On 3 October 1935 at 5 a.m. on the orders of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini 200,000 Italian troops invaded Ethiopia from Eritrea commanded by Emilio De Bono, without a declaration of war being made. On 7 October the League of Nations condemned the invasion and imposed sanctions.
In response Ethiopia declared war on Italy and Emperor Haile Selassie declared a general mobilization. Ethiopian troops put up considerable resistance although only a quarter of the army had military training and many of their weapons were from the 19th century.
Although the Ethiopians were able to slow the Italian forces down for a few weeks eventually their technical and military superiority gave them the advantage. Italian forces increasingly used chemical weapons and in March 1936 launched another offensive.
By May 1936 the Italians had destroyed any effective Ethiopian resistance as they captured Addis Ababa while Emperor Haile Selassie was forced into exile. Italian King Victor Emmanuel III was declared Emperor and Ethiopia was united with Eritrea and Somaliland.
Although the Italians had effectively emerged victorious fighting between Italian and Ethiopian forces continued until February 1937. This was the same month when an attempt was made to assassinate Marshal Rodolfo Graziani by two Eritreans living in Ethiopia.
Following the failed assassination attempt the Italians responded brutally by killing Ethiopian civilians in Addis Ababa. Following the failed assassination attempt the Italians responded brutally by killing Ethiopian civilians in Addis Ababa. They set fire to houses and used daggers and truncheons to kill.
In what became known as the Graziani massacre up to 30,000 Ethiopians were murdered. In May a group of Ethiopians who had studied abroad were executed and thousands were sent to detention camps where they suffered from diseases and a lack of food.
The Italians introduced highly racist policies during their occupation. Minister of Colonies Alessandro Lessona enforced the policy of racial segregation between Blacks and whites as well as establishing the Colonial Police Corps.
Resistance continued despite the brutality of the fascist forces and a revolt broke out in Gojjam in 1938 that was brutally suppressed and resulted in further reprisals. Guerrilla resistance continued until 1940.
In 1940 Italy declared war on Britain and entered the Second World War. In 1941 Italian troops were defeated by the allies in the region, Haile Selassie returned and the horrific Italian reign of terror in Ethiopia was over.
#AntiImperialism #SOSHaiti #HandsOffHaiti
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The UN has given the green light to a US-sponsored resolution authorizing yet another military invasion against Haiti by a multinational coalition. Let’s recall US President Joe Biden’s statement that it wouldn’t matter if “Haiti sank into the Caribbean” when he was a senator before the 1994 US invasion.
https://void.cat/d/LmmPSZjLWuSGgDrRjTsCkN.mp4
#AntiImperialism #SOSHaiti #HandsOffHaiti
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The US bombed the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, on this day in 2015. The US called it “collateral damage”, but the hospital was attacked for an hour with precision air strikes.
The trauma hospital, then the only kind in northeastern Afghanistan, provided high-quality, free surgical care to victims of all types of traumas, including government troops and Taliban fighters.
All war parties were repeatedly informed of the hospital’s location. During the airstrikes, all efforts by MSF staff to contact the US military were unsuccessful.
Having claimed that there were Taliban militias in the hospital, the US later described the attack as a “tragic mistake,” a mistake which was not uncommon for US attacks in Afghanistan.
Due to discrepancies between the US military account and eyewitness reports, MSF launched an independent investigation. It stated that the attack was conducted with the purpose to kill and destroy.
When fighting between the government and Taliban forces became more intense and shifted to northeastern Afghanistan, the hospital lost its ability to treat patients.
Eight years later, the need for trauma care in Kunduz is exceptionally high after the 20-year American war in Afghanistan. The US has refused to compensate the hospital.
#AfghanistanWar #Imperialism #WarCrime
Listen to former US National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, in 2014 correctly predict that Germany would "fall into line" not to protect Ukrainians, but German capitalists, if the US decided to step up its proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. This summer German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said by 2027 Germany will have supplied €17 billion in military aid, boasting this amounts to "the biggest support" surpassed only by the US itself.
Clashes erupted when over a hundred hooded youths confronted police units amid riots in the streets of the Catalan town of Molins de Rei in Barcelona province. The clashes erupted during an annual festival, which was accompanied by a massive police presence.
Footage showed commercial facilities, including car showrooms, being attacked, barricades being formed, and flames in the street. Police cars were also pelted with objects. One person has been arrested following the clashes, and no one was injured, according to the Catalan police.
Did Mao Zedong kill all the landlords in China? One of the claims made by anti-communist bourgeois historians is that the Chinese revolutionary leader was responsible for the mass killings of landlords following the establishment of the People's Republic of China. Some have claimed that up to 2 million landlords were killed during the land reform period. Watch Lady Izdihar explain why these claims are simplistic and don't tell the whole story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xms3_YtC32Y
#LandLords #ChinaPolitics #Communism
Today marks the 74th anniversary of Chairman Mao, the leader of the Chinese Communist Party, proclaiming the foundation of the People’s Republic of China. He stated that the “cannonballs of the October Revolution” had “brought Marxism” to China.
China’s eight hundred million citizens rose, and through the development of socialism, China reached a pivotal moment in humanity's deliberate march toward Communism. Following Mao’s death in 1976, emerging bourgeois elements within the party executed a coup d’état and reinstated capitalism under the direction of Deng Xiaoping and his successors, who continue to govern China today.
One of Mao’s notable concluding remarks was: “If China’s leadership is usurped by the revisionists in the future, the Marxist-Leninists of all countries must relentlessly expose them, fight them, and assist the Chinese masses in their struggle against the revisionists.”
Happy birthday to the socialist revolutionary Samora Machel, who led the independence war against Portuguese colonialism! The first President of Mozambique was in command of the Marxist-Leninist Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO), which declared the "total and complete independence of Mozambique" on June 25, 1975.
On this day in 1971, Founder Huey P. Newton and chairwoman Elaine Brown of the Black Panther Party (BPP) embarked on a historic delegation to revolutionary China, invited by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The Black revolutionaries saw Mao Zedong’s China as a beacon of socialism at a time when the Soviet Union was rolling out capitalist reforms.
The Black Panther leaders toured the country during the tumultuous Cultural Revolution. Their journey included a meeting with China’s first premier, Zhou Enlai, to discuss the CCP’s support for Black American revolutionaries. Newton later revealed that he had been offered political asylum because he had been politically persecuted, had been released from prison on bail, and was facing a third trial upon his return. “But,” he wrote, “I told them I had to return, that my struggle is in the United States of America.”
With Mao openly demanding the complete emancipation of Black people and China’s material support for African liberation struggles, Chinese Communists already had a rich history of support for Black revolutionaries worldwide. In this way, the BPP became one of the first and most important organizations to synthesize Mao's ideas internationally. Huey Newton and Elaine Brown’s journey to China highlighted the power of solidarity among revolutionary forces.
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#BlackHistory #BlackPantherParty #BlackPanther
Thousands of people around the world have taken to the streets to mark International Safe Abortion Day.
Globally, an estimated 25 million unsafe abortions are performed each year, 45% of all abortions. Unsafe abortion is also responsible for up to 13% of maternal deaths.
While 97% of these unsafe abortions happen in the Global South, where access to legal and affordable abortion services is limited, the “September 28 Day of Action” campaign organizers note that: “Several European countries and increasingly the United States face fierce attacks by the opposition groups that wish to curtail women’s reproductive freedom by imposing legal and financial restrictions, projecting greater stigma and discrimination and further obstructing access to abortion care.”
The campaign was originally founded by women’s groups in Latin America and the Caribbean. September 28 was chosen to coincide with the abolition of slavery in Brazil. In 2011 it was established as a day of global solidarity for the right of women to have safe and legal abortions.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Y5kJlkIbQ5A
#InternationalSafeAbortionDay #SafeAbortionDay #Abortion
Did you know that NATO has been accused of covering up one of the worst peacetime ferry disasters in European history? 29 years ago today the MS Estonia car ferry sank in the Baltic Sea while crossing from Tallinn to Stockholm leading to the deaths of 852 people.
Shortly after 01:00 on 28 September 1994 a loud bang was heard. There are claims that this could have been a NATO submarine colliding with the ferry or explosives going off. Last year it was revealed that the Swedish military used the ferry to transport weapons.
At the time of the sinking a large NATO Naval exercise called Cooperative Venture 94 was just starting in the Norwegian Sea. There were also reports that the Mayday signals from the Estonia were being jammed.
None of the NATO ships in the area responded to the distress calls or helped with the rescue efforts. As a result, a third of those who had initially escaped died of hypothermia, and fewer than half of those who managed to leave the ship were rescued.
According to journalist Sven Anér, nine Estonian crew who survived the disaster disappeared without a trace. According to Anér, they were flown to Arlanda Airport near Stockholm and then flown to the US on a private jet. Anér argues this was a convenient way to remove witnesses.
Following the sinking it was reported that one of the ferry's captains Avo Piht had survived. However, German TV footage of him being interviewed in a hospital in Finland appears to have been confiscated by German intelligence. A Swedish pilot confirms that he rescued Piht.
Piht is deleted from a list of survivors and on October 7 Interpol issued a message looking for him but he appears to have vanished. Chief engineer Lembit Leiger and two twins Hannely & Hanka-Hannika Veide also disappeared.
In 1995 Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Denmark, and Russia signed a treaty declaring the site a grave and prohibiting further investigation. A 1997 investigation claimed that the disaster happened due to faulty bow door locks.
However, risking prosecution a Swedish documentary crew organized a dive to the ship. In their 2020 program, they revealed evidence that the ship had a 4-meter hole in the hull indicating it had been involved in a collision.
Along with carrying military weapons, there are also claims that the ship was used for counter-terrorism exercises including one the day before the disaster. Although Swedish authorities have claimed that there were no weapons aboard when the ship sank.
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#NATO #PsyOp #MSEstonia
On September 28, 2000, Palestine’s Second Intifada began. An estimated 4,228 Palestinians were killed during the uprising, according to the UN, with the most infamous massacre occurring in the Jenin refugee camp in 2002.
To mark this anniversary, red. Media spoke with Ali Al-Samoudi, a Palestinian journalist who lived through the uprising and reported from the ground on the 2002 Jenin camp invasion.
“Resistance remains [for the younger generation] a valid and compelling choice. Resistance manifests in diverse ways, ranging from peaceful marches protesting settlements to armed opposition to the occupation.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFU-m6ISyHA
#Palestine #Jenin #Israel
Today is the birthday of Bhagat Singh, a revolutionary socialist and a legend of India’s independence movement. He was born in 1907 and would later join the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association and took part in numerous armed actions against the British. The colonial authorities executed him in 1931 when he was just 23 years old.
Although he respected Gandhi’s role in organizing people to resist British rule, he also developed a critique of Gandhi’s methods and vision for a post-independence India. However, despite his atheism and Marxism, he’s still revered today by all sections of the country and is referred to as Shaheed-e-Azam (the Great Martyr) in Punjabi.
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#IndiaHistory #Communism #BhagatSingh
Happy birthday to the South African revolutionary and anti-apartheid activist Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, also known to many Black South Africans as the “Mother of the Nation”! Her ideological persistence showed when, even after the end of apartheid in South Africa, she continued to fight for her revolutionary ideals.
Winnie became one of the leading opponents of apartheid, which led to her being regularly detained, and spending months in solitary confinement while being tortured and beaten. Instead of being intimidated by her experiences, she later told a reporter: “I no longer have the feeling of fear, there is nothing more to fear.” Winnie later headed the African National Congress’s(ANC) Women’s League and struggled against the oppression of and for equal rights for women.
Winnie was always, foremost, a freedom fighter, not only the “wife of Nelson Mandela” she is often made out to be. Unlike the ANC leadership, she acknowledged that even though apartheid had ended in South Africa, the enormous inequality of distribution and, thus, the economic oppression of the impoverished masses remained.
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#BlackHistory #AfricanHistory #Apartheid
98-year-old Ukrainian Nazi veteran Yaroslav Hunka, who served with the Waffen SS during World War II, was praised in the Canadian parliament with a standing ovation by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Canadian PM Justin Trudeau.
Hunka was a member of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS which perpetrated multiple massacres against Polish civilians and was involved in anti-partisan operations as well as frontline combat against the Red Army during WWII. The Waffen SS was declared a criminal organization during the Nuremberg Trials.
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#Ukraine #WaffenSS #CanadianParliament
In the US, Cuba is portrayed as a backward Communist dictatorship hell-hole where people live in grinding poverty and infrastructure is falling apart. However, not only is this a distorted, inaccurate picture, but it ignores the numerous areas where Cuba does better than the US. One of them is providing its population with a home. While homelessness is soaring in the US, in Cuba it is effectively non-existent.
Homelessness in the US has risen by 11% this year to reach the highest level in 15 years since US authorities started collecting data.
In contrast, housing is considered a human right in Cuba, and rent is capped at 10% of family income. Following the Cuban Revolution in 1959, Fidel Castro introduced housing subsidies and state-owned homes to combat homelessness, almost eradicating it as a social problem. Today, thanks to government subsidies, around 90% of Cubans own their own home compared to about 65.9% in the US.
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#Cuba #CubanRevolution #Homelessness
Today marks the anniversary of the historic meeting of Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro and Black revolutionary Malcolm X in Harlem, New York, in 1960. The meeting was like no other, do you know why?
A year after the Cuban Revolution, Castro and his delegation arrived in New York to attend the UN General Assembly. However, the management of the Manhattan hotel where the delegation had made reservations refused to accommodate them, following pressure from the US government that had already convinced other hotels to reject the Cubans. Upon learning of their situation, Malcolm X invited them to come uptown to Harlem and stay at the Black-owned Hotel Theresa, where he assured them, they would be welcomed with open arms.
The people of Harlem warmly received the 34-year-old Cuban revolutionary leader, crowds gathering round-the-clock in front of the hotel. To them, Castro was the bearded revolutionary who had boldly defied white America, and his stay in Harlem symbolized the shared struggle of African Americans with the rest of the Third World against racism, colonialism, and imperialism.
Castro pointed out that Black people in the United States weren't as influenced by the government's anti-Cuban propaganda as white Americans. Castro also highlighted the progress in revolutionary Cuba to eliminate racial discrimination, emphasizing that Cubans, Africans, and Black Americans were all in the same struggle.
He said, "I feel as if I were in Cuba now. I feel very warm here." In response, Malcolm X acknowledged that it was indeed true that "We in Harlem are not addicted to all the propaganda the US government puts out." They then embraced, and Malcolm X noted, "As long as Uncle Sam is against you, you know you're a good man."
Happy #Caturday! (PLO, 1988).
Happy birthday to legendary Black Marxist author, revolutionary, and Black Panther George Jackson, who was born on this day in 1941! When serving a prison sentence in 1966, he became involved in revolutionary politics. He co-founded the prison organization known as the Black Guerrilla Family with W.L. Nolen, who introduced him to Marxism and Maoism. As Jackson said, “I met Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Engels, and Mao when I entered prison, and they redeemed me.” He also described himself as a “Marxist-Leninist-Maoist-Fanonist.”
Jackson increasingly spent more time in solitary confinement, studying political theory and writing letters to friends and supporters. These letters were eventually turned into two bestselling books, Soledad Brother, and Blood in My Eye, which made him famous amongst US and European leftist groups. Jackson also gained numerous admirers among fellow inmates from Black, white, and Latino backgrounds.
On 21 August 1971, Jackson was shot dead from a prison tower after he had been involved in a hostage-taking. Three days before his death, he rewrote his will, leaving all his royalties and control of his legal defense fund to the Black Panther Party. Read on to explore some of Jackson’s most powerful and evocative quotes.
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#BlackHistory #BlackPower #BlackGuerrillaFamily
Today marks Mali's Independence Day; the country gained independence in 1960 after nearly 60 years of French rule. Mali is one of the epicenters of the new wave of anti-French strife around the Sahel and once again overthrew a government with close ties to France in a coup in 2021.
Why is Africa being shaken by one coup after another? A look at the overlap between the coup-torn countries and France's colonial past on the continent quickly reveals a pattern.
Systematic underdevelopment through colonial occupation, as well as the continuous imperialist exploitation of Africa, has left an entire continent destabilized. Over 214 coup attempts or successful coups have occurred in Africa since 1950, a significant proportion of the 486 coups or coup attempts that have happened worldwide over the last 73 years, according to figures from Kentucky and Florida universities.
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#PanAfrican #DeColonize #AfricanHistory