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Category: Venezuela

  • Breaking news: Laureates of the MEA for 2023 announced

    Today the three Martin Ennals Award Laureates 2023 were announced !

    The 2023 Laureates — Delphine Djiraibé (Chad), Feliciano Reyna (Venezuela), and Khurram Parvez (Jammu and Kashmir) — have each dedicated over 30 years of their lives to building movements which brought justice for victims, accountability from leaders, or medicines to the marginalized. They have made human rights real for thousands of people in their communities, despite the ongoing, sometimes life-threatening, challenges they endure.  For more on this award and its laureates, see: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/awards/043F9D13-640A-412C-90E8-99952CA56DCE

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    Delphine Kemneloum Djiraibé was one of the first female lawyers in Chad and a pioneer of the human rights movement in one of the poorest countries in the world, fraught with corruption and human rights abuses. Convinced that her role is to “challenge the power”, Delphine has advocated on behalf of victims and the democratic process for over 30 years. She was a key figure in bringing the former dictator Hissène Habré to justice. Djiraibé heads the non-governmental organisation Public Interest Law Center (PILC), which trains volunteers and accompanies citizens seeking justice for violations of their rights. In recent years she has been particularly active in combating gender-based violence and is in the process of establishing the first women’s counselling center in Chad, which will include an emergency shelter for women affected by domestic violence. See also: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/laureates/5B701F71-12FD-B713-9F99-5E09B9AFD6DA

    After the death of his partner Rafael from AIDS in 1995, Feliciano Reyna, then an architect, founded Acción Solidaria to provide much needed medication and treatment to Venezuelans living with HIV & AIDS. Feliciano and Acción Solidaria began advocating for access to health for the marginalised LGBTQI population in a country where healthcare was on the decline and corruption on the rise. They created the first national AIDS Help Line in Venezuela and ran a national awareness campaign on HIV & AIDS, which aired on TV and in movie theaters, and received radio and magazine coverage. Feliciano Reyna went on to found CODEVIDA, a coalition of Venezuelan organisations promoting the rights of Venezuelan citizens to health and life. As he put it: “We walked directly into the complex humanitarian emergency in Venezuela”. Despite ongoing threats, since 2006, he has worked closely with UN mechanisms to defend human rights in his country. In 2019 his advocacy was instrumental in establishing the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela. 

    At the age of 13, when Khurram Parvez witnessed the shooting of his grandfather during a protest demonstration against the molestation of women outside his house in Kashmir, he chose to “not incite violence and become part of some revenge” , but rather to become a “nonviolent activist“. He founded the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS) and is the Chair of the Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances. For 15 years he has travelled to the most remote parts of the region to sit with victims of abuse, collect documentation and report on their stories. Under his leadership, the JKCCS has been highly effective in translating the protections guaranteed in international human rights law into local realities. Despite continued attacks on his right to freedom of expression by the Indian government, being jailed in 2016 and losing a leg to landmines, Khurram relentlessly spoke the truth and was an inspiration to civil society and the local population. In November 2021, he was arrested under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) on politically motivated charges. He remains detained without trial in India.  See also: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/laureates/81468931-79AA-24FF-58F7-10351638AFE3

    You can watch them take questions from the press at the Club Suisse de la Presse, livestreamed on February 14th, 2023 from 12h CET.

    A celebration of the Laureates 2023 will take place on 16 February at the Salle communale de Plainpalais in Geneva, at 6:30pm. The event is open to the public and livestreamed from the Martin Ennals Foundation’s website and Facebook page. Sign-up to the Ceremony

    2023 Edition

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Venezuelan Political Prisoner on Trial in Miami Refuses to “Sing”

    Starting December 12, an evidentiary hearing before the US Southern District Court of Florida is considering a case of historic importance. Is the US above international law? Can international conventions on diplomatic immunity be violated by US courts and prosecutors? The fate of Alex Saab, a special envoy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is being contested, but larger questions that could affect the lives of diplomats around the world will be decided.

    Most prisoners with a get-out-of-jail-free card would have played it, but not Alex Saab. The Venezuelan diplomat has been incarcerated for two and a half years.

    On June 12, 2020, Alex Saab was on a mission from Caracas to Tehran to procure supplies of food, fuel, and medicine denied the Venezuelans by sanctions imposed by the US. His plane was diverted to the island archipelago nation of Cabo Verde. When it landed on the tarmac, he was seized at Washington’s behest and has been imprisoned since.

    Under pressure from the US, Cabo Verde defied findings by the regional ECOWAS Court of Justice and the United Nations Human Right Committee to free Alex Saab. As a special envoy of the Venezuelan government, he was supposed to be immune from arrest and detention under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.

    Then on October 16, 2022, Saab was “extradited” – really “kidnapped” because the US does not have an extradition treaty with Cabo Verde – and imprisoned in Miami.

    Washington’s embarrassingly feeble excuse for the forcible extraction of a foreign national to the US was that the special envoy was guilty of bilking the Venezuelan people.  Yet, as soon as Saab had been thrown into the federal penitentiary, the Department of Justice dropped their seven charges of money laundering.

    The remaining charge of “conspiracy” to money launder is a prosecutor’s gift because the accused can’t use the fact that they did not commit the alleged crime as proof of innocence.

    In fact, what the imperial power had perpetrated was an example of extra-territorial judicial overreach. Someone who is a foreigner and not in the US is being persecuted for an alleged crime committed in a foreign country. Only an entity that had arrogated to itself to be the world’s cop could pull off such an egregious action.

    Surely, if Mr. Saab was indeed undermining the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the US would have been delighted. Such subversive activity would have been consonant with US’s own policy of regime-change to be achieved by applying sanctions. Yet it was Saab who was, by Washington’s own admission, instrumental in helping Venezuela circumvent these unilateral coercive measures by bringing humanitarian supplies from Iran in legal international trade.

    Contrary to Washington’s colonialist pretext that Saab was wronging the Venezuelan people, the Caracas government has treated him as a national hero.

    But perhaps the strongest argument for Saab’s sincerity is that the US government has admitted that the diplomat was targeted because he had information that Washington wanted. No lesser an authority than former US Defense Secretary Mark Esper wrote: “It was important to get custody of him. This could provide a real roadmap for the US government to unravel the Venezuelan government’s illicit [sic] plans.”

    Yet under torture in Cabo Verde and further incarceration in the US, Alex Saab has refused to “sing” and has maintained his allegiance to the democratically elected government of Venezuela. Instead of being reunited with his family, Alex Saab in still arguing for his right to diplomatic immunity and against his illegal detention.

    If the US refuses to recognize special envoy Saab’s diplomatic immunity, the precedent will endanger the inviolability of diplomats worldwide.

    The post Venezuelan Political Prisoner on Trial in Miami Refuses to “Sing” first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Volatility of US Hegemony in Latin America (Part III)

    A surging Pink Tide has brought left electoral victories in Latin America and the Caribbean protesting the neoliberal model imposed by the US and its collaborators. Neoliberalism has failed to meet the needs of the peoples of the region and is losing its legitimacy as a prototype for development.

    However, the countries of the region must of necessity engage in a world financial order dominated by the US, which limits the possibilities of developing their economies successfully.

    Troubled waters

    US and other western central banks – what Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega calls the “gang of assassins who control the global economy” – maintained low interest rates for much of the last decade which encouraged countries in Latin America and the Caribbean to take out large loans.

    Starting around 2021, interest rates were slowly raised. Coincident, the pandemic hit and developing countries were forced to go further into debt to fund Covid measures and cushion the effects of the economic dislocation. In these volatile times, the value of the US dollar has increased on international markets.

    For developing nations, this has meant higher interest payments coupled with capital flight to US financial markets in particular. Inflation, fueled by US and allied sanctions on Russia, have disrupted international supply chains, making goods less available and more expensive. In addition, large corporations have extracted excess profits.

    The Pink Tide meets a right-wing counter current

    Paradoxically those very problems which the left-leaning governments protested about, now have become theirs to solve once in power and at a time of growing economic distress. What Reuters calls the now “orphaned right” in Latin America and the Caribbean may be down but not dead.

    Mexico. In Mexico, AMLO is termed-out for the 2024 presidential race. The popular president is currently advocating contentious electoral reforms and expanded welfare. Economic growth is stagnating, and the country continues to be plagued with horrific drug cartel violence. The US is heavily pressuring Mexico to accept GMO crops, energy sector privatization, and measures to prevent immigrants for crossing the border into the “land of the free.”

    Argentina. Argentina, a major global supplier of grains and soybeans, is in the third year of a draught. The economy is in shambles with inflation running at nearly 100%, wages stagnant, and an enormous debt incurred by the former rightist administration.

    Current vice president and former president (2003-2007) Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (CFK) is the likely left candidate in the upcoming presidential race in October. She may be pitted against former right-wing president Mauricio Macri in what would be a polarizing contest. CFK, who narrowly escaped death when the assassin’s gun jammed, is facing major legal “lawfare” challenges for corruption. Presently, the right is favored to win in the polls.

    Bolivia. President Arce faced a month-long coup attempt in the Santa Cruz department of Bolivia. Right-wing forces set up blockades and violently attacked unionists and campesinos, causing considerable damage to the national economy before an agreement was reached. The timing of the next national census was the ostensible point of contention, but the larger and continuing purpose was to destabilize the leftist administration.

    Peru. The ever-mercurial Peru has had five presidents in three years. After winning by a razor thin margin, the majority right-wing legislature has so hounded President Castillo that he has literally been unable to govern. They have even blocked his ability to leave the country while he is being investigated on multiple corruption charges. Castillo is hanging in there by his fingernails, having survived two impeachment attempts (and another in progress) and some five cabinet reorganizations.

    Honduras. After over 12 years of US-aligned governments in Honduras, President Castro has inherited a strongly entrenched rightist judiciary, military, and police and a weak economy. A state of emergency was imposed at the end of November to address widespread extortion by gangs.

    The new president has proceeded cautiously given her constrained options. The legislature passed her repeal of the ZEDE free trade zones. But the US ambassador has interfered in Honduran affairs, opposing the repeal.

    Chile. Gabriel Boric has tried to position himself as the “good” non-authoritarian left. On the campaign trail and in office, he criticized Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, creating disunity among the left-leaning Latin American states. Maduro of Venezuela returned the compliment by labelling him the “cowardly left”; Ortega of Nicaragua called him a White House “lapdog.”

    While he may ingratiate himself to the US, President Boric’s popularity ratings have plummeted. He surfed into office on the popular wave for a new constitution to replace the Pinochet-era one, but which went down in a referendum on September 4 with only 38% approval. The economy is in decline and the indigenous Mapuche people are in revolt.

    Colombia. The new progressive president has to carefully triangulate with the entrenched right and the colossus of the north. Colombia is the only NATO “global partner” in Latin America, and President Petro has proposed bringing NATO into the Amazon. The congenitally anti-communist, neoliberal Soros foundation is also working closely with the new government.

    Despite these constraints, President Petro has reopened relations with Venezuela, reversing Colombia’s previous role as the US surrogate to attack its neighbor. Petro has forged ahead with his Total Peace initiative with the ELN and other armed guerillas, based on the 2016 Peace Agreement. Further, the new administration seeks to negotiate peaceful settlements with right paramilitaries and drug cartels. Meanwhile, illicit cocaine production in Colombia, the world’s largest supplier, is on a record increase.

    Petro has also been successful in getting his tax reform enacted to fund his ambitious social programs. Nevertheless, his energy policies present problematic choices between extraction for profit and retrenchment for the environment.

    Brazil. Lula beat Bolsonaro by 1.5%. Given the unexpected closeness of the vote and Bolsonaro’s extreme right-wing positions, not to mention his bungling of the Covid crisis and general mismanagement, some analysts considered the election more of a rejection of Bolsonaro than an affirmation of Lula. A significant proportion of the electorate believe, without evidence, that Lula is a corrupt criminal who stole the election.

    For over three weeks after Bolsonaro lost, right-wing truckers blocked Brazil’s highways in protest, and evangelicals preyed outside military bases calling for the army to overturn the vote. Bolsonaro neither conceded, nor commented, nor even appeared in public. His Vice President Hamilton Mourão offered the excuse that his chief had a skin disease preventing him from wearing pants!

    Finally, Bolsonaro called for annulling over half the votes because of a supposed bug in the electronic system, which would allow him to remain president of Brazil. The independent election authority reaffirmed Lula’s legitimate victory.

    Lula’s Workers’ Party lost some of the major cities and states and lacks an effective majority in the national legislature, immediately forcing Lula to moderate his economic agenda after his initial proposal set financial markets plunging. Lula’s running mate and now VP Geraldo Alckmin is a center-right politician, who was included on the ticket to attract that constituency. Lula will take office on January 1.

    Prognosis for the Pink Tide

    The recent left successes of the Pink Tide have been considerable, but may be transient, subject to the ebb and flow of the electoral arena. Further, this Pink Tide is limited by social democratic politics ideologically tied to accommodating their own bourgeoisies, which inhibits how far social change can be achieved.

    Significantly, no new revolutions accompanied this current wave of left electoral victories. Nor are any new revolutions currently on the horizon. The existing socialist countries of Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua have been engaged in defensive struggles against the regime-change campaigns of the US. Their futures are more constrained than they were a decade ago. And their continued survival is by no means guaranteed.

    Overarching the hemisphere is the continued presence of US. Globally, Washington has become more aggressive in asserting its dominance and more unified in its imperialist mission now that the Democrats have become the leading party of war.

    Meanwhile, recessionary clouds are gathering over the world economy which will impede the left-leaning administrations’ social programs. Unlike the previous Pink Tide of 2008, this one won’t be buoyed by a comparable commodities boom.

    Nevertheless, looking into the new year, Venezuelan President Maduro observed at a meeting of the São Palo Forum of regional left parties: “We are facing a favorable wave for the peoples, for the anti-neoliberal model, for the advanced pro-independence model.”

    See Part I here; Part II here

    The post The Volatility of US Hegemony in Latin America (Part III) first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Volatility of US Hegemony in Latin America (Part II)

    The US has long considered Latin America and the Caribbean to be its “backyard” under the anachronist 1823 Monroe Doctrine. And even though current US President Biden mistakenly thinks that upgrading the region to the “front yard” makes any difference, Yankee hemispheric hegemony is becoming increasingly volatile. A “Pink Tide” of left electoral victories since 2018 have swept Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Honduras, Chile, Columbia, and Brazil. At the same time, China has emerged as an economic presence while tumultuously inflationary winds blow in the world economy.

    In this larger context, the socialist triad of Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua are addressed below along with the importance of Haiti.

    Henry Kissinger once quipped: “To be an enemy of the US is dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal.” He presciently encapsulated the perilously precarious situations in the “enemy” states targeted for regime change by the imperial power – Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua – as well as the critical consequences for Haiti of being “friended.”

    Out-migration from Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua

    While accommodation and cooption by Washington may be in order for social democracies such as the new administrations in Colombia and Brazil, nothing but regime ruination is slated for the explicitly socialist states. Looking pretty in pink is begrudgingly tolerable for Washington but not red.

    The Democratic Party speech writers may lack the rhetorical flourish of John Bolton’s “Troika of Tyranny,” but President Biden has continued his predecessor’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. The result has been unprecedented out migration from the three states striving for socialism, although the majority of migrants entering the US are still from either the Northern Triangle (consisting of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras) or Mexico.

    US immigration policy is cynically designed to exacerbate the situation. The Biden administration has dangled inconsistent political amnesties jerking Venezuelan and Nicaraguan immigrants around. The Cuban Adjustment Act, dating back to 1966, perversely encourages irregular immigration.

    With Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, the pull of economic opportunities drives people to leave in the face of sanctions-fueled deteriorating conditions at home. These migrants differ from those from the Northern Triangle, who are also fleeing from the push of gang violence, extortion, femicide, and the ambiance of general criminal impunity.

    Socialist states red-lined

    US sanctions, which have literally red-lined Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, are more lethal than ever. The electronic technology for enforcing the coercive measures has far advanced since the days over six decades ago when JFK first visited what is called the “blockade” on Cuba. Further, the effect over time of sanctions is to corrode socialist solidarity and cooperation. And in recent times, cyber warfare using social media is effectively wielded by the imperialists.

    Natural disasters have a synergistic effect aggravating and amplifying the pain of sanctions. An August lightning strike destroyed 40% of Cuba’s fuel reserves. Then Hurricane Ian hit both Cuba and Nicaragua in October, while Venezuela experienced unprecedented heavy rainfall, all with lethal consequences.

    The Covid pandemic stressed these already sanctions-battered economies, presenting the unenviable choice of locking down or working and eating. Cuba was forced to suspend tourism, which was a major source of foreign income. Venezuela chose an innovative system of alternating periods of lockdown. Nicaragua, where three-quarters of the population work in small businesses and farms or the informal sector, implemented relatively successful public health measures while keeping the economy open.

    Venezuela has made remarkable progress turning around a complete economic collapse deliberately caused by the US sanctions, but it still has a long, long way to recovery. For example, poor people are getting fat in Venezuela, not because there is too much food, but because there is not enough. Consequently, they are forced to subsist on high caloric arepas made of fried corn flour and cannot afford more nutritious vegetables and meats.

    Nicaragua is bracing for more US sanctions, while the situation in Cuba is more desperate than ever. But with international support and solidarity, the explicitly socialist states have continued to successfully resist the onslaughts of imperialism.

    Haiti made poor by imperialism

    Compared to Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, Haiti is suffering even more. It is the poorest country in the hemisphere, made so by imperialism. Few countries in the hemisphere have had as intimate a relationship with the hegemon to the north as Haiti…unfortunately. Presently civil society has risen up in revolt and for good reason.

    Haiti achieved independence in 1804 in the world’s first successful slave revolt and the first successful anti-colonial revolution in Latin America and the Caribbean. For those Afro-descendants, the price of freedom has been stiff. The former colonial power, France, along with the US have been bleeding Haiti dry ever since. Over $20 billion has been extracted for “reparations” under the force of arms for the cost of the slaves and repayment of the consequent “debt.”

    Under US President Bill Clinton – he has since apologized after the damage was done – peasant agriculture was destroyed with an IMF deal. Since then, Haiti has gone from being a net exporter of rice to an importer from the US. The consequent population shift from the land to the cities conforms to the designs for Haiti to be a low-wage manufacturing center for foreign capital.

    The treatment of Haitian immigrants and would-be immigrants on the US southern border by the overtly racist and anti-immigrant Donald Trump has been even worse by his supposedly “woke” Democratic successor. Tellingly, Biden’s special envoy quit in protest because he found the administration’s policy, in  his words, “inhumane.”

    Haiti has been without an elected president. Ariel Henry, the current officeholder, was simply installed by the Core Group of the US, Canada, and other outside powers after his also unelected predecessor, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated in July 2021. The Haitian parliament doesn’t meet, most government services are non-functional, rival armed groups control major swarths of the national territory, and cholera has again broken out.

    The US has proposed a return of a multi-national military force like the previous disastrous MINUSTAH effort by the UN, which left the country in the state it is now. Little wonder that the peoples of the hemisphere aspire to alternatives to the US aiding their development.

    Chinese tsunami and the Russian rip tide

    China has emerged as an alternative and challenger to US dollar dominance of the hemisphere. China has provided vital life support for the socialist states targeted by US for regime change. During the Covid pandemic, China supplied the region with medical equipment and vaccines, literally saving lives.

    The Chinese economic presence has been like a tsunami wave from the east building up as it approached the American landmass. In 2000, China accounted for a mere 2% of the region’s trade. Economic exchanges began to swell when China joined the World Trade Association in December 2001. Today, China is the number one trading partner with South America and second only to the US for the region as a whole.

    China has expanded its political, cultural, and even military ties with the region, while Taiwan’s fortunes have receded. Over twenty Latin American and Caribbean countries have joined the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), offering more diverse commercial and financial options.

    Russia, too, has been a salvation as when Cuba was caught in the pandemic peak with the Delta strain and their oxygen plant broke down. Russia airlifted life-saving oxygen and later brought vital fuel after the fires at Matanzas crippled the Cuban energy grid.

    To be continued…

    • The inflationary blowback from western sanctions on some one third of humanity present an increasingly volatile global context.

    • Part III concludes with the challenges ahead for countries striving for independence from US dominance.

    • See Part 1 here;

    The post The Volatility of US Hegemony in Latin America (Part II) first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Volatility of US Hegemony in Latin America (Part 1)

    Latin America and the Caribbean have again began to take on a becoming pink complexion, all the more so with June’s historic electoral victory in Colombia over the country’s long-dominant US-backed right-wing and a similar reverse in Brazil in October. These electoral rejections of the right-wing followed left victories last year in Peru, Honduras, and Chile. And those, in turn, came after similar routs in Bolivia in 2020, Argentina in 2019, and Mexico in 2018.

    This electoral wave, according to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, speaking at the Climate Summit in November, “open[s] a new geopolitical age to Latin America.” This “Pink Tide” challenges US hemispheric hegemony, whose pedigree dates back to the 1823 Monroe Doctrine.

    The tidal surge

    The metaphor of the “Pink Tide” aptly describes the ebb and flow of the ongoing class conflict between the minions of imperialism and the region’s popular forces. Back in 1977, the region was dominated by the “rule of the generals.” The infamous US Operation Condor supported explicit military dictatorships in all of South America, except for Colombia and Venezuela, and in much of Central America.

    Then the tide began to turn with the election of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela in 1998. By 2008, almost the entire region was in the pink with the notable exceptions of Colombia, Mexico, and a few others. A decade later, a conservative backlash left Uruguay, Ecuador, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Cuba, and a lonely handful of other states on the progressive side. But that was to change by mid-year 2018.

    Mexico

    The first blush of pink to the current wave dates back to July 1, 2018, with Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s landslide victory in Mexico. Many believe his two previous runs at the presidency were stolen from him. Affectionately known by the acronym AMLO, his broad coalition under the newly formed MORENA party swept national, state, and municipal offices and ended 36 years of neoliberal rule.

    Mexico’s list to the left was significant. It is the second largest economy in the region and the thirteenth in the world. Mexico is the second largest US trading partner after Canada and before China.

    AMLO has made important foreign policy initiatives independent, in fact, defiant, of the US. He conspicuously invited Venezuelan President Maduro as a guest of honor to a major Mexican holiday celebration. When Biden called a “democracy summit” for the hemisphere last June but did not invite Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, AMLO boldly led a boycott, which largely sabotaged the affair. And AMLO has been a strong proponent of regional integration promoting CELAC and other multi-national institutions.

    Argentina

    A year after AMLO’s ascendency, the rightist Mauricio Macri was replaced by the left Peronist Alberto Fernández on October 27, 2019. The flip from right to left was a repudiation of Macri’s subservience to the IMF and austerity economic policies, which had generated mass opposition.

    Bolivia

    Two weeks after the election in Argentina, the left suffered a major body blow on November 10, 2019, when a coup overthrew leftist President Evo Morales in Bolivia. The coup was backed by the US with the complicity of the Organization of American States (OAS) under the leadership of Luis Almagro, a sycophant to the Yankees.

    Evo, as he is popularly called, was the first indigenous president in the majority indigenous country. He barely escaped the coup violence when a plane supplied by AMLO whisked him to safety in Mexico.

    Evo’s vindication came a year later on October 18, 2020, when his fellow Movement to Socialism (MAS) Party member Luis Arce won back the presidency by a landslide. Evo then returned from exile and has since played an international role as a spokesperson on climate change, regional integration, indigenous rights, and other left issues.

    Peru

    Then seven months later, a person from a Marxist-Leninist party took the presidency in Peru on June 6, 2021. When the rural schoolteacher and strike leader Pedro Castillo emerged as one of the two contenders in the first presidential election round, he was virtually unknown. The international press even struggled to find a photo of the future president.

    Castillo won the final election round against the hard right Keiko Fujimori. Castillo’s victory spelled the end of the Lima Group, a coalition of anti-Venezuela countries. Strategically, the Pacific rim of South America, which had previously been entirely populated by right-wing US allies, now had a leftist in its midst.

    Nicaragua

    The left trend was further consolidated five months after the success in Peru when the ruling Sandinista Party (FSLN) in Nicaragua swept the national elections on November 7, 2021. A year later on November 6, 2022, the Sandinistas were further affirmed with a sweep of the municipal elections.

    Nicaragua had been recovering from a violent unsuccessful coup attempt in 2018 involving the Catholic Church and other right-wing elements. Having failed to achieve regime change by helping to instigate and back the coup, the US has since tightened the economic screws on the third poorest state in the hemisphere ratcheting up unilateral coercive measures.

    Despite the illegal US sanctions designed to punish its people, the socialist government has done so much with so little. Nicaragua’s 8.3% economic growth during the pandemic is among the highest in the region and indeed the world.

    Nicaragua is the safest in the entire region and among the safest internationally. Education and healthcare are free. With the best roads in Central America, the previously neglected and isolated Caribbean coast is now more fully integrated with the rest of the country. And an unsurpassed 30% of the national territory is in autonomous zones for indigenous and Afro-descendent peoples. Contrary to US propaganda, polls show President Daniel Ortega is popular with his constituents.

    Venezuela

    Then two weeks after the left electoral affirmation in Nicaragua, the same was repeated in Venezuela. The ruling Socialist Party (PSUV) swept the regional and legislative elections on November 21, 2021.

    Although the US and a handful of its most sycophantic allies still recognize the Trump-anointed Juan Guaidó as “interim president” of Venezuela, the vast majority of states accept Nicolás Maduro as the lawful president. The hapless Mr. Guaidó has the highest disapproval ratings among potential opposition candidates for the 2024 presidential election. While polls show that if a snap election were called, Maduro would win.

    Meanwhile, Biden, under pressure to ease fuel shortages of its own making, is ever so slightly easing Trump’s draconian sanctions. Chevron is resuming limited operations in Venezuela and some of Venezuela’s $20 billion of “kidnapped” assets in foreign banks are being released for humanitarian projects.

    Honduras

    Just a week after the Venezuela election, the sweetest left triumph was achieved. Xiomara Castro became the first woman elected to the presidency in the history of Honduras on December 1, 2021. Her husband, Manuel Zelaya, had been overthrown in a coup on June 28, 2009, that was orchestrated by US President Barack Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

    Castro replaced over twelve years of “nacro dictatorship,” a well-deserved opprobrium that is confirmed by the US government itself. Back in 2009, the facts were so clear that even the accomplice Obama had to admit Zelaya was ousted in a “coup,” though he weaseled that wasn’t a “military” coup.

    The US then backed a succession of illegitimate presidents, including the most recent past President Juan Orlando Hernández, with generous military, financial, and political support. Even the OAS, which is essentially an arm of the US masquerading as a multi-national body, questioned the validity of his election. Then once Castro won, “JOH” was quickly extradited to the US and thrown into prison for importing vast quantities of cocaine to the US.

    Formerly known as the “USS Honduras” for its role as the US surrogate in Central America, the new Castro presidency will be charting a new course for Honduras.

    Chile

    Less than two weeks after the defeat of the right in Honduras, Gabriel Boric won the Chilean presidency on December 19, 2021, campaigning under the slogan “neoliberalism was born in Chile and here it will die.” He replaced the rightist Sebastián Piñera who, incidentally, was the richest person in Chile.

    A former student leader turned politician, the 36-year-old Boric came out of the mass anti-neoliberal protests of 2019 and 2021, which mobilized a significant portion of Chile’s population. Boric had beaten the Communist Party candidate in the progressive Apruebo Dignidad coalition primary and went on the defeat José Antonio Kast in the presidential election.

    To call Kast a far rightist would be an understatement. Sometimes leftist rhetoric too loosely accuses opponents of being fascists. In the case of Kast and his politically active brothers, however, the term is perfectly apt. Their father came from Germany and was an actual member of the Nazi Party.

    Colombia

    What happened next was truly historical. Former leftist guerilla (since moderated toward the center-left) Gustavo Petro and his VP Francia Márquez, an Afro-descendent environmentalist, were the first progressives to ever win in Colombia on June 19th of this year. Their Pacto Histórico coalition had come out of the immense popular protests of 2019 and 2020, which featured indigenous and Afro-descendent participation.

    Colombia, formerly known as the “Israel of Latin America,” had long been the leading US regional client state and the largest recipient of US military aid in the hemisphere. This election promises to upset that role and break with the influential right-wing former President Álvaro Uribe and his successors.

    Outgoing rightist President Iván Duque also made history as Colombia’s least popular president. He immediately joined the rightist Wilson Center in Washington, changing job titles but not, in effect, employers.

    Brazil

    Colombia was a huge splash in the region, but what ensued in Brazil was a crashing tidal wave of global proportions.

    Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known colloquially simply as Lula, was first elected in 2003 and left the presidency in 2010 with soaring popularity ratings. He was succeeded by fellow Workers’ Party member Dilma Rousseff, who was reelected in 2014. Two years later, the right-dominated legislature used “lawfare” to oust her from office.

    Lula was then a victim of lawfare himself. Although the most popular would-be presidential candidate, he spent April 2018 to November 2019 in prison. This allowed Jair “Trump of the Tropics” Bolsonaro to assume the presidency. Then in a spectacular comeback, Lula beat Bolsonaro in the next presidential contest on October 31, 2022.

    Sea change in Latin America and the Caribbean

    The progressive electoral victories decisively tip the regional geopolitical balance to the portside. The rank order by size of the largest regional economies is Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, and Peru – all of which are now on the left side of the ledger. Brazil’s is the eighth largest economy in the world.

    Brazil’s inclusion in the BRICS transcontinental alliance foreshadows an emerging international multipolar independence from the west. Originally including Russia, India, China, and South Africa, BRICS+ may expand to include Argentina, Iran, Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, and others.

    Lula campaigned on creating a regional currency, the SUR. Maduro, too, has called for a regional currency, which would challenge US dollar dominance.

    Lula, Maduro, and their fellow travelers promise to be spokespersons for the poor at home, for regional integration (reviving UNASUR and reinforcing MERCOSUR), and internationally for multilateralism (addressing climate change and possibly even helping to broker a peace in Ukraine).

    To be continued…

    • Part II addresses the explicitly socialist countries (Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua), the lessons of Haiti, and the emerging role of China.

    The post The Volatility of US Hegemony in Latin America (Part 1) first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Venezuelan migrants expelled after Biden expands Title 42 expulsions

    The United States expelled hundreds of Venezuelans to Mexico over October 15–16, reports José Luis Granados Ceja.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • AOC, Pressley Slam Biden for Using Title 42 to Expel Venezuelan Asylum Seekers

    Democrats and progressives are condemning the Biden administration for its continued use of Title 42, a cruel anti-immigration pandemic policy that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is now using to expel Venezuelan asylum seekers arriving at the southern U.S. border.

    In a letter with 24 signatories, spearheaded by Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-New York) and Sen. Bob Menendez (D-New Jersey), lawmakers criticized DHS’s announcement, saying that the continued use of Title 42 is “morally wrong, discriminatory, and unlawful.”

    Expressing their “profound disappointment” with the DHS decision, the lawmakers said that “Title 42 violates our nation’s domestic and international legal obligations by placing asylum seekers at risk of extreme violence.” The letter was signed by prominent progressive lawmakers like Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), Ayanna Pressley (D-Massachusetts) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan).

    The lawmakers wrote that the policy is racist, citing a report from a public health expert from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention saying that Title 42 is used “to keep Hispanics out of the country.” The lawmakers also pointed out that experts have said that the policy — which is supposedly being employed to stop the spread of COVID-19 — has no public health basis.

    Using Title 42 against Venezuelans is especially heinous, the lawmakers wrote, given that the administration itself has acknowledged the danger of sending people at the border back to Mexico, noting that it puts people at risk of kidnapping, sexual assault or death.

    “It is critical that the Administration reassess the decision to implement Title 42 against Venezuelan asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border,” the lawmakers continued. “We have a moral and legal responsibility to ensure that our immigration policies respect human rights and recognize the dignity of all human beings seeking refuge.”

    The letter echoes one sent by dozens of human rights organizations earlier this month, also urging DHS to reconsider the policy. “DHS can and should take all legally permissible steps to restore access to asylum at ports of entry, regardless of the asylum seeker’s nationality or other factors, and to cease — not expand — Title 42 expulsions,” reads the letter, which was signed by immigrant rights groups like Human Rights Watch and RAICES.

    Earlier this month, DHS announced that it would be expanding the use of Title 42, a policy originally invoked by President Donald Trump that has been used to deport at least 1.8 million asylum seekers — including, infamously, last year and early this year when DHS sent over 20,000 Haitian asylum seekers to Haiti, despite the danger, violence and instability that some asylum seekers warned they would face there.

    The agency announced this time that it would be cracking down on asylum seekers from Venezuela, much to the dismay of immigrant rights advocates who have long contended that Title 42 is used to discriminate against non-white asylum seekers and should have been ended months, if not years ago.

    Earlier this year, the Biden administration announced that it would be ending the use of Title 42 in May. But the move was blocked by a Trump-appointed judge, and the Biden administration is working on appealing the injunction.

    Although advocates lauded Biden’s announcement that Title 42 would be ended, they also expressed frustration that the administration hadn’t ended the policy far earlier.

    Although Biden promised on the campaign trail that he would end the policy in his first year in office, he has actually ramped up the use of the inhumane policy, expelling more asylum seekers during his first months in office than Trump ever did. The Biden administration is still expelling tens of thousands of asylum seekers each month, despite moving to end the policy.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Biden Expands Title 42 to Turn Away Venezuelan Asylum Seekers at the Border

    We get an update from immigrant justice advocate Guerline Jozef, who is in Mexico to look at the impact of the Biden administration’s expansion of Title 42 to turn away Venezuelan asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border. The Trump-era policy lets the government expel asylum seekers on public health grounds. “It is unacceptable today for the government to try to expand Title 42, and forcing people to continue to die,” says Jozef. Meanwhile, the Biden administration announced it will allow 24,000 Venezuelans to enter the country by air if they have a financial sponsor in the United States. Applicants must first apply online. The program is similar to one set up for Ukrainians earlier this year. Jozef notes immigrants from Venezuela and Haiti are treated harshly, while Ukrainians fleeing similar political instability back home are welcomed, and that the immigration system should be structured to treat everyone with compassion and dignity.

    TRANSCRIPT

    This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

    AMY GOODMAN: So, you’re in Mexico City looking at migrants. And I wanted to turn to the issue of Haitian migrants and also the Biden administration’s new policy on Venezuelan asylum seekers. All Venezuelans who arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border will now be turned away under Title 42, a Trump-era pandemic policy that’s been used to block at least 2 million migrants from applying for asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border.

    Meanwhile, the Biden administration announced it’s going to allow 24,000 Venezuelans to enter the country by air if they have a financial sponsor in the United States — of course, which many don’t. Applicants must first apply online. The program is similar to one set up for Ukrainians.

    This is Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas speaking last week in D.C.

    DHS SECRETARY ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: To reduce the number of people arriving at our southwest border irregularly and create a more orderly and safe and humane process for people fleeing the humanitarian and economic crisis in Venezuela. Those who attempt to cross the southern border of the United States illegally will be returned. Those who follow the lawful process we announced yesterday will have the opportunity to travel safely to the United States and become eligible to work here.

    AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, Secretary of State Tony Blinken said last week the Biden administration has no plans to reduce sanctions on Venezuela. Some studies estimate the sanctions have killed tens of thousands of people in Venezuela. A few years ago, it was Mike Pompeo, under Trump, who offered a pathway to lift the sanctions, predicated on regime change in Venezuela and replacing the president with Juan Guaidó.

    How much of this situation can you attribute to U.S. policy against Venezuela? And then, what is happening with this massive deportation of Venezuelans? And also talk about Haitians being turned back.

    GUERLINE JOZEF: Thank you so much, Amy.

    Again, I am not an expert in Venezuelan politics, but what I can tell you is that the 24,000 Venezuelans who have been announced by Secretary Mayorkas and the Biden administration is a piecemeal, because what we are seeing, we are seeing hundreds of thousands of people still fleeing Venezuela. We are seeing a expulsion, deportation of at least 1,000 Venezuelans a day from the United States back to Mexico. And we are seeing that the piecemeal that is being offered to the Venezuelan population is also being used as a deterrent factor for people who have already been on the road to seek for protection, people who are still traversing the Darién, people who are here in Mexico, who do not have the ability or the privilege to fly from Venezuela to the United States. I think when we are looking into how we are welcoming people, we must center compassion, not just using a carrot and a stick just to deter people, but really provide wholesome protection for folks.

    So, I am here in Mexico City looking into how it is affecting, impacting the migrant population, people in mobility, people in displacement, people who are searching for asylum and protection. Whether they are from Venezuela, whether they are from Ukraine or from Haiti, they must all welcome with dignity. And what we are seeing happening to the Venezuelan community is unacceptable. Although we welcome the idea of providing, you know, the protection for the 24,000, but what will happen with the hundreds of others who are already at the U.S.-Mexico border? What will happen to the Haitians who are still stuck at the U.S.-Mexico border because of Title 42? It is unacceptable today for the government to try to expand Title 42 and forcing people to continue to die.

    Amy, as I’m speaking to you right now, we are in the middle of doing three funerals in Tijuana. Three Haitians have died in Tijuana this past week alone, including a 2-year-old girl, a man who was killed, and another one who died due to lack of medical care. So, what we are seeing is that the use of Title 42 continues to destroy lives. And there is no reason that the U.S. government, under President Biden, should continue to use Title 42 as a way to deter, and definitely being able to see death at the U.S.-Mexico border.

    So we must continue to push. We must continue to hold everyone accountable as we move forward, to understand that support, protection must be provided for the Venezuelans, support and protection must be provided for the Haitians, the same way we are welcoming and continue to support the Ukrainians. The reality is —

    JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Guerline — Guerline, if I can ask you —

    GUERLINE JOZEF: — we cannot return —

    JUAN GONZÁLEZ: If I can ask you — we just have a few more minutes. I wanted to ask you about the role of the Mexican government in cooperating with the Biden administration in terms of people being sent back to Mexico. And also, what do you say to these local leaders around the United States, even in places like New York City, that are now being inundated with the asylum seekers that are being shipped by bus from Texas and Florida to Northern cities and Northern states, the sheer numbers of people they’re suddenly having to deal with?

    GUERLINE JOZEF: I don’t think we are being inundated by asylum seekers. I believe that we did not prepare, intentionally or unintentionally, to actually receive people in mobility, people in need of protection. As a country, the same way we did for the Ukrainians, we did not have anyone on the news complaining about Ukrainians coming to New York or to other cities. They were received and welcomed and placed into a sponsorship program and supported full, full on. So I don’t believe we are being inundated. I believe that we need to be better prepared to receive people, and not allow the false narrative that we are in the middle of a crisis in order to deter cities, such as Chicago or New York, or states, like Massachusetts, to receive people.

    And we applaud the states and the cities who are receiving people, but we know that the federal government can provide the support needed to welcome those people, just as we have done for the Ukrainians. And we still have yet to see any welcoming program for the Haitians. We still have yet to see any meaningful change within the immigration system to be able to address those issues. We are seeing a response to false narrative. We are seeing a system that is being built to deter people. We are seeing a narrative that is being creating against immigrants. That’s what we are seeing right now.

    And we are calling on accountability for all people who are a part of this misleading information. And we really are here — we are in communications with many organizations in New York, in Chicago, in D.C., who are willing and able to support people arriving.

    AMY GOODMAN: Guerline Jozef, we want to —

    JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And —

    AMY GOODMAN: Juan, go ahead.

    JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Oh, no. And Mexico’s role? I asked you about Mexico’s role, as well.

    GUERLINE JOZEF: Yes, Juan. The thing is, we understand that the U.S.-Mexico summit happened last week in San Diego. We were not privy of the decisions or how the communications went. But as a result, we see Mexico is receiving folks. So, we just are here and pleading and asking the Mexican government to do the right thing by the migrants and people in — displaced people in immobility.

    AMY GOODMAN: Guerline Jozef, we want to thank you for being with us, co-founder and executive director of Haitian Bridge Alliance, today joining us from Mexico City in Mexico.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Why the US Imprisoned Venezuelan Diplomat Alex Saab

    A year ago, October 16, the long arm of US extra-territorial judicial overreach abducted Alex Saab and threw him into prison in Miami, where the Venezuelan diplomat has languished ever since.

    The official narrative is that Saab had bilked the Venezuelans in a “vast corruption network” and the US as the world’s self-appointed cop was simply enforcing good business practices. However, commentary by Washington insiders corroborates that Saab’s “crime” was trying to obtain humanitarian supplies in legal international trade but in circumvention of the illegal US sanctions on Venezuela.

    Cabo Verde captivity

    Back on June 12, 2021, Mr. Saab was on a humanitarian mission to procure needed food, fuel, and medicine for the people of Venezuela who had been suffering from an unconscionable blockade of their country. The US had imposed unilateral coercive measures – a form of collective punishment and illegal under international law – on Venezuela explicitly to make conditions so unbearable that the people would turn against their democratically elected government, which had fallen into disfavor with Washington.

    Alex Saab’s flight from Caracas to Tehran was diverted to Cabo Verde off the coast of west Africa for a fuel stop. He was seized and has been imprisoned ever since.

    Not only had the US-initiated Interpol “red alert” warrant been issued a day after the arrest, but as a credentialed special envoy and deputy ambassador to the African Union, Mr. Saab had protection from apprehension. Under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, he was immune from arrest and detention, even in the time of war. The US is a party to the Vienna Convention.

    Alex Saab was imprisoned under squalid conditions, including torture. Cabo Verde, under pressure from the US, twice disregarded orders from the regional Economic Community of West African States Court of Justice to free the diplomat, even though it was supposedly bound by the court’s jurisdiction. Likewise, appeals from the United Nations Committee on Human Rights to free him were ignored.

    US charges against Alex Saab

    Then a year ago, the diplomat was again kidnapped from where he was held captive and flown to Miami, without notifying his legal team or family.

    Cabo Verde did not have an extradition treaty with the US and Alex Saab had not exhausted his legal appeals to the country’s courts. The timing of his forcible removal was telling, because the next day the opposition party in Cabo Verde won the national elections on a platform that included Saab’s release.

    While the US initially charged Mr. Saab with seven counts of money laundering, these were dropped. Switzerland, where the crime was allegedly perpetrated, found no evidence of wrongdoing after an exhaustive three-year investigation. The nebulous and hard to disprove “conspiracy” to money launder is the one remaining charge.

    Washington insiders reveal the back story on the US prosecution of Saab

    Speakers at a forum held six months before Saab was abducted to the US revealed why the diplomat was such a high value target. Michael Nadler, a former US federal prosecutor with the Department of Justice who had signed the July 2019 indictment in the Saab case, told the forum: “I would tell you at the beginning, we didn’t have any idea just how big Alex Saab was going to become and has become.”

    In a clear admission that the US was behind Saab’s detention in Cabo Verde, Nadler recalled: “Alex Saab’s flight to Iran was a last-minute discovery. And a lot of pieces fell into place perfectly to be able to stop him and have him arrested.”

    Ryan Berg, the other main speaker at the forum, is a specialist on Latin America with the right-wing American Enterprise Institute. He explained why the US targeted Alex Saab: “The strong US interest in his extradition from Cape Verde to the US is that he knows a lot.” Berg elaborated: “He’s involved in a lot of these transactions to skirt US sanctions and US sanctions architecture. And therefore, the US has a strong interest in him because of everything that he knows.”

    Role of sanctions in the US hybrid war against Venezuela

    In short, Saab facilitated the “Maduro regime’s attempts to circumvent US sanctions,” according to no more authoritative source than former US Treasury Secretary Mnuchin. Further, Saab had close working relations with Russia, Iran, and China, which are states, Nadler acknowledged, that “… remain critical in their support for the [Venezuela] regime as well as their ability to skirt US sanctions.”

    The sanctions are a form of hybrid warfare. Nadler explained how this warfare is conducted:

    Most banks have correspondent relationships because they do deal in dollars and then they send money throughout the world. Even if you have a local bank in Columbia, what they will essentially do if you become a designated or sanctioned individual is they will cut you a check for the full amount in your bank account, but you’ll never be able to cash that check because almost now every bank or financial institution in the world is connected to the US financial institution. And nobody wants to risk being sanctioned because the sanctions can be significant based on each and every dollar transaction or each and every financial transaction that’s conducted.

    Nadler continued on the impact of US sanctions:

    Many actors in the region consider and quite frankly fear, the unilateral or asymmetric ability of the US government to sanction them…something that’s seriously circumscribes their ability to maneuver. And so, it is something that…a country like Venezuela fear[s].

    He concluded that sanctions are “…the main tool of the US government in bringing pressure against the Maduro regime,” which is why Saab has been so central.” Sanctions, he spelled out, are “the primary driver or the primary tool of the US government to limit the room for operations from the Venezuelan regime.”

    Alex Saab – the jewel of negotiations with the US

    The US is now negotiating with Venezuela through backdoor channels over the related issues of prisoner exchanges and easing oil sanctions. According to the opposition aligned El Diario de las Americas: “Alex Saab is the jewel of negotiations with the US.”

    Former US Defense Secretary Mark Esper wrote that Saab is a key asset: “It was important to get custody of him. This could provide a real roadmap for the US government to unravel the Venezuelan government’s illicit plans and bring them to justice.”

    Prisoner-exchange negotiations between the US and Venezuela have been taking place behind the scenes. On October 1, five dual national US-Venezuelan citizens, two native-born Americans, and a lawful permanent US resident were released from Venezuela in return for two Venezuelans imprisoned in the US. Although freeing political prisoner Alex Saab is a national priority for Venezuela and a key point in its negotiations with the US, he was not included in this exchange.

    As his wife Camila Fabri Saab explains: “The kidnapping of Alex Saab is part of an attack against Venezuela and seeks to teach a lesson against anyone who has the courage to defend their country’s sovereignty.”

    The post Why the US Imprisoned Venezuelan Diplomat Alex Saab first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • High-Value US Asset “Fat Leonard” Arrested in Venezuela: Possible Prisoner Swap

    The principal perpetrator, in what AP News called “one of the most extensive bribery scandals in US military history,” popped up in Venezuela of all places. Leonard Glenn Francis bilked the US Navy out of at least $35 million.

    The culprit goes by the moniker “Fat Leonard.” He tips the scales at 350 pounds, according to the US Marshals wanted poster.

    ABC News reports that Navy commanders “passed him classified information and steered their ships, mostly from the Navy’s 7th Fleet to ports he controlled” in exchange for “Kobe beef, expensive cigars, concert tickets and wild sex parties at luxury hotels.”

    Francis is credited with commanding a mercenary army: “He became part of the Navy, even using his own warship, the Braveheart, to join classified missions against Al Qaeda. He enjoyed diplomatic cover.”

    Cakewalking to Caracas

    Arrested in 2013 on bribery charges, Francis pled guilty in 2015. But his sentencing was problematically delayed seven years.

    Eighteen days before his scheduled sentencing on September 22, he evaded the supposed 24-7 security of his house arrest, cut off his GPS monitoring ankle bracelet, and slipped across the Mexican border from San Diego. A $40,000 reward was put on his head by the US Marshals.

    According to numerous reports in touch with the US Marshals, he flew from Mexico to Cuba and then on to Venezuela. Just hours before his would-be sentencing in the US, he was caught by Venezuelan authorities. Acting on an Interpol Red Alert, he was apprehended at the Caracas airport supposedly on his way to Russia.

    Francis is now seeking asylum in Venezuela. The South America nation, by law, must consider his request. Neither US nor Venezuelan official sources have commented on the asylum request.

    Made for TV

    While under house arrest, Francis voluntarily engaged in podcasts with video journalist Tom Wright. Francis bragged on camera about running a prostitution ring inside the US Navy, crowing: “Everyone was in my pocket. I had them in my palm.” Peter Chiarelli, co-writer of the blockbuster film Crazy Rich Asians, made a deal to adapt the podcasts for television.

    Juicier than the discredited Steele dossier on Donald Trump, Francis boasted in the podcasts: “What really worried the United States the most was these officers being corrupted by me, that they would be corruptible by the foreign powers.”

    Among those caught in the corruption was Rear Admiral Robert Gilbeau, the first active-duty admiral ever convicted of a felony. US District Judge Janis Lynn Sammartino sentenced the high-ranking officer to a mere 18 months in prison. Gilbeau will still be pocketing a $10,000 per month pension, courtesy of the US tax payers.

    A Bush the Elder appointee to the federal bench, Judge Sammartino allowed Francis to be transferred from prison to supposed “strict house arrest.” There Francis lived the life of excessive luxury, according to Stars and Stripes, an official publication of the US Defense Department.

    Judge Sammartino’s compassion for the filthy rich and military brass apparently did not extend down to the sailors on the USS Reagan in their case over radioactive exposure after the Fukushima meltdown. The judge rejected their appeal.

    Friends in high places

    “Fat Leonard” had friends in high places. By 2017, 60 admirals were among the 440 people who have come under US judicial scrutiny. According to the official US Naval Institute’s USNI News, the initial co-conspirators derisively labeled themselves “the cool kids” and “the wolf pack.”

    Commander Mike Mickiewicz, an officer who was later convicted, told Defense News, Francis “was a crook, but he was our crook.”

    Federal criminal charges were filed against 34 individuals in the corruption scandal and all but one have been convicted. Twenty-two pleaded guilty, including Francis and his four top aides.

    Others included 17 Navy officials: at least ten commissioned officers, two petty officers, one former NCIS special agent, and two civilian Navy contracting officials. More are awaiting trial. Separately, five Navy officers were charged with crimes under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, subject to court-martial proceedings.

    Another admiral, the Navy’s chief intelligence officer, was only stripped of access to classified information. One of the factors that makes Francis such a high value asset was precisely his illicit privileged access to military intelligence.

    Problematics of extradition

    US District Court Judge Sammartino set a December 14 status hearing for Francis. However, Washington first has to get this high-value asset back to the US.

    The US and Venezuela have an extradition treaty, but the devil is truly in the details of how this transfer might be accomplished. For one thing, the corruption charges against Francis may not be technically covered in the extradition treaty. More to the point, though, are the political issues.

    Juan Guaidó, the puppet that the US claims is president of Venezuela, would surely send Francis packing in a heartbeat if Washington ordered him to do so. But pretend presidents don’t have any real power. So, the US will have to deal with the actual government of Venezuela’s democratically elected President Nicolás Maduro.

    As ABC News comments:  “The US government could face an uphill challenge returning the fugitive [Francis] to American soil. The Biden administration doesn’t officially recognize President Nicolás Maduro’s socialist government, has no embassy in Venezuela, and has imposed crushing sanctions on the country that have further embittered relations.”

    The San Diego Tribune speculates: “‘Fat Leonard,’ once a power broker, could become pawn in US-Venezuela diplomacy.”

    David Smilde agrees: “I have no doubt the Venezuelans will make hay of [Francis’ arrest], especially because they have felt the effects of the long arm of the US justice system.” Smilde, a longtime cheerleader for crippling US sanctions on the people of Venezuela, is with the inside-the-beltway think tank Washington Office on Latin America.

    Among Venezuela’s options, says Brian Fonseca of the Florida Worldwide College, would be to allow Francis to continue on to Russia to “poke a finger within the eye of America.” Not likely, but speculation is running wild.

    Prisoner exchange

    Coincidentally the trial of Venezuelan political prisoner Alex Saab opens in Judge Robert Scola’s US District Court in Miami just two days before Judge Sammartino’s hearing for “Fat Leonard” Francis in another US District Court. Ambassador Saab is contesting his illegal kidnapping – the US prettifies it as an extradition – to the US to face a charge of conspiracy to money launder. As a diplomat, he should have enjoyed absolute immunity from detention under the Vienna Convention, to which the US is a party.

    Both the US and Venezuela agree that special envoy Alex Saab was a key figure engaged in the trade of fuel, food, and medicine in circumvention of the asphyxiating sanctions by the US on Venezuela. They differ mainly on whether such humanitarian efforts should be rewarded or punished.

    Alex Saab has not seen his wife and children going on three years. A Saab-Francis swap would serve the interests of both nations as well as achieve justice twice over. The Maduro government in Venezuela initiated and the FreeAlexSaab campaign supports freeing the diplomat.

    Prisoner-exchange negotiations between the US and Venezuela continue behind the scenes. As recently as September 1, nine prisoners were exchanged by their respective countries at an airport in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Two were Venezuelans, who are relatives of the Venezuelan president’s wife and were convicted by the US of trafficking narcotics. Venezuela maintains they “were set up.”

    Five others in the exchange are dual national US-Venezuelan citizens, except for Jose Pereira who is a lawful permanent US resident. The five were convicted of embezzlement when they were executives at the Venezuela subsidiary CITGO. The US maintains they were “wrongfully detained.” The remaining two are also US citizens. Ex-Marine and former US military contractor Matthew Heath was convicted on terrorism charges in Venezuela. Osman Khan entered Venezuela illegally from the conflict zone on the closed Colombian border.

    While largely silent about freeing their two nationals imprisoned on drug charges, Caracas has made freeing Ambassador Saab a national priority and a key point in its negotiations with the US.

     https://twitter.com/MichelCaballero/status/1573397045402107911

    The post High-Value US Asset “Fat Leonard” Arrested in Venezuela: Possible Prisoner Swap first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • 2022 Right Livelihood Laureates announced

    Recipients of the 2022 Right Livelihood Award show that systems change is not only possible but outright necessary in the face of failing governance and the breakdown of international order. For more on this and other awards, see: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/awards/97238E26-A05A-4A7C-8A98-0D267FDDAD59

    Hailing from Somalia, Ukraine, Venezuela and Uganda, the 2022 Laureates have each created new models for human and societal interactions that challenge the status quo. With crises stemming from authoritarian governance, international aggression, profit-seeking economic systems and political inertia to take action against a planetary climate breakdown, these change-makers have imagined a better world and work tirelessly to make it a reality.

    The 2022 Laureates are:

    Fartuun Adan and Ilwad Elman “for promoting peace, demilitarisation and human rights in Somalia in the face of terrorism and gender-based violence.” Among them they won quite a few awards, see: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/laureates/80cc3d15-775d-40bd-8591-fa921fc45f25 and https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/laureates/9D4A093D-1276-6907-739B-23CABBB12158

    Oleksandra Matviichuk and the Center for Civil Liberties (CCL) “for building sustainable democratic institutions in Ukraine and modelling a path to international accountability for war crimes.” See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2015/03/14/side-event-on-the-ukraine-on-17-march/

    Cecosesola of Venezuela “for establishing an equitable and cooperative economic model as a robust alternative to profit-driven economies.”

    Africa Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO) “for their courageous work for climate justice and community rights violated by extractivist energy projects in Uganda.”

    “The 2022 Right Livelihood Laureates are grassroots actors dedicated to strengthening their communities. In the face of failing governance and a breakdown of order – including wars, terrorism, extractivism, massive displacement and economic crises – they have established new, human-centric systems. Their successes demonstrate how we can build societies on the principles of justice rather than exploitation,” said Ole von Uexkull, Executive Director at Right Livelihood.

    Find more information in our Press Kit.

    Find more information on the Laureates here.

    https://rightlivelihood.org/2022-announcement/

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Venezuela’s mining region a hotbed of sex trafficking and violence, UN says

    Fact-finding mission reports brutal massacres and sexual slavery in gold-rich arc where armed gangs fight for control

    Struggling to get by amid Venezuela’s runaway inflation, widespread shortages and rampant unemployment, a young woman left the city of San Félix for the promise of a job deep in the forests of Bolívar state.

    The offer made on Facebook promised a good salary in exchange for working in a booming mining town.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • US Hybrid War against Venezuela Goes to Court

    Ambassador Alex Saab, a victim of the US economic war to achieve regime change in Venezuela, has been under arrest for over two years. This article recounts the developments in the diplomat’s court case. Saab is fighting against his illegal detention and extradition before the 8th District Court in Miami.

    As Venezuela’s special envoy and a deputy ambassador to the African Union, Saab has diplomatic immunity from arrest and detention under the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. Although a party to the convention, the US has flouted this principle of international law.

    Judicial overreach on political grounds

    Alex Saab was targeted by the US because of his role in helping circumvent their sanctions imposed on Venezuela. These measures, a form of collective punishment, are intended to make conditions so onerous that the people would renounce their elected government. Such unilateral coercive measures constitute hybrid warfare and are illegal under international law.

    Ambassador Saab was on a humanitarian mission from Caracas to Tehran to procure food, fuel, and medicine in legal international trade but in contravention of the illegitimate US sanctions. When his plane made a fuel stop in Cabo Verde on June 12, 2020, he was seized and imprisoned at Washington’s behest.

    He was tortured and held in solitary confinement until December 2020. Then he was released to strict house arrest but without visits from his wife and children and without necessary medical care.

    Although the regional Economic Community of West Africa (ECOWAS) Court of Justice and the UN Human Rights Committee ordered his release, Saab was held captive. The $200,000 award in damages by the ECOWAS court was unpaid.

    According to distinguished Nigerian human rights lawyer Femi Falana, the arrest and detention of Alex Saab in Cabo Verde is an example of  “extraterritorial politically motivated judicial overreach” and a “twenty-first-century form of colonialism.”

    On October 17, 2021, the opposition party won the national election in Cabo Verde on a platform which included freeing Alex Saab. However, the day before, the long arm of Washington “justice” had simply seized the Venezuelan diplomat, dressed him in an orange jumpsuit, and deposited him in a US prison.

    The US has no extradition treaty with Cabo Verde and no notice of his extradition was given to Saab’s family or lawyers. Nor had Saab’s legal recourse in Cabo Verdean courts been completely exhausted. His extradition was an illegal fait accompli.

    Money laundering charges dropped by US

    The original charges against Mr. Saab related to money laundering in Venezuela with Venezuela as the alleged victim. Even if charges related to defrauding the Venezuelan government were justifiable, they should be laid in Venezuela and not in the US, which is attempting to starve Venezuela into submission.

    Then on November 1, 2021, after what amounted to a judicial kidnapping to the US, Washington dropped all money laundering charges against Saab leaving the single charge of conspiracy to launder money.

    An exhaustive three-year investigation of money laundering changes by Swiss courts, where the activity was allegedly perpetrated, had found no evidence to support the US’s claim.

    Conveniently for the prosecution, the remaining charge of “conspiracy” is quite easy to prove since it only requires proof of an agreement without the objective being realized. Fighting vague conspiracy charges is a nightmare for defense lawyers. The charge is often called “the darling of the prosecutor’s nursery.”

    The labyrinth of the US “justice” system

    Ambassador Saab is presently detained in a federal facility in Florida. He has been unable to have family visits because they have no guarantee of safe passage. His prison conditions are difficult with insufficient food and in a dangerous environment without medical care for his cancer and other ailments.

    During his unlawful detention in Cabo Verde, counsel for Alex Saab challenged the US extradition proceedings with a “motion to vacate” based on his status as a diplomat.

    That motion was first refused in a US “lower” trial court and then appealed “up” to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. His appeal challenging the charges based on diplomatic status was then sent right back “down” in June 2022 from the appellate court to the trial court.

    In anticipation of his December 12 hearing, Saab filed preliminary motions for disclosure of evidentiary materials with a view to filing a motion to quash the indictment based on his diplomatic status. If diplomatic immunity is recognized, Saab should be released. If not, there will be the trial for conspiracy to launder money in Venezuela.

    Saab’s motion to compel disclosure of discovery materials

    Exculpatory material could be held by the US, which would prove Saab’s status as a diplomat. Under what are known as the Brady rules, the prosecution must provide all evidence available and under its control, which might help in his defense.

    Accordingly, Saab requested all information material to his defense held by the US government regarding diplomatic status, including evidence on:

    • His service as Venezuelan special envoy or other diplomatic roles.
    • Whether any other country, or international or supranational organization, considered him to be a Venezuelan special envoy or any other diplomatic role.
    • His role in Venezuela’s state-to-state activities with Iran and the purpose of his travel to or from Iran.
    • The flight, diversion, or detention of the plane on which he was travelling, which landed in Cabo Verde.
    • Knowledge by US government personnel of his diplomatic status, appointment as a special envoy, or activities taken on behalf of Venezuela.
    • Documents found on his person or plane, following his detention and arrest in Cabo Verde, and any information relating to such documents.

    Saab asked the court to order the disclosure of information held by the US departments of Defense, Justice, State, and Treasury, the Office of International Affairs, the National Security Division, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Customs and Border Patrol and Homeland Security Investigations, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the US Coast Guard.

    Saab’s counsel anticipates that all these agencies would have information regarding his diplomatic status. Comprehensive disclosure could lead to recognition of full immunity.

    US government tries to prevent disclosure of discovery materials

    The US government prosecutor made a series of somewhat specious arguments asking the judge to reject the Brady motion, dismissing the motion as a simple “fishing expedition” with no merit. In short, this was a legal tactic by the government to hide the truth.

    The US prosecutor argued that the requests to review documents outside of the prosecution team’s immediate control should be denied, even if they were held by a government agency and even if they supported Saab’s claim to diplomatic status. The prosecutor contended that only material under the prosecutor’s direct control and related to the investigation can be disclosed; other material held by other branches of the government cannot be sought and disclosed under Brady.

    This would mean, if the US government has definitive proof of Saab’s status or recognition thereof in agencies out of the control of the prosecutor, Saab cannot obtain such information under the Brady rule.

    Saab’s defense argued that he requires disclosure of information from all branches of the US government. This is because the entire US government is engaged with his extradition and prosecution. The prosecution, for instance, even asked to allow someone from the National Security Division to attend the hearing, although they were not previously part of the prosecution team.

    Saab’s diplomatic immunity argued

    The following describes the prosecution’s arguments followed by those of the defense. This is based on the respective court statements filed by the two sides and particularly on the transcript of the September 13th hearing.

    The prosecution argued that the issue of ignoring diplomatic immunity had been settled in Cabo Verde when it granted extradition. The US court should not depart from precedent and second-guess the legitimacy of a foreign country’s decision to extradite an individual. Such an approach would be contrary to the act-of-state doctrine with respect to Cabo Verde.

    Saab’s defense countered that no authority requires deference to Cabo Verde’s decision to allow the extradition. Cabo Verde law applies in Cabo Verde and not in the US.

    The prosecution maintained that Saab has never been entitled to immunity under either the Diplomatic Relations Act or the International Organizations Immunities Act because he had never been notified to the US State Department as a member of any foreign mission in the US, including Venezuela’s bilateral mission and delegation to the African Union.

    Saab’s defense disputed that, regardless, Saab was traveling from Venezuela to Iran and at no point transited the US. He had “transit immunity.”

    The prosecution contended that US law (US v. Alvarez-Machain, 1992) allows prosecution even if the accused were wrongly sent to the US. Even forcible abduction does not prevent trial in the US for violations of US laws.

    Saab’s defense stated that this is a baseless excuse which would allow US agents to kidnap a person in any country and try that person for crimes under US law.

    Central to the US government’s case is the self-serving notion that, since Washington does not recognize the Maduro government, no Venezuelan diplomatic nominate enjoys immunity. In other words, the imperial power arrogates to itself the authority to determine whom other countries may appoint as their diplomatic representatives.

    Saab’s defense noted that it is an undisputed fact that Venezuela, the sending state, and Iran, the receiving state, not only recognize each other’s government, they recognize that Saab is a special envoy.

    In that context, to accord him diplomatic immunity is independent upon the US’s position as to which government of Venezuela they recognize. To hold otherwise would completely distort and rob of any meaning both the US obligations and the Vienna Convention and the Diplomatic Relations Act. Failure to do so would be devastating to the diplomatic world and international relations.

    Court’s current ruling

    Arguments in Mr. Saab’s defense were presented to the court on September 13. On September 15, Judge Scola ruled partially in favour of Mr. Saab, granting him circumscribed access to discovery materials. Disclosure under Brady would include materials under the control of the prosecution: DEA, FBI, and ICE.

    Excluded from Brady disclosure are materials held by the Department of State, the Office of International Affairs, the National Security Division, the Department of Treasury, the Department of Defense, and the US Coast Guard. The judge held that none of these entities were involved in the investigation leading to his indictment, so these entities need not be searched for proof of diplomatic status.

    The US court’s narrow interpretation of the Brady obligations risks causing a major injustice. If, in its many international relations and contacts, the US has evidence of Saab’s status, the US can hide this if this evidence is outside the scope of the criminal investigation against him.

    This would even be possible if the US had recognized his status as a diplomat in some special context outside the investigation of the alleged conspiracy to launder money. This denial of justice could be likened to a form of judicial lynching.

    Trial for December 12 and a proposed non-judicial solution

    Saab’s diplomatic immunity will be argued in Southern District Court on December 12. For now, Ambassador Alex Saab is still unjustly detained pending trial.

    We believe, Mr. Saab must be recognized as a diplomat and trial should be terminated. There is a non-judicial means to revolve this. The Biden administration can engage in a prisoner exchange that would unite Mr. Saab and also US citizens imprisoned in Venezuela with their families. Venezuela is willing and the US should do the same.

    The post US Hybrid War against Venezuela Goes to Court first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • #EndReprisals campaign continues throughout HRC 51

    Human rights defenders promote dignity, fairness, peace and justice in their homes, workplaces, communities and countries. They challenge governments that fail to respect and protect their people, corporations that degrade and destroy the environment, and institutions that perpetuate privilege and patriarchy. For many, the United Nations (UN) is the last arena in which they can confront abuses. 

    Human rights defenders must be able to share crucial information and perspectives with the UN safely and unhindered. Yet some States try to escape international scrutiny by raising obstacles – such as intimidation and reprisals – aimed at creating fear and systematically hindering defenders’ access to and cooperation with human rights mechanisms. See my post of today: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2022/09/20/human-rights-defenders-at-the-51st-session-of-the-un-human-rights-council/

    This needs to change! Join the campaign of the International Service for Human Rights today so human rights defenders have a seat at the UN table.

    What can you do? ISHR and partners have worked to support individual defenders and organisations that have endured multiple forms of reprisals and intimidation. Take action for them now and help #EndReprisals!

    Here are two quick, impactful actions you can take:

    Write to State representatives at the UN and urge them to take up cases from Belarus, Burundi, China, Egypt, and Venezuela
    Click to tweet a message in solidarity with the individuals or groups described in a specific case:

     Tweet for Viasna in Belarus

    Tweet for human rights lawyers in Burundi

    Tweet for Jiang Tianyong in China

    Tweet for Ibrahim Metwally Hegazy in Egypt

    Tweet for NGOs in Venezuela

    Join the campaign

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Venezuela intelligence agencies guilty of crimes against humanity – UN report

    United Nations mission says President Nicolás Maduro and others ordered ‘grave crimes’ including torture to stifle opposition

    Venezuela’s intelligence agencies are committing crimes against humanity as part of a plan orchestrated at the highest level of government to repress dissent, UN experts have concluded.

    A team tasked with investigating alleged violations in Venezuela said it had uncovered how members of intelligence services implemented orders by President Nicolás Maduro and others in a scheme to stifle opposition.

    Continue reading…

  • Possible Prisoner Exchange in US Hybrid War against Venezuela

    US special presidential envoy for hostage affairs Roger Carstens is on a case which could lead to freeing Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab. Pressure is building on the Biden administration to swap Saab for some American citizens currently incarcerated in Venezuela.

    Alex Saab targeted in the US economic war against Venezuela

    Alex Saab, who has been confined for over two years, is a victim of the US economic war calculated to achieve regime-change in Venezuela. He has been targeted because of his role in helping circumvent the sanctions imposed on Venezuela by the US. These measures, really collective punishment, are intended to make conditions so onerous there that the people would renounce their elected government. Such unilateral coercive measures are illegal under international law.

    Saab was on a humanitarian mission from Caracas to Tehran to procure food, fuel, and medicine in legal international trade but in contravention of the illegal US sanctions. When his plane made a fuel stop in Cabo Verde on June 12, 2020, he was seized and imprisoned on Washington’s behest. Although the regional ECOWAS Court and the UN Human Rights Committee ordered his release, Saab was held captive. Then in October 2021, the US extradited Saab and has imprisoned him ever since in Miami.

    As Venezuela’s special envoy and a deputy ambassador to the African Union, Saab had diplomatic immunity from arrest and detention under the Vienna Convention. Although a signatory to the convention, the US has flouted this international law.

    Saab will be fighting against his illegal detention at a hearing before the 8th District Court on October 29. An international campaign has been mounted to #FreeAlexSaab.

    Hybrid war against Venezuela heats up

    Starting in 2015 with US President Obama’s sanctions against Venezuela and ratcheted up by subsequent US presidents, the US has intensified its hybrid war against the socialist government of that South American country. One of the spoils of that war was CITGO. This US-based oil refiner and retailer was initially a subsidiary of the Venezuelan oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (PdVSA).

    In July 2018, the US expelled the then CITGO president Asdrúbal Chávez. Then in January 2019, in a major blow against Venezuela, CITGO revenues were cut off.

    US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced that the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) had seized CITGO to hold “accountable those responsible for Venezuela’s tragic decline.” In fact, it was the US sanctions that were explicitly designed to cause the decline he hypocritically lamented.

    In an incredible inversion of logic, Mnuchin claimed that the seizure was to “support” an opposition deputy in Venezuela’s National Assembly named Juan Guaidó “to restore their [Venezuela’s] democracy.” Mr. Guaidó had declared himself president of Venezuela on a street corner in Caracaras and was immediately recognized as legitimate by US President Trump. The 35-year-old US security asset had never even run for national office. His self-proclamation was unlawful and unconstitutional.

    Besides handing control over CITGO to Guaidó, the US declared in March 2020 that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was a “narco-terrorist.” A $15 million bounty was put on his head. Adding to the farce, the Drug Enforcement Agency put up a wanted poster on its website.

    More recently in May 2022, a US judge approved of the auctioning of the $8-billion-worth CITGO. However, the auction is contingent on the approval of the US Treasury’s OFAC, which currently opposes the auction because it is “inconsistent with US foreign policy goals” now that the asset is controlled by Guaidó. However, Guaidó has been complicit in mismanaging and giving away Venezuelan assets that the US has seized and handed over to him.

    The purpose of the auction would be to pay claims by the Canadian mining company Crystallex and the US oil company ConocoPhillips against Caracas for nationalizing their properties in Venezuela. However, in another ironic twist, the US sanctions against Venezuela explicitly prevent the servicing of its debt.

    The convoluted case of the CITGO Six

    The case of the CITGO Six is playing out against this backdrop of hybrid warfare and international finance. The six – Tomeu Vadell, Gustavo Cardenas, Jorge Toledo, Alirio Jose Zambrano, Jose Luis Zambrano, and Jose Angel Pereira – are Venezuelan citizens and were executives at CITGO. All but one also hold dual US citizenship.

    The head of PdVSA called the CITGO executives to Caracas in November 2017, where they were arrested for embezzlement in a $4 billion refinancing scheme. The group was granted house arrest in December 2019. But they were imprisoned again in February 2020 after President Trump received Juan Guaidó at the White House and House Speaker Pelosi also honored the pretend president.

    After New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson made a visit to Caracaras in July 2020, two of the six – Cárdenas and Toledo – were released to humanitarian house arrest. The releases by Caracas were a goodwill gesture following US President Trump’s comment in June 2020 of possibly directly meeting with Venezuelan President Maduro. Later, Trump walked back on the opening, reiterating the US regime-change policy: “I would only meet with Maduro to discuss one thing: a peaceful exit from power!”

    The remaining executives were again granted house arrest, only to be transferred back to prison in October 2021 after Alex Saab was extradited to the US.

    Other US citizens imprisoned in Venezuela – US mercenaries or innocents abroad

    The US maintains that the CITGO Six are wrongfully imprisoned, although noting that “PdVSA has long been a vehicle for corruption.”

    An even harder case for asserting innocence is that of two former Green Berets arrested in May 2020 in connection with a plan to kidnap President Maduro. Luke Denman and Airan Berry were leaders of Operation Gideón. Derisively dubbed the “Bay of Piglets,” their amphibious assault failed.

    Then in September 2020, ex-Marine Matthew Heath was apprehended near an oil refinery and accused of terrorism and spying. At the time of Heath’s capture, he possessed a grenade launcher, a sub-machine gun, C4 explosives, and a satellite phone along with bricks of $20 bills. Not your typical tourist, even the Washington Post suggested Heath was tied to the CIA.

    The case of Eyvin Hernandez is perhaps the least known. The former Los Angeles public defender was detained earlier this year when he was caught illegally crossing the border from Colombia into Venezuela without proper papers.

    US-Venezuela prisoner swap negotiations

    Last February, family members of the imprisoned CITGO Six met with Department of Justice officials and urged them to accept a prisoner exchange to free their relatives. The Associated Press reported the families “vented” against the extradition of Alex Saab by the US. The Venezuelan government’s goodwill gesture of moving their loved ones from prison to house arrest had been reversed after Washington perversely reciprocated by extraditing Saab.

    The Biden administration was also pressured by Representative Michael McCaul, the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He complained: “These Americans deserve a whole of government effort to getting them home, and Congress equally shares the responsibility and desire to get this mission accomplished.”

    While a prisoner swap may be considered, the US also claims the authority to conduct military operations and impose sanctions against states holding illegally detained Americans. But, then again, Washington routinely takes such actions with even weaker excuses.

    Swap rumors circulated in March 2022. Without advance publicity and veiled in secrecy, an unprecedented high-level US delegation visited Venezuelan President Maduro. The delegation was led by National Security Council senior director for the Western Hemisphere Juan Gonzalez and was accompanied by hostage affairs envoy Roger Carstens. Carstens had previously traveled to Caracas in December of last year to meet with the CITGO Six, Matthew Heath, and the two former Green Berets.

    Afterward, Venezuela released former CITGO executive Gustavo Cardenas and Cuban-US naturalized citizen Jorge Fernandez. The latter had been arrested on terrorism charges for flying a drone on the Colombian border with Venezuela.

    Venezuela’s latest goodwill gesture has not been reciprocated by the US, although it is widely believed that the two countries are continuing prisoner swap negotiations through confidential back channels.

    Precedent of the Cuban Five’s release

    The US is reluctant to engage in prisoner swaps on the grounds that such magnanimity encourages hostage taking. Nevertheless, that reluctance can be overcome as it was in the case of the Cuban Five.

    The Cuban government, cooperating with their US counterparts in the “war on terrorism,” supplied Washington with information on terrorists plotting against Cuba from the US. Instead of arresting the terrorists in September 1998, the US imprisoned five Cuban undercover intelligence officers who had infiltrated US-based terrorist organizations to protect their homeland.

    Two of the five Cuban heroes, as they were known back home, were released after basically serving their sentences. The remaining three were released in December 2014 in a prisoner swap, ostensibly for US spy Rolando Trujillo, but really for alleged US agent Alan Gross.

    Gross’s well-connected family had launched an aggressive drive for his release. More significantly, a massive international solidarity campaign to free the Cuban Five proved to have been decisive. Cuban President Fidel Castro promised that the five would be freed, and he kept his promise. Venezuelan President Maduro, meanwhile, is demanding Alex Saab’s repatriation.

    The post Possible Prisoner Exchange in US Hybrid War against Venezuela first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Venezuela To ‘Rebuild Fellowship’ With Petro Government In Colombia

    Mexico City, Mexico – Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro celebrated the inauguration of Gustavo Petro as president of Colombia, with leaders pledging to rebuild the long but fraught relationship between the two Caribbean countries.

    “I extend my hand to the people of Colombia, to President Gustavo Petro, to rebuild fellowship on the basis of respect and love between peoples,” said Maduro on Sunday.

    For his part, Petro called for Latin American governments to leave aside their political differences and work toward regional integration.

    “It is time to leave behind the [political] blocs, the groups, and the ideological differences in order to work together. Let us understand once and for all that there is much more that unites us than what separates us and together we are stronger,” said Petro during his inaugural address to his country from Bogotá’s Bolívar Square.

    The post Venezuela To ‘Rebuild Fellowship’ With Petro Government In Colombia appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Understanding Maduro’s successful socialist economic strategy

    IN ITS intensely biased coverage of Venezuela during the hard years of 2014-21 the mainstream media wheeled in every imaginable academic pundit to “demonstrate” that the country’s economic woes were the result of President Nicolas Maduro overseeing Venezuela’s slide “into authoritarianism and economic collapse” (the Guardian, January 24 2019) and not of cruel US sanctions.

    In 2019, the Economist for instance, in line with US policy, published a front cover with a clench-fisted Juan Guaido titled “the battle for Venezuela’s future,” positing “the world democracies are right to seek change.” Very rarely, if at all, the mainstream media or the activated pundits gave any significant weight to the well over 500 illegal and criminal unilateral coercive measures (aka sanctions) inflicted on Venezuela and its people by the US and its European and Latin American accomplices.

    The post Understanding Maduro’s successful socialist economic strategy appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • While Cuba Deals with Blazing Fire, the U.S. Watches and Waits

    Cuban firefighters (Photo Credit AP)

    By now, the images of the oil explosion that erupted in the Cuban province of Matanzas on Friday, August 5 and continues blazing have become international news. When lightning struck an oil tank in Cuba’s largest oil storage facility, it quickly exploded and began to spread to nearby tanks. As of now, four of the eight tanks have caught fire. Dozens of people have been hospitalized, over 120 have been reported injured, at least 16 firefighters are still reported missing and one firefighter has died.

    This latest disaster – the largest oil fire in Cuba’s history – comes at a time when Cuba is currently undergoing an energy crisis due to soaring global fuel costs, as well as over-exploited and obsolete infrastructure. The raging fire will undoubtedly further exacerbate the electricity outages that Cubans are suffering from as a result of the on-going energy crisis that is occurring in the middle of one of the hottest summers on record globally.

    Almost immediately, the Cuban government requested international assistance from other countries, particularly its neighbors that have experience in handling oil-related fires. Mexico and Venezuela responded immediately and with great generosity. Mexico sent 45,000 liters of firefighting foam in 16 flights, as well as firefighters and equipment. Venezuela sent firefighters and technicians, as well as 20 tons of foam and other chemicals.

    The U.S., on the other hand, offered technical assistance, which amounted to phone consultations. Despite having invaluable expertise and experience with major fires, the U.S. has not sent personnel, equipment, planes, materials, or other resources to its neighbor that would actually help minimize the risk to human life and the environment. The U.S. Embassy in Havana instead offered condolences and stated on day four of the blazing fire that they were “carefully watching the situation” and that U.S. entities and organizations could provide disaster relief. They even posted an email, vog.etatsnull@nairatinamuHabuC, for people who want to help, saying “our team is a great resource for facilitating exports and donations of humanitarian goods to Cuba or responding to any questions.” But people who have contacted that email for help receive an automated response in return, telling people to look at their fact sheet from a year ago.

    Contrast this to Cuba’s response to Hurrican Katrina in 2005, when the Cuba government offered to send to New Orleans 1,586 doctors, each carrying 27 pounds of medicine—an offer that was rejected by the United States.

    While the U.S. government pays lip service to helping in Cuba’s emergency, the truth is that U.S. sanctions on Cuba create real and significant barriers to organizations trying to provide assistance to Cubans, both in the United States and abroad. For example, Cuba sanctions often require U.S. organizations to get Commerce Department export licenses. Another obstacle is the lack of commercial air cargo service between the U.S. and Cuba, and most commercial flights are prohibited from carrying humanitarian assistance without a license. Cuba’s inclusion in the State Sponsor of Terrorism List means that banks, in both the United States and abroad, are reluctant to process humanitarian donations. And while donative remittances (which can be sent for humanitarian purposes) have been recently re-authorized by the Biden administration, there is no mechanism in place to send them, as the U.S. government refuses to use the established Cuban entities that have historically processed them. Moreover, payment and fundraising platforms such as GoFundMe, PayPal, Venmo and Zelle, will not process any transactions destined or related to Cuba due to U.S. sanctions.

    In any case, the response to this disaster should come primarily from the U.S. government, not NGOs. An Obama-era Presidential Policy Directive specifically mentions U.S. cooperation with Cuba “in areas of mutual interest, including diplomatic, agricultural, public health, and environmental matters, as well as disaster preparedness and response.”  Despite the 243 sanctions imposed by the Trump administration – and overwhelmingly maintained by the Biden White House – the Policy Directive appears to remain in effect.  In addition, Cuba and the United States signed a bilateral Oil Spill Preparedness and Response Agreement in 2017 prior to Trump taking office, which the U.S. noted means both countries “will cooperate and coordinate in an effort to prevent, contain, and clean up marine oil and other hazardous pollution in order to minimize adverse effects to public health and safety and the environment.”  The agreement provides a roadmap for bilateral cooperation to address the current humanitarian and environmental disaster.  In addition, the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, which is part of USAID, “is responsible for leading and coordinating the U.S. government’s response to disasters overseas,” including sending technical experts as they have in more than 50 countries. Neither OFDA nor any other part of USAID, which spends approximately $20 million annually in regime change funding in Cuba (primarily to Florida-based groups), have offered humanitarian aid thus far.

    As Congress takes important steps to advance legislation to address climate change and disasters, the Biden administration is watching a potential ecological disaster 90 miles from the U.S. coastline without offering meaningful assistance to contain it, both to protect the Cuban people but also to mitigate any potential marine damage to the narrow strait that separates the two countries.

    Withholding assistance at this critical time indicates to Cubans, Cuban Americans and the world that the Biden Administration is not really interested in the well-being of the Cuban people, despite statements to the contrary. This is an opportunity to show compassion, regional cooperation, environmental responsibility, and, overall, to be a good neighbor. It is also an opportunity for the Biden administration to finally reject the toxic Trump administration policies towards Cuba and restart the broad bilateral diplomatic engagement that was so successfully initiated under the Obama administration.

    The post While Cuba Deals with Blazing Fire, the U.S. Watches and Waits first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Venezuela condemns US coup plots as Bolton doubles down

    The Venezuelan National Assembly unanimously condemned recent comments by former US National Security Advisor John Bolton boasting about his involvement in coup plots against the government of Nicolás Maduro, reports José Luis Granados Ceja.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • The Empire Is Showing More And More Of Its True Face

    Listen to a reading of this article:

    ❖

    Genocide walrus John Bolton outright admitted to planning foreign coups with the US government in conversation with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Wednesday. That’s coups, plural.

    While arguing that the Capitol riot on January 6th of last year was not an attempted coup but rather just Trump stumbling around trying to look after his own interests, Bolton hastened to pull authority on the matter when Tapper suggested that he might not be correct about how coups work.

    “I disagree with that,” Bolton said. “As somebody who has helped plan coups d’etat — not here, but, you know, other places — it takes a lot of work, and that’s not what [Trump] did.”

    Places. Plural.

    Tapper just let Bolton’s remark slide like he didn’t just admit to something extraordinarily fiendish, but did eventually follow up with a request that the former National Security Advisor elaborate.

    “I do want to ask a follow up,” Tapper said. “When we were talking about what is capable, or what you need to do to be able to plan a coup, and you cited your expertise having planned coups.”

    “I’m not going to get into the specifics,” replied Bolton with a chuckle.

    “Successful coups?” Tapper asked.

    “Well, I wrote about Venezuela in the book,” Bolton answered. “And it turned out not to be successful – not that we had all that much to do with it, but I saw what it took for an opposition to try and overturn an illegally elected president, and they failed. The notion that Donald Trump was half as competent as the Venezuelan opposition is laughable.”

    “I feel like there’s other stuff you’re not telling me, though,” Tapper responded.

    “I’m sure there is,” Bolton said, grinning like he just finished boiling a puppy.

    Tapper pursued the matter no further, because he is a propagandist first and a journalist second, and he would be acutely aware that Bolton was saying things that you are not supposed to admit to on television.

    Bolton’s sole admission to coup plotting runs counter to his comments about the US government’s failed attempt to oust President Nicolas Maduro while he was facilitating that bizarre operation under the Trump administration, telling reporters in 2019 that the empire’s Venezuela shenanigans were “clearly not a coup.”

    In other examples of the US empire just rearing its ugly head right out in broad daylight, an excellent new report by Alan MacLeod with Mintpress News shows that Facebook/Instagram parent company Meta has been hiring dozens of people who previously worked in the US intelligence cartel to help regulate what content gets seen on the social media giant’s platforms. Some were hired from straight out of the CIA or had (officially) left the agency very recently.

    The CIA used to infiltrate the media. Now the CIA is the media. This trend of openly hiring US intelligence veterans to help teach the public what thoughts to think about the world began a few years ago in the legacy media, and now we’re seeing it in the new media as well.

    This is part of a broader trend in which many of the ugly things the US empire used to do in secret it now does openly with the aid of propaganda spin. In addition to attempting coups right out in the open as we saw in Venezuela and just giving intelligence insiders positions of influence within both new and old media institutions, you’ve got things like the US government-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which according to its own founding officials was set up to do overtly what the CIA used to do covertly.

    We see NED’s fingerprints all over pretty much any situation where the western power alliance needs to manage public perception about a CIA-targeted government, from Ukraine to Russia to Hong Kong to Xinjiang, to the imperial propaganda firm known as Bellingcat. Rather than manipulate world narratives and foment discontent from behind the veil of hidden identities and cutouts as in CIA tactics of old, NED just manipulates them openly by pouring funds into narrative management operations which benefit the empire while framing it as promoting democracy and human rights.

    class=”twitter-tweet” data-width=”550″>

    To further #humanrights & human dignity for all people in China, the National Endowment for Democracy has funded Uyghur groups since 2004. #NEDemocracy #HumanRightsDay https://t.co/C0LJEyWxq1 pic.twitter.com/OqZdehdxXN

    — NEDemocracy (@NEDemocracy) December 10, 2020

    Then you’ve got things like American officials telling the press that the US government has been circulating disinformation about Russia and Ukraine, Biden administration officials saying the proxy war in Ukraine is being used to “weaken” Russia and that they are fine with US brinkmanship with Russia causing global recession and hunger, and western officials telling the press that Ukraine is crawling with CIA personnel.

    What the empire has found is that you don’t need to hide as much from public visibility as long as you can manipulate what people think they’re seeing. If the public is sufficiently propagandized and consent has been adequately manufactured, you can get away with just proclaiming some random guy the president of a foreign country and seeing if you can manipulate the rest of the world into playing along with you.

    If your narrative control is strong enough, you can even keep the empire running smoothly when information gets out into the open that you’d rather stay hidden. Very often these days major stories about imperial malfeasance will come out that simply have no impact, either because the mainstream news media unite to ignore them or because they spin those revelations as coming from someone bad or not containing important information.

    People tend to overrate the power of the US war machine and underrate the power of the US propaganda machine. While the US military finds itself losing a war to the Taliban, the awesome power of its propaganda engine has people marching in perfect alignment with the will of the oligarchic empire.

    When I was in an abusive relationship, the more ground down and submitted I became the more my abuser would flaunt his abusiveness in the plain light of day. Toward the end he was just outright admitting he was a sociopath and a manipulator and openly telling me he was going to do monstrous things to me before he did them, because he was that confident that he had me wrapped around his finger.

    Luckily, he was wrong. And hopefully the empire is wrong as it makes this same calculation with all of us.

    _________________

    My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.

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  • The Pink Tide Surges in Latin America

    While the political balance between progressive and reactionary states south of the Rio Grande continues to tip to the left, even the corporate press pronounced Biden’s June Summit of the Americas meeting in Los Angeles a flop. Most recently, Colombia elected its first left-leaning president, following similar victories in Chile, Peru, and Honduras, which in turn followed Bolivia, Argentina, and Mexico.  And the frontrunner in Brazil’s presidential contest slated for October is a leftist. However, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and especially Cuba – countries led by explicitly socialist parties – are critically threatened by US imperialism, subjected to severe sanctions. In short, the geopolitical situation in the Western Hemisphere remains volatile. What does this portend for US hegemony and for socialism?

    Ebb and flow of the class struggle in Latin America

    The tidal metaphor describes the shifting constellations of governments in what Washington long considered its exclusive domain ever since the 1823 Monroe Doctrine. The Pink Tide is a reaction to, and a struggle against, neoliberalism, which is the contemporary form of capitalism. The Pink Tide first entered its flow phase in 1998 with the election of Hugo Chávez as president of Venezuela. What followed was truly a sea change with a developing expression of sovereignty and independence. An alphabet soup of regionally integrated entities arose: ALBA, UNASUR, MERCOSUR, Petrocaribe, CELAC, etc.

    Upon assuming state power, the emerging left governments paradoxically inherit the very problems that precipitated the popular discontent that had led to their ascendence. And that is not to mention the looming presence of the Colossus of the North whose official policy is zero tolerance of insubordination to the empire.

    The Pink Tide went into an ebb phase around 2015 with the election of hard-right Mauricio Macri in Argentina. A US-backed coup in Honduras had already deposed Manuel Zelaya’s leftist government in 2009 and foreshadowed a later US-instigated regime-change operation in Bolivia, overthrowing Evo Morales in 2020. “Lawfare” coups in Paraguay and Brazil along with electoral defeats of leftists in Chile and Uruguay shifted the balance right. In Brazil, frontrunner Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (known colloquially as “Lula”) was forced to sit out the presidential election in prison on trumped up charges, allowing Jair Bolsonaro, the “Trump of the Tropics,” to win in 2018.

    Mexico kicks off the second left wave, July 2018

    Prospects for hemispheric progressivism again began looking bullish with Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO) victory in July 2018 after two previous attempts at the Mexican presidency, which were widely considered fraudulently stolen from him. A left turn by the second largest economy in Latin America, eleventh in the world, and the US’s second largest trading partner was not insignificant after decades of conservative rule. AMLO, whose MORENA party swept the 2018 national elections, has since shown fortitude in standing up to Washington.

    After it became apparent that Biden would not invite Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua to his Summit of the Americas in June of this year, AMLO led a boycott of the summit to be joined by Bolivia, Honduras, Guatemala, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. El Salvador and Uruguay also purposely missed the party, albeit for different reasons.

    AMLO pointedly made a state visit to Cuba and previously had conspicuously welcomed Venezuelan President Maduro as an honored guest.  AMLO stayed firm, even after Biden sent a special delegation to Mexico City apparently to remind him about the career prospects of others – such as Qaddafi, Noriega, and Hussein – who similarly failed to heed imperial summons.

    Then on July 4th, the Mexican president facetiously launched a campaign to take down the Statue of Liberty, “no longer a symbol of liberty,” because of the US prosecution of Julian Assange.

     A new president is anointed in Venezuela, January 2019

    Tempering any initial leftist euphoria over the ending of conservative rule in Mexico were the continuing US regime-change efforts against Venezuela designed to bring down the leading left state in the region. In one of the more bizarre examples of imperial hubris, US Vice President Pence called a person unknown to over 80% of the Venezuelan public and one who had never run for national office. Pence asked Juan Guaidó if he would like to be president of Venezuela. The next day, on January 23, 2019, this US security asset declared himself “interim president” of Venezuela on a Caracas street corner. US President Trump immediately recognized Guaidó as the legitimate chief-of-state followed by some 60 of the empire’s loyal vassals.

    Three years later, barely a baker’s dozen of states currently recognize Juan Guaidó as president of Venezuela. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who once gushed how “thrilled” she was with the puppet president, now doesn’t even recognize his name. The hapless Guaidó, by the way, failed to secure an invitation to Biden’s summit in Los Angeles last June now that he is such an embarrassment.

    After Obama first sanctioned Venezuela in 2015, the illegal measures were intensified by Trump and continued for the most part by Biden. After deliberately targeting Venezuela’s cash cow, the oil industry, the economy was devastated. Today, those fortunes are being reversed. With assistance from China, Russia, and Iran along with adroit economic planning and some concessions to garner support of the domestic bourgeoisie, the Venezuelan economy revitalized by 2022.

    Venezuelan President Maduro stood firm against repeated coup attempts by Juan Guaidó and military incursions from Colombia acting as a US proxy. Last November, the 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.

    A major sticking point blighting relations between the US and Venezuela is the extradition of Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab and his imprisonment in Miami. Saab had been instrumental in legally helping Venezuela circumvent the illegal US blockade. Apparently, the empire believes it has the prerogative to decide who other countries may appoint as their diplomats and to persecute those they do not like. This is despite the Vienna Convention, to which the US is a signatory and from which absolute diplomatic immunity is provided even in the time of war. However, under Mr. Biden’s “rules-based order” – as opposed to international law – the US makes the rules, and the rest of humanity must follow the orders.

    Rightist replaced in Argentina and a coup in Bolivia, Fall 2019

    The Pink Tide again began to rise when, on October 27, 2019, Alberto Fernández replaced Mauricio Macri, whose neoliberal policies had wrecked the economy in Argentina. The new president is aligned with more conservative elements within Peronism compared to his vice-president. The two Peronist factions have continued to wrangle over how to extricate Argentina from the debt-grip of the IMF and international finance, with the more progressive side recently gaining the upper hand.

    Then the Pink Tide suffered a major reversal only two weeks after its success in Argentina, when a US-backed coup overthrew leftist President Evo Morales in neighboring Bolivia. With the connivance of the Washington-based Organization of American States (OAS), Evo had to flee for his life. Rightist Senator Jeanine Áñez then entered the Bolivian presidential palace with a bible in her hand – I am not making this up –exorcized the building of indigenous paganism and declared herself temporary president. Major popular protests by the largely indigenous and poor populace followed, only to be brutally repressed with many fatalities.

    Almost precisely a year after the initial coup, Evo’s former minister of finance and a member of his Movement for Socialism (MAS) Party, Luis Arce, ran for the presidency. His landslide win vindicated Evo’s initial president victory in 2019.

    Marxist-Leninist assumes presidency in Peru, June 2021 – for now

    After four presidents in three years, in the ever mercurial and unpredictable Peru, a rural teacher and peasant leader from the Marxist-Leninist Perú Libre Party led the presidential primary election. Pedro Castillo faced far-right Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of an imprisoned former president and convicted human rights violator. Castillo was so unknown that the major press services had to scramble to find a photograph of him.

    Castillo was eventually declared the winner of the runoff on June 6, 2021, after a protracted vote count, but by a razor thin margin. With only a minority in the legislature, Castillo has been clinging to elected office by this fingernails ever since. Right off, he was pressured to remove his leftist foreign minister. Since then, he has survived two impeachment attempts, four cabinets, and his banishment from his own political party.

    The capital city of Peru, it should be noted, gave its name to the ill-fated Lima Group, a cabal of US client states aligned against Venezuela. Even before Peru voted red, the Lima Group had drowned in a rising Pink Tide.

    Left victories in Central America, November and December 2021

    The US deemed Nicaragua’s presidential election an undemocratic fraud nearly a year in advance as part of a larger regime-change campaign against left-leaning governments. Disregarding Washington’s call to boycott, a respectable 65% of the Nicaraguan electorate went to the polls on November 11, 2021, and 76% of the voters re-elected Sandinista President Daniel Ortega. The landslide victory was a testament to the Sandinistas’ success in serving Nicaragua’s poor and a repudiation of the 2018 coup attempt fomented by the US.

    Following the left reaffirmation in Nicaragua was the long-awaited and much savored victory in what was once called the USS Honduras, alluding to that country’s role as a base for US counter-insurgency operations during the “dirty wars” in Central America. Xiomara Castro, the first female president, was swept in by a landslide on November 28. The slogan of the now triumphant resistance front was: “They fear us because we have no fear.”

    It had been twelve years since a US-backed coup overthrew Manuel Zelaya, who was the democratically elected president and husband of Castro. The country had devolved into a state where the former president, Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH), was an unindicted drug smuggler, and where 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. Once the US government’s darling, JOH will likely spend the rest of his days behind bars given that he has been extradited to the US to face drug trafficking charges.

    Leftists win in Chile and Colombia with Brazil maybe next

    Last December 19, Gabriel Boric won the Chilean presidential election by a landslide against far-right José Antonio Kast. The 35-year-old Boric was a leader in the massive protests in 2019 and 2020 against corrupt President Sebastian Piñera. The slogan of the protests was: “If Chile was the birthplace of neoliberalism, then it will also be its graveyard!” The victory was a repudiation of the Pinochet legacy.

    A constituent assembly, where the left won the majority of the delegates in a May election, has rewritten the Pinochet-era constitution. But current polls suggest that the electorate may reject it. With a 59% disapproval rating and severe unrest in the territory of the Mapuche indigenous people, Boric has hard times ahead.

    Then, on June 19, history was made in the leading client state of the US in the Americas when Gustavo Petro became the first leftist president-elect ever, and his running mate, Francia Márquez, the first Afro-descendent vice president-elect. Petro, a former leftist guerilla and onetime mayor of Bogotá, had since shifted toward the center politically. But in the comparison to the far-right rule of former President Álvaro Uribe and his successors, Colombia has dramatically and decisively shifted to the left. Relations with Venezuela are being normalized and the Monómeros chemical plant, which was handed over to the Guaidó clique and run into the ground, may get returned to Caracas and restart producing needed fertilizers.

    Even more portentous than the left victory in Colombia would be one in neighboring Brazil, the largest economy in Latin America and the eighth in the world. That may happen with the October 2 presidential election where the frontrunner, Lula, has a substantial lead In the polls.

    Troubled waters ahead as the Pink Tide surges

    In conclusion, the surging Pink Tide is symptomatic of the increasingly manifest inability of neoliberalism to address the fundamental needs of the populace. Popular upheavals in Latin America are not isolated, but are indicative of a reaction to increasing inflation, poverty, crime, and drug-related violence. Demonstrations in July in Ecuador led by the indigenous CONAIE organization almost toppled the government of right-wing banker Guillermo Lasso over grievances regarding fuel prices, debts, and illegal mining. Panama is in “permanent strike.”

    The living standards of poor and working people globally are dramatically being eroded by a world order where the US and its imperial allies have imposed sanctions – what the UN calls unilateral coercive measures – on a third of humanity.

    The US may still be the hemispheric hegemon, but the edifice is corroding. While the US’s Millennium Challenge Corporation falters, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has made major inroads in Latin America as it has in Asia and Africa. Argentina joined the BRI last February, following 19 other regional states including Bolivia, Chile, Uruguay, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.

    The BRICS summit of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa was held virtually in June, representing some 30% of the world’s economy and 40% of its population. Argentina attended and is slated to become the next member of an expanded group along with Iran and possibly others such as Indonesia, Niger, and Egypt.

    China has become the region’s largest creditor and second-largest trading partner after the US. China’s trade with Latin America and the Caribbean grew 26-fold between 2000 and 2020 and is expected to more than double by 2035. China has provided a vital lifeline for states attacked by the US and room for newfound independence from the hegemon. Particularly when the US weaponized the Covid pandemic by increasing pressure on left states, China filled in.

    Despite a resurgent Pink Tide, the US hybrid warfare measures against the explicitly socialist countries in Latin America has created a precarious and critical inflection point. Cuba solidarity activist W. T. Whitney warns: “Thanks to the US blockade, Cuba’s economic situation is more desperate than ever.”

    The post The Pink Tide Surges in Latin America first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Beyond the Blob

    An interview with Senator Bernie Sanders’ foreign policy advisor Matt Duss.

    This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.

  • Venezuelan’s view on Gustavo Petro victory in Colombia, US sanctions, Iran pact

    Multipolarista host Benjamin Norton speaks with Venezuelan journalist Jesús Rodríguez Espinoza, editor of independent news outlet the Orinoco Tribune, about the victory of left-wing candidate Gustavo Petro in Colombia’s presidential election, the easing of a few US sanctions, and Venezuela’s 20-year cooperation agreement with Iran.

    The post Venezuelan’s view on Gustavo Petro victory in Colombia, US sanctions, Iran pact appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • 50th session Human Rights Council: issues directly affecting Human Rights Defenders

    A bit belatedly this overview for the 50th session:

    The 50th session of the UN Human Rights Council, from 13 June to 8 July 2022, will consider issues including sexual orientation and gender identity, violence and discrimination against women and girls, poverty, peaceful assembly and association, and freedom of expression, among others. It will also present an opportunity to address grave human rights situations including in Afghanistan, Belarus, China, Eritrea, Israel and OPT, Russia, Sudan, Syria and Venezuela, among many others. With “HRC50 | Key issues on agenda of June 2022 session” the ISHR provided again its indispensable guide. Here’s an overview of some of the key issues on the agenda that are the most relevant to HRDs [see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2022/02/21/guide-to-49th-session-of-human-rights-council-with-human-rights-defenders-focus/ and https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2022/04/15/results-49th-session-human-rights-council-as-seen-by-ngos/

    Thematic areas of interest

    Here are some highlights of the session’s thematic discussions

    Business and human rights

    Despite their vital work to protect the environment and combat climate change, Indigenous peoples as well as land and environmental defenders continue to be attacked. New data shows an alarming pattern of violence and harassment as a precursor to lethal attacks against defenders. 

    In 2020, Global Witness registered the killings of 137 land and environmental defenders in just five of the most dangerous countries for them: Colombia, Guatemala, Kenya, Mexico and the Philippines. However, a new dataset from the ALLIED Data Working Group, a coalition in which ISHR takes part, focused on these countries has for the first time documented what is often hidden – the non-lethal attacks, including threats, harassment, smear campaigns and stigmatisation that are a precursor to the shocking number of deaths we see each year.

    The findings highlight the urgent need for States to monitor, collect data, report on the situation of these defenders, and address the root causes of attacks against them. ISHR urges all States to make a commitment to the systematic monitoring of attacks on indigenous, land and environmental defenders in their countries, and to take stronger action, together with civil society and relevant UN Special Procedures, to address the root causes of attacks in the debate with the Working Group due to take place on 21 June 2022. 

    Reprisals

    Reports of cases of intimidation and reprisal against those cooperating or seeking to cooperate with the UN not only continue, but grow. Intimidation and reprisals violate the rights of the individuals concerned, they constitute violations of international human rights law, and they undermine the UN human rights system.

    The UN has taken action towards addressing this critical issue, including:

    • Requesting that the Secretary General prepare an annual report on cases and trends of reprisals;
    • Establishing a dedicated dialogue under item 5 to take place every September;
    • Affirmation by the Council of the particular responsibilities of its Members, President and Vice-Presidents to investigate and promote accountability for reprisals and intimidation; and
    • The appointment of the UN Assistant Secretary General on Human Rights as the Senior Official on addressing reprisals.

    Despite this, ISHR remains deeply concerned about reprisals against civil society actors who try to engage with UN mechanisms, and consistent in its calls for all States and the Council to do more to address the situation.

    During the 48th session, the Council adopted a resolution on reprisals. The text was adopted by consensus for the first time since 2009 and invites the UN Secretary General to submit his annual report on reprisals and intimidation to the UN General Assembly. Once again the resolution listed key trends, including that acts of intimidation and reprisals can signal patterns, increasing self-censorship, and the use of national security arguments and counter-terrorism strategies by States as justification for blocking access to the UN. The resolution also acknowledged the specific risks to individuals in vulnerable situations or belonging to marginalised groups, and called on the UN to implement gender-responsive policies to end reprisals. The Council called on States to combat impunity by conducting prompt, impartial and independent investigations and ensuring accountability for all acts of intimidation or reprisal, both online and offline, by condemning all such acts publicly, providing access to effective remedies for victims, and preventing any recurrence.

    Item 5 of the Human Rights Council’s agenda provides a key opportunity for States to raise concerns about specific cases of reprisals, and for governments involved in existing cases to provide an update to the Council on any investigation or action taken toward accountability. The President should also update the Council on actions taken by the President and Bureau to follow up on cases and promote accountability under this item.

    Due to the lack of a general debate under item 5 at HRC 50, ISHR encourages States to raise concerns about specific cases of reprisals during the interactive dialogues on the relevant countries on the agenda at this session or in the context of thematic interactive dialogues where relevant.

    During the organisational meeting held on 30 May, the President of the Council stressed the importance of ensuring the safety of those participating in the Council’s work, and the obligation of States to prevent intimidation or reprisals.

    In line with previous calls, ISHR expects the President of the Human Rights Council to publicly identify and denounce specific instances of reprisals by issuing formal statements, conducting press-briefings, corresponding directly with the State concerned, publicly releasing such correspondence with States involved, and insisting on undertakings from the State concerned to investigate, hold perpetrators accountable and report back to the Council on action taken.

    Sexual orientation and gender identity

    The mandate of the Independent Expert on violence and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity is up for renewal for the second time at this session. We will be following this closely and call on all States to support the mandate and contribute to the Council’s efforts to combat violence and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

    Other thematic reports

    At this 50th session, the Council will discuss a range of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights through dedicated debates with the mandate holders and the High Commissioner, including interactive dialogues with:

    • The Special rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association
    • The Independent Expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity
    • The Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health
    • The Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression
    • The Special Rapporteur on the right to education
    • The Independent Expert on human rights and international solidarity
    • The Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary of arbitrary executions
    • The Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
    • The Special Rapporteur on promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change
    • The Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises
    • The Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance
    • The High Commissioner on State responses to pandemics 

    In addition, the Council will hold dedicated debates on the rights of specific groups including;

    • The Special Rapporteur on the rights of internally displaced persons
    • The Working Group on discrimination against women and girls
    • The Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences
    • The Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants
    • The Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children
    • The Special Rapporteur on the elimination of discrimination against persons affected by leprosy and their family members
    • The Special Rapporteur on independence of judges and lawyers

    Country-specific developments

    Afghanistan

    Together with WHRDs from the country and civil society organisations from all regions, ISHR calls on States to lead and support an Urgent Debate at HRC50 on women’s rights in Afghanistan.

    Since August 2021, when the Taliban took control of the country, there has been an enormous deterioration in the recognition and protection of the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan, including with respect to the rights to non-discrimination, education, work, public participation, health, and sexual and reproductive health. The Taliban has also imposed sweeping restrictions on the rights to freedom of expression, association, assembly and movement for women and girls. Afghanistan is now the only country in the world to expressly prohibit girls’ education.

    The world’s worst women’s rights crisis demands a response and it would be unacceptable for the June session of the HRC, traditionally the session focused on gender-related issues, to pass without some meaningful action on the issue. I

    The Council will hold an interactive dialogue with the High Commissioner on the update on Afghanistan on 15 June 2022. 

    China 

    The High Commissioner’s visit to China failed to adequately address widespread and systematic violations in the country, express solidarity with victims and defenders, or pave the way for meaningful monitoring of China’s human rights crisis across the Uyghur and Tibetan regions, Hong Kong and mainland China. The High Commissioner’s end of mission statement failed to address strong, specific concerns or make substantive, concrete recommendations to the governmen. The broad concerns issued in a light language do not match the scope and gravity of human rights violations across the country that have been thoroughly documented by UN experts and civil society and that could amount to crimes against humanity and genocide.

    States should call on the High Commissioner to immediately publish her OHCHR report on the Uyghur region, with clear, compelling recommendations to the government, and present her findings in a briefing to the Human Rights Council. The High Commissioner should also ensure that the established annual meeting and working group for dialogue with the authorities are of public nature, include specific substantive recommendations to the government, and involve substantial consultation with a diverse set of independent civil society groups. China should also follow suit on promises for subsequent visits by the OHCHR by granting prompt unfettered access to Hong Kong and the Tibetan region. See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2022/06/09/disappointment-with-un-high-commissioners-visit-to-xinjiang-boils-over/

    Burundi

    The Commission of Inquiry on Burundi (CoI) concluded its work at the 48th HRC session in October 2021 while a new resolution establishing a mandate of UN Special Rapporteur on Burundi was adopted, resolution 48/16. The resolution tasks the mandate with monitoring the human rights situation in the country, making recommendations for its imp­ro­ve­ment, and re­por­ting to the Human Rights Council. During the 50th HRC session, the newly nominated Special Rapporteur on Burundi will present their first oral update on 29 June 2022.

    Egypt

    Notwithstanding the launch of a national human rights strategy, the fundamental purpose of which is to deflect international scrutiny rather than advance human rights, there has been no significant improvement in the human rights situation in Egypt since the joint statement delivered by States in March 2021 at HRC46. Emblematic recent examples include: Ayman Hadhoud’s death in the custody of Egyptian security forces following his enforced disappearance over two months ago and the execution of seven people in Egypt on 8 and 10 March 2022 following trials in which the defendants were forcibly disappeared, tortured, and denied their right to a lawyer.

    In response to the Egyptian President’s announcement of “reactivating the work of the Presidential Pardon Committee” on 26 April 2022, Egyptian human rights organisations submitted a proposal for a fair and transparent process to release political prisoners in Egypt. Yet, recent harsh sentences in unfair trials against peaceful critics demonstrate further the lack of political will of the Egyptian authorities to address the crisis of arbitrary detention in Egypt. ISHR joined more than 100 NGOs from around the world in urging the HRC to create a monitoring and reporting mechanism on the ever-deteriorating human rights situation in Egypt. 

    Israel and oPT

    This session, the COI on the oPt and Israel established in 2021 will present its first report to the HRC. Civil society from around the world had welcomed the historic resolution establishing the standing Commission of Inquiry to address Israel’s latest and ongoing violations against the Palestinian people on both sides of the Green Line, while also addressing the root causes of Israel’s settler colonialism and apartheid. The interactive dialogue with the CoI comes in the context of mounting recognition of Israel’s establishment and maintenance of an apartheid regime by Israel over the Palestinian people as a whole. During HRC49, the SR on the oPT called on the international community to accept and adopt his findings as well as the “findings by Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights organisations that apartheid is being practised by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory and beyond.” In its 2019 concluding observations, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination found that Israel’s policies violated Article 3 of ICERD pertaining to segregation and apartheid on both sides of the Green Line. In 2022, the Human Rights Committee concluding observations on Israel emphasized the “pre-existing systematic and structural discrimination against non-Jews”.

    While some States continue to seek to undermine the mandate of the CoI and effective accountability mechanisms to put an end to Israel’s apartheid regime, CSOs support the CoI’s methodological approach to fulfill its vital mandate. We call on States to engage with the substance of the mandate of the CoI during the interactive dialogue, express support for this important accountability mechanism and ensure it has sufficient resources to discharge its mandate.

    Russia 

    Together with a coalition of international and regional NGOs, as well as numerous Russian civil society organisations, ISHR urges the Council to establish an independent international monitoring and reporting mechanism on Russia. In the context of the systematic repression of civil society organisations, severe restrictions on press freedoms and independent media, severe restrictions and criminalisation of many forms of free expression, association, assembly and peaceful protest, and the propagation of huge volumes of misinformation, a Special Rapporteur is necessary to ensure that the international community receives vital information about the human rights situation on the ground. 

    Sudan

    The Council will hold a debate with the High Commissioner and Expert on Sudan on 15 June 2022.

    The Sudanese Women Rights Action documented from March to April 2022 the violations against women protesters, including arrests, injuries, and sexual violence. Their report also highlighted the economic and humanitarian situation in conflict areas and in the country in general. The report shows that “the coup leaders are using increasing violence against women protesters, including arrests, fabricated charges, direct lethal violence in protests, and sexual violence. The civic space is shrinking across Sudan, where human rights groups and WHRDs are not able to work freely and safely. Surveillance on internet, communication, movement, and offices of many groups led them to work from underground. The economic conditions and the fragile political situation is increasing women insecurity, as the peace process failed to end violence conflict areas. Women in Sudan are living in constant fear of violence with growing threats of the collapse of the state.”

    In light of this context, ISHR urges all States to support the adoption of a resolution that ensures continued attention to Sudan’s human rights situation through enhanced interactive dia­logues at the Council’s 52nd and 53rd regular sessions. While the Expert’s mandate is ongoing, a resolution is required for the Council to hold public de­bates and continue to formally discuss the situation. A resolution at the Council’s 50th session would ope­ra­tio­nalise resolution S-32/1, which in its operative paragraph 19 called upon “the High Commis­sioner and the designated Expert to monitor human rights violations and abu­ses and to continue to bring information thereon to the attention of the Human Rights Council, and to advise on the further steps that may be needed if the situation continues to deteriorate.”

    Venezuela

    On 29 June, the Council will hold an interactive dialogue with the High Commissioner on her report on the situation of human rights in Venezuela. The Council requested her to provide in this report a detailed assessment of the implementation of the recommendations made in her previous reports. Implementation of recommendations and improvements in the human rights situation on the ground remains a critical question as HRC mandates for OHCHR and the international investigative body for Venezuela expire in September. Venezuelan civil society groups continue to show evidence of a lack of any substantive human rights reform in the country, of a lack of meaningful cooperation by the State and – in fact – of regression in key areas such as judicial independence and civic space. ISHR urges States at the upcoming session to express support for the work of OHCHR in the country, and encourage the Office to speak clearly to realities on the ground. In addition, States should signal their support for the continuance of the work of the HRC’s fact-finding mission to the country through an extension of the Mission’s mandate at HRC51. 

    The adoption of the report of the third cycle UPR on Venezuela will also take place on the 29 June or 1 July.  

    Other country situations

    The Council will hold an interactive dialogue on the High Commissioner’s annual report on 14 June 2022. The Council will hold debates on and is expected to consider resolutions addressing a range of country situations, in some instances involving the renewal of the relevant expert mandates. These include:

    • Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on Eritrea
    • Interactive Dialogues with the High Commissioner and Special Rapporteur on Myanmar
    • Interactive Dialogue with the High Commissioner on Nicaragua
    • Interactive Dialogues with the High Commissioner on Ukraine
    • Interactive Dialogue with the Commission of Inquiry on Syria
    • Interactive Dialogue with the International commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia 
    • Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on Belarus
    • Interactive Dialogue with the Independent Fact-Finding Mission on Libya
    • Interactive Dialogue with the Independent Expert on Central African Republic 

    Council programme, appointments and resolutions

    The President of the Human Rights Council will propose candidates for the following mandates: 

    1. Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief
    2. Special Rapporteur on the right to education
    3. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
    4. Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises, member from African States
    5. Expert Mechanism on the Right to Development, member from Latin American and Caribbean States
    6. Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment
    7. Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, member from Eastern European States
    8. Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises, member from Western European and other States

    Resolutions to be presented to the Council’s 50th session

    At the organizational meeting on 30 May the following resolutions were announced (States leading the resolution in brackets):

    1. Elimination of discrimination against women (Mexico), mandate renewal 
    2. Freedom of expression (Brazil, Canada, Fiji, Sweden, Namibia, Netherlands) 
    3. Elimination of female genital mutilation (Africa Group)
    4. Rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association (Czech Republic, Indonesia, Lithuania, Maldives, Mexico), mandate renewal 
    5. Human rights situation in Sudan (United Kingdom, Germany, Norway, United States)
    6. Human rights situation in Syria (Germany, France, Italy, Jordan, Kuwait, Netherlands, Qatar, Turkey, United States, United Kingdom)
    7. Mandate of the Independent Expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity  (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Uruguay), mandate renewal 
    8. Casualty recording and the promotion and protection of human rights (Liechtenstein, Croatia, Costa Rica, Sierra Leone) 
    9. Human rights and climate change (Bangladesh, Philippines, Viet Nam)
    10. Access to medicines and vaccines in the context of the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health (Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Senegal, South Africa, Thailand)
    11. Enhancement of international cooperation in the field of human rights (NAM)
    12. Independence and impartiality of the judiciary, jurors and assessors, and the independence of lawyers (Hungary, Australia, Botswana, Maldives, Mexico, Thailand)
    13. Human rights and the regulation of civilian acquisition, possession and use of firearms (Ecuador, Peru)
    14. Human rights in Belarus, mandate renewal (European Union)
    15. Human rights in Eritrea, mandate renewal (European Union) 
    16. The promotion and protection of human rights in the context of peaceful protest (Switzerland, Costa Rica)
    17. Situation of human rights of Rohingya Muslims and other minorities in Myanmar (OIC) 
    18. Accelerating efforts to eliminate all forms of violence against women (Canada), mandate renewal 
    19. Mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons (Austria, Honduras, Uganda), mandate renewal
    20. Human rights and international solidarity (Cuba)
    21. Social Forum (Cuba)

    Read the calendar here. 

    Adoption of Universal Periodic Review (UPR) reports

    During this session, the Council will adopt the UPR working group reports on Myanmar, Togo, Syrian Arab Republic, Iceland, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Lithuania, Uganda, Timor-Leste, Republic of Moldova, South Sudan, Haiti and Sudan.

    Panel discussions

    During each Council session, panel discussions are held to provide member States and NGOs with opportunities to hear from subject-matter experts and raise questions. Seven panel discussions are scheduled for this upcoming session:

    1. Panel discussion on the root causes of human rights violations and abuses against Rohingya Muslims and other minorities in Myanmar 
    2. Panel discussion on menstrual hygiene management, human rights and gender equality
    3. Panel discussion on good governance in the promotion and protection of human rights during and after the COVID-19 pandemic
    4. Annual full-day discussion on the human rights of women
    5. Panel discussion on the adverse impact of climate change on the full and effective enjoyment of human rights by people in vulnerable situations
    6. High-level panel discussion on countering the negative impact of disinformation on the enjoyment and realization of human rights
    7. Annual thematic panel discussion on technical cooperation and capacity-building

    Stay up-to-date: Follow @ISHRglobal and #HRC50 on Twitter, and look out for its Human Rights Council Monitor. During the session, follow the live-updated programme of work on Sched. 

    https://ishr.ch/latest-updates/hrc50-key-issues-on-agenda-of-june-2022-session/

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • ‘Calibrated’ Dishonesty: Western Media Coverage of Venezuela Sanctions

    US sanctions, even by outdated estimates, have killed tens of thousands of Venezuelans. The unilateral policies have been widely condemned by multilateral bodies and human rights experts for their deadly impact, as well as for violating international law.

    But corporate media readers/viewers in the Global North are completely oblivious to this reality, as establishment outlets have gone out of their way to endorse sanctions by whitewashing their effects altogether. FAIR.org writing for example, that Washington has “sanctioned the government” rather than the people of Venezuela.

    A recent policy opening, microscopic to begin with and closed quickly enough, put all these dishonest traits on display, illustrating how free a rein US officials have to continue inflicting collective punishment on Venezuelans without challenge or scrutiny.

    The post ‘Calibrated’ Dishonesty: Western Media Coverage of Venezuela Sanctions appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • A Tale of Two Summits

    Last week (June 8-10) there were two summits in Los Angeles, California:  the Summit of the Americas hosted by the US State Department and the Peoples Summit hosted by US and international activist organizations. The two summits were held in the same city at the same time but could not be otherwise more different.

    Summit of SOME of the Americas

    Begun in 1994, in the heyday of US international dominance, the Summit of the Americas is officially a function of the Organization of American States. It is meant to coordinate and consolidate US economic, political and cultural interests.  The first summit, held in Miami, served this goal well. The Soviet Union had broken up, severely hurting allies such as Cuba. Neo-liberalism was on the march, even in countries such as Nicaragua where the Sandinistas had been voted out of power. The US had recently invaded Panama, making a murderous example of  any country or leader that defied US dictates.

    Since 1994, there have been Summits of the Americas every three or four years. The summits in Canada (2001) and Argentina (2005) had large anti-summit protests against capitalist globalization.  In Panama in 2015, Cuba was invited to the summit for the first time after a group of countries threatened to boycott the summit if Cuba was again excluded.  President Obama met and shook hands with Cuban President Raul Castro. There was widespread agreement and pleasure at the US  beginning to normalize relations with Cuba.

    In 2018, the US hostility to Cuba resumed under President Trump. The White House administration referred to Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela as a “troika of tyranny”.

    The policy of exclusion continues under the Biden administration and this became a major feature of the just concluded Summit of the Americas.  Despite threats to boycott the gathering by many Latin American and Caribbean presidents, the US chose to exclude Cuban, Nicaragua and Venezuela. This resulted in seven country presidents choosing not to attend: Mexico, Bolivia, Honduras, St Vincent, Antigua, Guatemala, El Salvador.  Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) said simply, “There cannot be a summit of the Americas if all the countries of the American continent do not participate. Or there can be, but …. it is just a continuation of the old policy of interventionism, or disrespect of nations and their peoples.”

    As it turned out, the absence of three excluded and seven allied leaders became a predominant feature of the Summit. The ghost of the ten hung over all events. The summit accomplished little with the lack of preparation being compared to a “privileged but lazy student” who does not prepare  for a test.  The Atlantic analyzed the situation: “The Summit of the Americas, hosted this year by Joe Biden, offers a measure of how far the U.S. has fallen.” The attendance was small and resolutions filled with platitudes with little substance.  Criticisms of the US exclusion of countries were openly aired.

    The NY Times described  the Summit by quoting a former Mexican ambassador who said many countries are “challenging U.S. influence, because U.S. influence has been diminishing in the continent.”

    At the Summit of the Americas, Secretary of State  Antony Blinken and OAS leader Luis Almagro spoke at a panel about “ Journalistic Freedom“.  Journalist Walter Smolarek exposed the farce as he boldly confronted Almagro because of his complicity in the 2019 Bolivian coup and more.

    There was a plea  from many countries to get beyond conflict and cold war, to genuinely work together to address the  looming and already dangerous results of climate change.

    The Summit of the Americas was expensive. Just the LA police security cost over $15 million.

    Peoples Summit 2022

    Two miles away from the Summit of the Americas, the Peoples Summit was held at the Los Angeles Technical Trade College.  The Peoples Summit included art and poster pavilion, a huge hall for panel discussions and speeches, and an outdoor pavilion featuring dozens of activist organizations and craftspeople. There was live music and dancing later at night.  Over a thousand people attended and spirits were high.

    The complex affair was organized by over ten convening organizations. These included the Answer Coalition, International Peoples Assembly, CodePink and unions SEIU 721 and AFT 1521.  There were over a hundred individuals providing support and organization for the event. Many activists flew  or drove to Los Angeles from across the US.  In contrast with the Summit of the Americas, the Peoples Summit operated on a shoestring based on volunteers.

    A wide array of domestic and international issues were addressed at the Peoples Summit.  They included Health as a Human Right, Gender Violence, Food Sovereignty and Climate Justice, Cultural Resistance, Youth Organizing Strategies, Justice for TPS and Undocumented Community, Lessons from Below and Organizing Unhoused Communities.  Plus many more.

    In 2020, Los Angeles counted over 66,000 homeless people in the city. The latest survey, from January this year,  is going to be released June 22.  These and other issues were explored by activists at the Peoples Summit.

    A major component of the Peoples Summit was international affairs and the connection to struggles at home. While the US spends well over $800 billion annually on the military, there are virtually no homes being built by the US government. The US Department of Housing and Urban Development  offers rental assistance and advice. In contrast, Venezuela has constructed 4 million homes for Venezuelan families.

    US censorship and attacks on media critics were further revealed at the Peoples Summit where Julian Assange’s father and brother talked about the world’s most famous imprisoned journalist and publisher. The Wikileaks founder has been imprisoned for ten years, with over three years at Belmarsh maximum security prison.  He is now threatened with extradition to the US, a kangaroo court and life imprisonment.  His only “crime” has been to reveal the real crimes of the US military and government.

    There was an outstanding lineup of speakers each of the three days of the Peoples Summit. These included local activists and indigenous leaders and noted international leaders such as Honduran Bertha Zuniga and Puerto Rican Oscar Lopez Rivera.

    The presidents of Cuba and Venezuela, plus Evo Morales, the former president of Bolivia, sent eloquent messages of support to the Peoples Summit.

    On Friday June 10 there was a mass march and rally from the Peoples Summit at the community college to the street in front of the Summit of the Americas. The streets of downtown Los Angeles echoed with calls, chats and songs as the march proceeded.

    Conclusions

    There is growing criticism of US presumptions of supremacy and US foreign policy promoting division and conflict. This was expressed by leaders who stayed away from the Summit of Americas and also many leaders who attended. The Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Amor Mottley, said frankly,

    It’s wrong that Cuba and Venezuela and Nicaragua are not here, because as you heard from Bahamas, we need to speak with those with whom we disagree….There’s too much narrow-casting instead of broadcasting. There’s too much talking at, instead of talking with…. And the simple priority must be people, not ideology.

    US exceptionalism and the exclusion of countries is increasingly being challenged. This matches the global criticisms of US unilateral sanctions. At the last UN General Assembly, the vote was 184-2 in denouncing US embargo on Cuba.  Seventy percent of world nations believes US sanctions violate international law.

    The Summit of the Americas showed the US attempting and failing to impose its will on the hemisphere.  The Peoples Summit showed a different vision which is in accord with the wishes of most countries and people.

    • Photos by Rick Sterling

    March 1

    March 2

    President Maduro

    Panel 2

    Evo Morales

    President Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel Bermúdez

    March 4

    Vendors and Activist Groups

    March 7

    Closing panel

    The post A Tale of Two Summits first appeared on Dissident Voice.

  • Summit of the Americas Flops While Workers Summit Exposes Cracks in the Imperial Façade

    Valentín, the man next to us in line as we made our way across the international border, asked what we had been doing in Tijuana. We had been at the Workers Summit of the Americas, organized as an alternative to Biden’s Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles. Our summit was as a place where countries besieged by and barred from the US could participate and was held in cooperation with a kindred counter-summit in Los Angeles.

    Valentín, who had been born in Mexico and spent most of his working life in the United States, had seen the border from both perspectives. He commented about Biden’s summit that although the US is rich in resources, industry, and agriculture, “it wants it all,” which pretty much sums up what imperialism is about.

    Historical debt to Mexico

    That border had not always been at Tijuana. As the immigrant rights movement reminds us, “we did not cross the border, the border crossed us.”

    Texas seceded from Mexico and was annexed to the US in 1845. The following year, the Mexican-American War was provoked by the US in a campaign of conquest. Two years later, Mexico was forced to sign the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ceding nearly half its national territory. The US gained what would become parts or all of California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Colorado. The Gadsden Purchase of 1853 added southern Arizona and New Mexico to the spoils of war.

    In all, 55% of Mexico, over half of her sovereign territory, was taken by the Colossus of the North. Consequently, the US owes Mexico a historical debt for the theft of its sovereign territory. This debt should be included with other major US historical debts such as those incurred by the exploitation of African slave labor and the genocide of its original peoples.

    Mexican Revolution

    Besides acknowledging the theft of Mexican lands, those of us on the left should also recognize Mexico’s considerable political contributions. The Mexican Revolution stands in the pantheon of great 20th century revolutions. Before the Russian, Chinese, Cuban, Vietnamese, and other revolutions, before the many Third World liberation struggles of the last century, came the Mexican Revolution, which began in 1910.

    As the first of the major 20th century revolutions, the Mexican Revolution guaranteed labor rights, nationalized subsoil rights, secularized the state and curbed the power of the Roman Catholic Church, and granted inalienable land rights to indigenous communities. Women’s rights were advanced, and women fought as soldiers and even commanders in General Emilio Zapata’s revolutionary army.

    There was no established path for the Mexicans when they made their revolution. That path was made by walking; they led the way.

    Cracks in the imperial façade

    For the first time since its 1994 launch in Miami, the US was hosting the Summit of the Americas, convened by the Washington-based Organization of American States (OAS). However, as AP News described, Biden’s maneuverings in the lead-up to his summit was a “scramble” to “avoid a flop.”

    That was in part because, today, Mexico again led the way challenging imperial hubris. Its president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), stood up to Biden’s imperial summons to come to the summit. AMLO would only dignify the event with his presence if all the countries of Our Americas were invited. Even after the US dispatched a team to Mexico City to cajole him to attend – but still refusing to invite the heads of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela – AMLO stood by his original principled stand.

    Joe Biden surely found it lonely with the presidents of Bolivia, Honduras, Guatemala, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines similarly boycotting his summit. The presidents of El Salvador and Uruguay also purposely missed the party, albeit for different reasons.

    Biden’s summit took place, but the buzz both inside the meeting and outside was the hypocrisy of the US attempt to try to appear to be promoting a “Summit for Democracy” while its actions have proven the opposite. The US-imposed illegal sanctions and blockades – unilateral coercive measures – on countries whose people fail to elect leaders sufficiently obedient to Washington are, in fact, a denial of democracy.

    And speaking of unelected leaders, the Trump-anointed and Biden-supported so-called “interim president of Venezuela,” Juan Guaidó, wasn’t on the guest list for the Los Angeles summit either. Even though the US and a handful of sycophantic allies still embarrassingly recognize the puppet as the Venezuelan head of state, he was closeted.

    Inside Biden’s summit, Argentinian President Alberto Fernández delivered what the press called a “damning speech” condemning the US president to his face for excluding other states. Belize, Chile, and a number of Caribbean countries also criticized the exclusions, calling for a realignment of regional institutions.

    Outside Biden’s summit, the official Cuban government statement commented: “Arrogance, fear of inconvenient truths being voiced, determination to prevent the meeting from discussing the most pressing and complex issues in the hemisphere, and the contradictions of its own feeble and polarized political system are behind the US government’s decision to once again resort to exclusion in order to hold a meeting with no concrete contributions yet beneficial for imperialism’s image.”

    As Ajamu Baraka of the Black Alliance for Peace commented: “For the peoples of our region, the failure of Biden’s Summit of the Americas would be a welcome event.”

    Even a corporate press report admitted: “President Joe Biden sought to put on a show of hemispheric unity at a Los Angeles summit this week, but boycotts, bluster and lackluster pledges instead exposed the shaky state of US influence in Latin America.”

    Workers’ Summit of the Americas

    In contrast, the Workers’ Summit of the Americas in Tijuana called for the unity of grassroots working class, peasant, political, and social movements to create a permanent forum for solidarity and linking of progressive struggles.

    Organizers from workers, peace, human rights, and solidarity organizations from north of the Rio Grande included Alliance for Global Justice, All-African People’s Revolutionary Party, Fire This Time, Unión del Barrio, Troika Kollective, Black Lives Matter – OKC, the Latino Community Service Organization (CSO), Freedom Road Socialist Organization, and the Task Force on the Americas.

    Mexican participation included Movimiento Social Por la Tierra, Sindicato Mexicano Electricista, and Frente Popular Revolucionario. Venezuelans included militants with the Plataforma de la Clase Obrera Antiimperialista (PCOA). Among the other participating organizations were Central de Trabajadores de Cuba, Asociación de Trabajadores del Campo de Nicaragua (ATC), and the Haitian MOLEGHAF.

    Host Jesús Ruiz Barraza, rector of CUT-University of Tijuana, opened the encuantro on June 10. US political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal, via recording, welcomed “the delegates of the excluded” in Tijuana. Former president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, addressed the encuantro, also via recording.

    Nelson Herrera of the Venezuelan PCOA, Rosario Rodríguez Remos of the Workers’ Central Union of Cuba, and Fausto Torres Arauz of the ATC of Nicaragua spoke. Revered Venezuelan campesino leader Braulio Alvarez, who had twice survived assassination attempts and is now a deputy in the National Assembly, addressed the meeting along with Venezuelan union leader Jacobo Torres de Leon.

    The second day was devoted to movement building and featured workshops on solidarity with the countries excluded from the Biden summit along with workshops on regional integration.

    With flags and banners flapping in the sea breeze, the last day convened on the international border. Speakers from both sides of the border and from throughout Our Americas addressed the crowd.

    Standing in front of the border wall, Venezuelan-American activist with the FreeAlexSaab campaign William Camacaro called for the immediate release of the Venezuelan diplomat from a Miami prison. That day, June 12, marked the second year of Alex Saab’s imprisonment for the “crime” of engaging in legal international trade to buy needed food, fuel, and medicine for the Venezuelan people, but in contravention of the illegal US sanctions designed to asphyxiate that independent nation.

    The final declaration of the Workers Summit called for a robust internationalism to promote solidarity with the sovereign nations and peoples suffering from sanctions imposed by the US and its allies. Latin America and the Caribbean were proclaimed a zone of peace.

    The post Summit of the Americas Flops While Workers Summit Exposes Cracks in the Imperial Façade first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • ‘Calibrated’ Dishonesty: Western Media Coverage of Venezuela Sanctions

     

    AP: US to ease a few economic sanctions against Venezuela

    AP (5/17/22) reported the US will “ease a few economic sanctions against Venezuela”…

    US sanctions, even by outdated estimates, have killed tens of thousands of Venezuelans. The unilateral policies have been widely condemned by multilateral bodies and human rights experts for their deadly impact, as well as for violating international law (Venezuelanalysis, 9/18/21, 9/15/21, 3/25/21, 1/31/19).

    But corporate media readers/viewers in the Global North are completely oblivious to this reality, as establishment outlets have gone out of their way to endorse sanctions by whitewashing their effects altogether (FAIR.org, 6/4/21, 12/19/20)—writing for example, that Washington has “sanctioned the government” (AP, 5/21/22) rather than the people of Venezuela.

    A recent policy opening, microscopic to begin with and closed quickly enough, put all these dishonest traits on display, illustrating how free a rein US officials have to continue inflicting collective punishment on Venezuelans without challenge or scrutiny.

    Stenographers at ‘ease’

    NBC: U.S. eases some sanctions against Venezuela

    …while NBC (5/17/22) said the “US eases some sanctions” in the present tense…

    The US Treasury Department on May 17 allowed the US-based oil company Chevron to talk to PDVSA, the Venezuelan state oil company, to discuss its operations in the country. Officials made clear that the energy giant remained forbidden from drilling or dealing in Venezuelan crude (AP, 5/17/22).

    Two weeks later, the White House renewed Chevron’s current license, which only permits maintenance work, until November. Nevertheless, this brief opening revealed some clear trends.

    First off, all mainstream outlets had virtually the same headline, writing that the US “eases some sanctions” (NBC, 5/17/22), was “to ease a few economic sanctions” (AP, 5/17/22) or “begins easing restrictions” (Washington Post, 5/17/22) on Venezuela. And though the very narrow scope of the authorization left few word choice alternatives, it certainly did not force corporate journalists to stick to the information spoonfed by “anonymous officials.”

    Not a single establishment outlet mentioned that sanctions have an impact on ordinary Venezuelans. Instead, the privilege of “just talking” to oil execs was painted as an incentive for President Nicolás Maduro to resume talks with the opposition.

    WaPo: Biden administration begins easing restrictions on Venezuelan oil

    …and the Washington Post (5/17/22) told readers that the US “begins easing restrictions.”

    The meager background/context provided in most pieces left room for plenty of representations. When referencing why government/opposition talks broke down last October, readers were told that Maduro walked away after the “extradition of a close/key ally” to the US (Washington Post, 5/17/22; AP, 5/17/22). However, there was no mention of the fact that, according to documents disclosed by Caracas, the “ally” in question (Alex Saab) has diplomatic immunity, and that Washington violated the Vienna convention by having him arrested overseas and extradited (FAIR.org, 7/21/21).

    Corporate outlets continued the habit of echoing unfounded charges against the Maduro administration as absolute truths, be they about electoral fraud (FAIR.org, 1/27/21), drug trafficking (FAIR.org, 9/24/19) or media censorship (FAIR.org, 5/20/19). The consequence is that by now no editor will flinch at a description of the Venezuelan government as “authoritarian” (Washington Post, 5/17/22), “autocratic” (CNN, 5/17/22) or “corrupt and repressive” (New York Times, 5/17/22).

    Establishment journalists were also happy enough to echo mobster-like threats from their anonymous sources, namely that the US will “calibrate” sanctions depending on whether progress in government/opposition talks is deemed acceptable (Reuters, 5/17/22; NBC, 5/17/22; AFP, 5/17/22; AP, 5/17/22). US officials refer to policies that are killing thousands of civilians as though they were a dial they can turn up or down at will, and their enablers in the media see no reason to be alarmed by this.

    NYT: U.S. to Offer Minor Sanctions Relief to Entice Venezuela to Talks

    The New York Times (5/17/22) more accurately headlined that the US was going “to offer minor sanctions relief.”

    For its part, the New York Times (5/17/22) described the steps as “minor sanctions relief” which despite the adjective still seems a bit overstated, considering that sanctions include an oil embargo and this was just an opportunity to talk to Chevron. The paper of record also tried to paint sanctions as having little to do with the collapse of Venezuela’s oil industry, writing that they only began in 2019. In fact, the first measures against PDVSA—cutting it off from international credit—are from mid-2017, after which output collapsed from nearly 2 million barrels a day to 350,000 in three years (Venezuelanalysis, 8/27/21).

    Simultaneously, Spain’s Repsol and Italy’s Eni got oil-for-debt licenses that “will not benefit [PDVSA] financially” (Reuters, 6/5/22). And no corporate journalist found any issue with the fact that somehow the US Treasury Department has the power to “let” European corporations deal with Venezuela.

    Not all critics created equal

    WSJ: Venezuela Sanctions Relief Is a Trap for Biden

    Mary Anastasia O’Grady (Wall Street Journal, 5/19/22) warned that the US was “tiptoeing toward a rapprochement with dictator Nicolás Maduro.”

    The Biden administration revisiting its sanctions policy even a little bit has generated a ferocious backlash that fed corporate media bias. The Wall Street Journal’s opinion section provided its usual extremism, with editorial board member Mary Anastasia O’Grady (5/26/22) writing that the US might be “tiptoeing toward a rapprochement with dictator Nicolás Maduro that will abandon the cause of Venezuelan freedom.”

    The Journal columnist referred to the opposition’s unelected Venezuelan “interim president,” Juan Guaidó, as “internationally recognized,” when the number of countries that actually recognize him is down to 16 (Venezuelanalysis, 12/8/21). She somehow presented the 2002 US-backed military coup that briefly deposed democratically elected President Hugo Chávez as “opponents defend[ing] the rule of law using institutions.”

    But there was plenty of bias in news reports as well when it came to weighing pros and cons of the Biden administration’s initiative. Indeed, only “hawkish” criticism of official policy gets airtime (FAIR.org, 5/2/22).

    A group of Venezuelan opposition figures, from economists to political analysts to business leaders, penned a letter to the Biden administration in April calling for sanctions relief (Bloomberg, 4/14/22). Though they conceded to the US’s supposed role in solving the country’s political crisis, they pointed out the obvious: Sanctions are hurting the Venezuelan people. Nevertheless, once it was time to discuss the sanctions policy, none of these figures was reached for comment by corporate journalists.

    Guardian: West must not lift sanctions on Maduro, says Venezuelan opposition

    Lifting sanctions against Venezuela would “hand victory to an autocratic alliance led by Vladimir Putin,” according to whom the Guardian (5/14/22) called “the country’s deputy foreign minister.” 

    Instead, the Guardian (5/14/22) reached out to the hardliners, going as far as interviewing someone with a made-up job in Guaidó’s “interim government” and calling her “the country’s deputy foreign minister.” The US-sponsored politician opposed sanctions relief without political concessions and—keeping up with the latest trends in propaganda—warned that “if Maduro is helped, so is Putin.”

    A number of US House Democrats have grown increasingly vocal in opposing the administration’s Venezuela policy, based on its humanitarian consequences. Days before the timid overtures, they wrote yet another letter to Biden (The Hill, 5/12/22). But when it was time to evaluate the latest measure, this letter earned a grand total of one sentence in just one report (AP, 5/17/22).

    In contrast, Sen. Marco Rubio (Guardian, 5/19/22) and Rep. Michael McCaul (New York Times, 5/17/22), both hardline Republicans, were on hand to accuse the administration of ”appeasing” or “capitulating to” Maduro. The only featured Democrat was notorious anti-Cuba and anti-Venezuela hawk Bob Menendez, whose rejection of showing any mercy to Venezuela was widely circulated (AP, 5/17/22; AFP, 5/17/22; NBC, 5/17/22; Washington Post, 5/17/22; Reuters, 5/17/22).

    Remarkably, even after the Biden administration decided to kick the can on Chevron’s license down the road until the midterms, outlets like the Associated Press (5/27/22) still only platformed the hardliners. And so, with next to no changes to Trump’s “maximum pressure” efforts, the corporate media audience will see the White House chastised for “bending over backward to appease an oil despot,” but not for causing a reported 30% of the Venezuelan population to be undernourished (Venezuelanalysis, 8/22/21).

    Imperialists in Wonderland

    Bloomberg: US Needs to See More From Maduro to Ease Venezuela Sanctions

    “The unilateral lifting of sanctions on Venezuela is not going to improve the lives of Venezuelans,” a senior White House advisor absurdly claimed to Bloomberg (5/19/22).

    If Western journalists are not keen to tell their audience what sanctions have meant, they are even less eager to challenge outright falsehoods coming from high-ranking Beltway figures.

    In a Bloomberg report (5/19/22), writers Patrick Gillespie and Erik Schatzker walked a familiar path by allowing senior White House advisor Juan Gonzalez to play hostage-taker, demanding that sanctions relief will require unspecified “democratic steps” and “bigger political freedoms.” But in the process, they published an outrageous and blatant lie.

    “The unilateral lifting of sanctions on Venezuela is not going to improve the lives of Venezuelans,” Bloomberg quoted Gonzalez. Amazingly, the authors let this statement go out unopposed, when in fact lifting sanctions is the most obvious thing the US could do to improve the lives of Venezuelans.

    The Venezuelan government, Venezuelan opposition figures/groups, UN special rapporteurs, think tanks, economists, US representatives and even the US Chamber of Commerce have documented or at least recognized the harmful consequences of unilateral sanctions. To not include a single one of these sources to counter Gonzalez’s ludicrous assertion is a choice that is as deliberate as it is dishonest.

    The latest Venezuela appearance in the spotlight showed again just how key the corporate media is for US foreign policy. With their “calibrated” efforts to conceal the consequences of sanctions, Western journalists have in fact made thousands and thousands of Venezuelan victims invisible to the public. It is they who deserve to be sanctioned.

     

    The post ‘Calibrated’ Dishonesty: Western Media Coverage of Venezuela Sanctions appeared first on FAIR.

    This post was originally published on CounterSpin.

  • Diaz-Canel, Maduro And Evo Send Messages To People’s Summit, Defying Biden’s Exclusions

    Miguel Díaz-Canel, President of Cuba, Nicolás Maduro, President of Venezuela, and Evo Morales, Former President of Bolivia send messages of solidarity to the people of the United States and the organizers of People’s Summit, an alternative to exclusionary Biden’s Summit of Americas.

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