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Author: Roger D. Harris

  • The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Calls for Escalating US Aggression against Russia

    The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists emerged after World War II as a voice for peace by some of the scientists who developed the then ultimate weapon of mass destruction. Now, its mission has drifted into being an echo chamber for the US imperial project urging President Biden to take even more destabilizing actions against Russia.

    Dropping the A-bombs

    By the time that the scientists at the top-secret Manhattan Project had developed the atomic bomb and the US military had worked out the logistics for deploying it, World War II was for all intents and purposes over. By early May 1945, Germany had unconditionally surrendered; in large part due to the efforts of the Red Army defeating the Nazi Wehrmacht, but at the horrific cost of 27,000,000 Soviet lives. The Japanese too had been defeated militarily and had agreed to “unconditional surrender” with the one caveat that Emperor Hirohito be spared.

    So, the world’s emerging hegemon had a problem. It had the ultimate weapon to impose its policy of world domination (i.e., today’s official US national security doctrine of global “full spectrum dominance”). But what good is this ultimate weapon if it is a secret? And, even if known, would the world believe that the US has the will to unleash such a destructive force?

    President Truman had the solution – nuke Japan. All the military targets in Japan had been destroyed, but an even stronger message of the US’s determination to enforce imperial hegemony was made by annihilating the civilian cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

    The Japanese promptly surrendered, offering up the life of their emperor. The US accepted, but did not execute the emperor, who was more useful alive than dead. Besides, the leniency gesture reinforced the message that the US would capriciously bomb at will. Even when President Obama visited Hiroshima in 2016, he pointedly offered “no apology” for the destruction his country had wrought.

    Dawn of the Cold War

    The quick Japanese surrender in August 1945 had another cause, which many modern historians consider more overriding than the US bombs. The Soviets, engaged with their western front, had remained neutral in the war with Japan, but had promised the Allies to join the war effort against Japan once the Germans were defeated. At the same time the US dropped the bombs, the USSR declared war with Japan causing Tokyo to capitulate.

    The dropping of the atomic bombs was the first salvo of the Cold War, signifying the end of the US wartime alliance of convenience with the Soviet Union. Truman’s rush to nuke Japan had the dual advantage of making known his “hammer” over the Kremlin as well as denying the USSR time to advance east and have a seat in the surrender agreement with Japan. The Soviets had not developed atomic weapons on the assumption – which proved to be essentially correct – that World War II would be over before they could be deployed to defeat the Axis powers.

    In the immediate post-war period, the Soviets and their allies were existentially threatened by the unambiguous intention of the US and its allies to destroy them. As a defensive measure, the Soviet Union had no choice but to develop a deterrent nuclear force, testing its first atomic bomb in 1949.

    Although the Soviets pledged to use their nuclear arsenal only in defense and renounced “first strike,” the US didn’t. Soon the Cold War arms race threatened the planet with destruction. The emergent construct of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) was a fragile arrangement for the future of humanity.

    Emergence of the Bulletin by scientists for peace

    Voices of peace arose from the very inventers of the atomic bomb. Immediately after the destructive power of the atom was rained on Japan and even before the Soviet Union developed their deterrent force, former Manhattan Project scientists Eugene Rabinowitch and Hyman Goldsmith founded the Educational Foundation for Nuclear Science, subsequently renamed the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

    Other notables associated with the Bulletin were nuclear physicist Hans Bethe, Soviet space scientist Anatoli Blagonravov, Jewish-German émigré and developer of quantum mechanics Max Born, physicist “father of the atomic bomb” turned anti-nuclear proliferation activist J. Robert Oppenheimer, British polymath peace activist Bertrand Russell, Soviet physicist Nikolay Semyonov, and Albert Einstein.

    The Bulletin’s Doomsday Clock, unveiled in 1947, was set at seven minutes to midnight. The clock was intended as an educational tool to serve “as a vivid symbol of these multiplying perils, its hands showing how close to extinction we are.”

    The Pugwash Conferences, an effort at peace in the early part of the Cold War, were an outgrowth of the Bulletin in its formative years in the 1950s.

    Mission drift at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

    Today, the risk of nuclear annihilation, not to mention global warming and other threats, has never been greater, according to the Bulletin’s Doomsday Clock. But the Bulletin has morphed from an advocate for peace and against other threats to humanity to something else.

    From an organization run by scientists, the current governing board of the Bulletin has hardly a scientist in sight. Its president and CEO is Rachel Bronson, a political scientist who came out of the US security establishment NGO world, including the Council on Foreign Relations (Wall Street’s think tank) and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (ranked the top military think tank in the world). Its chair, David Kuhlman, is a corporate consultant specializing in helping “clients identify pathways to profitable growth.” Its secretary, Steve Ramsey, formerly worked for defense contractor General Electric. Former Secretary of State and accused war criminal Madeleine Albright does promotionals for the Bulletin.

    The Bulletin maintains a liberal façade and still publishes articles that contribute to peace and environmentalism. In that way, its role in collusion with the US imperial project is insidious, because the patina of peace is used to legitimize its mission drift.

    Fanning the flames of anti-Chinese sentiment, the Bulletin promotes the conspiracy theory that the Chinese artificially developed COVID-19, featuring journalist Nicholas Wade’s “How COVID-19’s origins were obscured, by the East and the West.” However, scientific evidence points to natural origins of the virus. Anti-Russian sentiment is promoted with journalist Matt Field’s “Russian media spreading disinformation about US bioweapons as troops mass near Ukraine.” Where are the scientists advocating for peace?

    The Bulletin covers the Ukraine crisis

    Another case in point of its devolution is the article “How to mix sanctions and diplomacy to avert disaster in Ukraine,” published in the Bulletin on February 1. The article advocates for sanctions that would “severely and quickly devastate Russia’s powerful energy export sector.” Echoing Washington’s talking points, the article couches its recommendations as responding to Russian aggression but actually proposes nothing to de-escalate the conflict.

    It is beyond ironic that an organization that purports to be warning against the dangers of nuclear holocaust is making a full-throated defense of an even more aggressive posture by one of the world’s leading nuclear powers.

    Yes, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist’s Doomsday Clock is now 100 seconds to midnight, and they are trying to push it closer to Armageddon.

    The view of the Bulletin’s Ukraine article is that the current crisis is Putin’s “own making.” In contrast, the article explains that the US has diplomatically “initiated” talks with Russia. There is no mention of the forward deployment of US troops or sending lethal aid to Ukraine. There is no recognition of aggressive actions by NATO such as stationing assault ABM missile systems in Romania and possibly Poland. Off limits is allusion to the US shredding the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

    Hidden from sight in the aforementioned article and another published the same day on “How the demise of an arms control treaty foreshadowed Russia’s aggression against Ukraine” is the US-orchestrated Ukraine coup in 2014 that installed an anti-Russian regime there. The latter article’s meticulously detailed history of the region notes “Moscow invaded and annexed the Ukrainian territory of Crimea,” but not the coup that precipitated it.

    Reasonable peace proposals

    There is not a word in these articles of how some of the Russian initiatives might prevent hostilities and make the region more secure with a reduced likelihood of war. And certainly, there is none of the following reasonable peace proposals:

    +Russia and the US shall not use the territory of other countries to prepare or conduct attacks against the other.

    +Neither party shall deploy short- or intermediate-range missiles abroad or in areas where these weapons could reach targets inside the other’s territory.

    +Neither party shall deploy nuclear weapons abroad, and any such weapons already deployed must be returned.

    +Both parties shall eliminate any infrastructure for deploying nuclear weapons outside their own territories.

    +Neither party shall conduct military exercises with scenarios involving the use of nuclear weapons.

    +Neither party shall train military or civilian personnel from non-nuclear countries to use nuclear weapons.

    The above peace measures are what in fact Russia proposed, but are considered “non-starters” by the US and presumably by the Bulletin.

    Citing the Atlantic Council, the US-based think tank for NATO, the Bulletin explains that the sanctions that they are advocating would cause the Russian economy to “experience significant chaos.” These sanctions that the Bulletin calls for are a form of warfare just as deadly as dropping bombs. Sanctions kill! Instead of supporting peaceful measures to reduce tensions in the Ukraine, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has become a cheerleader for Washington.

    The post The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Calls for Escalating US Aggression against Russia first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Seven Myths about the January 6th Capitol Building Incident

    After over a year of incessant publicity, the Capitol building incident of January 6, 2021, has taken on mythic proportions. While all myths are prone to hyperbole, not all are entirely false as the following accounting relates.

    1.  January 6 was an attempted coup

    According to Noam Chomsky: “That it was an attempted coup is not in question,” likening the incident to Hitler’s failed Beer Hall Putsch of 1923. However, after storming the Capitol building and taking selfies, the demonstrators simply left after a few hours. Their attempt to influence the electoral process by disruption did not and could not have led to the seizure of state power.

    Journalist Glenn Greenwald points out, “after a full year of a Democrat-led DOJ [Department of Justice] conducting what is heralded as ‘the most expansive federal law enforcement investigation in US history’ [no rioters] have been charged with inciting insurrection, sedition, treason or conspiracy to overthrow the government.”

    Then on January 13, eleven were charged with “seditious conspiracy,” which according to the New York Times is difficult to prove. This raises the embarrassing question for the government of how could some two thousand people conspire in broad daylight to stage an insurrection and the FBI and other agencies didn’t know about it until after the fact.

    Greenwald continues, “the Department of Homeland Security issued at least six separate ‘heightened threat’ warnings last year, not a single one of which materialized. There were no violent protests in Washington, D.C. or in state capitols on Inauguration Day; no violent protests materialized the week after Biden’s inauguration…Each time such a warning was issued, cable outlets and liberal newspapers breathlessly reported them, ensuring fear levels remained high.”

    What did happen is that a sitting president unprecedently called for a march on the Capitol to contest an election, signifying a breakdown of bourgeois political norms. Quite unlike Al Gore, who took a hit for elite political stability rather than contest the 2000 presidential election, Trump flagrantly broke the rules of orderly succession.

    2.  January 6 ranks with Pearl Harbor and the terrorist attacks of 9/11

    Vice President Kamala Harris (no relation to this author) solemnly proclaimed: “Certain dates echo throughout history…when our democracy came under assault…December 7th, 1941. September 11th, 2001. And January 6th, 2021.”

    According to the US Senate report, seven fatalities are attributed to 1/6: one person was fatally shot by police, one succumbed to an overdose of amphetamine, and two others died of natural causes; all were Trump supporters. In the days that followed, Officer Brian Sicknick “died of natural causes” according to the coroner’s report, contrary to false news that his passing was due to injuries on 1/6. Two other police officers died of suicide.

    In contrast, 2,390 perished in Pearl Harbor; 2,977 in 9/11.  The former marked the beginning of active US military engagement in World War II, which took an estimated 70–85 million people. The latter sparked the “War on Terror,” claiming an estimated 1.3 to 2 million casualties.

    3. Trump and his supporters are ignorant

    Some suppose Trump and his supporters get by on crude cunning and animal instinct. An unfortunately pervasive left-liberal trope is that people who see the world differently from them must be “militantly ignorant,” otherwise they too would be Democrats. The self-faltering conceit is that if some half of the voting public, the “basket of deplorables,” were better educated, they would have better politics. Little wonder that Trump can play to the justified resentment to this class chauvinism.

    4.  Republican Party is the most dangerous organization in human history and the world has never seen an organization more profoundly committed to destroying planet earth

    Noam Chomsky, citing 1/6, made the above claim, which is partially true. The Republican Party is part of the bad cop/good cop dyad, which is the political leadership of the US empire. And that empire is the greatest threat ever to humanity. But focusing all the animus of one component of the ruling duopoly tends to render the duopoly itself – that is, the two-party system of capitalist rule – invisible. Demonizing the bad cop does not eliminate the system, but only renders the presumptive “lesser evil” more cosmetically acceptable.

    How different are the Republicans from the Democrats? Perceptions of reality are mediated by perspective. For instance, very small and near objects such as a house fly appear to be moving very fast. Very large and distant objects like the stars appear to be moving not all. The physical reality is the opposite. Likewise, the differences between the Republicans and the Democrats appear great or not much at all depending on one’s class and historical perspective.

    From an historical perspective, the affinities between Obama and Reagan are greater than between, say, the neoliberal Obama and New Deal LBJ. For a true-blue Democratic Party partisan, the chasm separating the parties is huge. For the Venezuelan whose cancer medications are blocked by the bipartisan US sanctions, the differences are imperceptible.

    After the Democrats lost the presidency in 2016 to as repugnant a figure as Donald Trump, they conjured up the alibi of Russian interference in the election and milked that for four years. Now the Democrats can no longer plausibly claim that Vladimir Putin is pulling strings in the White House. So, the January 6th incident has become the ruse of convenience for retaining the presidency and congressional majorities without offending their donors by doing anything significant for their voter base. As candidate Joe Biden assured his wealthy supporters, “nothing would fundamentally change” if he’s elected.

    5.  White supremacy is on the rise

    Part of the perception of growing white supremacy is a commendable increased awareness and reporting of this national blight and a growing movement in opposition. A KKK bombing in the late 1960s of an Historically Black College in Mississippi where I was a junior faculty did not even get into the news. Earlier this month, seven Historically Black Colleges received bomb threats and that made national headlines. The successes of anti-racist efforts like the Black Lives Matter movement, which mounted the largest mass demonstrations in US history, should be recognized.

    It also should be recognized that white supremacy didn’t originate with Trump, nor will it end with his departure, but is deeply embedded in the national DNA. Ask a Native American, whose ancestral lands were expropriated by the European settlers as part of a brutal process of displacement and extermination. Ask an African American, whose forrbearers were brought here as chattel slaves and upon whose labor much of the wealth of the nation was accumulated. Ask a Japanese American about the internment of the West Coast Japanese, which was the project of the arguably most liberal president in US history.

    As Ajamu Baraka of the Black Alliance for Peace comments: “Fascism is nothing new for us, a colonized people, people who have been enslaved. It has typically been called fascism only when white people do certain things to other white people.”

    Listen carefully to “our” national anthem, which celebrates: “No refuge could save the hireling and slave, from the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave, and the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave, o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

    6.  What is happening today is the same as Germany in the 1930s with Trump as the new Hitler

    Analogies of Trump to Hitler can be misleading. While material conditions for many Americans are distressing, they are not as dire as Weimar Germany, following its economic collapse. Nor do the Proud Boys and company approximate the hundreds of thousands of trained and armed paramilitaries under Hitler’s direct command. Most important, the mass working class Communist and Socialist parties in Weimar Germany were positioned to contend for state power, while trade unions and third parties challenging bourgeoise rule are in decline in the US today.

    Under fascism, the capitalist class voluntarily cedes a degree of economic decision making to a dictatorial state in exchange for guarantees of public order and promises to keep their profits. As long as any serious challenge to their power is absent, the US ruling elites have little incentive to resort to such measures.

    The charges that Trump is “power hungry” are likely true, though that does not necessarily distinguish him from other politicians. But the force of even his big ego is insufficient to win over a sufficient faction of the bourgeoisie to support a fascist dictatorship when the theatrics of the two-party system are working so well for their interests and billionaire fortunes are skyrocketing.

    But that does not mean that they need not prepare for the contingency of fascist rule, which is where the present danger resides. January 6 is being used to justify further expansion of the security state, which has and will continue to be used against the left.

    7.  January 6 is symptomatic of a body politic polarized as never before

    Polarization is the meta myth that overarches all others. According to a Pew poll, “Republicans and Democrats are more divided along ideological lines – and partisan antipathy is deeper and more extensive – than at any point in the last two decades.” This dysfunctional disintegration takes place in the context of a body politic lurching to the right. One side of the political duopoly blocks progressive change; the other uses the excuse of the blockage for failing to make progressive change.

    The palpable polarization of the Republican-Democratic hostilities serves as a distraction from the bedrock elite consensus on matters of state (i.e., which class rules) and economics (i.e., which class benefits).

    The smoke of the wrangling over the minutia of Build Back Better obfuscates the fact that a world record “defense” budget, greater than even the Pentagon requested, passed in a heartbeat. The squabble over masking distracts from the failure of the world’s richest nation to provide universal health care in a time of pandemic. The issues that truly affect the future of humanity – militarization and global warming – are obscured in the fog of cultural wars that divide working people. Meanwhile state security and surveillance measures become more pervasive, with the nominally more liberal party of the ruling class championing the FBI, CIA, and NSA.

    There are fault lines of class and fault lines of partisan politics. For now, those fault lines do not coincide. The narrow positing of the threat of the right around what happened on January 6 omits the larger issues of militarism, the surveillance state, welfare for the corporations, and austerity for working people. On these fundamental issues and despite sharp contention on other issues, there is a fundamental consensus between the ruling Republican and Democratic leadership.

    The post Seven Myths about the January 6th Capitol Building Incident first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • 2021 Latin America and the Caribbean in Review: The Pink Tide Rises Again

    US policy towards Latin America and the Caribbean continued in a seamless transition from Trump to Biden, but the terrain over which it operated shifted left. The balance between the US drive to dominate its “backyard” and its counterpart, the Bolivarian cause of regional independence and integration, continued to tip portside in 2021 with major popular electoral victories in Chile, Honduras, and Peru. These follow the previous year’s reversal of the coup in Bolivia.

    Central has been the struggle of the ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America) countries – particularly Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua – against the asphyxiating US blockade and other regime-change measures. Presidential candidate Biden pledged to review Trump’s policy of US sanctions against a third of humanity. The presumptive intention of the review was to ameliorate the human suffering caused by these unilateral coercive measures, considered illegal under international law. Following the review, Biden has instead tightened the screws, more effectively weaponizing the COVID crisis.

    Andean Nations

    The unrelenting US regime-change campaign against Venezuela has had a corrosive effect on Venezuela’s attempt to build socialism. With the economy de facto dollarized, among those hardest hit are government workers, the informal sector, and those without access to dollar remittances from abroad.

    Nonetheless, Venezuela’s resistance to the continued US “maximum pressure” hybrid warfare is a triumph in itself. Recent economic indicators have shown an upturn with significant growth in national food and oil production and an end to hyperinflation. Further, the government has built 3.7 million housing units, distributed food to 7 million through the CLAP program, and adroitly handled the COVID pandemic.

    When Trump recognized Juan Guaidó as president of Venezuela in 2019, the then 35-year-old US security asset had never run for a nationwide office and was unknown to over 80% of the Venezuelans. Back then some 50 of the US’s closest allies recognized Guaidó; now barely a dozen does so. Contrary to campaign trail inuendoes that Biden would enter into dialogue with the democratically elected president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, Biden has continued the embarrassing Guaidó charade.

    The November 21 municipal and regional elections were a double triumph for Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution: the ruling Socialist Party (PSUV) won significantly while the extreme right opposition (including Guaidó’s party) was compelled to participate, implicitly recognizing the Maduro government.

    Venezuelan special envoy Alex Saab was extradited – really kidnapped – to the US on October 16 on the vague and difficult to disprove charge of “conspiracy” to money launder. Swiss authorities, after an exhaustive 3-year investigation, had found no evidence of money laundering. Saab’s real “crime” was trying to bring humanitarian aid to Venezuela via legal international trade but circumventing the illegal US blockade. This egregious example of US extra-territorial judicial overreach is being contested by Saab’s legal defense because, as a diplomat, he has absolute immunity from arrest under the Vienna Convention. His case has become a major cause in Venezuela and internationally.

    Meanwhile, Colombia, chief regional US client state, the biggest recipient of US military aid in the hemisphere,  and the largest world source of cocaine, is a staging point for paramilitary attacks on Venezuela. President Iván Duque continues to disregard the 2016 peace agreement with the guerrilla FARC as Colombia endures a pandemic of rightwing violence especially against human rights defenders and former guerillas.

    On April 28, Duque’s proposed neoliberal tax bill precipitated a national strike mobilizing a broad coalition of unions, members of indigenous and Afro-descendent communities, social activists, and campesinos. They carried out sustained actions across the country for nearly two months, followed by a renewed national strike wave, starting on August 26. The approaching 2022 presidential election could portend a sea change for the popular movement where leftist Senator Gustavo Petro is leading in the polls.

    In Ecuador, Andrés Arauz won the first-round presidential election on February 7 with a 13-point lead over Guillermo Lasso, but short of the 40% or more needed to avoid the April 13 runoff, which he lost. A victim of a massive disinformation campaign, Arauz was a successor of former President Rafael Correa’s leftist Citizen Revolution, which still holds the largest bloc in the National Assembly. The “NGO left,” funded by the US and its European allies, contributed to the electoral reversal. Elements of the indigenous Pachakutik party have allied with the new president, a wealthy banker, to implement a neo-liberal agenda.

    In Peru, Pedro Castillo, a rural school teacher and a Marxist, won the presidency in a June 6 runoff against hard-right Keiko Fujimori, daughter of now imprisoned and former president Alberto Fujimori. Castillo won by the slimmest of margins and now faces rightwing lawfare and the possibility of a coup. Just a few weeks into his presidency, he was forced to replace his leftist foreign Minister, Hector Béjar, with someone more favorable to the rightwing opposition and the military.

    In Bolivia, a US-backed coup deposed leftist President Evo Morales in 2019 and temporarily installed a rightist. Evo’s Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) party successor, Luis Arce, took back the presidency last year in a landslide election. With the rightwing still threatening, a massive weeklong March for the Homeland of Bolivian workers, campesinos, and indigenous rallied in support of the government in late November.

    Southern Cone

    Brazil has the world’s eighth largest economy world and the largest in Latin America. Rightwing President Jair Bolsonaro has been dismantling social welfare measures, rewarding multinational corporations, and presiding over wholesale illegal mining and deforestation, while the popular sectors protest. Former left leaning President Lula da Silva is strongly favored to win in the October 2, 2022 elections. He was also favored to win in the 2018 presidential election against Bolsonaro but was imprisoned on trumped up charges, preventing him from running.

    In Chile, Gabriel Boric won the second round of the Chilean presidential election by a landslide on December 19 against far-right José Antonio Kast, the son of a German Nazi Party member. The 35-year-old Boric was a leader in the huge protests in 2019 and 2020 against corrupt President Sebastian Piñera, who is the richest person in the country. The slogan of the protests was: “If Chile was the birthplace of neoliberalism, then it will also be its graveyard!”

    Although the victory is a repudiation of the Pinochet legacy, Boric has also been somewhat critical of Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba. Boric’s libertarian socialist Frente Amplio party rode to victory with major support from the Chilean Communist Party along with center-left forces. Earlier in the year, in a plebiscite to forge a united popular campaign, Communist Daniel Jadue lost to Boric. A Constituent Assembly, where the left won the majority of the delegates in a May election, is currently rewriting the Pinochet-era constitution.

    In Argentina, the center-right Together for Change coalition decisively swept the November 13 midterm elections, rebuking the Peronists who have been unable to effectively address high unemployment and inflation.  In 2019, the center-left Peronist Alberto Fernández succeeded rightwing President Mauricio Macri, whose record breaking $50.1 billion IMF loan saddled the people with austerity measures. Prospects are now dim for restructuring of the debt or suspending payments with an opposition majority more intent on discrediting Fernández than addressing the issues.

    Caribbean

    Candidate Biden had signaled a return to the Obama-Biden easing of restrictions on Cuba. But once in office, Biden intensified the US hybrid war against Cuba. Discontent with critically deteriorating economic conditions erupted in popular demonstrations on July 11, fanned by the US-funded opposition. A repeat effort at a regime-change demonstrations, largely orchestrated by Washington, fizzled on November 15. Biden continues the same illegal policy of regime change against Cuba  as that of the previous twelve US presidents: covert and overt destabilization, blockade, and occupation of Guantánamo.

    Despite an economy severely impacted by the pandemic and the tightening of US blockade, Cuba has produced three COVID vaccines with two more in development. More than 90% percent of Cubans are vaccinated, surpassing the US.

    In Haiti, a 7.2 magnitude earthquake hit on August 14. Another upheaval has been the nearly continuous popular revolt against US-installed presidents. President Jovenal Moïse, who had ruled by decree after cancelling elections, was assassinated on July 7 in an apparent intra-ruling class squabble. Claude Joseph was installed as interim president for a few days and then replaced by Ariel Henry, with elections still postponed.

    Biden deported thousands of emigres back to Haiti. This represented “a disappointing step backward from the Biden administration’s earlier commitments to fully break from the harmful deportation policies of both the Trump and Obama presidencies,” according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

    Central America and Mexico

    In El Salvador, President Nayib Bukele, formerly associated with the left FMLN party, continued his regression to the right. In response, the Popular Resistance Bloc and other civil society groups staged large protests on September 15 and October 17.

    In Honduras, Xiomara Castro, wife of the former President Zelaya, was swept into the presidency by a landslide popular vote on November 28. The slogan of the now triumphant resistance front was: “They fear us because we have no fear.”

    In the twelve years since the US-backed coup overthrew the democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya, the country had devolved into a state where the former president, Juan Orlando Hernández, was an unindicted drug smuggler, the intellectual authors who ordered the assassination of indigenous environmental leader Berta Cáceres ran free, Afro-descendent people and women were murdered with impunity, gang violence was widespread, and state protection from the pandemic was grossly deficient.

    In neighboring Nicaragua, the US called the November 7 presidential election an undemocratic fraud nearly a year in advance as part of a larger regime-change campaign against left-leaning governments. The US claimed that “pre-candidates” were barred from running. However, these individuals had been arrested for illegal activities and were not credible candidates.

    In fact, the US has never supported democracy in Nicaragua. US Marines occupied Nicaragua from 1912 to 1934, only leaving after installing the autocratic Somoza dynasty to do their bidding. When the Sandinistas ousted the dictatorship in 1979, the US launched the Contra War. After fomenting an unsuccessful coup in 2018, the US NICA Act then imposed sanctions. This was followed in 2020 by the RAIN plan, a multi-faceted coup strategy.

    Disregarding Washington’s call to boycott, a respectable 65% of the Nicaraguan electorate went to the polls and 76% of the voters re-elected Sandinista President Daniel Ortega. The Sandinista’s landslide victory was a testament to their success in serving Nicaragua’s poor and a repudiation of the 2018 coup attempt. Immediately after the election, the US RENACER Act imposed new illegal sanctions.

    In Mexico, the June 6 midterm elections pitted the ruling MORENA coalition against the traditional parties (PAN, PRI, PRD), chambers of commerce, and the US embassy. NGOs funded by USAID and NED supported the opposition, whose talking points were echoed by the Economist and the Nation. While MORENA retained is majority in Congress and two-thirds of the governors in the midterms, they suffered setbacks in Mexico City, their traditional stronghold.

    Mexico is a critically important state as the second largest economy in Latin America, the eleventh in the world, and the US’s top trade partner. After decades of rightwing rule, left-of-center Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) and his new MORENA party have been in office for three years. Early on, AMOL earned the enmity of the US, when he proclaimed: “The global economic crisis has revealed the failure of the neoliberal model…The State should assume responsibility to lead development without foreign interference” (meaning the US).

    AMLO has predictably experienced pushback from traditional elites in Mexico and from the US, particularly in his attempts to reverse the privatization of the energy sector. The Zapatistas and some leftists oppose AMLO and his national development projects, especially the Mayan train. They accuse the government of supporting violence against indigenous communities in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas.

    Prospects for the New Year

    Independence from the hegemon to the north, regional integration, and international cooperative relations are on the agenda for the new year.

    China is now the second largest investor in Latin America and the Caribbean, which “reduce[s] US dominance” according to the US Congressional Research Service. Economic cooperation with China and to a lesser extent with Russia and Iran have been a lifeline for countries like Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua under regime-change siege by the US. In late December, Nicaragua broke relations with Taiwan and normalized them with the People’s Republic of China. The new government in Honduras has indicated they may soon follow suit. China intends to invest over $250 billion in the region, providing an alternative to dependence on Yankee capital for national development “south of the border.” If the inter-ocean canal project with Chinese backing in Nicaragua were resuscitated, it would be a geopolitical game-changer.

    The anti-Venezuela “Lima Group,” a US-Canada initiative, is now moribund with defections of key countries. Likewise, the Washington-based Organization of American States (OAS) is an increasingly discredited tool of US imperialism as evidenced by its complicity in the Bolivian coup. Cuba and Venezuela are not members of the OAS, and Nicaragua recently announced its withdrawal.

    The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) includes all the hemisphere except the US and Canada. CELAC is being revived as an independent regional alternative by Mexican President López Obrador and others.

    2022 promises continued left advances with favorable prospects for the Colombian and Brazilian presidential elections in May and October respectively. Overall, the pink tide is again rising with some 14 countries on the left side of the ledger and the revolt against neoliberalism intensifying from Haiti to Paraguay.

    The post 2021 Latin America and the Caribbean in Review: The Pink Tide Rises Again first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Trump Thinks He’s Still President: What Is the Evidence?

    Donald Trump thinks he’s still president according to no more reliable a source than Rachel Maddow on her February 5th show. This was confirmed in May by Vanity Fair.  Right-wing conspiracy theorists echo this analysis as recently as this month. Left-liberals are smugly confident that Kamala Harris’s running mate is in the White House, snoozing in the presidential bedroom. Inquiring minds ask what is the evidence nearly a year into the alleged Biden presidency that there has been a change of guard in Washington?

    +The Obama-Biden union card check proposal was not on Mr. Trump’s political horizon, nor is it on that of the current occupant in the White House.

    +The current occupant is ramping up Trump’s unhinged Sino-phobic hallucinations, sanctioning 34 Chinese entities for development of “brain-control weaponry.” Not that the Chinese have been angels. In an egregious suppression of freedom of information, the inscrutable Orientals have made it more difficult for US spies to operate in their country.

    +The current occupant nominally withdrew US troops from Afghanistan as negotiated by Mr. Trump, presumably reducing overall military costs. Yet, he continues the Trump-trajectory of lavishing billions of dollars more on the military than even the Pentagon requests.

    +Given his priority to feed the war machine, the new occupant is having a hard time finding sufficient funds for Biden-promised student debt forgiveness. Ditto for making two years of community college tuition-free.

    + President Trump slashed the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%; candidate Biden vowed to raise it to 28%; the current occupant proposed a further cut to 15%.

    Biden, while campaigning in 2019, pledged to wealthy donors that “nothing would fundamentally change” if he’s elected. And nothing has changed despite recent drama in the Senate over Build Back Better. Trump’s $4.5 trillion corporate-investor tax cut still appears secure.

    +Raising the federal minimum wage to $15-an-hour from $7.25, where it has languished since 2009, was a big selling point for the Biden campaign. Now it is on hold, while billionaire fortunes balloon, leaving the working class broke but woke under the current administration.

    +The Obama-Biden nuclear deal with Iran was gutted by Trump. The current occupant, contrary to Biden’s campaign utterances, has not returned to the conditions of the JCPOA. Rather, he has continued Trump’s “maximum pressure” policy against Iran.

    +Candidate Biden, calling for a foreign policy based on diplomacy, criticized Trump’s dangerous and erratic war mongering. Yet only a month after his inauguration, the new president capriciously bombed “Iranian-backed militias” in Syria who were fighting ISIS terrorists and posed no threat to the US.

    The new president went on to authorize further “air strikes” on “targets” around the world such as Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Now, the undiscriminating reader might think these are acts of war. But war, according to the “rules-based order” of the new occupant, is best understood as a conflict where US lives are lost rather than those of seemingly more expendable swarthy-skinned foreigners.

    +The Obama-Biden normalization of relations with Cuba and easing of restrictions were reversed by Trump. Presidential candidate Biden had signaled a return, but the current occupant has instead intensified the US hybrid war against Cuba.

    +Candidate Biden pledged to review Trump’s policy of US sanctions against a third of humanity. The presumptive intention of the review was to ameliorate the human suffering caused by these unilateral coercive measures. Sanctions are a form of collective punishment considered illegal under international law. Following the review, the current occupant has instead tightened the screws, more effectively weaponizing the COVID crisis against countries such as Nicaragua, Cuba, and Venezuela, while adding Ethiopia and Cambodia to the growing list of those sanctioned.

    +Among Trump’s most ridiculous foreign policy stunts (and it’s a competitive field) was the recognition of Juan Guaidó as president of Venezuela in 2019. The then 35-year-old US security asset had never run for a nationwide office and was unknown to over 80% of the Venezuelans. Contrary to campaign trail inuendoes that Biden would dialogue with the democratically elected president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, the new guy in the White House has continued the embarrassing Guaidó charade.

    +The current White House occupant has also continued and expanded on some of the worse anti-immigrant policies of the xenophobe who preceded him. Asylum seekers from Haiti and Central America – fleeing conditions in large part created by US interventions in their countries – have been sent packing. Within a month of assuming the presidency, migrant detention facilities for children were employed, contradicting statements made by candidate Biden who had deplored locking kids in cages.

    +President Trump was a shameless global warming denier. Candidate Biden was a refreshing true believer, boldly calling for a ban on new oil and natural gas leasing on public land and water. But whoever is now in the Oval Office opened more than 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico for fossil fuel drilling.

    Perhaps the strongest evidence that Trump is practically still in office is the political practice of his left-liberal detractors who solemnly promised to “first dump Trump, then battle Biden.” However, these left-liberals are still obsessing about dumping Trump. Instead of battling Biden, they are fanning the dying embers of the fear of another January 6 insurrection, giving the Democrats a pass.

    Of course, the Democrats occupy the executive branch along with holding majorities and both houses of Congress. Yet, despite campaign pledges and spin, the continuity from one administration to the next is overarching as the preceding quick review documented.

    The partisan infighting theatrics of the “dysfunctional Congress” is in part a distraction from an underlying bedrock bipartisan consensus. Congress is dysfunctional by design on matters of social welfare for working Americans. It is ruthlessly functional for matters of concern for the ruling elites, such as the military spending, bank bailouts, corporate welfare, and an expansive surveillance state.

    The Democrats offer an empty “we are not Trump” alternative. The bankrupt left-liberals no longer stand for substantial improvements to the living conditions of working people, a “peace dividend,” or respite from war without end. Instead, they use the scare tactic that they are the bulwark against a right popular insurgency; an insurgency fueled in the first place by the failure of the two-party system to speak to the material needs of its constituents.

    The post Trump Thinks He’s Still President: What Is the Evidence? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Nicaragua Has a Public Relations Problem, Not a Democracy Problem

    US President Joe Biden hectored Nicaragua about their November 7 elections accusing them of “a pantomime election that was neither free nor fair, and most certainly not democratic.” Three days earlier, the US lavished a $650mil arms deal on Saudi Arabia, a monarchy where they don’t even pretend to have elections for higher office. Clearly more than democracy is at issue with the US offensive against Nicaragua.

    At issue is what Biden described as “the arbitrary imprisonment of nearly 40 opposition figures since May, including seven potential presidential candidates.” An objective investigation reveals: (1) the motivation for the arrests had nothing to do with the election and (2) the effects of the arrests had no impact on the election.

    The US government, along with its political allies and corporate media, have spun the arrests into a public relations nightmare for the ruling Sandinista government of President Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. The arrests are being used as a pretext for a concerted operation to delegitimize the genuinely democratic elections of a government seeking to be independent of Washington. This is part of a larger regime-change campaign against the left-leaning governments of Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua; what former US National Security Adviser John Bolton called the “Troika of Tyranny.”

    The seven presidential “pre-candidates”

    The corporate press, hostile to the elected Nicaraguan government, dubbed seven of those arrested as “pre-candidates.” However, none of them were associated with the ballot-qualified political parties in Nicaragua, and not one of them had a popular following outside the Washington Beltway. In short, they were not seriously running for presidential office and, if they had been, none would have mounted a serious challenge to the ruling Sandinistas.

    Even if the “pre-candidates” were legitimate presidential hopefuls, the fact that there were seven of them demonstrates that the US was unable to unify the opposition around a single candidate. Had the seven “hopefuls” run, they would have further split the opposition vote. The notion that the Sandinistas arrested the seven to ensure they would win is a fiction.

    The violent opposition has been in disarray ever since their 2018 coup attempt fizzled and a tidal wave of public opinion turned against them. The US had spent tens of millions of dollars generating the opposition but was unable to get the fractious parties to coordinate amongst themselves.

    Nicaragua’s electoral oversight body, the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE), is an independent branch of the government. Both Sandinista and opposition party representatives are on it. Rather than suppressing the opposition, the CSE extended the deadline for parties to register to run in the November elections to encourage a diversity of voter choices. However, one far-right grouping, headed by a former Somoza general, did not get their paperwork in order on time and was therefore not certified.

    The seven “presidential hopefuls” plus 30 others were arrested for another reason. Following the 2018 coup attempt, Nicaragua passed two laws that criminalized promoting foreign interference in Nicaragua’s internal affairs, seeking foreign military intervention, organizing acts of terrorism, and promoting coercive economic measures against their country. They were arrested for these illegal activities; activities, it should be noted, that are similarly prohibited by the US’s own FARA Act, after which the Nicaraguan laws were modeled.

    US has never supported democracy in Nicaragua

    Biden castigated Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega for being “no different from the Somoza family.” Perhaps Biden forgot that the US installed and supported the Somoza dictatorship, while the US regime-change campaign is trying to do exactly the opposite with the current Sandinista leadership.

    If Daniel Ortega were truly “no different from the Somoza family,” the US would be supporting the Nicaraguan government rather than trying to overthrow it. In fact, an examination of the historical record indicates that the US has never supported democracy in Nicaragua.

    The US Marines landed in 1912 and occupied the Central American country on and off until the Somoza dynasty dictatorship replaced direct US control. When the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) overthrew the dictator in 1979, the US resurrected remnants of Anastasio Somoza’s national guard, the contras, that brutally terrorized the fledgling republic.

    To this day, the US has opposed the Sandinistas. Empires like that of the US do not support democratic self-determination of vassal states. Dating back to the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, Latin America and the Caribbean are regarded as the empire’s “backyard.”

    Popularity of the Sandinistas

    Biden carped that the democratically elected Nicaraguan leadership is “long unpopular.” However, Biden’s own plunging approval rating of 42.8% isn’t anything to envy. In contrast, a reliable pre-election poll indicated 73.1% approval for President Ortega. More to the point, the popularity of a country’s politicians is an internal matter and not the business of the US.

    It is noteworthy to understand why the current Nicaraguan “regime” enjoys considerable popular support. Fundamental to this understanding is a long and concerted history of grassroots organizing by the Sandinistas. They led a successful revolution and today continue deep organizing in poor urban barrios and rural areas, especially among the youth, Indigenous and Afro-descendent Nicaraguans, and women.

    Second, the “regime” enjoys popularity beyond the Sandinista base as an embodiment of national sovereignty, unity, and peace in reaction to the long and lamentable history of US intervention. This is especially the case after the US-instigated coup attempt of 2018. Although this is anecdotal, just about everyone I spoke to in Nicaragua had a horror story of the recent violence.

    More than other elections, this November 7th sparked celebrations lasting through the night and into the early morning on the streets of popular neighborhoods throughout the country.  It marked, in the popular consciousness, an official “end to the terrible nightmare and the return to a peaceful process of nation building,” in the words of Abigail Espinosa, a small farmer from Masaya.

    Third, the “regime” has achieved so much with few resources. As Nan McCurdy, a United Methodist missionary who lived in Nicaragua for over 30 years, reports:

    Since 2007 [when the Sandinistas returned to power] poverty has been cut in half, maternal mortality has dropped by 70%, infant mortality by 61% with a 66% reduction in chronic malnutrition in children 6 to 12 years old. With a high percentage of small and medium-scale farmers and much government investment in training and loans, they have achieved 90% food sufficiency.

    Given this record, the current Sandinista election victory by a 76% margin, following 72.5% in 2016, 62% in 2011, and 38% in 2006 are indications of growing popular support and not of dictatorship.

    The parallel reality of follow-the-flag journalists

    The corporate press has been savage in its treatment of Nicaragua, echoing and embellishing the distortions of the US State Department. If Nicaragua is indeed “a slow-motion horror movie” or “a hell,” as described by the follow-the-flag journalists, at least the sinners have universal free education and health care. What these State Department scribes fail to ask is, if the second poorest country in the hemisphere can afford these social welfare measures – really human rights – why can’t the richest?

    It was striking how much the corporate press accounts of the election differed from what happened on the ground in Nicaragua. The Times, gleefully spun: “The streets of the capital, Managua, were also quiet, with little to show that a significant election was underway.” That is, the newspaper of record failed to acknowledge that the election was proceeding peacefully, and the usual Sunday afternoon calm prevailed. But the literally hundreds of thousands of celebrants spontaneously taking to the streets in Nicaragua after the polls closed got no coverage. Meanwhile the corporate press reveled about a few contras demonstrating in Costa Rica.

    Yes, as the New York Times reported, the government “banned large campaign events.” The ban, which applied to all political parties, was due to the COVID emergency and not to suppress political expression. No, as the Times implied, “the only candidate is Daniel Ortega.” Six candidates stood for the presidency.

    After its initial report, the Times had to retract their falsehood – they called it an imprecision – that there were only Sandinista party campaign advertisements in Managua. By my count, banners for the Partido Liberal Constitucionalista (PLC) were most prevalent.

    Nicaragua exercises electoral sovereignty

    Months before the elections, Biden had already pronounced the vote a fraud because he anticipated that the majority of Nicaraguans would vote their choice rather than Washington’s. The US imperiously implored the Nicaraguans to boycott their own elections, which was ignored by a respectable 65% of the electorate; a turnout similar to the vote that landed Biden in office, which was touted in the US media as a “record turnout.”

    On election day, Biden, acting like a schoolyard bully, then threatened to use “all diplomatic and economic tools at our disposal” to punish Nicaragua for exercising its national sovereignty. This was no idle threat.

    Nicaragua is already suffering from illegal US sanctions. The NICA Act of 2018, under the Trump administration, imposed sanctions, including blocking loans from international financial institutions controlled by the US. In August 2020, the Responsive Assistance in Nicaragua (RAIN) plan was revealed, which was a multi-faceted coup strategy by which the US contracted corporations to overthrow the Nicaraguan government. RAIN called for a “sudden, unanticipated transition” government to forestall what they admitted would otherwise be a Sandinista victory in a free election.

    In a seamless handoff from the administrations of Trump to Biden, the RENACER Act, which passed Congress just days before the election and was signed into law immediately following, will visit even more misery on the people of Nicaragua. The Organization of American States, the European Union, and individual state “partners” of the US imperial project such as the UK and Canada have or are in the process of imposing additional hardships on the Nicaraguans.

    Such is the price for holding what the Nicaraguans called their eclecciones soberanas, sovereign elections. Those who deny this right, disallow the Nicaraguan’s imperative to fight back against the imperialist assault.

    All election  bodies had by law equal numbers of men and women

    Elderly voter enters polling station

    Voter with special needs is directed to his voting station

    Voters proudly show their inked thumbs, indicating they had voted

    The post Nicaragua Has a Public Relations Problem, Not a Democracy Problem first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Nicaragua Celebrates Democracy: Election Day Report

    Leon, Nicaragua, November 7, 2021: — On the fight down to Nicaragua a few days ago to be one of 225 international official election accompaniers from 27 countries, the expat Nicaraguan woman sitting next to me was hostile to the current Sandinista government. She said there will be an election but no vote, because only one person is on the ballot. At the polling station in the colonial city of Leon this election morning, November 7, candidates from six political parties standing for president were, in fact, on the ballot: PLC, FSLN, CCN, ALN, APRE, and PLI.

    Some of these parties included elements that tried in 2018 to violently overthrow the Nicaraguan government in a US-instigated regime change endeavor. All the perpetrators had been granted amnesty, despite such heinous acts as rape, torture, and even burning people alive, not to mention destruction of billions of dollars worth of public property.

    To prevent a reoccurrence of the violence around today’s election, the government had arrested certain individuals who had violated the amnesty by continuing to promote the violent overthrow of the government and/or to serve as unregistered agents of foreign states (namely the US) engaged in regime change activities; actions, it should be noted, which are illegal in the US.

    Yet the US government and its allied corporate press are using these legal arrests to discredit and undermine the Nicaraguan election. According to imperial logic, any election (e.g., Venezuela), where someone not beholding to the US is elected, is illegitimate and the democratic winner is a dictator.

    None of the arrested individuals in Nicaragua, who are mostly connected with non-governmental associations (NGOs), were associated with the established opposition political parties. Yet the US government incredulously calls seven of them “pre-candidates,” a made-up electoral category. Not one of them was remotely a “rival” political candidate. In any case, the ruling Sandinistas were polling 60-75% pre-election approval rates, while the opposition was in disarray.

    When buying an election through lavish funding of NGOs fails, when even a coup attempt as in 2018 fails, and when it is no longer politically acceptable to send in the Marines as the US did in previous times, Uncle Sam is relegated to carping about the election process.

    In contrast to the US political class’s gnashing of teeth over the arrests, there were no demonstrations in support of those arrested here in Nicaragua. The response of the head of a rural women’s cooperative was typical. She felt safer that they are locked up so that they won’t repeat the violence of 2018.

    This morning an Indigenous election worker at a polling station, Alfredo Jose Rodriquez Sanchez, summed what we overwhelming heard: “These elections are a call to peace, harmony, and reconciliation.” A religious man, he said that he went to church to get divine guidance on how to vote to promote tranquility and calm. He added that despite the regime change violence of 2018, “we are all one people.”

    Clarisa Cardenez, a voter, commented to us election accompaniers: “I am very happy because this is a civic festival for Nicaraguans.” Like so many other Nicaraguan citizens who spoke with us today, she expressed her appreciation for us accompanying their election to see “our peace and calm.”

    Outside one of the polling stations, we met Yacer Hermiday and Clender Lopez. Their Facebook account, La Consigna, along with their accounts on Instagram and Twitter, were among the over 1000 such pro-Sandinista social media accounts that had gotten shut down in the run-up to the election. The two young men had been using social media to show the good things happening in Nicaragua, since the end of the 2018 violence, only to be censored by Silicon Valley for reporting positively about the Sandinista government, headed by President Daniel Ortega.

    They laughed when I asked if they were being paid to post positive images of the Nicaraguan government’s programs or were associated with the government. Shaking their heads “no,” they explained that a small group of friends were just trying to show “what is going on in Nicaragua and how our government is doing so much for our people.” They concluded: “We were shut down for telling the truth.”

    The last person to engage us, on leaving the polling station, was a 26-year-old man. Voting for the second time in his life, he said: “It is a great privilege to vote; elections are an expression of Nicaragua’s sovereignty.”

    In contrast, just days before today’s election, the US passed the RENACER Act. Imposing additional new illegal sanctions on Nicaragua, the act explicitly interferes in the Nicaraguan election in order to punish the people of this small and poor Central American country for exercising their independence from the colossus to the north.

    • Author’s Note:  This report was written before the polls closed and the results announced.

    The post Nicaragua Celebrates Democracy: Election Day Report first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Forbes Reveals Why the US Government Is Trying to Extradite Venezuelan Diplomat Alex Saab

    Alex Saab is “the key that unlocks the Venezuelan monetary mystery—that is, how a country facing sanctions from the US, the UK and the European Union—is still able to export things like gold and oil…and really the only man who can actually explain how the country [Venezuela] survives today,” according to Forbes.

    The US would far prefer to just quietly extradite Saab to Miami, use whatever means necessary to extract sensitive information from him, and then warehouse him in the world’s largest prison system. Forbes uses the euphemism “under pressure” by US prison authorities as the means to force Saab to “shed light on Venezuela’s post-sanction economic network.” Saab already reports that his surrogate captors in Cabo Verde, described below, have unsuccessfully employed torture to try to break his will and induce him to betray Venezuela.

    That an elite business magazine such as Forbes is featuring a diplomat from a country aspiring to become socialist is a testament to the growing international movement to free the imprisoned Alex Saab and an indication of the weakness of the US case against him.

    The arrest of a diplomat

    Saab is fighting what Canadian lawyer John Philpot, an expert on international law, calls “a flagrant attempt of extra-territorial judicial overreach by the US.”

    In June 12, 2020, Saab was on a mission as a special envoy of the Venezuelan government to procure food, fuel, and medicines from Iran, when his plane from Caracas to Tehran was diverted to Cabo Verde for a fueling stop. Saab’s arrest and subsequent detention at the bidding of the US is arbitrary, illegal, and irregular. Further, Saab has been denied treatment for his cancer condition.

    Saab, the deputy Venezuelan ambassador to the African Union, is fighting extradition to the US for the “crime” of trying to procure humanitarian supplies in violation of illegal US sanctions. To date, Saab’s legal appeals to Cabo Verdean authorities for freedom have been either denied, rejected, or ignored.

    Under the Vienna Convention, a credentialed diplomat such as Saab has absolute immunity from arrest, even in the time of war. Saab appealed to the US 11th Circuit Court on the basis of his diplomatic status. In response, Washington filed an application for an extension to reply in a legal delaying tactic to allow Saab’s pending extradition without recognizing his diplomatic immunity. It is as if the US empire is claiming the authority to qualify who other countries may choose and receive as their ambassadors.

    Consider, however, that the US government still does not recognize the democratically elected Nicolás Maduro as the legitimate president of Venezuela. In contradiction of the United Nations and almost every other country in the world, Joe Biden continues to claim that the Trump-anointed, US security asset Juan Guaidó is Venezuela’s “interim” head of state.

    The US case against Alex Saab

    The US alleges Saab culpable of fraud and money laundering to bilk the Venezuelan people who are, in fact, under siege by the US. Specifically, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control accuses Saab of “loot[ing] hundreds of millions of dollars from starving Venezuelans.” One would think that Saab would be given a Presidential Medal of Freedom for his efforts, given that the US policy of promoting regime change in Venezuela is doing precisely the same thing as Saab is being accused.

    The US and its sycophantic allies have imposed unilateral coercive measures on Venezuela that amount to a blockade through the use of secondary sanctions. The UN has repeatedly called such collective punishment illegal and has demanded their repeal. Some three dozen countries and one third of humanity are suffering under US sanctions.

    Largely due to the sanctions, the Venezuelan economy has drastically contracted, especially after the targeting of its oil sector, which is its major source of foreign earnings. Attempts by the Venezuelan government to access its own gold reserves held abroad or to use its drawing rights from the International Monetary Fund to pay for COVID relief have been blocked at the behest of the US government. The Venezuelan oil company subsidiary in the US, CITGO, has been appropriated by Washington. Venezuela’s bank accounts abroad have been frozen and looted by the US and its allies. Western Union has suspended money transfers to Venezuela. And third-country ships carrying supplies to Venezuela have been seized by the US in blatant acts of piracy on international waters. The result has been widespread misery and even death in Venezuela.

    The real reasons for the US extradition effort on Alex Saab

    David Dawkins, the Forbes staff author of the article on Saab, uses the byline “I cover the work and wealth of Europe’s richest.” Because Forbes services the niche of corporate media that is read by elites and those who attend them, their reports are – as in this case – more factual than some of the more popularly oriented media outlets.

    For example, Forbes discloses that Saab is believed to have “the means and know-how to help discreetly keep an entire economy moving under the eyes of a watching world.” The “world” that is “watching” is a reference to the US surveillance state. Because Saab has been instrumental in circumventing the illegal US blockade of Venezuela is exactly why the US has persecuted the diplomat and why Washington seeks to bring him to the US.

    Indeed, Saab is understood to be, according to Forbes, “a key cog in Venezuela’s national money machine,” who “worked as a key fixer on the country’s housing and food programs, juggling contacts, companies and bank accounts around the world.”

    Giving credit where it is due, Forbes notes: “Much to the annoyance of the Trump and Biden administrations, Saab, a creative and capable businessman, found a way to navigate Venezuelan trade in sectors like food, oil and gold between the cracks of US oversight.”

    The US case against Saab is political, not legal. Femi Falana, Saab’s lead attorney at the regional Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) court in Nigeria, maintains “the case against Alex Saab is indeed rooted in political expediency.” The real reason for the US extradition effort, as Forbes reveals, is that Saab is a “serious information asset for the US in understanding just how the country [Venezuela] does business.”

    Underlining the importance of Saab to the US, the Navy cruiser San Jacinto was clandestinely deployed for a period off the coast of Cabo Verde, where Saab was imprisoned. The New York Times described the dispatch of the warship as a “secret mission aimed at helping deal a major blow to President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela.”

    International effort to free Alex Saab

    Forbes correctly reports: “But for many in Venezuela, this [Saab’s activities] is not criminal—Saab is a hero, and his efforts overseas are the actions of a man trying to feed and house the hungry and homeless.” The Venezuelan government recently appointed Saab as an official delegate to the talks in Mexico between them and the opposition United Platform group.

    Internationally, Cabo Verde has received diplomatic letters protesting the Saab case from Iran, China, Russia, the United Nations, the African Union, and ECOWAS, based on the principles of immunity and inviolability of consular rights. Over 15,000 internationals have signed a petition to the US and Cape Verdean political leadership to free Alex Saab here.

    Forbes says Saab’s extradition is imminent. Saab’s lawyer Femi Falana says, “the legal process is far from over, and His Excellency Alex Saab will not be going to the United States any time soon.” Regardless, Alex Saab says:

    For those who dream that my speech or integrity will change if I am extradited, let me spoil that illusion. My integrity does not change with the [political] climate or the type of torture. Venezuela is sovereign.

    The post Forbes Reveals Why the US Government Is Trying to Extradite Venezuelan Diplomat Alex Saab first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Roger D. Harris.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Venezuelan Diplomat Alex Saab Fights Latest US Extradition Maneuvers

    Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab remains defiant after over 14 months under US-ordered arrest in the African archipelago country of Cabo Verde. A special envoy of the Venezuelan government, he is fighting extradition to the US for the “crime” of trying to procure humanitarian supplies of food, fuel, and medicine from Iran in violation of illegal US sanctions. To date, Saab’s legal appeals for freedom have been either denied, rejected, or ignored as his extradition to the US is becoming increasingly imminent.

    The legal case

    Saab continues to fight this flagrant attempt of extra-territorial judicial overreach by the US. In response to Saab’s recent appeal to the US 11th Circuit Court, the US filed on August 24 an application for an extension to reply on October 7. This legal delaying tactic is likely a US ploy to allow Saab’s pending extradition without recognizing his diplomatic immunity.

    Under the Geneva Conventions, a credentialed diplomat such as Saab has absolute immunity from arrest, even in the time of war. The US does not recognize Saab’s diplomatic status as if Washington has the authority to qualify who other countries may choose and receive as their ambassadors.

    To begin with, Saab’s arrest on June 12, 2020, was arbitrary, illegal, and irregular. While on his way from Caracas to Tehran, his plane was diverted to Cabo Verde for a technical fueling stop. Saab was forcibly removed from the plane by Cabo Verdean police who did not have an arrest warrant.

    The day after the arrest and detention, the US had INTERPOL issue a Red Notice, which was subsequently annulled by INTERPOL. And when the arrest warrant arrived after the fact, it was made out in the name of a person who was not Alex Saab. Such is the truly farcical legal basis for the diplomat’s detention.

    Cabo Verde is a member of. and under the jurisdiction of, the Economic Organization of West African State (ECOWAS) Court of Justice, which ordered Saab to be released and even paid damages by the Cabo Verde government. Cabo Verde appealed the ruling, lost, and then claimed – even though it had recognized the authority of the court by participating in the proceedings – that it did not have to obey the court’s orders.

    Subsequently, the United Nations Human Rights Committee called for Saab’s release.

    Saab’s legal team went to the Cabo Verde Supreme Court with a writ of habeas corpus. This was denied on the absurd grounds that Saab was at “liberty” under “house arrest.” In fact, he was not only detained but not allowed to be treated for a cancer condition by his doctors or even meet with family who came to support him when they first came to Cabo Verde. Only after pressure was Saab allowed minimal visitation.

    On August 13, Saab’s case came before the Cabo Verde Constitutional Court contesting his detention on twelve constitutional grounds. Saab was not allowed to appear in person at the court. Although the Constitution Court is bound to respond, it has simply run the clock so far.

    The political case

    This legal theatre around the Saab case serves as an obfuscation for what is fundamentally a political case of the US attempting to impose regime-change on Venezuela through its punishing unilateral coercive measures; measures which amount to an unlawful blockade of the Latin American nation.

    The US wields an inordinate amount of influence on one of the smallest nations in the world with a larger Cabo Verdean population in the US than on the home islands. With few natural resources, Cabo Verde is dependent on remittances from abroad and more unfortunately is “a waypoint for illicit drugs and other transnational organized crime,” according to a US government report. With a GDP of only $1.7bil, the current $400mil US embassy building project is a considerable carrot for Cabo Verde.

    The political nature of the case is in effect recognized by the US. Saab is accused by the US of being the mastermind behind a network of sources that has allowed Venezuela to bypass the US blockade and procure needed supplies, which is the reason for targeting Saab. In pursuit of enforcing its illegal sanctions, the US would likely want to extract from Saab information on how Venezuela has tried to circumvent the blockade, which the US has imposed to asphyxiate Venezuela into submission.

    Saab alleges that he has been tortured while in Cabo Verde. He has reason to expect that he would face more of the same, if he were extradited to the US, to force him to not only disclose his trade contacts and channels but to denounce the government of Venezuela.

    Saab in his own words

    Saab, however, remains defiant. On August 19, Saab legally charged Cape Verdean authorities with gross misconduct in his case including torture. The following are his own words in a statement released through his lawyers August 25:

    “Cape Verde has not decided yet because despite having all legal terms expired and having clear knowledge that innumerable laws have been violated, the fact of now having to totally violate its own constitution in order to extradite me, upsets the conscience of those judges of the Constitutional Court, who have been honest until now, but who are strongly pressured by the US.

    In Cape Verde, its president, the prime minister, the corrupt attorney general, and even the humblest people, know and recognize that I am kept kidnapped.

    For those who dream that my speech or integrity will change if I am extradited, let me spoil that illusion. My integrity does not change with the [political] climate or the type of torture. Venezuela is sovereign. It is the country that adopted me.

    It is the country for which all decent people fight. We do not go around the world lying and asking for sanctions against the people.

    Venezuela will win this battle, whether in Cape Verde or in North America, we will win. I hope to see the sanctions lifted soon, and that priority will continue to be given to the people who need at least 30 more years of electoral victories, led by a people united around the PSUV [socialist party] and our President Nicolas Maduro Moros.

    So, leave the emotions out wondering if the plane arrived, if it didn’t arrive, if I will ‘sing’ as a tenor in case they extradite me, etc. Let go of that ridiculous illusion, first because there is nothing to ‘sing’ about and second because as I have said many times, I will never betray the Homeland I serve.”

    International effort to free Alex Saab

    Internationally, Cabo Verde has received diplomatic letters protesting the Saab case from Iran, China, Russia, the United Nations, the African Union, ECOWAS, and, of course, Venezuela based on the principles of immunity and inviolability of consular rights. Over 15,000 internationals have signed a petition to the US and Cape Verdean political leadership to free Alex Saab at https://afgj.org/free-alex-saab.

    The post Venezuelan Diplomat Alex Saab Fights Latest US Extradition Maneuvers first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Afghanistan:  Longest US War Continues to a New Stage

    The longest of the United States’ “forever wars” in Afghanistan was supposed to end August 31 after President Biden extended his predecessor’s withdrawal date from May of this year. But what will be ending is not clear; certainly not the imperial mission of the world’s superpower. If the US determines that it cannot impose its hegemony on that corner of the world through a compliant client state, it will opt for chaos instead.

    Puppeteer departs – puppet forces collapse

    In recent weeks, the Taliban military rapidly advanced, taking provincial capitals in Afghanistan and then the capital city of Kabul on August 15. The US-backed former President Ashraf Ghani fled the country in a helicopter packed with cash, the US embassy took down the stars-and-stripes, and Western governments evacuated personnel.

    In the leadup to the debacle, the US bombed a country, which has minimal air defenses, in a war that has cost at least 171,000 to 174,000 lives. Along with Qatar-based long-range B-52 Stratofortress strategic bombers and AC-130 Spectre gunships, MQ-9 Reaper drones were deployed.

    While claiming it would end the war, the US had intended to continue to bomb Afghanistan at will and to keep private military contractors (i.e., mercenaries) there, along with some uniformed US and allied NATO troops such as those from Turkey. The New York Times conceded that: “Instead of declared troops in Afghanistan, the United States will most likely rely on a shadowy combination of clandestine Special Operations forces, Pentagon contractors and covert intelligence operatives to find and attack the most dangerous Qaeda or Islamic State threats, current and former American officials said.” All those plans are now being reevaluated.

    Even before the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, tens of thousands of Afghan refugees were slated to come to the US with Washington already releasing $300 million in the effort. Under the US Refugee Admissions Program, the former collaborators with the US occupation of their country will likely form a bastion of rightwing sentiment similar to the role that anti-Cuban Revolution refugees play in the US.

    The US had spent $2.3 trillion on the war and over twenty years building the Afghan Armed Forces. In a matter of days that army capitulated. Indications are that the clearly repressive religious extremist Taliban was not so much welcomed by most Afghans as much as the US and its NATO allies were rejected.

    Only a month ago, Biden confidently proclaimed a rout of the Afghan Armed Forces by the Taliban was impossible: “Because you have the Afghan troops that’s 300,000 well-equipped — as well-equipped as any army in the world — and an air force against something like 75,000 Taliban.” Yet the Taliban with far fewer fighters, backed by no foreign power, and severely inferior in terms of equipment – never a commanding military force – prevailed because their adversary was so profoundly repugnant. They were natives, not occupiers.

    US as the midwife to the birth of the Taliban

    The antecedents of the Taliban date to the CIA-backed insurgency against the socialist Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, which was instituting modernization, emancipation of women, literacy, and land reform programs starting in 1978. The US war in Afghanistan is longer than just two decades. An extension of the old Cold War, the Afghanistan phase started with Ronald Reagan’s support of the mujahadeen “freedom fighters” back in the 1980s in a US jihad against the Soviet Union. And “the longest war” is continuing today with Joe Biden’s New Cold War.

    Back then, the Soviet Union was allied with the socialist government in Afghanistan. Soon Moscow was caught in a lose-lose situation of either allowing a nearby country to be subverted by the West or dispatching troops there to defend against a foreign-instigated insurgency. US President Carter’s National Security Advisor Brzezinski saw Afghanistan as a trap to get the US’s adversary into a Vietnam-like quagmire “to make the Soviets bleed for as much and as long as is possible.” The cost of having Soviet troops on the ground in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989 is believed to have contributed to the dissolution of the USSR.

    Various mujahideen elements backed by foreign powers, particularly the US coordinating with Pakistan, were used to overthrow the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan in 1992. In the following Afghan Civil War period, the Taliban arose in 1994 out of the contending mujahideen armies. By 1996, it had emerged triumphant against five rival mujahideen factions.

    From being a US ally and asset, the Taliban became the enemy in 2001, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The subsequent US invasion of Afghanistan was somewhat speciously justified with allegations that under Taliban rule the country had harbored terrorists and had links to al-Qaida. More to the point, the long occupation of Afghanistan was a projection of US military capacity into central Asia. Especially after the Islamic Revolution in Iran overthrew the US client regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the US needed military and surveillance bases close to the belly of Russia and China.

    Restoration of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and the prospects of chaos

    With the seizure of Kabul by the Taliban just days ago, the prospect of a nation ruled under strict Sharia law with brutal penalties for noncompliance is chilling. Interference in Afghanistan by the US was never motivated by its abhorrence to fundamentalist theocracies or the Taliban’s repulsive record on women’s rights, as evidenced by Washington’s fawning treatment of the Saudi dictatorship.

    The Taliban is primarily drawn from the Pushtun ethnic group, which comprises nearly half of the Afghan population. However, the Taliban does not have consolidated support among other ethnic groups, especially in the north, or even within the Pushtun population. One of the poorest countries in the world with one of the highest birth rates, Afghanistan faces rampant COVID, drug addiction, and food shortages. Further, the Taliban lacks the experience for national rule and is not popular outside their rural bases, making for an extremely volatile situation.

    It is not clear what the US role will be now regarding Afghanistan. The precipitous US retreat may not mean a complete defeat; timing should not be confused with the substance. The US could still reach a new accommodation with the Taliban to further US strategic and economic interests, while exploiting the Taliban’s brand of Sunni zealotry to destabilize nearby Shi’ite Iran, Russia with its Chechnya insurgency, and China with its Uyghur insurgency.

    Both China and Russia have officially met with the Taliban in the last month precisely to try to forestall the exportation of extremist Islamic insurgency within their borders. Also in July, representatives from the Taliban and the Afghan government were hosted in Tehran, and Iran remains “cautiously open” to the new government in Kabul with whom they share a 572-mile border.

    Chaos in Afghanistan with the prospect of disorder spilling over regionally, while perhaps not the preferred option for the US, could have the advantage for the US imperial project of derailing development initiatives in Russia and especially China with its ambitious Belt and Road Initiative extending into Afghanistan. In a not unsimilar situation after the US was forced to withdraw from Vietnam, Brzezinski claimed he encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot and the Thai to help the Khmer Rouge.

    Afghanistan is now in far worse a condition than before the US invasion. Afghanistan is the world’s leading source of illicit drugs, followed by the US client state of Colombia. Under US occupation, Afghanistan became the “world’s first true nacro-state.”

    While the current military advances of the Taliban look like defeats for the US imperial project, this is not the same as a victory for the WAfghans whose progressive secular government, the socialist Democratic Republic, was quashed three decades ago. Once again, the US empire offers the world a binary choice between submission to its “rules-based order,” where the US makes the rules and disregards international law, or chaos.

    Meanwhile inside the beltway and beyond, recriminations about US policy failures in Afghanistan are being hurled in all directions. US President George H. W. Bush’s 1991 obituary on the US people’s objection to endless imperial war – “By God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam Syndrome once and for all.” – may yet prove to be premature.

    The post Afghanistan:  Longest US War Continues to a New Stage first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Progressive Death of Progressivism

    Emblematic of our times, the Berniecrat organization Our Revolution – never remotely revolutionary – has rebranded itself as “pragmatic progressive.” This innovation is based on the realization that progressive reforms will never be enacted unless they are fought for.  And, since they are not about to fight President Biden, then it is only programmatic to accept that these reforms won’t happen.

    Our Revolution surrenders

    Good bye, Medicare-for-All, now that Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and even Bernie Sanders have abandoned the cause. Never mind that a majority of the electorate still favors the proposal. But to get Medicare-for-All, progressives would have to stand up to the Democratic Party. And that would entail a fight and therefore is not pragmatic.

    A major reason for the Democrat’s obstruction of Medicare-for-All is that the health insurance industry and big pharma bought them off plus the entrenchment of corporate interests more broadly in the party. However, another factor is at work. Access to healthcare free-at-the-point-of-service would make working people more secure. For the exploiting class, it is better to forego a small gain in profits as the tradeoff for keeping workers precarious and thus less demanding. The people who run the Democratic Party know which side of the class barricades they are on; unfortunately, some progressives do not.

    Some of the dump-Trump veterans, who are now AWOL in the battle against the current leader of the imperialist camp, proclaim Joe Biden is the political incarnate of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Lost in the fog of war is the fact that, for over forty years, Biden has been among the architects of the neoliberal project associated with the Democratic Leadership Group to bury FDR’s New Deal.

    The New Deal was an experiment in a mild form of social democracy, where the capitalist ruling class allowed a degree of social welfare state functions in return for labor peace. Ever since Carter, gaining steam with Reagan and Clinton, and continuing now with Biden, neoliberal reform has entailed privatization of education, health, and other state enterprises, economic austerity for working people, and deregulation and tax relief for the corporations, while augmenting the coercive apparatus of the state. In short, since the 1970s, neoliberalism has been the form of contemporary capitalism.

    This is what democracy looks like

    In the run-up to the US 2020 presidential election, some erstwhile progressives told us to hold our noses and get on the Biden bandwagon. Then, as they worked alongside the decadent Democrats, they became desensitized to the redolence of being in proximity to power. And now some counsel us to stand down to the powerful and join in attacking the official enemies of Washington.

    However, some Berniecrats have resisted the succor of the Democrat’s big tent and are still fighting the good fight under the banner of the Movement for a People’s Party. They have had the temerity to picket Squad member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to hold her feet to the fire on her campaign promises.

    This is what democracy looks like. Politicians can hardly be blamed for gravitating to the rewards of party orthodoxy, if their constituents fail to demand that they follow through on the platform that got them elected. But for demanding that politicians that talk progressive also walk progressive, those who speak truth to power are attacked by those who no longer consistently do so.

    So, we often see the following progression. After shirking from criticizing the powerful, the next career move is to find legitimacy by criticizing those who do. For example, the Young Turks show accused anti-imperialist Grayzone reporter Aaron Mate falsely and without evidence of being “paid by the Russians.”

    This is symptomatic of elements of progressivism who have become ever more comfortable with the Democrats as the only alternative to what they perceive as the greater evil of the Republicans. Since they now eschew criticizing those actually in power, they are relegated to attacking the genuine left. Rather than “battling Biden” as they promised after “dumping Trump,” some progressives have descended the slippery slope into providing left cover for the Democrats both on domestic and, as argued below, international fronts.

    Covering for imperialism

    The domestic capitulation of some self-identified progressives also translates into a deafening silence about opposing the imperialism of the Democratic Party. Shortly after the dawn of the new millennium, the US anti-war movement experienced a resurgence against Republican President George W. Bush’s Iraq war. But soon as Democrat Barack Obama took office, with Bush’s Secretary of Defense Gates still in charge, the anti-war movement collapsed and has been since largely quiescent.

    More recently, imperialist ventures have been greeted with more than silence. There are now, unfortunately, full-throated echoes of the imperialist’s talking points by former anti-war activists and intellectuals.

    Take the arguably once progressive NACLA (North American Congress on Latin America) in a recent article specifically calling for “taking off the cloak of silence.” NACLA reports on the “long-standing totalitarian Cuban government.” According to the author, an expert on “social and cultural entrepreneurship” (i.e., promotion of capitalism), the US blockade of Cuba “isn’t responsible for the island’s economic downfall. Instead that is a result of the powerful [Cuban government] elite’s iron grip and stockpiling.” Of course, if that were anywhere near the truth, the US would have no need for the blockade.

    This takes place in the context of President Biden doubling down on a regime-change offensive, reversing campaign promises to reverse Trump’s illegal sanctions on Cuba. Washington now believes Cuba is close to falling due to the deprivation caused by the ever-tightening US blockade exacerbated by the COVID pandemic.

    Further, NACLA tells us that the view of Cuba as a “model for many anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements” is not only wrong but that the Cuban’s attempt at socialism is based on “an economic model that is inherently ineffective.” Unfortunately, that verdict has a perverse element of truth. As long as the US can impose suffocating unilateral coercive measures on Cuba and other small nations striving for an alternative to neoliberalism, the socialist model will not be allowed to succeed.

    Socialism is supposed to satisfy people’s needs, while capitalism is inherently a system that creates unlimited perceived needs without the means for their fulfillment. That is, under capitalism, a system driven by individual greed, one cannot ever accumulate too much. The carrot on a stick, perpetually dangled out of reach, is the essence of what the author of the NACLA article proudly calls “entrepreneurship.”

    But what happens when – as the NACLA article admonishes – the nation striving for socialism can no longer “cover the basic necessities to make daily life worth living”? Apparently, solidarity with the Cubans against attacks by the world’s superpower is not paramount for some self-identified progressives who issued a recent petition to the Cuban government.

    Their Change.org petition, quoting Rosa Luxemburg on freedom from a repressive state, demanded the release of Frank García Hernández arrested by the Cuban government on July 11. However, the Mr. García had already been released the following day, while the petition was still being circulated.

    Whatever the intentions of the individual signatories of the petition, its actual impact had nothing to do with freeing someone who was already free and everything to do with providing a left cover for imperialism. Had the signatories been genuinely concerned with what they perceived as an overreaction by the Cubans to a manifestly existential security threat to their revolution, they should have also addressed the petition to the White House and demanded the ending or at least easing of that security threat. Some of these same individuals have also signed petitions against Nicaragua, Syria, and other official enemies of the US.

    Struggling on two fronts

    Meanwhile, the neoliberal order is becoming more and more exposed, with billionaires increasing their net worth astronomically while working people face a yet to be contained pandemic with inadequate healthcare, unemployment, and austerity. This is fuel for the populist right-wing, which could be the shock troops of a fascist movement. But we are not there yet.

    The legitimate concern about fascism, when associated exclusively with Trump and his followers, has been used by some self-identified progressives as an excuse to embrace the Democrats. The struggle against “neofascist” Trumpism has been coopted into a surrender into the main party now in charge of the imperialist state and increasingly distinguishing itself as the leading proponent of war.

    The January 6th riot by Trump supporters at the Capital Building was conflated by Democrats into a coup attempt of new kind where the perpetrators, instead of taking state power, took selfies and went home. Some of the villains of January 6th, Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, turned out to be friendly with the FBI and possible agents with get-out-of-jail-free passes.

    It would be cold comfort for progressives to discover that they have triumphed against the crude fascism of working-class guys with tattoos only to find that the friendly fascism of Saint Robert Mueller’s national security state has prevailed. Progressives, who have their canons aimed at Mar-a-Lago, may be leaving their backs exposed to those who now hold state power in Washington.

    The ensuing clamor after January 6 from would-be progressives to expand the already enormous police powers of the state against protesters is an example of the dictum that you should be careful about what you wish for. The state coercive apparatus – police, military, homeland security, FBI, CIA, NSA, etc. – has been and will be used against the left.

    The genuinely progressive solution is not to support one or the other neoliberal party, which are collectively the perpetrators of the current calamity, but to struggle against the conditions that foster a right-wing insurgency. That is, resist both right-wing populism and the established ruling class, with the main emphasis on those in power.

    The post The Progressive Death of Progressivism first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Roger D. Harris.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • US Targets Nicaraguan Presidential Election

    Before Henry Kissinger became a Clinton pal, liberals condemned him for saying: “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.” The 1973 US-backed coup and bloodbath in Chile followed. Now Uncle Sam has a problem in Nicaragua, where independent polls predict a landslide victory for Daniel Ortega’s leftist Sandinista slate in the November 7th presidential elections.

    The US government and its sycophantic media are working to prevent Ortega’s reelection. On July 12, the US slapped visa restrictions on one hundred Nicaraguan elected legislative officials, members of the judiciary, and their families for “undermining democracy.” A month earlier, the Biden administration imposed sanctions on President Ortega’s daughter, along with a military general, the head of the central bank, and an elected legislator.

    These and other recent illegal US sanctions on Nicaragua are designed to promote regime change and are based on the ridiculous charge that this poor and tiny nation is a “extraordinary and unusual threat to the US national security,” when the opposite is the case.

    The NICA Act of 2018, under the Trump administration, imposed sanctions, including blocking loans from international financial institutions controlled by the US. In August 2020, the Responsive Assistance in Nicaragua (RAIN) plan was revealed, which is a multi-faceted coup strategy by which the US contracted corporations to overthrow the Nicaraguan government. RAIN calls for a “sudden, unanticipated transition” government to forestall what they admit would otherwise be a Sandinista victory in a free election. In a seamless handoff from the Trump to the Biden administration, the pending RENACER Act would further extended “targeted sanctions.”

    US intervention in Nicaragua and, indeed, in all of Latin America under the 1823 Monroe Doctrine has a long history continuing to the present. Back in 1856, US citizen William Walker tried to impose himself as head of a slave state in Nicaragua, only to be assassinated four years later. In 1912, the US began an occupation of Nicaragua, forcing the country to become a US protectorate. The US was ousted in 1933 in a war led by national hero Augusto C. Sandino, after whom the present revolutionary party was named. In the 1980s, the US government proxies, the Contras, fought the new Sandinistas after they overthrew the US-backed Somoza dictatorship.

    Problematic premises

    In the past, most US progressives opposed the imperialism of their government. But more recently, as Jeremy Kuzmarov of CovertAction Magazine observed: “United States warmakers have become so skilled at propaganda that not only can they wage a war of aggression without arousing protest; they can also compel liberals to denounce peace activists using language reminiscent of the McCarthy era.”

    A recent Open Letter to the Nicaraguan Government from U.S. Solidarity Workers 1979-1990 reflects the US imperial talking points. This US open letter, dated July 1, is joined by one from Europeans, formerly active in solidarity with Nicaragua, and one from international academics, mainly in the field of Latin American studies. (Links to all three letters may be dodgy.) All three letters, likely coordinated, use similar language to make matching critiques and demands.

    While other international activists from the 1980s still prioritize non-intervention and solidarity with the Sandinista government, the concerns expressed in the open letter should be respectfully evaluated. The open letter is based on the following problematic premises:

    1. The open letter claims the Ortega “regime” is guilty of “crimes against humanity.”

    In fact, Nicaragua is by far the most progressive country in Central America under the Sandinista government.

    Unlike the Guatemalans, Hondurans, and El Salvadorians in these US client states, Nicaraguans are not fleeing to the US in search of a better life. Poverty and extreme poverty have been halved in Nicaragua, and the UN Millennium Development Goal of cutting malnutrition has been achieved. Basic healthcare and education are free, and illiteracy has been virtually eliminated, while boasting of the highest level of gender equality in the Americas. Nicaragua, which enjoys the lowest homicide rate in Central America, also has the smallest police force with the smallest budget in the region. These are not the hallmarks of a dictatorship.

    1. The open letter claims the 2018 coup attempt was simply a “demonstration of self-determination.” While the open letter correctly notes that the events of 2018 reflected an element of popular discontent, it renders invisible the millions of dollars and many years of US sponsored subversion in Nicaragua.

    Social media campaigns of false information orchestrated by US-sponsored groups fueled viciously violent protests. According to solidarity activist Jorge Capelán: “those who kidnapped, tortured, robbed, murdered and raped citizens here in Nicaragua in April 2018 were the coup promoters. They themselves recorded everything with their cell phones. They even set fire to murdered Sandinista comrades in the street.”

    Benjamin Waddell, a signatory to the open letter, admitted “it’s becoming more and more clear that the US support has helped play a role in nurturing the current [2018] uprisings.” Dan La Botz, another Ortega-must-go partisan, provided the background: “US organizations such as USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and no doubt the CIA had for decades, of course, worked in Nicaragua as they do everywhere in the world.”

    No substantive progressive alternative was offered by the opposition in 2018, according to William Robinson, another signatory to the open letter. Rather, 2018 was an attempt to achieve by violent means what could not be achieved democratically at the ballot box.

    1. The open letter claims the Nicaraguan government “in no way represents the values, principles and goals of the Sandinista revolution.” This stance arrogates to foreigners the role of telling the Nicaraguan people how to evaluate their revolution. The electoral process in Nicaragua makes clear that the Nicaraguans think otherwise.

    After successfully overthrowing the US-backed dictator Somoza and fighting the counter-revolutionary war against the US-backed Contras, the Sandinista’s lost the 1990 election. Notably, outgoing President Ortega without hesitation obeyed the electoral mandate, the first time in Nicaragua’s history that governing power was passed peacefully to another political party.  After 17 years of neoliberal austerity, Daniel Ortega won the presidential election of 2006 with a 38% plurality and went on to win in 2011 with 63% and 72.5% in 2016. Ortega’s ever increasing electoral margins suggest the majority of Nicaraguans support him as the legitimate leader of the Sandinista revolution.

    Problematic proposals

     Using the same loaded language as the US government, the open letter calls on the “Ortega-Murillo regime” to release political prisoners currently being held, including “pre-candidates,” members of the opposition, and “historic leaders” of the Sandinista revolution; rescind the national security law under which these individuals were arrested; and negotiate electoral reforms.

    Nicaragua has passed two recent laws: the Foreign Agents Law and the Law to Defend the Rights of the People to Independence, Sovereignty, and Self-Determination for Peace. These laws, which the open letter wants rescinded, criminalize promoting foreign interference in Nicaragua’s internal affairs, seeking foreign military intervention, organizing acts of terrorism, and promoting coercive economic measures against their country. These are activities, it should be noted, that are similarly prohibited in the US’s FARA Act, after which the Nicaraguan laws were modeled.

     The recent actions of the Nicaraguan government prosecuting people who break their laws is a normal function of governance. That some of the accused perpetrators may have political aspirations does not immunize those individuals from arrest for unlawful activities.

    The letter from the aforementioned academics claims that among those detained are the “most prominent potential opposition presidential candidates.” In fact, none of the 17 political parties in Nicaragua have chosen their candidates, and “most of those currently under investigation do not belong to any legally registered party.” In fact, Stephen Sefton reports from Nicaragua that “no leading figure from Nicaragua’s opposition political parties has been affected by the recent series of arrests of people from organizations that supported the 2018 coup attempt.”

    One of the most prominent of those arrested is NGO director Cristiana Chamorro, charged with money laundering for receiving millions of dollars from the USAID, other US government agencies, and allied foundations for regime-change purposes. In her defense, she incredulously claimed that the US State Department had audited her and found everything to their liking.

    The “historic leaders” of the Sandinista revolution are just that; people who had broken with the revolution long ago and since 1994 had collaborated with the US-allied rightwing opposition and NGOs. More to the point, they are being charged with illegal collusion with foreign powers.

    The open letter calls for “negotiating electoral reforms,” but electoral law in Nicaragua as in the US is determined by the legislative process and not by negotiations among various power blocks. Nicaragua has implemented some but not all reforms mandated by the Organization of American States. The fourth branch of government, the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE), oversees elections. A third of the current CSE is composed of representatives of parties other than the ruling party, even though the Sandinistas hold a super-majority in the legislature.

    The right of the Nicaraguan revolution to defend itself

    While acknowledging “the long and shameful history of US government intervention,” the open letter does not acknowledge the right of the Nicaraguan revolution to defend itself. On the contrary, their implied endorsement of the 2018 coup attempt is a call for regime change by non-democratic means and an implicit pass for US interference.

    The open letter’s finding that “the crimes of the US government – past and present – are not the cause of, nor do they justify or excuse” the behavior of the current government in Nicaragua is a door that swings two ways. Whatever the alleged wrongdoings the Ortega government, that still does not justify the US government’s regime-change campaign. The open letter is thunderously silent on current US intervention, notably the punishing NICA and RENACER acts.

    The Nicaraguan government has prioritized the needs of poor and working people and has made astounding progress on multiple fronts. That is why they are being targeted for regime change, and why the Nicaraguans have taken measures to thwart US intervention.

    The Trump administration specifically targeted the so-called “Troika of Tyranny” – Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua – with repressive illegal sanctions aimed at regime change. That policy of US domination did not start with Trump, nor is it ending with the new US administration.

    The imperialists are clear on who they target as their enemy; some elements on the left are less clear on who is their friend and whether Nicaragua has a right to defend itself.  If the signers of the open letter believe, as they claim, “in the Nicaraguan people’s right to self-determination…of a sovereign people determining their own destiny,” then the November 2021 election should be protected, free from interference by the US, its international allies, and its funded NGOs.

    The post US Targets Nicaraguan Presidential Election first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • US Compels Small African Country to Imprison Venezuelan Diplomat

    The Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab, imprisoned for trying to buy humanitarian supplies from Iran in legal international trade but in violation of illegal US sanctions, is facing extradition to the US. That is like getting stabbed in the back and then being arrested for carrying a concealed weapon.

    US extraterritorial judicial overreach

    On June 12, 2020, Saab was on his way from Caracas to Tehran, when his plane had to make a routine fueling stop. While in the air, the pilot was informed that Morocco,  and Algeria would not allow the plane to land, ostensibly for COVID pandemic reasons. Instead, the plane was carefully choreographed to refuel in Cabo Verde, a small archipelago nation off the Atlantic coast of Africa.

    Upon landing in Cabo Verde, Saab was forcibly removed from the plane, imprisoned, and held under torturous conditions. A year later, Saab, who is a lawfully appointed diplomatic agent of Venezuela, remains illegally imprisoned and is fighting extradition to the US.

    Saab faces US charges with a maximum penalty of 160 years imprisonment. To put Saab’s potential sentence into perspective, the reportedly rogue Cabo Verde soldier who murdered eleven in the 2016 Monte Tchota massacre on the Cape Verdean island of Santiago received a 35-year sentence.

    Although Saab had not violated any law in Cabo Verde, the US has been able to exert enormous pressure on one of the smallest countries in the world to detain Saab. As Canadian human rights lawyer John Philpot commented: “This is an egregious extraterritorial judicial overreach on the part of the US. The arrest and detention of a special envoy, on mission and in transit, is unprecedented and set a new nadir in just how low the US will stoop to fulfill a political foreign policy goal.”

    The US can legally embargo any country it chooses and prevent US entities from trading with that country, as in the case of Venezuela. But this particular judicial exploit amounts to imposing US domestic law on the world. The US is enforcing what the United Nations calls unilateral coercive measures. These measures are literally starving the Venezuelan people and denying them medicine in a time of COVID – clearly collective punishment and therefor illegal.

    Luis Filipe Tavares, who was prime minister at the time of Saab’s illegal arrest, affirmed that on all questions of national security Cabo Verde submits to US command. He declared: “The United States of America is the only one to defend us!” Cabo Verde, incidentally, is applying for membership in NATO, a US-commanded military alliance.

    International human rights delegation responds to politicized case

    Femi Falana, Saab’s lead attorney at the regional court in Nigeria, commented: “The public confession by the [Cabo Verde] Prosecutor General on Thursday last week that the case against Alex Saab is indeed rooted in political expediency.”

    Saab’s habeas corpus writs have been twice taken to the Cabo Verde Supreme Court and twice denied on the absurd grounds that he is “already at liberty” and that there has been “no depreciation of freedom.”

    In January, after seven months of prison conditions that the US State Department describes as “life threatening,” Saab was moved under regional judicial pressure to “house arrest,” which in this case is really prison by another name. He cannot leave the house and visitation even by his lawyers is severely limited. Saab, who has been diagnosed with cancer, has not been able to have his oncologist visit him. Similarly, visitation by members of his family and international legal team members has been denied.

    The shuttered concrete block building, where Saab is confined, is under heavy police guard. Saab not only has to pay the rent on his de facto prison, but he also must pick up the tab on the adjacent building where his prison guards are quartered.

    The next step in Saab’s legal defense is to challenge the constitutional grounds for the Cabo Verde Supreme Court’s decision not to release him. On Monday, writs of habeas corpus were filed at the Supreme Court, challenging the court’s rulings.

    An emergency humanitarian delegation, which has been in Cabo Verde since June 3 working on a number of fronts to #FREEAlexSaab, filed the writs. The signatories are religious leader Bishop Filipe Teixeira of Boston and a Cabo Verdean citizen, Cabo Verdean presidential candidate Pericles Tavares and also of Providence, Rhode Island, and US citizens and human rights activists Sara Flounders with the International Action Center and Roger Harris with the Task Force on the Americas.

    The writs of habeas corpus are on three grounds. First, Alex Saab is a special envoy of Venezuela and its deputy ambassador to the African Union. He thus has diplomatic immunity from arrest and detention.

    The second ground refers to an INTERPOL Red Alert for his initial arrest. Although the Cabo Verdean authorities used this as an excuse to follow the dictates of the US, the Red Alert was cancelled, so it cannot be used to justify Saab’s continued arrest.

    The third ground is the ruling by the regional court of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to not only free Saab but to pay him $200,000 in damages. The claim by the Cabo Verde government that the ECOWAS ruling is not binding is bogus.

    Saab’s lawyer in Cabo Verde’s capitol city of Praia, Jose Manuel Pinto Monteiro, explained that Cabo Verde is a member of the regional ECOWAS community, where it enjoys measures for economic development, mutual aid, and several other benefits. Yet Cabo Verde ingenuously refuses to come under ECOWAS’s human rights jurisdiction.

    When the Saab case came before the ECOWAS court, Cabo Verde fully participated making procedural motions and oral arguments and then appealing and losing again. So, while in effect recognizing the court by being a full participant in their proceedings, Cabo Verde claimed that the regional court did not have jurisdiction after it had twice lost its case.

    The Cabo Verde court will now have three months to consider the habeas corpus writs. However, attorney Pinto anticipates a decision as soon as mid-June. If it goes against Alex Saab, he may soon be extradited to the US for the “crime” of trying to secure humanitarian supplies for one of the 39 countries worldwide suffering under illegal US sanctions.

    The post US Compels Small African Country to Imprison Venezuelan Diplomat first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Leftist Anti-Anti-Imperialism: Supporting Imperialism but with Caveats

    Academic Gilbert Achcar, in an article originally in New Politics and  picked up by The Nation, proves by his own example that what he calls “progressive democratic anti-imperialists” are not progressive. Rather, they (1) serve to legitimize reaction and (2) obscure the singular role of US imperialism, while (3) attacking progressive voices. Such anti-anti-imperialism provides left cover for the foreign policy of the US as well as the UK, where Achcar is based.

    Legitimizing imperialism

    Achcar, by his own admission, supported the US/NATO imposition of a no-fly zone over Libya, which quickly and predictably morphed into a full war of Western imperial conquest against one of the then most prosperous African nations. Today Libya is a failed state, where black African slaves are openly traded and military factions contend for state power.

    Achcar’s alibi is that he warned “there are not enough safeguards in the wording of the [no-fly] resolution to bar its use for imperialist purposes,” adding that he favored the imperialist action as a measure for the “protection of civilians and not ‘regime change.’” This is an example of leftist anti-anti-imperialism; i.e., supporting imperialism but with caveats.

    Achcar wished for a democratic people’s uprising in Libya rather than Western imposed regime-change. So, while he echoed the main imperialist talking points about the “brutal dictator” and his “regime,” he hoped for a nice imperialism which would achieve regime change by “democratic” means. He admits to no responsibility for his propagandizing which – whether it was his intention or not – foreshadowed the ensuing disaster.

    Behind Achcar’s leftish rhetoric is a flawed belief that somehow the imperialist actions of the US and its allies may be truly humanitarian. In short, the US purportedly has a “responsibility to protect (R2P).” Achcar championed R2P in the former Yugoslavia, Libya, and Syria, where his article lauds how the US bombing “rescued” people on the ground, even though in every instance the outcomes were neither democratic nor humanitarian.

    That such noble intentions regarding “responsibility to protect” inexorably devolve is because R2P is nothing more than an ideological defense of the imperial project. The true anti-imperialist stance, contra Achcar, is no intervention – humanitarian or otherwise. The fundamental lesson should be evident that, after the multitude of US-backed post-WWII “military actions,” neither the motivation to participate nor the outcomes were democratic or humanitarian.

    How many wars has the US been involved in lately? Timothy McGrath, in an article in The World, documents anywhere from 0 to 134 depending on your definition, since the last officially declared US war was WWII. McGrath concludes that the right answer to how many is “too many,” which is an appropriate anti-imperialist view.

    Obscuring the singular role of US imperialism

    Achcar says: “To illustrate the complexity of the questions that progressive anti-imperialism faces today – a complexity that is unfathomable to the simplistic logic of” the peace activists he criticizes. “Complexity” is indeed the crux of his argument and what is wrong with it. Achcar’s political universe does not recognize a single, imperialist superpower but a “complexity” of imperialisms. His plea for opposing all imperialisms renders the role of the US imperialism equivalent to all other nations.

    But how can this be given the facts? The US has over 800 foreign military bases, not including secret “black” sites, active-duty combat bases, and foreign installations nominally under the name of the host nation but garrisoning US troops. And that does not include what are literally armies of US private military contractors abroad. US military spending eclipses the next ten nations in the world. US arms sales makes it the greatest war profiteering nation. US has the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons of mass destruction and a “first strike” nuclear posture. No other nation or combination of nations have such imperial reach.

    Achcar’s formulation in effect obscures the hegemonic role of US imperialism. In his view, the US has “kept a low profile in the Syrian war” compared to the “incomparably more important intervention of Russian imperialism.” Not mentioned is that Syria in near Russia’s border, while it is a half a globe away from the US. Moreover, Russia is in Syria at the invitation of a sovereign nation in accordance with international law, whereas the US is committing the supreme crime of waging war.

    Although Achcar says all imperialisms should be equally opposed, that has not been his practice. Achar teaches at the London School of Oriental and African Studies where an anti-imperialist student group revealed that he taught a training class to members of a counter-insurgency branch of the UK military. In his defense, Achcar responded: “Should we prefer that the military and security personnel of this country be solely exposed to right-wing education?”

    Attacking progressive voices

    Achcar’s central thesis is: “Meanwhile, Cold War ‘campism’ was reemerging under a new guise: No longer defined by alignment behind the USSR but by direct or indirect support for any regime or force that is the object of Washington’s hostility.” “Campism,” according to perennial Cold Warrior Achcar, is the political deviation of not being sufficiently hostile to the USSR or Russia or communism.

    Achcar laments what he considers errant voices of leftist “fools,” but not the larger issue of the decline of the anti-war movement. In fact, the very elements that he attacks – the US Peace Council, UNAC, and the Stop the War Coalition– are among the leading anti-war organizations in the US (USPC and UNAC) and the UK (StWC).

    Achcar’s “plague on all houses” is a recipe for inactivism by the peace movement. If all state actors are imperialist, then there is nothing left to do but empty moralizing. For example, by conflating US imperialism with the Syrian defense, no solution is possible for ending that benighted struggle. The only option left for progressive politics under the Achcar paradigm is to wish for a magical perfect socialism to arise triumphal out of the ashes of the bombs.

    Surely the fundamental demand of the genuine peace movement, “out now,” is anathema to Professor Achcar, who espouses the imperialist prerogative of the “right to protect.” Those who promote such non-intervention are attacked as “fools.” Achcar, incidentally, dismisses political understandings to the left of him as “lunatic” and “not intelligent.”

    Achcar begins his article with the observation that “the last three decades have witnessed increasing political confusion about the meaning of anti-imperialism” and proceeds to prove that thesis by his apologetics for US imperialism and his disdain for those who object to Washington’s hostility to nations that assert their independent sovereignty.

    The article concludes with Achcar elevating to a “guiding principle” the responsibility to support “intervention by an imperialist power [when it] benefits an emancipatory popular movement…[with] the restriction of its involvement to forms that limit its ability to impose its domination.” In other words, he supports imperialism but with caveats.

    The post Leftist Anti-Anti-Imperialism: Supporting Imperialism but with Caveats first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • US Trying to Extradite Venezuelan Diplomat for the “Crime” of Securing Food for the Hungry: The Case of Alex Saab v. The Empire

    The case of Alex Saab raises dangerous precedents in terms of extraterritorial judicial abuse, violation of diplomatic status, and even the use of torture to extract false confessions. This is according to Montréal-based international human rights lawyer John Philpot. He spoke on May 19 at a webinar sponsored by the Alliance for Global Justice and other groups about this example of the long reach of the US empire enforcing its deadly sanctions on some one third of humanity.

    US sanctions Venezuela for being sovereign

    Stansfield Smith of Chicago ALBA Solidarity commented that the Saab case is part of a larger US effort to use “lawfare” to impose its illegal sanctions, which the United Nations condemns as “unilateral coercive measures.” The US employs sanctions to discipline countries that attempt to develop independent of its dominion.

    The US is able to extend its imperial reach through its domination of the international financial system, which is US dollar denominated and meditated through the monetary exchange known as SWIFT. By controlling the international financial system, Smith explained, Washington can demand banks in foreign countries to accept US restrictions or face sanctions themselves.

    Venezuela’s resistance to US interference, starting with Hugo Chávez’s Bolivarian Revolution two decades ago, has been punished by the US with mounting sanctions so extreme that they now amount to an asphyxiating blockade, causing severe shortages of food and medicine. William Camacaro of the Alberto Lovera Bolivarian Circle attested to the impact on the people of Venezuela. This US effort to achieve regime change is, in effect, collective punishment to coerce the Venezuelans to reject their elected government.

    Even a report from the US government readily admits that “sanctions, particularly on the state oil company in 2019, likely contributed to the steeper decline of the Venezuelan economy.” This crippling blow to its oil industry has impacted Venezuela’s capability to generate electricity, conduct agriculture, and generate income from oil sales to fund social programs and import vital necessities, all of which have negatively impacted the lives of ordinary Venezuelans.

    Once a leading oil exporter, Venezuela’s ability to import equipment components for its oil refineries and light oil to mix with its heavy crude has been cut off by the US, devastating its productive capacity. The US has even blocked international oil-for-food swaps by Venezuela.

    US targets humanitarian mission

     Special envoy and ambassador to the African Union for Venezuela, Alex Saab, was on a humanitarian mission flying from Caracas to Iran to procure food and gasoline for the Venezuelan CLAP food assistance program. Saab was detained on a refueling stop in the African nation of Cabo Verde and has been held in custody ever since June 12, 2020.

    Saab’s “crime,” according to the US government, which ordered the imprisonment, was money laundering. That is, Saab conducted perfectly legal international trade, but his circumventing the US sanctions – which are designed to prevent relief to the Venezuelans – is considered by Washington to be money laundering.

    The Swiss government, after a two-year investigation into Saab’s transactions with Swiss banks, concluded on March 25 that there was no money laundering. The real reason Saab is being persecuted is because he is serving his country’s interest rather than that of the US. Saab was born in Colombia but now holds Venezuelan citizenship.

    The US mandate for the arrest and extradition of Saab would be like Saudi Arabia demanding the arrest and extradition of a British citizen visiting Italy for wearing short-shorts. In essence, the US does not have legal jurisdiction over a Venezuelan in Cabo Verde on his way to Iran.

    As Indhriana Parada wrote in the webinar chat: “Greetings from Venezuela. We support the release of Alex Saab. It is a totally political case, and we want him back. Alex Saab did not launder money. Alex Saab bought food and medicine for Venezuela.”

    The legal fig leaf for what amounts to a kidnapping was an INTERPOL “red notice,” which was not issued until a day after Saab’s arrest and was subsequently dropped. Saab has specified, “they tortured me and pressured me to sign voluntary extradition declarations and bear false witness against my government.”

    Saab’s distinguished African defense team

    Saab’s attorney in Cabo Verde, Geraldo da Cruz Almeida, explained to the webinar the absurdity of the politically motivated legal case against his client. Alex Saab has violated neither Cabo Verdean nor Venezuelan law. Moreover, Saab’s diplomatic status should have given him immunity from arrest.

    The US does not recognize Saab’s diplomatic status. But then again, Biden maintains the fiction that the self-appointed and Trump-anointed Juan Guaidó is president of Venezuela.

    Femi Falana, former President of the West African Bar Association, spoke to the webinar from Nigeria. Attorney Falana represented Saab before the regional Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Court. On March 15, the court ordered Saab’s release and cancellation of the extradition.

    Under US pressure, Cabo Verde continues to hold Saab. Attorney Falana has called on President Biden to respect the rule of law and human rights in Africa. Sara Flounders of the International Action Center pointed out that 15 of the 39 countries under the illegal US sanctions are African.

    Ranking 175th and 185th among the countries of the world in terms of geographic area and economic size, respectively, resource poor, and dependent on tourism and remittances from abroad, the Republic of Cabo Verde is vulnerable to US strong-arm tactics. Shortly after Saab’s arrest, the US gifted $1.5 million to private sector entities in Cabo Verde on top of some $284 million total US aid in the last 20 years.

    The US State Department describes Cabo Verde as “an important partner” where the “current administration has prioritized relations with the United States and Europe.” The US Bureau for International Narcotics Law Enforcement funds and supports activities in Cabo Verde, while the Boston Police Department works with Cabo Verde police.

    Cabo Verde, it should be noted, is important in the history of African liberation. Marxist Amílcar Cabral led the liberation movement of Guinea-Bissau and Cabo Verde Islands and was assassinated in 1973, only months before independence was declared from Portugal.

    Setting a precedent

    Meng Wanzhou, a Chinese national doing business in Canada, is under arrest for “bank fraud” and is fighting extradition to the US. North Korean Mun Chol Myong has already been extradited to the US from Malaysia on similar charges to those used against Saab for doing business according to international law rather than abiding by the US’s illegal measures.

    In short, Saab’s is not an isolated case of US misconduct around enforcing its illegal sanctions but an emerging pattern. Anyone of us working to get needed goods to a US-sanctioned country is at risk of the US pushing to get us arrested and jailed in some country we pass through, which is subservient to the US.

    That the US can engineer the arrest of a diplomat – someone who has immunity by international law even in the time of war – is a dangerous precedent. That the arrest was extraterritorial is worse; and especially so because Saab is an ambassador to the African Union. This harkens back to the flagrantly illegal and inhumane US practice of extraordinary rendition, which was used to populate the Guantánamo torture chambers.

    The award-winning movie The Mauritanian is about the true story of crusading lawyer Nancy Hollander, who successfully freed a tortured innocent man from the made-in-the-USA hell of Guantánamo. The Hollander character, played in the movie by Jodie Foster, says: “I am not just defending him, I am defending the rule of law.”

    The real-life Nancy Hollander attended the webinar and announced she will help defend Saab if he is extradited to the US. A lawyer’s delegation to Cabo Verde in solidarity with Saab is being planned and a petition campaign on his behalf is underway. These efforts recognize that the defense of Alex Saab is a defense of the rule of international law against illegal US sanctions (#FREEAlexSaab).

    The post US Trying to Extradite Venezuelan Diplomat for the “Crime” of Securing Food for the Hungry: The Case of Alex Saab v. The Empire first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • US Role Behind the Defeat of Ecuador’s Leftist Presidential Candidate

    by Roger D. Harris / April 26th, 2021

    The US role in the defeat of leftist Andrés Arauz in Ecuador’s presidential contest on April 11 was not overt because it did not need to be, according to a high-ranking Latin American diplomat. We met with the diplomat and others on an official election observation delegation with CODEPINK. Names of some sources remain anonymous due to a hostile political environment towards progressives.

    This setback for the Citizens Revolution movement, founded by Rafael Correa, will have profound implications for Ecuador and beyond, fortifying the US-allied reactionary bloc in Latin America.

    Former President Correa left office with a 60% approval rating. He had been twice elected president on the first round; unprecedented for Ecuador, which had a turnover of seven presidents in the previous decade. His Alianza País party had won fourteen elections, reflecting the popularity of their wealth redistributive programs, including reducing extreme poverty in half.

    His chosen successor, Lenín Moreno, will exit on May 24 with a single-digit approval rating. Much happened in the ensuing four years. Correa went from being the most popular democratically elected president in the country’s history to having his party rejected by an electoral majority.

    ¿Qué pasó? – What happened?

    In 2017, Correa had campaigned for his former vice president to carry on their Citizens Revolution. However, once in office, sitting President Moreno turned sharply right against his former colleagues, employing lawfare to decapitate the leadership of the Citizens Revolution. His own vice-president, Jorge Glas, is now in prison and other top officials have been forced to flee Ecuador. Correa, accused of using “psychic influence,” was convicted in absentia in an evidence-weak corruption trial that prevented him from returning to Ecuador.

    According to Correa’s attorney, Fausto Jarrín, Moreno was assisted by the US in this legal dismantling of his own party. Casting pretenses aside, Moreno was in Washington on the day of the first round of the Ecuadorian presidential elections. Just before the second round, Moreno and his top officials flew to the Galapagos to meet with the US ambassador.

    Moreno handed the shop over to the US.  He revoked Julian Assange’s Ecuadorian citizenship, allowing Assange to be arrested in the UK. He recognized Juan Guaidó’s bogus claim to the presidency of Venezuela. After US Vice President Pence visited Ecuador, the FBI was welcomed back. Even a US military base in the Galapagos (part of Ecuador) was gifted to Washington.

    Moreno expelled the Cuban doctors and withdrew from key regional alliances: UNASUR, CELAC, and ALBA. At a time of COVID, these actions had lethal consequences. Had Ecuador instead maintained its membership in the regional organizations, their collective power could have been used to obtain vaccines and other resources to fight the pandemic.

    Moreno imposed an IMF austerity package on Ecuador, only to be partly withdrawn in the face of a massive indigenous-led protest in October 2019. Then under the cover of the presidential election campaign and pandemic, Moreno reinstated the unpopular measures.

    The turncoat Moreno adopted a full-throated neoliberal program and is scrambling to enact additional “economic reforms” before his term is over to prevent the next administration from “putting the toothpaste back in the tube.” But he needn’t worry. Incoming President Guillermo Lasso not only shares the same neoliberal program, but members of Lasso’s right wing political party collaborated with Moreno in the National Assembly.

    This has been a brilliant strategy for the right. Ecuador is in economic crisis with the impacts of austerity measures exacerbated by the pandemic. By putting in place a full neoliberal program before leaving office, Moreno spares Lasso the onus of the unpopular measures while serving international finance represented by Lasso and the US.

    Lawfare used to rig the electoral playing field

    Ecuador’s electoral authority, the CNE, did not recognize the Arauz campaign until December for a February 7 first-round election. Arauz, who was sick with COVID in December, had spent the last four months battling for party certification while the other campaigns were gaining momentum.

    Unlike their rich banker opponent, the Arauz campaign was strapped for funds to build an on-the-ground campaign infrastructure. More importantly, lawfare measures prevented them from even using their party’s name, forcing them to cobble together UNES as their new party.

    Further, Correa with his considerable name recognition and popularity was banned from running as Arauz’s vice president. Worse, the party was prohibited from using Correa’s image, name, or voice in their campaign materials. Yet other parties could invoke Correa to smear the Arauz campaign by falsely accusing Correa of corruption and associating Arauz with Correa as also corrupt.

    Despite all these hurdles, Arauz won the first-round election with a 32% vote, giving him a 13-point lead over second-place Lasso, but short of the 40% or more needed to avoid a second-round contest. Arauz also was leading in the polls, but that was to change with a massive disinformation campaign.

    Right-wing propaganda campaign

    The right-wing mobilized its near monopoly of mass media to spin sworn enemies Moreno and the Citizens Revolution as allied, in what an Arauz campaign leader characterized as the “TikTok and meme-ification” of political discourse.

    Arauz, an energetic 36-year-old economic wiz, was portrayed as stupid and lethargic. In contrast, the 65-year-old conservative Lasso put on a pair of red shoes and was marketed as hip.

    A four-year rightist media campaign portrayed Correa and associates as corrupt.  A Citizens Revolution militant explained, “if you repeat a lie ten times, it becomes a truth.” The “NGO left,” funded by the US and its European allies, contributed to this inversion of reality.

    Struggle ahead in Ecuador

    Guillermo Lasso, owner of the second largest bank in Ecuador, won with a 5-point lead. Arauz said in his concession speech: “This is an electoral setback but by no means a political or moral defeat.”

    With 49 out of 137 seats in the National Assembly, his party remains the single largest bloc. The task of the Citizens Revolution politicians, according to party leaders, will be to maintain unity within their own ranks while forging coalitions with potential allies.

    Meanwhile, they will have to fend off continued lawfare attacks and repression from the right. Some militants have already left the country.

    The second largest bloc in the assembly with 27 seats is the ideologically diverse and indigenous Pachakutik. The Citizens Revolution’s relationships with the leadership of some indigenous organizations and, for that matter, certain labor unions have at times been contentious.

    Correa opposed the clientelism of the past and shunned “selling” ministries and other positions to politically influential leaders in return for their support. Correa concentrated instead on serving the interests of their constituents with infrastructure projects for underserved indigenous regions, granting water rights, and promoting multi-cultural education and health policies. Likewise, workers got wage gains.

    In retrospect, the Citizens Revolution is now openly self-critical about running roughshod over some indigenous and labor leaders. Amends will have to be made, according to a former Correa minister.

    “Promoting democracy” in service of the US empire

    Ruling elites hold elections to legitimize their rule, not because they believe in democracy. By the time of the 2021 presidential election in Ecuador, the playing field had been rendered so precipitously unlevel that the US had little need to overtly intervene as it did in Bolivia in 2019.

    But that did not mean that the US was not actively intervening. The websites of USAID, NED, NDI, and IRI make no secret of the imperial hubris of pretending to “promote democracy” in Ecuador. The US laid the groundwork, according to a high-level diplomat, to unify the right and rig the contest against the left.

    As William Blum revealed, US intelligence had prior to Correa and likely since, “infiltrated, often at the highest levels, almost all political organizations of significance, from the far left to the far right…In virtually every department of the Ecuadorian government could be found men occupying positions high and low who collaborated with the CIA for money.”

    Commenting on the new Biden administration, Correa’s former Ambassador Ricardo Ulcuango observed that US foreign policy is the same with Democrats and Republicans. The Democrats, he added, are more dangerous because they are better at speaking about cooperation when they are, in fact, intervening.

    This article was posted on Monday, April 26th, 2021 at 7:21am and is filed under Ecuador, Elections, Lenin Moreno, Media, The “Right”, United States.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • US Role Behind the Defeat of Ecuador’s Leftist Presidential Candidate

    The US role in the defeat of leftist Andrés Arauz in Ecuador’s presidential contest on April 11 was not overt because it did not need to be, according to a high-ranking Latin American diplomat. We met with the diplomat and others on an official election observation delegation with CODEPINK. Names of some sources remain anonymous due to a hostile political environment towards progressives.

    This setback for the Citizens Revolution movement, founded by Rafael Correa, will have profound implications for Ecuador and beyond, fortifying the US-allied reactionary bloc in Latin America.

    Former President Correa left office with a 60% approval rating. He had been twice elected president on the first round; unprecedented for Ecuador, which had a turnover of seven presidents in the previous decade. His Alianza País party had won fourteen elections, reflecting the popularity of their wealth redistributive programs, including reducing extreme poverty in half.

    His chosen successor, Lenín Moreno, will exit on May 24 with a single-digit approval rating. Much happened in the ensuing four years. Correa went from being the most popular democratically elected president in the country’s history to having his party rejected by an electoral majority.

    ¿Qué pasó? – What happened?

    In 2017, Correa had campaigned for his former vice president to carry on their Citizens Revolution. However, once in office, sitting President Moreno turned sharply right against his former colleagues, employing lawfare to decapitate the leadership of the Citizens Revolution. His own vice-president, Jorge Glas, is now in prison and other top officials have been forced to flee Ecuador. Correa, accused of using “psychic influence,” was convicted in absentia in an evidence-weak corruption trial that prevented him from returning to Ecuador.

    According to Correa’s attorney, Fausto Jarrín, Moreno was assisted by the US in this legal dismantling of his own party. Casting pretenses aside, Moreno was in Washington on the day of the first round of the Ecuadorian presidential elections. Just before the second round, Moreno and his top officials flew to the Galapagos to meet with the US ambassador.

    Moreno handed the shop over to the US.  He revoked Julian Assange’s Ecuadorian citizenship, allowing Assange to be arrested in the UK. He recognized Juan Guaidó’s bogus claim to the presidency of Venezuela. After US Vice President Pence visited Ecuador, the FBI was welcomed back. Even a US military base in the Galapagos (part of Ecuador) was gifted to Washington.

    Moreno expelled the Cuban doctors and withdrew from key regional alliances: UNASUR, CELAC, and ALBA. At a time of COVID, these actions had lethal consequences. Had Ecuador instead maintained its membership in the regional organizations, their collective power could have been used to obtain vaccines and other resources to fight the pandemic.

    Moreno imposed an IMF austerity package on Ecuador, only to be partly withdrawn in the face of a massive indigenous-led protest in October 2019. Then under the cover of the presidential election campaign and pandemic, Moreno reinstated the unpopular measures.

    The turncoat Moreno adopted a full-throated neoliberal program and is scrambling to enact additional “economic reforms” before his term is over to prevent the next administration from “putting the toothpaste back in the tube.” But he needn’t worry. Incoming President Guillermo Lasso not only shares the same neoliberal program, but members of Lasso’s right wing political party collaborated with Moreno in the National Assembly.

    This has been a brilliant strategy for the right. Ecuador is in economic crisis with the impacts of austerity measures exacerbated by the pandemic. By putting in place a full neoliberal program before leaving office, Moreno spares Lasso the onus of the unpopular measures while serving international finance represented by Lasso and the US.

    Lawfare used to rig the electoral playing field

    Ecuador’s electoral authority, the CNE, did not recognize the Arauz campaign until December for a February 7 first-round election. Arauz, who was sick with COVID in December, had spent the last four months battling for party certification while the other campaigns were gaining momentum.

    Unlike their rich banker opponent, the Arauz campaign was strapped for funds to build an on-the-ground campaign infrastructure. More importantly, lawfare measures prevented them from even using their party’s name, forcing them to cobble together UNES as their new party.

    Further, Correa with his considerable name recognition and popularity was banned from running as Arauz’s vice president. Worse, the party was prohibited from using Correa’s image, name, or voice in their campaign materials. Yet other parties could invoke Correa to smear the Arauz campaign by falsely accusing Correa of corruption and associating Arauz with Correa as also corrupt.

    Despite all these hurdles, Arauz won the first-round election with a 32% vote, giving him a 13-point lead over second-place Lasso, but short of the 40% or more needed to avoid a second-round contest. Arauz also was leading in the polls, but that was to change with a massive disinformation campaign.

    Right-wing propaganda campaign

    The right-wing mobilized its near monopoly of mass media to spin sworn enemies Moreno and the Citizens Revolution as allied, in what an Arauz campaign leader characterized as the “TikTok and meme-ification” of political discourse.

    Arauz, an energetic 36-year-old economic wiz, was portrayed as stupid and lethargic. In contrast, the 65-year-old conservative Lasso put on a pair of red shoes and was marketed as hip.

    A four-year rightist media campaign portrayed Correa and associates as corrupt.  A Citizens Revolution militant explained, “if you repeat a lie ten times, it becomes a truth.” The “NGO left,” funded by the US and its European allies, contributed to this inversion of reality.

    Struggle ahead in Ecuador

    Guillermo Lasso, owner of the second largest bank in Ecuador, won with a 5-point lead. Arauz said in his concession speech: “This is an electoral setback but by no means a political or moral defeat.”

    With 49 out of 137 seats in the National Assembly, his party remains the single largest bloc. The task of the Citizens Revolution politicians, according to party leaders, will be to maintain unity within their own ranks while forging coalitions with potential allies.

    Meanwhile, they will have to fend off continued lawfare attacks and repression from the right. Some militants have already left the country.

    The second largest bloc in the assembly with 27 seats is the ideologically diverse and indigenous Pachakutik. The Citizens Revolution’s relationships with the leadership of some indigenous organizations and, for that matter, certain labor unions have at times been contentious.

    Correa opposed the clientelism of the past and shunned “selling” ministries and other positions to politically influential leaders in return for their support. Correa concentrated instead on serving the interests of their constituents with infrastructure projects for underserved indigenous regions, granting water rights, and promoting multi-cultural education and health policies. Likewise, workers got wage gains.

    In retrospect, the Citizens Revolution is now openly self-critical about running roughshod over some indigenous and labor leaders. Amends will have to be made, according to a former Correa minister.

    “Promoting democracy” in service of the US empire

    Ruling elites hold elections to legitimize their rule, not because they believe in democracy. By the time of the 2021 presidential election in Ecuador, the playing field had been rendered so precipitously unlevel that the US had little need to overtly intervene as it did in Bolivia in 2019.

    But that did not mean that the US was not actively intervening. The websites of USAID, NED, NDI, and IRI make no secret of the imperial hubris of pretending to “promote democracy” in Ecuador. The US laid the groundwork, according to a high-level diplomat, to unify the right and rig the contest against the left.

    As William Blum revealed, US intelligence had prior to Correa and likely since, “infiltrated, often at the highest levels, almost all political organizations of significance, from the far left to the far right…In virtually every department of the Ecuadorian government could be found men occupying positions high and low who collaborated with the CIA for money.”

    Commenting on the new Biden administration, Correa’s former Ambassador Ricardo Ulcuango observed that US foreign policy is the same with Democrats and Republicans. The Democrats, he added, are more dangerous because they are better at speaking about cooperation when they are, in fact, intervening.

    The post US Role Behind the Defeat of Ecuador’s Leftist Presidential Candidate first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The US Capitol Building Riot and Its Blowback

    by Roger D. Harris / January 12th, 2021

    The right-wing demonstration turned violent riot at the US Capitol on January 6 was a spectacle, complete with Confederate flags and a QAnon shaman in red-white-and-blue face paint. The Venezuelan government stated: “With this unfortunate episode, the United States is experiencing what it has generated in other countries with its policies of aggression.”

    Some half of the active electorate voted for Trump, who believed the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent. The other half of the active electorate was abhorrent about what happened in Washington on January 6, speaking with semi-religious reverence about the desecration of sacred institutions. They believed, in contrast, that it was the 2016 presidential election that was stolen. The Russians were the culprits then and, for the last four years, they supported politicians ever vigilant against détente breaking out with the second most powerful nuclear state.

    The meme, “Due to travel restrictions this year, the US had to organize the coup at home,” went viral. Rather than a coup, as claimed by many in mainstream media, what happened in DC was a riot. “There is a huge difference,” observes Glenn Greenwald, “between, on the one hand, thousands of people shooting their way into the Capitol after a long-planned, coordinated plot with the goal of seizing permanent power, and, on the other, an impulsive and grievance-driven crowd more or less waltzing into the Capitol as the result of strength in numbers and then leaving a few hours later.”

    Whether Trump intended to stage a coup was secondary to whether he could do so. The institutions of state power were aligned against him, as indicated by the last ten secretaries of defense who admonished no go. Too much attention has been wasted obsessing about what was, at best, a delusion.

    The myriad maladies of the American body politic did not originate with Mr. Trump and will not terminate with his departure. He was unique, but not exceptional. His style was all his own, but the substance of the reign of 45 revealed a dreary continuity with his predecessors. And when Trump made feeble attempts to deviate, as with ending endless wars, the Democrats and the permanent state slapped him back into line.

    In fact, Trump may not go away. And for that he will have the liberals to thank. Just like some Trotskyists have made a career of exorcising the specter of Stalin, who died in 1953, liberals will be doing the same with Trump.

    Even if Trump wanted to gracefully bow out of public life – an unlikely outcome – liberals would keep on flogging his dead horse, for Trump has been their greatest asset. And well the liberals need to hold on to the ghost of Trump, as being “not-Trump” is their defining character now that liberalism is dead. Their agenda consists of simply carrying forward the same basic program of neoliberalism at home (but with diversity) and imperialism abroad (but with responsibility to protect) as Trump, only with more finesse.

    How unfathomable it is that a blowhard, paunchy, septuagenarian with a dyed hair combover could lead a right-wing cult movement. Far more bizarre is that person is also the president of the US, who in the 2020 election received more votes than any candidate in history except for his successful challenger. Arguably a white supremist, he garnered 58% of the white voters but also 18% of the black male voters and 36% of the Latino men. That 83% of those who felt the economy was a prime issue chose Trump is an insight into why someone so repugnant could attract so many votes.

    In short, the system has not been meeting the needs of its people, its naked dysfunctionality is bare for all to see, and the ruling circles are experiencing a crisis of legitimacy. The response of the rulers to mass discontent is not to address the root causes but to step up suppression as the trajectory of neoliberalism lurches toward fascism. The aftermath of the events of January 6 has precipitated blowbacks by the ruling elites, such as proposed anti-domestic terrorism measures, in anticipation of popular resistance to the intensifying contradictions of the US imperial project.

    The drama played out on January 6 reflected the distress generated by historical developments in late-stage capitalism: globalization and automation-induced job losses, accelerating wealth and income inequality, reduced access to educational opportunities and health care, food insecurity and hunger, and the threat of becoming homeless.

    The system’s unresolved contradictions are increasingly visible to its victims in both progressive (e.g., Black Lives Matter movement) and reactionary forms (e.g., the Trump phenomenon). Neither of these tendencies are likely to fade away because the conditions that precipitated them will only be exacerbated. Nativist and white-supremist elements – long an undercurrent in the American polity – have been given oxygen by Trump. The Democrats dismiss the right-wing insurgency as a “basket of deplorables.” The left needs to both resist the growing right-wing presence and neutralize them, if not win them over to understand the true source of their discontent.

    The Capitol building riot is being spun to distract from the failure of the neoliberal state to meet the needs of its citizens. Suddenly forgotten are urgently needed reforms like Medicare for All and a stimulus that benefits working people. Instead, the incoming administration of Joe Biden is pushing extensions of the authoritarian state under the guise of combatting domestic terrorism. But thanks to the Patriot Act, for which Biden takes credit as its prime writer, and other such repressive legislation already on the books, the state has already too much power over its citizens.

    These extensions of the coercive power of the state have been and will be used to suppress popular movements and need to be resisted. Beware, the mania for censoring so-called hate speech is a tool for silencing any dissent to the ruling powers. The price of cutting off Trump’s rants on Twitter and Facebook is the ascendence of monopoly corporations that are so powerful that they can even muzzle an elected president. Commonplace is the new normal of unchecked private corporations collecting data 24/7 on our most intimate activities.

    Because the ruling class cannot solve the maturing contradictions of global capitalism, their response to their crisis of legitimacy is to increasingly rely on repression. We cannot rely on the Democrats, who are now backed by the so-called moderate Republicans and underwritten by finance capital, because they are the ones cheerleading the descent into accelerating authoritarianism, as they champion censorship and the oppressive security state measures.

    Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad warn of three world existential crises: nuclear annihilation, climate catastrophe, and neoliberal destruction of the social contract. The ruling class is preparing for a real insurrection and, given the alternative, the people may not disappoint them.

    This article was posted on Tuesday, January 12th, 2021 at 3:42pm and is filed under Authoritarianism, Democrats, Donald Trump, Global Capitalism, Joe Biden, Neoliberalism, Opinion, Protests, Republicans, Surveillance, The “Left”, The “Right”, White Supremacy.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • US Intervenes as Venezuela Prepares for High Stakes Election

    by Roger D. Harris / November 27th, 2020

    The US finally appointed an ambassador to Venezuela after a decade hiatus and in the runup to the Venezuelan National Assembly elections. The new ambassador, James Story, was confirmed by US Senate voice vote on November 18 with Democrats supporting Trump’s nominee.

    Ambassador Story took his post in Bogotá, Colombia. No, this is not another example of Trump’s bungling by sending his man to the wrong capital. The US government does not recognize the democratically elected government in Caracas.

    Impasse of two Venezuelan presidents

    US hostility to Venezuela started when Hugo Chávez became president in 1999 and continues to this day, according to Adán Chávez, the late president’s older brother and vice-president of the PSUV, the ruling socialist party in Venezuela. “For the last 21 years,” he commented, “the empire has been perfecting its attacks” on Venezuela.

    The elder Chávez, spoke at an international online meeting with the US Chapter of the Network of Intellectuals, Artists and Social Movements in Defense of Humanity on November 19. Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution, he explained, was not initially socialist, although it was against neoliberalism. The traditional parties in Venezuela in 1998 had lost their appeal to the voters. Hugo Chávez ran and won, looking for a “third way” that was neither capitalist nor socialist. What the revolution discovered was that there was no third way: either socialism or barbarism.

    When in 2013, Venezuela elected President Nicolás Maduro and not the US-backed candidate, the US declared that election fraudulent and refused to recognize the winner. In the 2018 when Maduro was reelected, the US – not taking any chances – proclaimed fraud four months in advance of the vote.

    Then in January 2019, US Vice President Pence telephoned the newly installed president of Venezuela’s National Assembly, Juan Guaidó. The following morning Guaidó declared himself president of Venezuela on a Caracas street corner. Almost immediately Donald Trump recognized him as Venezuela’s de facto president.

    Guaidó’s claim to the national presidency was based on being third in constitutional succession, overlooking that neither the Venezuelan president nor vice-president had vacated their offices. At the time, the 35-year-old was unknown to 81% of the Venezuelan people, according to a poll by a firm favorable to the opposition. Guaidó was not even a leader in his own far-right party, Popular Will. He had never run for national office and his previous “exposure” was just that. A photograph of his bare behind made the press when he dropped his pants at a demonstration against the government. The person, whose butt may have been better known than his face, only got to be president of the National Assembly by a scheme which rotated the office among the parties in the legislature.

    But Juan Guaidó had one outstanding qualification to be the US-anointed puppet president of Venezuela – he was a trained US security asset.

    Guaidó’s parallel government has named ambassadors without power and has colluded with the US to loot Venezuelan national assets, some $24 billion. His former attorney is now on the legal team working to take over CITGO, the oil company in the US owned by Venezuela.

    “As time went on,” Mission Verdad reported from Venezuela, “support for Guaidó faded and his childish image became a laughable anecdote of Venezuelan politics.” After several failed coup attempts, corruption, embezzlement, resigning from his own party, and losing the presidency of the National Assembly, Guaidó’s last shred of legitimacy – his National Assembly seat – will be contested on December 6 with elections to the unicameral legislature.

    US interference and sanctions on Venezuela

    The extraordinary level of US interference in Venezuela’s electoral process highlights their importance. The US government has preemptively declared the upcoming National Assembly elections fraudulent.  Guaidó’s political party and others on the far right have dutifully obeyed Trump’s directive to boycott the contest.

    However, other opposition elements have broken with the US strategy of extra-parliamentary regime change and are participating in the elections. They have also distanced themselves from Guaidó’s calls for ever harsher sanctions against his people and even for US military intervention.

    To maintain discipline among the moderate opposition, the US has sanctioned some opposition party leaders for registering to run in the parliamentary elections. Nevertheless, 98 opposition parties and nine Chavista parties (supporters of the Bolivarian Revolution) will be contesting for 277 seats in the National Assembly.

    Following the US’s lead, the European Union rejected the upcoming election and an invitation to send election observers. A long list of international figures including Noble Prize winners and former heads of state petitioned the EU: “This election represents, above all a democratic, legal and peaceful way out of the political and institutional crisis that was triggered in January 2019 by the self-appointment of Juan Guaidó as ‘interim president’ of Venezuela.”

    The Council of Electoral Experts of Latin America (CEELA) and other internationals will be observing the election on December 6. CEELA Chairman Nicanor Moscoso noted: “We, as former magistrates and electoral authorities in Latin America, have organized elections and also participated in over 120 elections…Our aim is to accompany the Venezuelan people.”

    The nine Chavista parties are not running on a unified slate. The new Popular Revolutionary Alternative coalition, which formed to run candidates independently, includes the Venezuelan Communist Party.

    Communists normally would not get favorable ink in The New York Times. But when there are splits on the left, the empire’s newspaper of record exploits them: “They championed Venezuela’s revolution – they are now its latest victims.” The paper reports: “The repression is partly an outcome of Mr. Maduro’s decision to abandon the wealth redistribution policies of his late predecessor, Hugo Chávez, in favor of what amounts to crony capitalism to survive American sanctions [emphasis added].”

    The key to deconstructing the Times’s hit piece is the phrase, “to survive American sanctions.” As Alfred de Zayas, the United Nations Human Rights Rapporteur on Venezuela, had observed even before the pandemic hit, the US sanctions on Venezuela are causing “economic asphyxiation.” Compromises have been necessitated.

    President Maduro has survived a drone assassination attempt, mercenary invasions, and abortive coups. In this context, the ruling party realistically feels under siege.

    Although running independent candidates, Communist Party leader Oscar Figuera states “we see imperialism as the main enemy of the Venezuelan people.” And on that the Chavista forces are united.

    National Assembly elections as a referendum on the Venezuelan project

    Venezuela’s Vice Foreign Minister Carlos Ron characterized the election as a referendum against the “brutal blockade” imposed by the US and its allies and against their effort to undermine Venezuela’s democracy by trying to prevent the election from being conducted. He spoke from Caracas in a webinar produced by the US Peace Council and others on November 18.

    Carlos Ron lamented that the Venezuelan opposition does not play by the rules. In the 24 national elections held since the election of Hugo Chávez, only the two that have been won by the opposition were deemed truly legitimate by them. Yet this is the electoral system that former US President Jimmy Carter proclaimed to be “the best in the world.”

    Margaret Flowers of Popular Resistance spoke in the November 18 webinar calling for the US government to end the illegal coercive economic measures, including unfreezing Venezuela’s assets. Flowers called for reestablishment of diplomatic relations with the legitimate government of Venezuela based on peace and mutual respect.

    Ajamu Baraka of the Black Alliance for Peace spoke at the webinar of the necessity to protect the Venezuelan project as the “gateway to the transformation of the entire region,” which is also why the US sees Venezuela as a threat. He cautioned that Joe Biden has the same regime-change policy as Trump. Our responsibility, Baraka concluded, is to build a clear anti-imperialist movement.

    This article was posted on Friday, November 27th, 2020 at 8:19am and is filed under Crimes against Humanity, Donald Trump, Elections, Joe Biden, Juan Guaidó, Lies, President Nicolas Maduro, Sanctions, United States, US Congress, US Foreign Policy, US Hypocrisy, Venezuela.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.