Understanding Venezuela Election

Marc Cooper , from his substack. 

I HAVE to say something about Venezuela. Too much of the American Left along with a few groupuscles in Latin America are the only people in the world still believing that the Maduro Dictatorship in Venezuela is actually an anti-imperialist beacon of socialist solidarity and prosperity.

In fact, it is a hell hole from which a full quarter of the population — some 8 million— have fled. And having run into some of the 700,000 who are now in Chile, these are poor people who were plain hungry and tired of the Chavista-Maduro bullshit.

Maduro has created a new class of wealthy government lackeys, parasites, and favored loyalists who are swimming in money — and not exactly short on cocaine (google Maduro’s wife and family for that one). As Chavez dubbed his regime Bolivarian, the new rich are called the Boliburgueses.

Since the election a week ago Sunday, hundreds of thousands of protesters have come into the streets denouncing the obvious fraud perpetrated. Around 20 have been shot dead. Among the various election observers, many from progressive Latin American organizations, the Carter center, the international press, and the opposition itself, it appears that Maduro actually lost by a margin as big as 2 to 1 but simply declared victory.  The AP has concluded he really lost. Duh. So has everybody else. Well, almost everybody. There are still American progressives like acrobats in pain, contorting themselves to justify one of the most fixed elections in recent history.

Much of the American Left cannot articulate a strong critique of regimes like Venezuela or Cuba for that matter, and currently not even Russia, because there is a large percentage of American lefties who are wittingly or otherwise, are what we Old Leftists call “campists.”

They believe in their hearts that only the US has imperialist or military agency and that any country in the world, regardless of its regime, is to be supported if it is “anti-imperialist” which in the end translates as anti-American. So… for these campists, yeah, Iran and China and even Russia and certainly Venezuela, are seen ONLY as victims of US imperialism with absolutely NO regard for the living conditions of the respective populations. Nor is any independent agency ever assigned to these “anti-imperialist” states because whatever they do, whatever evil they perpetrate on their own people or others, is rotuinely justified by these campists as legitimate resistance to.. multiple choice: a)the cia b) the state department c) NATO, D) and generally, US Imperialism. 

And while leftists are properly quick to point out all the anti-democratic aspects of American elections they are usually dead silent on these sort of chronic human rights violations imposed by various dictatorships — so long as they call themselves socialist (they are not) or, simply engage in phony anti-Imperialist rhetoric. The case study for the latter is Nicaragua where the dictatorial Ortega family has buried both the Sandinista Revolution and basic democracy and in the name of Sandino has imposed a ruthless pro-capitalist dictatorship with socialist rhetoric. I guess that is the China model. Savage capitalist dictatorship with enormous inequality all in the name of Chinese socialism. I mean, how do these reptiles get through a party convention without cracking up in laughter (but dont ask Code Pink about Chinese democracy because China is a victim of US Imperialism — and also a pretty direct funder of Code Pink!

This chronic inability to liberate themselves from these Stalinist impulses, their ability to apologize for brutally anti-democratic dictatorships so long as they are a thorn in the American side. render this sort of American leftist politically inert at best — radioactive at worst.

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Many of us will remember Marc Cooper from his informed writings on Chile at the time of the coup, and during the dictatorship.

(https://thecoopscoop.substack.com/p/coop-scoop-do-progressives-really(https://thecoopscoop.substack.com/p/coop-scoop-do-progressives-really))

 

AP Results.

https://apnews.com/article/venezuela-maduro-machado-biden-gonzalez-a625eb01979bc9cf5570d03242f198b1

  

Refugees- Our responsibility

  

Refugees. Houston, Texas.  Dec.24, 2023. 

 

As residents of a state whose “ruler” on this Christmas Eve is closer in spirit to King Herod than Jesus’ Good Samaritan, it’s disconcerting to reflect on how the Christmas story is about refugees in distress. It’s a story of two people and their soon-to-be infant child forced to leave their homeland for fear the child will be murdered. (“Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt ...”) 

During the week before Christmas, Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill that will make it a violation of state law for people to cross the border into Texas between ports of entry. It’s already a federal offense to cross that way. Beginning March 1, local law enforcement will be empowered to arrest, and judges to order removed, anyone determined by a standard of “probable cause” to have entered Texas unlawfully. If the law is allowed to stand, racial profiling and harassment throughout Texas are sure to follow. Already, Hispanic Texans are preparing for the inevitable — having documents at the ready in their vehicles to show a Department of Public Safety trooper who may stop them, counseling their driving-age children about what to say and what not to say if they are stopped, making sure they have emergency phone numbers to call. 

Contributing to our growing reputation as arguably the most heartless state in America, Abbott’s new law is the latest iteration of his border-security crusade. Instead of working with the federal government and other border states to solve a vexing problem, he’s adopted a Lone Ranger approach that includes using people as pawns for political gain by busing — and now flying — them to distant cities, lining the Rio Grande with razor wire and dangerous floating buoys and constructing a made-in-Texas border wall. He’s also wasted billions of dollars of our money on an occupying army of National Guard and DPS personnel who have been dispatched to border counties. None of these ill-conceived measures have stemmed the flow of vulnerable people seeking to enter this country through 

 

Even more disturbing on this Christmas Eve is to ponder the possibility — the very real possibility — that the most corrupt, ill-equipped and dangerous president in our nation’s history, a man whose brutish border inclinations our governor has endorsed, will once again occupy the White House. This is the man whose “zero tolerance” immigration policy in 2017-18 resulted in several thousand children being wrenched from their parents’ arms when the parents, many of them asylum seekers, were detained at the border for possible illegal entry. Hundreds of children, to this day, have not been reunited with their families. At least Texas DPS has ordered troopers to avoid separating families.

Donald Trump has implied he would seek to implement the same cruel tactic if elected president again. He also wants to dispatch law enforcement to round up the millions of undocumented immigrants already in this country and impound them in vast detention camps, probably in Texas, while they await deportation.

This is the man whose sneering, anti-immigrant deprecations parrot none other than Adolf Hitler. “They’re poisoning the blood of our country, that’s what they’ve done ...,” he told cheering supporters at a rally in Durham, N.H., last week. “They’re coming into our country from Africa, from Asia, all over the world, they’re pouring into our country, nobody’s even looking at them. They just come in. The crime is going to be tremendous.” 

It’s hard to understand how some of Trump’s most ardent supporters profess to be among the most vocal followers of the Prince of Peace.

“I don’t know how you can take someone like that and say that they’re fit to be president of the United States,” former New Jersey governor and Trump challenger Chris Christie told CBS’ “Face the Nation” last week. Neither do we. 

 

Like Joseph and Mary and their child, more than 100 million people around the world are estimated to have been displaced this year, many of them on the move this very night. Refugees and migrants, they are fleeing persecution, grinding poverty, war and unspeakable violence. With children in tow, they are crossing dangerous Central American jungles, riding atop swaying trains across Mexico, trudging across deserts. They are clinging to crowded, leaky rafts on the Mediterranean, hoping to reach safety in Europe. They are fleeing starvation and disease in North Africa and the Middle East. Within a few miles of Bethlehem, Jesus’s birthplace, they are frantically pushing up against the war-ravaged border separating Gaza from Egypt. Migrant distress is a global phenomenon.

It is not America’s alone to face but we would like to believe, still, even in this polarized state, that America is one of the nations most equipped, most obligated and most resolved to meet the challenge.  

Trump, by the way, has said he’s never read “Mein Kampf,” the Hitler manifesto, and that’s probably true, but someone among his past and present advisers surely has. Our guess is one or both of “the Steves” — anti-immigrant ideologue Stephen Miller or Steve Bannon, former presidential adviser and cheerleader of insurrectionists. Miller, architect of Trump’s family-separation scheme, is a potential attorney general in a Trump Cabinet; Bannon is under indictment at the moment, accused of cheating donors who gave money in support of Trump’s proposed border wall. If convicted, he’ll expect a presidential pardon.

Neither Trump nor Abbott knows or cares, it seems, that immigration policy and border integrity are devilishly complex issues. They involve numerous moving parts, some overlapping, some contradictory. To get beyond the crude “solutions” that ideologues and political opportunists trumpet requires negotiation among interested parties who will not agree on every issue. It requires, also, an acknowledgement, a basic understanding, that we are dealing, not just with policy, but with people, often fleeing brutality, turmoil and the agony of uncertainty. Finding the appropriate balance is a dilemma challenging nations around the world, including, most recently, the European Union, where anti-immigrant politicians are in the ascendancy.

Expulsados a Mexico

 Powerful video.  this week.

Here is the Univision report on refugees in Juarez expelled from the U.S. 

https://www.univision.com/noticias/inmigracion/expulsados-a-mexico-crisis-por-una-ola-de-migrantes-devueltos-desde-eeuu

Refugees at the Border: How do we respond?

Migrants Find Sanctuary in Texas

 Migrants and refugees find safe harbor in Texas.

https://capitalandmain.com/migrants-from-matamoros-find-shelter-in-mcallen-texas-0309

Safe Harbor for Refugees

 

Refugees Welcomed Upon Arrival

 

The main stream press seems focused now on declaring a “crisis at the border.”. - the arrival of a few thousand refugees and asylum seekers.

Our response should be; There is no crisis ! Why Panic? 

As a nation we can accept and accommodate these new immigrants.  Many are fleeing catastrophes created by U.S. neoliberal capitalism and imperialism. 

The response should be; provide the refugees with a safe harbor, ( As required by international conventions the U.S. has endorsed. )

Safe harbor would be safety and an opportunity for a legal hearing on the application for asylum. 

Although ICE, the Border Patrol, and the Republican political machine see and declare a crisis, we should not feed into that narrative.

Sanders Releases a Real Immigration Plan !

Sanders on Immigration

By far the most progressive plan of any of the candidates.

Key Points

·       Institute a moratorium on deportations until a thorough audit of past practices and policies is complete.

·       Reinstate and expand DACA and develop a humane policy for those seeking asylum.

·       Completely reshape and reform our immigration enforcement system, including breaking up ICE and CBP and redistributing their functions to their proper authorities.

·       Dismantle cruel and inhumane deportation programs and detention centers and reunite families who have been separated.

·       Live up to our ideals as a nation and welcome refugees and those seeking asylum, including those displaced by climate change.

Details

This country is a nation of immigrants. Other than the native peoples of the Americas, every one of our families came here from somewhere else. Some came by choice, some by necessity, and others in chains. As we have developed as a nation, each of us has contributed to the growth and prosperity of America in our own way. And our nation has been most successful and most true to its ideals when that prosperity has been shared among all of us. In many ways, that is what this campaign is about: building a movement to create an America where everyone shares in the prosperity that they and their ancestors helped create.

Read the plan

https://berniesanders.com/issues/welcoming-and-safe-america-all/

Report on the families arriving in McAllen, Texas. With photos.

Report on the families arriving in McAllen, Texas. With photos.
Report in Spanish.
https://www.univision.com/especiales/noticias/2019/ninos-frontera/index.html

Babies, As Young as 5 Months old, Held at El Paso Tent City

Gabe Ortiz, Daily Koz 
Hundreds of people, including infants as young as 5 months old, have been detained in “an emerging tent city” at the El Paso Border Patrol Station in conditions that one visiting legislator has described as filthy and totally unfit for families, the Daily Beast reports. “Five U.S. Army tents meant for battlefield hospitals have been repurposed to hold men, women, and children, including infants. Two of the tents were erected over the past week, expanding the facility’s capacity by several hundred people.” Outside, the prison camp is surrounded by barbed wire, with little room to move around. Inside, vulnerable families are languishing for days on end in awful conditions, said Rep. Nanette Barragán of California, who toured the facility last month. She said officials told her their “goal” was to assure people got showers every three days—how generous—but what she saw and heard was “unhealthy.” “One woman had a baby, a five-month-old baby and said she’d been there for five days,” she said. “The baby had filthy clothes. The situation is unhealthy. People are in a confined space, they’re not getting showers, their clothes are dirty, babies are not getting Pampers like they should be. These ladies were crying and telling us their stories and it was just heartbreaking.” These families aren’t sleeping on cots but rather “on a temporary floor that covered the asphalt parking lot beneath, with babies sometimes sleeping on their parents’ legs to avoid the hard floor.” It was just days ago that border officials were forcing detained people to sleep on dirt and rocks in a now-closed cage under a bridge, also in El Paso. Officials were more than happy to allow media to photograph that horror show, as well as to perp-walk children to add some images to the administration’s propaganda campaign.  But now “reporters are forbidden from the facility, leaving The Daily Beast to observe the operation through a telephoto lens from nearly a quarter-mile away.” None of this has to be happening, though. “One of my concerns is they’re slowing down the process almost intentionally and they’re helping create the appearance of this backlog,” Barragán said. “I don’t know this for sure, and I have nothing to point to other than our history of not getting truthful information from this administration and these agencies.” That Barragán even got to tour the prison camp is half the battle. When three House Democrats tried to tour the prison camp for migrant kids in Florida earlier this month, they were blocked by the administration in violation of federal law. “As members of Congress it is essential that we see for ourselves what conditions are, and conduct the constitutionally mandated oversight that we are obligated to provide,” said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida. “The Department of Health and Human Services is violating federal law denying us entry today.”

There is No Wall in El Paso

Mr. Trump. There is no wall in El Paso.  Its a fence !
  

People are fleeing once again. They are fleeing hunger,  and violence  and official corruption. It is important to separate  Immigration and Refugees.  They have different laws applying to them. 

These migrants from are making their way north to the U.S. border to seek asylum, in search of  freedom from the poverty and violence that has been perpetuated by U.S. imperialism and neoliberal capitalism. 

Those eligible for refugee status should be admitted as required by the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Migrants and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights  (1946) which the U.S. government helped to draft.   860,000 on back list. 

Trump  claims  there is crisis of criminal gangs at the border.  Somewhat. But, not near what he claims.

The drug traffic at the border  is not caused by migration.  The drugs are brought in by gangs with trucks and tunnels. A wall will not stop the traffic.  It does need to be stopped. 

The issue is the Wall. There is not a dispute about the need for more border enforcement and protection.  The conflict is will a wall make the difference.  Contrary to what he said, there is no wall in El Paso.  It is a fence. 

  A  Wall will not stop drug trafficking. It will not even slow it down.  The well-funded and increasingly sophisticated cartels are not going to be stopped by a wall.  The overwhelming majority of illicit traffic flows through ports of entry—not in the vast stretches of land in between where any wall would be built.

Refugees are not the source of drugs.  There is a failure of drug enforcement. 

Trump Imposes new asylum procedure

Rini Tempelton

   The Trump administration announced a new migration policy Thursday that will require asylum seekers who cross the Mexican border illegally to return to Mexico while their cases are decided.

The United States has been trying for months to get Mexico’s leaders to agree to house those migrants, and on Thursday Mexico’s new government reluctantly agreed.  ( agreed?) 

“This deal is a stark violation of international law, flies in the face of U.S. laws passed by Congress, and is a callous response to the families and individuals running for their lives,” said Margaret Huang, the executive director of Amnesty International.

The program is almost certain to be challenged in the United States courts by human rights groups and advocates

A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, Roberto Velasco, said the move did not represent an agreement between the two countries, but rather “a unilateral move by the United States that we have to respond to.”

The American secretary of homeland security, Kirstjen M. Nielsen, said the move would prevent people from using the asylum process as a way of slipping into the United States and remaining in the country illegally.

Defend Immigrants' Rights

Central American Refugee Caravan- How you can help

Sunday, Dec 9, 12:30pm, Central American Refugee Caravan: How do we ensure a moral and lawful response? Dr. Duane Campbell and Cori Ring-Martinez provide caravan updates and background on the root causes of the refugee crisis, followed by discussion of our individual, collective, and national responsibility to asylum seekers based on human rights and international law. Refreshments. First United Methodist Church, 2100 J St. Sacramento. FMI: 916-225-8511

Autoridades mexicanas reubican a cientos de migrantes centroamericanos e...

AMLO Becomes President of Mexico

AMLO Becomes President of Mexico

Ciudad de México. En la primera acción del gobierno de Andrés Manuel López Obrador, en política interna, la Secretaría de Gobernación anunció un programa intersecretarial para proteger a los integrantes de la caravana migrante que se encuentran en la frontera norte del país.

El plan emergente será operado con instancias de los tres niveles de gobierno; consiste en la revisión de albergues y en el reforzamiento de las medidas de seguridad, en torno a los centroamericanos, mediante un operativo coordinado con elementos de protección ciudadana del gobierno federal, así como elementos estatales, de Baja California, además de los locales, del municipio de Tijuana.

Estas acciones serán encabezado por David León, coordinador nacional de Protección Civil; el comisionado Nacional de Migración, Tonatiuh Guillén, y el titular de la Comisión Mexicana de Ayuda a Refugiados (Comar), Andrés Ramírez, quienes se reunieron la noche del viernes en Gobernación con el gobernador de Baja California, Francisco Vega de Lamadrid.

En la reunión de trabajo para definir los pormenores del plan emergente participaron los subsecretarios Zoé Robledo (Gobierno) y Alejandro Encinas (Derechos Humanos, Migración y Población).

Los albergues serán revisados, en especial los ubicados en Tijuana, "a fin de que se determine si son suficientes, además de que se pueden dotar de los insumos básicos necesarios para su buen funcionamiento y que los integrantes de la caravana migrante tengan un lugar digno donde alojarse, entre otras acciones a ejecutarse", dijo Gobernación en el comunicado número 2 de esta adminstración.

Met with the leaders of Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala to plan a way to work together to develop the region and reduce migration. 

What Mexico has offered is:

In Mexico, the government of President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador has signaled it will hold Central American migrants on Mexican soil while they wait to hear whether their applications for political asylum are granted by the U.S. Mexico’s incoming foreign minister said Tuesday the Trump administration should, in return, pay at least $20 billion for a Marshall Plan-style program aimed at developing the economies of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. It’s not clear what services Mexico would provide migrants hoping to win U.S. asylum. At the crossing between Tijuana and San Diego, U.S. officials are processing only about a hundred claims per day, even as thousands of migrants are living in squalid, open-air camps near the border while they await their turn to apply for asylum. CBP says the migrants may have to wait up to six weeks to have their appeals heard.

For comparison. 

In 2017 the U.S. gave Honduras 750 million for military aid and 67 million for humanitarian and development assistance.

Less for El Salvador. 

Solidarity With Honduran Exodus

International Call to Action for the Refugee Caravan and Central American Exodus

As thousands of our refugee relatives—children, elders, brothers, sisters, LGBTQI+ siblings and people with disabilities—make their way to the border, we are calling for an InternationalDay of Action in Solidarity with the Caravan and Exodus from Central Americaon Sunday, November 25^th, 2018.We, an ad-hoc Migrant and Refugee Solidarity Coalition, composed of migrant rights and social justice groups, invite individuals and organizations across the country and globe to organize demonstrations in their cities, and if they have the capacity, to join our rally and march to the border.  

We call for an action on November 25th to commemorate the anniversary of the 2017 Honduran election stolen by the US government-backed, right-wing military dictator Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH). We are demonstrating on this day to acknowledge and draw attention to the current social and political crises driving the exodus from Central America. We understand that these crises—drug wars, military coups, destruction of indigenous lands for the benefit of corporations, and environmental catastrophe in the region—are all symptoms of US foreign policy, corporate profiteering and war-making. 

Moreover, we see that the Trump administration is creating a warlike atmosphere against the caravan. It should be clear that they are not just acting with the support of a cabinet of white supremacists and a majority GOP in the Senate but are also emboldened by the last few decades of bipartisan militarization of the border, mass raids, expansion of for-profit detention centers, and mass deportations—with more than 2.5 million migrants under Obama and Trump alone. Further, these policies are a continuation of a long history of anti-Indigenous colonial violence and genocide.

These attacks have been complemented by decades of pushback against the migrants’ rights movement and years of terror against all who participated in the mega marches for Migrant’s Rights back in 2006 and since. We must continue to build and consolidate our gains no matter how large or small. 

Legal precedent, “civility,” regard for life: the administration has no respect for any of it. The only thing that it responds to is resistance from below.

The US government, as with all governments, and the people of the United States have a choice: We can reject the humanity of the refugees and buy into the racist anti-migrant rhetoric of the Administration and the media. OR, we can do what humans have an obligation to do and what the US government owes the people of Central America: insist on allowing all the refugees the right to seek asylum!

Demands

1. Respect for the right of asylum for all members of the Central American Exodus. Stop the profiling and criminalization of refugees; lift the executive order limiting access to asylum. 
2. Process all asylum claims made at Ports of Entry with expediency. We reject Custom and Border Protection’s claim that Port of Entries lack capacity to let in refugees. We also reject the shift away from decades of international asylum agreements that allow for requests to be made anywhere on the border.
3. The US government must publicly acknowledge a) its role in Honduran Coup in 2009, b) that the Honduran government is a US supported dictatorship, and c) recognize the political and social crises throughout Central America as caused by US foreign policy. 
4. Call for international solidarity beyond the US and Mexico. The United Nations and Red Cross must also recognize the Humanitarian crisis at the US/Mexico Border.
5. We demand freedom for incarcerated migrants now and free movement for asylum seekers. No incarceration of migrants in shelters or for-profit detention centers.
6. No impunity for governments that violate international asylum agreements and processes. Prosecute officials who violate the human right to seek asylum in any country of their preference.

Endorsing Organizations: 

Pueblo Sin Fronteras

Otay Mesa Detention Resistance

Union Del Barrio 

Trump Admin Opposes U.N. Resolution on refugees

The United States was the only country Tuesday to vote against a U.N. General Assembly resolution on refugees, Reuters' Michelle Nichols reports. U.S. officials opposed the annual measure "because it said elements of the text ran counter to the Trump administration's sovereign interests," according to Reuters. More here.

Central American Refugees

Asylum and the Central American Refugees