Cuban president leads pro-Palestinian march in front of US embassy in Havana

Some 100,000 people said to participate in march, including Palestinian medical students studying in Latin American nation

By AGENCIES and TOI STAFFToday, 8:51 am   0

(L-R) Cuba's Prime Minister Manuel Marrero, Cuba's President Miguel Diaz-Canel, and his wife Lis Cuesta take part in a march in support of the Palestinian people and against Israel's war with Hamas in Havana, Cuba on 

November 23, 2023. (Yamil Lage/AFP)

Thousands of people led by Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel marched along Havana’s iconic boardwalk Thursday in a show of solidarity with the Palestinian people and demanding an end to the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

Wearing a black-and-white Palestinian keffiyeh, Díaz-Canel was accompanied by Cuba’s main leaders, including Prime Minister Manuel Marrero and Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez.

The marchers walked for two kilometers (1.2 miles), passing in front of the US Embassy. As they passed the embassy on the seaside avenue, some yelled “fascist Yankees, you are terrorists.”

Palestinian medical students who were in Cuba as part of a cooperation program joined the rally.

“Today we are supporting the Palestinian people, supporting all those people who feel the pain of having lost a family member, a loved one due to this massacre,” said Yanquiel Cardoso, a physical culture specialist who participated. “We are asking for a ceasefire… and for Palestine to be free.”

Many young people had posters with the phrase “Free Palestine” with crude photographs of children injured by bombs or flags identifying both Cubans and Palestinians.

Others picked up chants of “free, free Palestine, Israel is genocide” and “up with Palestinian freedom,” Reuters reported.

“This march means a lot to us,” said Sami Sabala, a 26-year-old Palestinian medical student in Havana. “It raises feelings … And it makes people feel that Palestine is not alone.”

The Interior Ministry said on X, formerly Twitter, that 100,000 people took part in the hour-long march, convened by associations of youth groups in the communist-run nation.

People participating in a march in support of the Palestinian people and in opposition to Israel in Havana, Cuba on November 23, 2023. (Photo by Yamil Lage / AFP)

Israel’s war with the ruling Gaza terror group began on October 7, when some 3,000 Hamas terrorists burst through the border with Israel, unleashing the deadliest attack in the country’s history.

At least 1,200 people were killed, most of them civilians, and some 240 were taken hostage. Entire families were slaughtered in their homes, and over 360 people were mowed down at an outdoor music festival.

In response, Israel vowed to topple Hamas’s 15-year rule in Gaza and return the hostages, and launched an aerial offensive and subsequent ground campaign to meet those goals.

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says that more than 14,000 people have been killed since the outbreak of war. However, the death toll cannot be independently verified.

This is the second time that Cuba’s top leaders have participated in solidarity rallies since the war began. Last week, the Palestinian flag was projected on the monument to José Martí, the most iconic in the Caribbean capital.

The rare march was the first of its kind in about a decade, as the late Cuban leader Fidel Castro was known to stage similar demonstrations to protest the US before his death in 2016.

Communist-run Cuba has been a longtime supporter of the Palestinian cause and hasn’t had diplomatic ties with Israel since 1973.

People take part in a march in support of the Palestinian people and against Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza in Havana, Cuba, on November 23, 2023. (Yamil Lage/AFP)

Prior to the war, Cuba was one of just two Latin American nations without ties to Israel, Venezuela being the other after it ended its relationship in 2009.

But since October 7, several other Latin American countries have joined Cuba, severing or downgrading their diplomatic ties with Israel.

On November 14, the Central American country of Belize announced that it would be suspending diplomatic ties with Israel, citing “unceasing indiscriminate bombing” in Gaza as its reason for doing so.

Two weeks prior, on November 1, Bolivia broke off relations with Israel after restoring them just three years earlier and accused the country of “carrying out crimes against humanity.”

At the same time, Chile, Colombia and Honduras have all recalled their ambassadors.

In contrast, Argentinian president-elect Javier Milei is a vocal backer of Israel and has vociferously condemned Hamas’s October 7 terror attack. In a recent interview with The Times of Israel, he cited an Argentine rabbi as his spiritual guide and said he’d move the country’s embassy to Jerusalem.

Report: Half of MSC-Certified ‘Sustainable’ Tuna Caught with Controversial Gear


Tuna fisheries often rely on fish aggregating devices (FADs), floating human-made structures that fish congregate around, which makes it relatively easy to catch them, but which have also raised concerns about high rates of bycatch, capture of juvenile tuna, and pollution.

November 24, 2023 by Mongabay

By Shreya Dasgupta

Tuna fisheries often rely on fish aggregating devices (FADs), floating human-made structures that fish congregate around, which makes it relatively easy to catch them, but which have also raised concerns about high rates of bycatch, capture of juvenile tuna, and pollution.
Despite these concerns, the number of tuna fisheries using FADs that are certified sustainable under the standards of the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), the largest ecolabeling scheme for wild fisheries, has soared, and FAD-fished tuna now account for more than half of all MSC-certified tuna, according to a new report from France-based nonprofit BLOOM Association.
The report contends this constitutes a weakening of MSC standards in order to meet market demands for tuna.
The MSC has refuted this claim, pointing to steps that certified fisheries are taking to reduce and study the impact of FADs.

In November 2018, Pesqueras Echebastar, a Spanish tuna fishing company, received a certificate of sustainability from the London-based nonprofit Marine Stewardship Council, the world’s largest ecolabeling scheme for wild fisheries. This was the first time a purse seine fishery using fish aggregating devices (FADs) — a controversial fishing method — had been certified by the MSC. Since then, the number of MSC-certified tuna fisheries using FADs has soared, according to a recent report by France-based nonprofit BLOOM Association.

“It’s a massive issue because FADs have not become sustainable,” Frédéric Le Manach, BLOOM’s scientific director and the author of the report, told Mongabay in an email. “It’s just the MSC standards and the way they are applied by certifiers that have gotten even weaker.”

The MSC’s senior PR manager, Susannah Henty, disagreed with the report’s findings. “We strongly refute the false and misinformed claims made by Bloom, which has a long running campaign against commercial fishing,” she told Mongabay in an email. “Fisheries obtain MSC certification by meeting a set of strict criteria on their environmental impact — only the highest-scoring fisheries will gain certification … Destructive fisheries cannot be certified as sustainable to the MSC Fisheries Standard.”
A magnet for fish

Fishers have long known that fish tend to cluster around floating structures like logs, seaweed, coconuts, and even large animals. They’ve used this knowledge to their advantage, deploying human-made structures known as fish aggregating devices, or FADs, either anchored to the seafloor or drifting, to encourage fish to gather. They then catch the fish using various gear like purse seines, longlines or hooks.

In recent decades, the number of drifting FADs, or DFADs, in the ocean has surged, partly aided by low-cost satellite-tracking buoys that allow fishers to remotely monitor the devices. Tuna fisheries in particular have turned to DFADs because they reduce the time spent searching for tuna. These devices also lead to a much higher fishing success rate for purse seiners compared to using the nets on free-swimming tuna schools. This increased fish catch can help improve food security and revenue for developing countries, according to a review of DFADs published in July.

But there are several concerns too. For example, DFADs tend to catch more juveniles of yellowfin tuna (Thunnus albacares) and bigeye tuna (T. obesus) than when targeting free-swimming schools. This can potentially threaten their populations, researchers say. These devices also tend to result in much higher bycatch of non-target species like sea turtles, sharks and billfishes than does targeting free-swimming tuna schools. Moreover, many of the tens of thousands of these drifting devices get lost, abandoned, or discarded. They often drag mesh nets, which continue to catch marine animals as they float around, and many end up polluting shores.
MSC embraces FADs

The first tuna fishery became MSC certified in 2007. At first, only small-scale, low-impact tuna fisheries were getting the eco-certifications, the BLOOM report notes.

“For consumers, the situation was quite clear until the end of 2011,” Le Manach said. “When buying MSC-certified tuna, you were only buying pole-and-line [or] troll tuna, so, small, coastal fisheries with very low impact gears.”

In December 2011, the Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA) fishery — the world’s largest tuna purse seine fishery now comprising eight island states and a territory in the South Pacific — became MSC certified. The fishery catches tuna both from free-swimming schools and by using FADs, but the certification was awarded only to the former part of its operation. At the time, the MSC noted on a webpage about the PNA that “the fishing method behind MSC certified tuna caught in the waters of the PNA nations excludes the use of fish aggregating devices, or FADs … In FAD fishing young tuna can be caught before they can reproduce, with an increased risk of other species ending up as bycatch. Tackling the problems associated with FAD fishing is critical to our ocean’s health and productivity.”


Now, though, industrial tuna purse seine fisheries using FADs account for more than half of all MSC-certified tuna, more than 1.2 million out of 2.2 million total metric tons, the BLOOM analysis found.

“When buying MSC-certified tuna now, you are most likely to buy FAD-caught tuna and tuna caught by a vessel that uses FADs most of its time,” Le Manach said. “You’re very unlikely to find an MSC-certified [tuna] can coming from the earlier small, coastal fisheries with very low impact gears, which have become lost in an ocean of unsustainable fisheries certified along [with] them.”

The MSC’s Henty, however, said it’s “misleading to suggest that all fishing on FADs is destructive.”

To be certified as sustainable, third-party certifiers — chosen and paid by the fisheries themselves — evaluate whether the fishery meets three main principles of the MSC Fisheries Standard: Fishing must be at a level that ensures the target fish stocks are sustainable; it must have low impacts on the wider ecosystem; and the fishery must have effective management that adheres to applicable laws and standards. And to become MSC certified, fisheries must provide “a great deal of data” to the organizations assessing them against the three principles, Henty said.

“In the past, few fisheries using dFADs have been assessed to the MSC Fisheries Standard due to a lack of understanding of the impacts, or high bycatch rates,” Henty added. “However, in recent years … the fishing industry, scientists, regional fisheries management organisations and conservation groups have invested significantly in reducing the environmental impacts of FADs.”


These steps, according to Henty, include improved tracking and data collection, adopting the use of biodegradable FADs, licensing and registration of FADs, using only non-entangling FADs, implementing rapid-release systems to return unwanted catch back to the sea alive, and 100% coverage by independent shipboard observers.

For instance, MSC-certified fishery Echebaster has enacted measures to better track its fleet’s deployed FADs and improve the observer coverage of its fishing trips, and it has committed to using non-entangling and biodegradable FADs. But it has yet to fully adopt these measures. There’s also a lack of consensus on what the best biodegradable and non-entangling FAD designs are. To generate more data, the MSC itself awarded Echebaster nearly 50,000 pounds (about $64,000) in 2020 — two years after its certification — to team up with AZTI, a Spain-based science and technology center, and study some risks posed by derelict DFADs. But in Echebaster’s latest assessment report, the certifying body noted that the research is still a work in progress.

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Two conservation groups raised objections to some of the certifying body’s favorable findings and scores, noting that several DFAD impacts — including how the gear affects species like silky sharks (Carcharhinus falciformis) and the extent and impacts of lost and abandoned DFADs in the ocean — had not been adequately evaluated.

The problem, the BLOOM report contends, is that tuna fisheries using FADs are being MSC certified not because they’re already sustainable at the time of assessment, but because they could be sustainable in the future.

Not everyone shares the MSC’s optimism that this sustainable future will ever arrive.

“My perspective would be that the more we understand about FADs, in fact, the lower they would perform against a sustainability standard,” Megan Bailey, who researches fisheries and seafood supply chains at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada, told Mongabay in an email.

“And while it is true that the purse seine industry has invested significant amount of funding to improve FAD designs, the two issues revolving around FAD fisheries have not changed, juvenile overfishing and ecological impacts,” said Bailey, who was not involved in the BLOOM report but has collaborated with the group on research in the past.

The BLOOM report contends that since the MSC charges retailers royalties for using its ecolabel, the organization stands to gain monetarily from increased certification of industrial tuna fisheries. “Retailers are the ones contributing the overwhelming part of the MSC’s budget, but they want big volumes of cheap fish,” Le Manach said. “So, only industrial fisheries work for them.”

In response to this point, Henty defended MSC’s model. “The MSC’s market-based funding model is important because consumer demand for sustainable seafood products helps to drive reform of the fishing industry and incentivises the take-up of sustainable fishing practices,” she said. ”All of the income from licensing use goes back into our programme of work, including supporting small-scale fisheries worldwide.”

In any case, consumers wanting to buy sustainable tuna will likely end up buying tuna caught with FADs since that’s most of the certified catch by volume, Bailey said.

“For many consumers that will be fine with them because it carries the blue logo and thus they ‘know’ they are eating sustainable seafood,” she said. “For other consumers, however, they’d likely want to know if what they are buying is actually the ‘best environmental choice’ as the MSC used to proclaim about itself.”

—

This post was previously published on news.mongabay.com and under a Creative Commons license CC BY-ND 4.

Caste equality advocates in the US vow not to give up

Leah Carter in Los Angeles

California's governor vetoed a historic bill to add caste as a protected category, but efforts to recognize discrimination in the United Statescontinue to pick up steam.

Prem Pariyar (far right) and other members of Californians for Caste Equity pose together

Image: Prem Pariyar

When Prem Pariyar arrived in the US from Nepal in 2015, he didn't expect that he would be sleeping in a van or on couches in employee housing due to his caste affiliation.

"I thought caste discrimination does not exist here. I was very depressed," Pariyar told DW.

Pariyar, a descendant of a family in the Hindu Dalit caste, sometimes referred to discriminatorily as the "Untouchables", is one of many South Asian advocates pushing forward efforts to legally recognize caste discrimination in the US.

While caste is commonly referred to in the context of Hinduism and India, it is a social hierarchy system that is thousands of years old and recognized in several countries across the region, including Nepal, where Pariyar grew up.

"We need to educate everyone so that this system will be stopped," he told DW. "We are isolated generation to generation. There is intergenerational trauma."
Caste discrimination crossing borders

Pariyar decided to come to the US after his family was violently attacked because of their caste in the middle of the night in their home in the capital, Kathmandu.

When he tried to file charges against the assailant, the authorities did nothing, and even threatened him for taking action.

He proceeded to find a job at a restaurant in the US, where his employer offered to house him. However, his colleagues in the house wouldn't share a room with him, making casteist claims and slurs. So, he slept on the couch, instead.

Pariyar, who is now on the Board of Directors for the National Association of Social Workers, California Chapter, said his story is not unique. While he had hoped to leave this form of discrimination behind in Nepal, he said he and several others have faced significant hurdles in employment and even safety upon coming to the US.

India: Dalit journalist fights caste injustices and bias  03:17

There are over 5.4 million South Asians in the US, with the majority concentrated in California. They are one of the largest growing demographic groups in the country, with many people coming to work in the tech industry in California's Silicon Valley.

Many US-based Dalits say the system of discrimination has followed them, resulting in harassment, sabotage in the workplace and even violence.

In recent years, activists have united under new groups such as the Californians for Caste Equity Coalition and Equality Labs, which were both instrumental in the push for legal recognitions.

Legal setback

Last month, following over a year of advocacy and a month-long hunger strike, California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed Senate Bill 403, which would have made the state the first to include caste in the list of protected classes under civil rights laws.

The bill would have offered employment and housing protections alongside categories such as race, gender and sexual orientation.

However, despite an overwhelming majority (31-5 in the Senate), Newsom called the bill "unnecessary," saying that protections against caste-based discrimination are covered legally under already existing protections that "shall be liberally construed."

The veto created an uproar on both sides of the South Asian community, spurring rallies at the capitol, lobbying lines through hallways, and a hunger strike in favor of the bill.

Those opposing the bill, such as the Hindu American Foundation, called it both racist and a potential "constitutional disaster," which would have "put a target on hundreds of thousands of Californians simply because of their ethnicity or racial identity."

Critics of Newsom's veto decision have said that he made the move in order to maintain relations with a growing Hindu voting base, which largely upholds the caste system.

"Through this process, we shined a light on a long-hidden form of discrimination that persists across multiple communities in California," said Senator Aisha Wahab, the first Muslim and Afghan American woman elected to the state legislature, and the author of the bill.

The hard life of India's Dalits on display in Berlin gallery  04:01

Efforts pick up steam

Despite the veto, Fresno, a city in California's Central Valley, unanimously agreed to ban caste-based discrimination specifically, about a week prior.

In February, Seattle became the first US city to outlaw caste-based discrimination. Educational institutions, including California State University, Harvard, Brandeis and University of California – Davis, all in recent years have made separate legal provisions on the matter.

Meanwhile, the corporate world has also added to the movement, with tech giants including Apple and IBM updating employee policies to include caste discrimination in recent years.

Those protections follow a 2020 lawsuit initiated by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing against Cisco, a $195 billion (€178 billion) company, on the grounds that a Dalit employee had been severely discriminated against by supervisors of a "higher" caste.

Had caste discrimination been recognized then, advocates say, the employee could have won the case.

For now, Pariyar says recent legal efforts have united the Dalit community and others fighting for protections.

"Many more cities are rethinking caste," he said. "Before, I was alone. Now, our people are united, and our voice is one to combat this."

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for DALIT 

 

Indian-origin doctor commits $4 million for Hindu advocacy in US

Indian-origin doctor Mihir Meghani has pledged to donate $1.5 million more to the Hindu cause over the next eight years, taking the total number to $4 million.

Indian-American physician Mihir Meghani. (Photo:X)

Press Trust of India

Fremont (California),UPDATED: Nov 24, 2023 12:26 IST

Posted By: Poulami Kundu

Hinduism is not just a religion, it's a way of life, a prominent Indian-American physician, who has committed $4 million to advocate Hindu advocacy and awareness causes in the United States, has said.

Emergency care physician Mihir Meghani, who founded the Hindu America Foundation along with his friends two decades ago, at the annual Silicon Valley gala early this month of the organisation pledged to donate $1.5 million more to the Hindu cause over the next eight years.

This contribution will raise his total donations for the cause to $4 million in two decades.

The announcement by Dr Meghani possibly gives him the distinction of being the biggest Indian American donor for the Hindu cause in the United States.

“My wife, Tanvi and I, have contributed $1.5 million to the Hindu American Foundation thus far. We've also contributed a million dollars more over the last 15 years to other Hindu and Indian organisations and causes. Over the next eight years, we're making a pledge of $1.5 million to pro-India and Hindu organisations,” Dr Meghani told PTI in a recent interview.

“I say this to all of you who are viewing this to realise that I don't have a startup company. I don't have any side businesses. I'm an emergency doctor on a salary. My wife is a fitness instructor and a jewellery designer. We're not making millions of dollars a year. We don't have stock options. We're doing this because it's our Dharma, it's our duty,” he said.

Just out of university, Dr Meghani and three of his friends Aseem Shukla, an associate professor in urologic surgery; Suhag Shukla, an attorney and Nikhil Joshi, a labour law attorney co-founded the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) in September 2003, the first of its kind Hindu advocacy group in the US.

Responding to a question, Dr Meghani said Hinduism is not as easily understood by most Americans because most Americans are Christian. “They come from an Abrahamic background. When they look at different religions, they can't understand that Hinduism is not just a religion, it's a way of life. It's a way of thinking about life," he said.

Hindus who are coming from India don't quite understand that they have a Hindu identity and an Indian national identity, he said, adding: "We need to talk about that".

"What we need are Hindus to be strong in the Bharatiya or Indian identity, which is the political identity for our civilisation, but also they should be very proud and open about their Hindu identity. And when they have that, their coworkers, their friends, and neighbours will understand us better,” he said.

One of the early successes of HAF in Washington DC, he said, was to get Diwali recognised in the US.

"Now you can see that Diwali is celebrated at the White House, with the Vice President, in the US Congress and all across different state and local governments across the country. But it took time to get there,” he said about the three-year effort by them.

The Hindu American Foundation, which in its initial years was all based on volunteerism, now has an annual budget of $2.5 million and has several full-time staffers. Its goal is to increase its budget to $5 million next year and $20 million by the end of the decade, he said.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for WENDY DONIGER 

The USA Gets High

BY RON JACOBS   NOVEMBER 24, 2023

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Since 1967, the Jefferson Airplane has been bewitching teenagers with the observation from their song “White Rabbit”: “One pill makes you larger/and one pill makes you small.…” Drug warriors have never liked this tune, while the Airplane’s lead singer Grace Slick once sarcastically remarke that the line “Feed your head” from the same song was about encouraging her listeners to go to the library and read. I suppose it could be interpreted that way, although I’m sticking with my original interpretation. In fact, I’m quite certain most people are.

The Airplane, like their fellow San Franciscans the Grateful Dead and many other rock bands from the same period, we proselytizers for LSD and other psychedelic drugs. These bands’ affinity for marijuana was well known and their advocacy of what was known as the counterculture was an unspoken truth. We understood them (and us) to be travelers to a new consciousness. Arguably, this historic episode did change the world.

In his new book Quick Fixes:Drugs in America from Prohibition to the 21st Century Binge, author Benjamin Y. Fong agrees with that premise. However, his explanation of how and why it did is not for the reasons we believed them to be fifty years ago. Instead, Fong argues that the psychedelic revolution merely made the world of capitalism and commodification easier to tolerate. Furthermore, it opened up a new market to exploit and a more expansive means to advertise the products sold to this new market.

This perspective on the nature of drugs and their usage in the United States over the past is what underpins Fong’s argument throughout the book. As he traces the history of alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, narcotics, amphetamines, diazepams (Valium, etc.), anti-depressants and other psychotropics, marijuana and cocaine, it is their usefulness to the capitalist economy at particular times that informs his discussion. The history he tells is both anecdotal and comprehensive. In the telling, the role of the pharmaceutical industry and government regulatory agencies are major players.

Caffeine and tobacco remain the most unregulated legal drugs in the United States. Alcohol is a close second or third in that lineage. Utilizing Fong’s understanding that the most dispensed drugs at any particular historical moment are those that serve the needs of capitalism at the time, the continuing popularity of coffee makes almost perfect sense. After all, its consumption usually makes people more alert and more energetic; the perfect combination for maximum production in the service of capital. The rationale for tobacco is less obvious. In fact, it wasn’t until the advent of the cigarette that tobacco became a popular means to relax among the working class. A smoke lasted just about as long as a ten-minute break from the assembly line or its equivalent.

Alcohol consumption, on the other hand, was not necessarily a positive practice in terms of the new capitalist workplace. Prior to the mills, factories and other larger worksites of capitalism, alcohol usage was not usually a political issue. Sure, there were always churches and other organizations that frowned on its use and pushed to close down saloons and taverns. These campaigns were usually local. It was when the so-called industrial age became a factor in the employment sector that alcohol use began to be seen as a problem by a substantial number of powerful US citizens. Encouraged by the Temperance campaigns—which were often composed of middle class women, Progressive politicians, and various capitalists—the drive toward alcohol prohibition took off. Some of the campaigners understood that the underlying reasons for alcohol abuse lay in the terrible working conditions and the abominable living conditions many workers had to deal with. Those campaigners pushed for legislation that would address those issues while they also worked to close places where alcohol was served and manufactured. Other campaigners were more typical of other self-righteous moral campaigns. In other words, they blamed the individual, not the social conditions existing as a result of capitalism.

As Fong’s narrative continues, the reader is presented with the advent of amphetamines, first used in massive (and legal) quantities by the US military, then as a means toward greater production by individual US residents after World War Two. The explosion of US manufacturing, advertising and other elements of modern capitalism in the 1950s and 1960s carried with it an increase in what is now commonly known as anxiety. At first, psychologists correctly attributed this mental health symptom to the stresses of modern capitalist society. Those stresses were exacerbated by advertising which encouraged material consumption and ultimately a competition to see who could consume the most. According to people like the US diplomat George Kennan, anxiety was a price US residents had to pay to be free. The option, as Fong wryly notes, was between anxiety and communism and communism was out of the question. In fact, the advent of drugs designed to deal with the stresses and traumas of modern capitalist society was also the beginning of an industry dedicated to placing the onus on the individual for mental health and removing any blame from the social systems actually creating unhealthy mental states.

The penultimate chapter of the book is a discussion of marijuana’s history in the United States. After taking the reader through a condensed version of that history, one finds themselves at the door of a marijuana retail shop in 2023, at least figuratively. It is Fong’s assessment that when it came to marijuana in the United States, money won out. This is essentially true. Although the laws regarding legal marijuana in some states allow individuals to grow limited amounts of cannabis, there are others that don’t. Likewise, while some states set aside a certain number of cultivation and sales licenses for underserved populations, others don’t, thereby allowing corporate cannabis to dominate or completely control that state’s market. As a long time on again/off again marijuana smoker, I am grateful I live where I can grow my own. At the same time, I am also grateful for the retail shop a mile away. In short, although the corporatization of cannabis rubs me the wrong way, I am glad that police can no longer arrest me for smoking it.

Quick Fixes is a useful and concise history and discussion of drugs, the drug war and the less-than-honest role capitalists and their governments play in the regulation and propagation of drugs and those who partake of them. At the same time, its discussion of these phenomena shows how the drug marketplace is an almost perfect template for how modern monopoly capitalism works.

Ron Jacobs is the author of Daydream Sunset: Sixties Counterculture in the Seventies published by CounterPunch Books. His latest offering is a pamphlet titled Capitalism: Is the Problem.  He lives in Vermont. He can be reached at: ronj1955@gmail.com.

Forward Ever: 40 Years on from the End of the Revolution and the U.S. Invasion of Grenada

BY AMY LI BAKSH

 NOVEMBER 24, 2023
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Photograph Source: TSgt. M. J. Creen, USAF – Public Domain

Dear Comrades
if it must be
you speak no more with me
nor smile no more with me
nor march no more with me
then let me take
a patience and a calm
for even now the greener leaf explodes
sun brightens stone
and all the river burns.
Now from the mourning vanguard moving on
dear Comrades I salute you and I say
Death will not find us thinking that we die.

—Martin Carter

With this poem, George Lamming, Barbadian novelist and poet, ended his address at a December 1983 memorial service in Trinidad for Maurice Bishop, Jacqueline Creft, Norris Bain, Vincent Noel, Unison Whiteman, and all who had been killed during the abrupt end to the Grenada Revolution.

“It is the tragedy of a whole region which has brought us here,” said Lamming during his address. “The landscape of Grenada and its people are the immediate victims… But all of us are now the casualties of the American invasion.”

When an intra-party conflict broke out, leading to the killing of revolutionary leader Bishop and other victims on October 19, 1983, the Reagan administration seized the pretext to invade. On October 25, 1983, thousands of U.S. troops landed on the island.

This year, Grenada commemorates both 50 years as an independent nation and 40 years since the violent implosion of the People’s Revolutionary Government and subsequent U.S. invasion. For the first time, the government of Grenada has recognized October 19 as a national holiday, designated as “National Heroes Day.” Decades on, reckoning with the events of 1983 continues.

Writer Marise La Grenade-Lashley spoke at the inaugural National Heroes Day gathering, where she echoed sentiments expressed in her article in Now Grenada a year prior. “The shocking events of 19 October 1983, whose effects reverberated across the Caribbean and beyond, created deep psychological wounds that have never really healed. One coping mechanism adopted by some persons directly affected by the events of that fateful day has been to retreat in silence,” she wrote.

“While silence is a common reaction to trauma, it has, in the case of Grenada, created a void in our society that needs to be filled with factual and unbiased information related to those four and a half years during which Grenada embarked on an alternative path to development that crumbled so abruptly, so brutally, so tragically,” La Grenade-Lashley added.

The designation of National Heroes Day includes a mandate to bring the history of Grenada’s revolution to civics classes in Grenadian schools.

A Revolutionary Movement Provokes U.S. Ire

In 1979, Maurice Bishop and his New Jewel Movement (NJM) took control from the increasingly authoritarian regime of Sir Eric Gairy, Grenada’s first prime minister. Gairy, an ally of Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet and creator of the notorious “Mongoose Gang” private militia, modelled after the Haitian Tonton Macoutes, had lost public support and remained in power through rigged elections.

The insurrection installed the NJM as the People’s Revolutionary Government (PRG), suspended the 1974 Constitution, and declared Bishop prime minister. The government’s first steps were to encourage trade union representation, introduce free medical services, and to prioritize education and adult literacy programs as well as projects benefitting small farmers and farmworkers.

One month into the PRG’s rule, Bishop gave a national broadcast after a visit from U.S. Ambassador Frank Ortiz. “The ambassador pointed out that his country was the richest, freest, and most generous country in the world, but as he put it, ‘We have two sides,’” said Bishop. “We understood that to mean that the other side he was referring to was the side which stamped on freedom and democracy when the American government felt that their interests were being threatened.”

Over the next four years, Bishop spoke often of the U.S. pressure on the PRG. He felt that the Reagan administration was seeking to destabilize the revolution through the media and through economic trade disruptions. The Monroe Doctrine had given way to the Reagan Doctrine, and closer Cold War ties from Grenada to Cuba and the USSR could not be tolerated. As Hugh O’Shaughnessy, a British journalist who was on the ground in Grenada when the invasion finally happened, put it: “The State Department and the Pentagon in Washington…had been seeking ways of putting an end to the left-wing government of Grenada.”

Meanwhile, the PRG was putting in place a variety of projects, one of which was a program—the National Cooperative Development Agency (NACDA)—to deal with the joblessness and landlessness faced by the country’s youth. Trinidadian-born Regina Dumas moved to Grenada in March 1980 to take up a role as registrar of cooperatives within NACDA. “It was like all my dreams had come true,” Dumas said when we spoke on October 17, a few days before the National Heroes Day celebrations. “Here I am, working with rural people, farmers, and listening to them talk, and realizing—these people know what they want.”

In her book, Memoir of a Cocoa Farmer’s Daughter, Dumas describes her work at NACDA, which involved helping to get privately held, uncultivated land into the hands of young prospective farmers tasked with reviving the local and export agriculture markets.

In those days, Dumas often took Sunday afternoon drives to visit the construction site of the new international airport. Supported by Cuba and other countries, the airport was one of the PRG’s flagship projects. “That the government of Cuba chose to support this initiative by providing a skilled work force…was the cause of much rancour with the United States which stridently opposed it,” Dumas writes in her memoir.

During a nationally televised address in March 1983, Reagan displayed a picture of the airport runway under construction. “The Cubans with Soviet financing and backing are in the process of building an airfield with a 10,000-foot runway,” he said. “Grenada doesn’t even have an air force. Who is it intended for?” The implication was clear. During the invasion later that year, the airport would be one of the locations bombed by the U.S. military.

The Revolutionary Government Implodes

Months away from the Revolution’s fifth anniversary, divisions within the PRG between Bishop and his deputy prime minister, Bernard Coard, began to come to a head. “Why, when they knew that the Reagan administration was poised to pounce at the slightest error made, would they play into their hands so easily?” said Dumas. “I dismissed, completely out of hand, the rumors that I heard as counter-revolutionary propaganda. What an error on my part!”

The rumors were becoming reality. Disagreements between Bishop and Coard over a plan for shared leadership turned sour, and Bishop was deposed and placed under house arrest in the first week of October 1983. On October 19, six days after Bishop had been placed under house arrest, Dumas recalls hearing the chanting of hundreds of Grenadians marching the streets in support of Bishop. “The plan, apparently, was to march to the residence of Maurice Bishop, where he was being held, confront the members of the People’s Revolutionary Army (PRA), who were holding him hostage, and forcibly, if necessary, free him from his temporary prison and reinstate him as prime minister,” she said.

After gathering her two children from school and returning home, Dumas watched in horror from her veranda as the march, which had successfully liberated Bishop, went to Fort Rupert (originally called Fort George, but renamed after Bishop’s father Rupert, who had been killed by Gairy’s Mongoose Gang in 1974). Once at Fort Rupert, they were faced with a hail of bullets. “Armored personnel carriers began to shoot directly into the crowd of people who were climbing the fort, singing and dancing with Maurice on their shoulders,” Dumas writes in her book. “With no other point of exit…I watched as people leaped over the edge of that fort, quite substantial in height, and into the crashing waves and rocks below.”

Within hours, Bishop had been executed alongside 10 others at Fort Rupert. General Hudson Austin issued a national announcement: “With immediate effect, and until further notice, anyone caught on the streets of St. George’s and environs will be shot on sight.”

The Invasion Strikes

For Dumas, the events were both political and personal. “They had killed the prime minister of the country and others of their own group and party. They had killed my friend Jacqui, thus leaving her young son an orphan,” she said. “They had decidedly opened up the gates to those who had always opposed the revolution.”

President Reagan ordered troops to invade Grenada on October 25. As O’Shaughnessy wrote: “At 6:40 on the morning on Thursday 27 October 1983 a platoon of U.S. marines edged nervously past the main branch of Barclay’s Bank in St. George’s, the capital of Grenada, towards Fort Rupert. They need not have worried. No resistance awaited them there.”

The arrival of the U.S. military brought a rain of bombings across the forts and levelled a mental health hospital, killing 30 patients and wounding many more.

Neville Warner, a Tobago-born son of a Grenadian family, recalls to me how the PRG had built a factory in St. George’s to begin producing mango nectar on a large scale for local consumption and export, as part of the government’s push to localize food production and reduce dependence on imports. The factory was one of the locations bombed as the U.S. troops landed. The space where it stood now hosts a factory producing Coca-Cola.

During the invasion, Cubans were rounded up from the Cuban Embassy and sent back to their homeland. In November, Fidel Castro would pay tribute to the Cubans killed in Grenada during the destruction of the airport. “The U.S. government looked down on Grenada and hated Bishop. It wanted to destroy Grenada’s process and obliterate its example. It had even prepared military plans for invading the island—as Bishop had charged nearly two years ago—but it lacked pretext,” Castro said in a speech in Havana. He lauded Grenada’s social and economic advances despite the U.S. hostility.

“Bishop was not an extremist,” Castro continued. “Rather, he was a true revolutionary—conscientious and honest…Grenada had become a true symbol of independence and progress in the Caribbean.”

The events that unfolded in Grenada would echo throughout the Caribbean and the world. With a quick military victory secured, the emboldened Reagan administration doubled down on counterinsurgency in Central America, supporting ruthless regimes in Guatemala and El Salvador and backing the Contras in Nicaragua. Six years after landing in Grenada, U.S. troops invaded Panama.

For La Grenade-Lashley, there’s more to be done in the work of remembering 1983 and the Revolution that preceded it. “Rather than lament the irretrievable, we can look to the future with optimism,” she writes. “To teach and enlighten our youth, accurate and unbiased information can be culled from the many books, articles and papers written on the Grenada Revolution.”

“We have heard of Truth and Reconciliation Commissions around the world,” she continues. “In Grenada, although we have had our own Truth and Reconciliation Commission, it remains vital that we pay closer attention to the ordering of these three words. Truth and reconciliation. Truth precedes reconciliation.”

This article is syndicated in partnership with the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA).

Amy Li Baksh is a Caribbean writer, artist, and activist based in Trinidad and Tobago. Their academic background is in Caribbean history and literature with a particular interest in postcolonial social movements across the region.