressive International (@ProgIntl) May 25, 2022
“The people who have sustained war and violence are determined to continue sustaining it at all costs,” said Charo Mina Rojas, a leader in Proceso de Comunidades Negras, an alliance of Afro-descendant organizations in Colombia. She also relayed concern about election fraud and voter intimidation.
Overall, though, the situation looks promising to many onlookers because of the presence of left-wing regional strongholds like Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela; as well as many countries boycotting the U.S.-hosted Summit of the Americas; and the political tide recently turning in countries like Honduras and Perú.
“Colombia is the last beachhead the U.S. has in Latin America,” Kovalik said.
Julie Varughese is editor of Toward Freedom. She recently wrote about the historic candidacy of Márquez.
Maria #Zakharova: @usairforce actions have posed risks to civil aviation.
https://t.co/mHgrPfSV9f pic.twitter.com/wKBBlPViVk
(@mfa_russia) December 5, 2021
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, on the other hand, openly said in case of a potential conflict between Russia and Ukraine, Minsk will support its ally, Moscow. At the same time, Belarus announced joint military exercises with Russia along its border with Ukraine. Plus, Lukashenko promised to visit Crimea soon, which would be Belarus’ de facto recognition of the Kremlin’s incorporation of Crimea into the Russian Federation.
