Tag: Politics

Colombian paramilitaries encounter adverse US court decision and people’s resistance  / by W. T. Whitney

Paramilitary fighters hold their rifles during a ceremony to lay down their arms in Otu, northwest Colombia, on Dec. 12, 2005. Photo: Fernando Vergara/AP

South Paris, Maine

Away from industrialized countries, capitalism worked its way by means of enslavement, die-offs, wars, plunder, and thugs. Colombia specializes in thugs – since the 1970s. Paramilitaries, shock troops for Colombia’s rich and powerful, are an arm of Colombia’s military. A recent court decision in the United States provokes questions about the future of Colombia’s paramilitaries and about official U.S. reactions.

A trial jury in the U.S. District Court in West Palm Beach, Florida, determined June 10 that Chiquita Brands, formerly the United Fruit Corporation (UFC), was guilty of financially supporting the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). The paramilitary band has operated since the 1980s in Colombia’s northern banana-producing regions. The decision will be appealed.

Chiquita will pay $38.3 millionto 16 family members of eight individuals murdered by the AUC paramilitaries. Chiquita had supplied them with arms and ammunition. 

According to EarthRights, whose lawyers managed the case, “Chiquita knowingly financed the AUC, a designated terrorist organization, [as per the U.S. State Department], in pursuit of profit …These families, victimized by armed groups and corporations, asserted their power and prevailed in the judicial process.” No U.S. corporation has previously been punished for committing human rights abuses abroad

Testimony indicated AUC paramilitaries were active in suppressing labor activism, opposing leftist guerrillas, and enforcing company dictates against individual workers. With Chiquita support, “the paramilitaries successively extended their power in the region … by means of assassinations, disappearing people, and displacing thousands of them,” according to a report. 

The court’s ruling comes 17 years after Chiquita, in a 2007 plea-bargain agreement, acknowledged guilt in violating U.S. law prohibiting financial support for terrorist organizations. Acknowledging payments of $1.7 million to AUC paramilitaries for “security services” from 1997 to 2004,”Chiquita paid a $25 million fine. The company was spared having to reveal the identity of company executives approving the illegal payments.

Subsequently hundreds of claims against Chiquita descended on courts in Colombia. To secure relief for the victims’ families in U.S. courts, lawyers led by Terrence Collingwood, who represented 173 families, consolidated claims against Chiquita; they would pursue two “bellwether cases.” Favorable decisions would enable litigation to proceed on behalf of the other families. The second case opens on July 15.

Other companies have funded Colombian paramilitaries. A recent report indicates that Ecopetrol, Colombia’s largest oil company, paid paramilitaries up to 5% of the value of contracts it signed, that Bavaria brewery delivered to paramilitaries a portion of every dollar generated from sales along Colombia’s northern coast, and that distributers associated with Postobón, Colombia’s largest beverage company, gave paramilitaries boxes of bottled drinks to be sold for cash.

Only because the crimes occurred outside the United States did a U.S. court acquit Coca Cola companyon charges it contracted with paramilitaries to kill nine unionists in 1990-2002. Drummond coal-mining company, based in Alabama, beat back well-founded charges tried in a U.S. court that it paid paramilitaries to assassinate three labor leaders between 1996 and 2001. Del Monte and Dole food companies were charged in Colombian courts with “financing right-wing paramilitary groups,” according to a 2017 report.

With their own railroads, seaports, and ships, United Fruit Company and its offspring Chiquita have operated banana plantations in Panama, Colombia, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Guatemala. Chiquita with a presence in 70 countries recently registered $7.59 billion in yearly revenue.

UFC, Chiquita’s parent and mentor, once claimed 42% of Nicaragua’s national territory. Agrarian reform impinging on UFC holdings there led to a CIA-mediated U.S. coup in 1954 that removed the left-leaning government of President Jacobo Árbenz.

In 1928 near Santa Marta on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, banana workers were on strike. UFC called upon an obliging Colombian government to send in troops. They machine-gunned strikers and their families. More than 1000 died. The pretext was Communist agitation.

In a poignant reminder almost a century later, on June 12, 2024, “5000 or so people undertaking a civic strike outside of Santa Marta blocked the Caribbean Trunk Route,” National Highway 90. According to the report, “The communities were asking the government for solutions for violence dispossession, displacement, and lockdown in their areas at the hands of paramilitary groups.” The strike lasted three days.

Nationwide mobilization organized by the Congress of the Peoples had begun on June 4. Activists representing “small farmers, African-descendants, Indigenous peoples, and urban representatives of the diversity of the Colombian people” blockaded four big highways. In Bogotá, they occupied the Interior Ministry and the Vatican Embassy.

Human rights leader Sonia Milena López, speaking at a press conference, declared that, “Paramilitarism has been and is a politics of the oligarchy enabled by the Colombian state.” She outlined measures for dismantling paramilitarism.

The government, she insisted, must recognize “that a national paramilitary strategy at the rural and urban level does exist and is oriented toward developing a genocidal process aimed against the people’s movement.” It must abandon “any pretension of political recognition of paramilitary elements” or of negotiating with them.  

She called for ‘investigating those who finance and direct [the paramilitaries], both state and private,” and for “removing …military officers when there are … accusations or evidence of connivance or lack of effective action against the paramilitaries.” 

In an interview, Esteban Romero, spokesperson for the Congress of the Peoples, reported that paramilitaries are absorbing territory, displacing populations, and threatening and harassing social leaders.  He suggested progressive president Gustavo Petro lacks the power needed to undo “a Colombian political regime that is a paramilitarized regime, one that created private armies to contain social changes.”

Paramilitaries are dangerous, as recalled by analyst Luis Mangrane: “Between 1985 and 2018, the paramilitary groups were the principal agents responsible for the killings associated with armed conflict [between the FARC and the Colombian government], having accounted for 45% of the total of 205.028victims. Through the ‘para-politics’ in the 2002 elections, they managed to coopt a third of the Congress.”

The paramilitaries’ base of support is strong, not least in the United States. There will be no new U.S. response to their actions, it seems, unless it is mediated through Colombia’s military. What with close ties between paramilitaries and the military, however, that possibility seems unlikely

The association shows in a memo from the U.S. Department of Justice in 2001: “Colombia has five divisions in its army, but paramilitaries are so fully integrated into the army’s battle strategy, coordinated with its soldiers in the field, and linked to government units … that they effectively constitute a sixth division of the army.”

Colombia’s labor minister, Communist Party member Gloria Inés Ramírez reflects on the staying power of the paramilitaries. “[P]aramilitaries came to the fore within the framework of the development of contemporary capitalism … Colombian capitalism turns out to be a complex socio-economic synthesis between a traditionalist and pre-modern tendency around land concentration, on the one hand, and a modernizing tendency in capital accumulation, on the other. This synthesis favored the authoritarianism of the political regime, the increasing militarization of politics and the growing role of paramilitary organizations.”

W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.

Bernard Lown’s political activism and medical achievements are celebrated in Maine / by W. T. Whitney

Photo: Anadolu Agency (AA)

South Paris, Maine

Bernard Lown was honored June 7 in Lewiston, Maine. The place was the massive Bates Mill, the former workplace for migrants mostly from Quebec who made textiles. The minting of the “American Innovation $1 Coin” in Lown’s honor had been announced in May. It was Lown’s birthday; he was born in Lithuania in 1921 and died in 2021.

The occasion featured the unveiling of a portrait of Lown painted by Robert Shetterly. Lown joins others honored by Shetterly in the series of portraits he calls “Americans Who Speak the Truth” (AWTT).

The event, attended by the writer, offered ample recognition of Bernard Lown’s medical accomplishments and his dedication to collective struggle for justice. A prime concern here is that celebration of Lown’s successes may have obscured how and why Lown did engage with the mass social and political movements of his era. Insight on that score may contribute to an understanding of how individuals now might involve themselves in big political and social catastrophes of our own time.

Maine-resident Shetterly explained to the gathering that individuals being honored through his portraits were, or are, heroes who exemplify creativity, courage, and/or passion for justice. Exhibitions of Shetterly’s portraits and educational programs based on his subjects have circulated throughout the country.

University of Maine President Joan Ferrini-Murphy, reported that Lown participated in and provided support for programs of the University’s Honors College. Doug Rawlings, a founder of the Veterans for Peace organization and head of its Maine chapter, praised Lown as an inspiration for peace advocacy.

Lown had strong connections with Maine. He arrived in Lewiston in 1935, attended high school there – at first not speaking English – and studied at the University of Maine. City officials of Lewiston and Auburn in 1988 renamed a bridge connecting the cities as the Bernard Lown Peace Bridge. Maine VFP staged a rededication of the Peace Bridge to Bernard Lown on the 2022 anniversary of the U.S. nuclear attack on Hiroshima.

Lown’s accomplishments were many: invention and introduction of the DC cardiac defibrillator (he chose not to apply for a patent), introduction of hospital cardiac care units, establishing that sick cardiac patients remain active, and urging physicians to be caring and empathetic with patients.

He founded the group Physicians for Social Responsibility in 1961.With Soviet cardiologist Evgeni Chazov, he founded International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War in 1980. In 1985 they won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Lown became politically engaged with mass movements early, on the side of working people, and against headwinds.

He and his family had confronted the Hitlerite danger in Lithuania. High-school student Lown, according to AWTT, “was outraged at the sight of policemen arresting the unconscious, bleeding striker, while allowing his strike-breaking assailant walk free. Lown jeopardized his relationship with his family and joined the striking workers …The striking French-Canadian workers were accused of being part of an international communist conspiracy.”

This was the Lewiston–Auburn shoe strike of 1937. The Maine Army National Guard was called out. There was confrontation between strikers and police on what is now the Bernard Lown Peace Bridge.

Lown was briefly expelled from Johns Hopkins Medical School for violating the rule that no sick white person would receive a Black donor’s blood. He earned a suspension for inviting a Black physician to speak at the medical school.

He belonged to the Association of Internes and Medical Students (AIMS), a U.S. organization associated with the International Union of Students (IUS). Soviet Bloc students were members of the IUS, which weighed in on post-war peace, anticolonialism and more.  In 1947 Lown wrote “an effusive write-up of IUS’s founding” in the AIMS magazine The Interne.

Lown, an officer with the U.S. Army Reserve, was called up for the Korean War.  He defied the requirement that he indicate political affiliations. The Army allowed him an honorable discharge and drafted him as a private. He recalled that after receiving an undesirable discharge in 1954, “I was without a job and couldn’t get a job …wherever I’d go the FBI was one jump ahead.” 

Then, reports the Harvard Crimson, “[Frederick] Stare, [nutrition professor at the Harvard School of Public Health,] won notoriety for hiring … [Lown] who had been accused of holding communist sympathies.”

Lown’s attitude toward Cuba is revealing. He told an interviewer that, ““I have been to Cuba six times and learned much about doctoring in Cuba … If impoverished Cuba can provide first-class health care for its people so can other developing countries. Perhaps it is even possible for rich USA, if only it ceases viewing medicine as a marketable commodity.”

To return to the question posed at the start here: how do citizens focusing on their own lives and their own reactions to political happenings become part of mass movements the way Bernard Lown did? Do they identify as members of a social class?

New York Times columnist David Brooks, remarkably, seems qualified to explain. The U.S. mainstream media barely acknowledges the existence of social class. For a representative writer actually to examine the origins of class consciousness suggests he may know something.

Brooks stated recently that, “students at elite universities have different interests and concerns than students at less privileged places,” also that “the elite universities are places that attract and produce progressives.” Therefore, “American adults who identify as very progressive skew white, well-educated and urban and hail from relatively advantaged backgrounds.”

(We hold back on critiquing Brooks’ notion of “very progressive” and his idea that working-class and oppressed people are unlikely to identify as such.)    

Brooks, continuing, cites an authority who argues that, “[J]ust as economic capitalists use their resource — wealth — to amass prestige and power, people who form the educated class and the cultural elite … use … resources — beliefs, fancy degrees, linguistic abilities — to amass prestige, power and … money.” Brooks, presuming that the excluded may be resentful, envisions “a multiracial, multiprong, right/left alliance against the educated class.”

He describes a progression: individuals experience their own political awakenings, realize their perceptions are shared, and think of themselves as a larger whole. He pictures two sets of people, two social classes, who find they are at odds with each other. He provides a roadmap of sorts showing that politically-engaged individuals, in large numbers, may well become part of mass political and social movements.

In any case, Bernard Lown, involved with struggles that continue now, lauded for achievements that were extraordinary, does matter, and not least for the model he is now of dedicated political engagement. 

W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.

US Interventionists Busy in Bolivia as Political Crisis Looms / by W.T. Whitney Jr.

Photograph Source: José Fuertes – https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Reposted from Counterpunch

Delegates loyal to President Luis Arce dominated the 10th Congress of Bolivia’s Movement toward Socialism (MAS) Party held in El Alto in early May. They selected Grover García, chief of a governmental agency and formerly of a farmworkers’ union, to be MAS’s new leader, replacing former president Evo Morales in that capacity.

Another MAS gathering on June 10 takes place in Cochabamba to elect other Party leaders. One more, a “unity congress,” happens there on July 10, in territory friendly to Morales. He conditions his participation on the MAS Party and his own presidential candidacy for 2025 not being eliminated.

Division within the MAS Party is good news for the U.S. government. It had opposed MAS political power from the beginning of Morales’ progressive rule in 2006 until a U.S.-backed coup ousted him in 2019.

Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous president, retained popular support throughout his tenure. His government overcame repeated attacks from oligarchic, racist, separatist, and U.S.-allied political forces based largely in Bolivia’s eastern departments, notable for rich oil and gas deposits and industrial-scale agriculture. MAS governments, with Luis Arce as minister of economy and public finance, achieved social advances, reduced poverty, nationalized oil and gas extraction and production, carried out land reform, and elevated the status of Bolivia’s majority indigenous population.

The U.S. government has eyed immense lithium deposits in Bolivia and expressed concern about Chinese economic inroads; a commentator notes that, as of 2017, “China has become the principal contractor and financing source for Bolivia’s state-led national development project.”

That President Luis Arce’s secured a 55% majority vote on October 19, 2020 to restore the MAS Party to power is also worrisome to Washington officials. His government in October 2022 mobilized popular support to defeat an opposition uprising led by reactionary politicians in Santa Cruz and other eastern departments. The victory elevated Arce’s appeal to government officials and MAS activists alike.

Division between the Party’s two wings, widening over two years, is highly visible. Highway blockades, strikes and demonstrations carried out by “radical factions of the MAS movement led by former President Evo Morales” played out between January and March. Rising inflation, reduced gas and oil production, falling currency reserves, and shortages of fuel and food add to MAS’s vulnerability.

One goal of the 10th MAS Party Congress was that of meeting constitutional requirements of orderly party function. Observers were on hand whose reports to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE in Spanish) would allow the Tribunal to certify the “resolutions of the Arcista conclave.” But an adverse ruling now and two more in the future would deprive the MAS Party of its “judicial personhood,” and rule out future election participation.

Democracy is at risk. Journalist Tatiana Castro claims social movements, “pillars that sustain the MAS in power,” are “fundamental for guaranteeing governability … [and] part of the democratic dynamics.”  Within the MAS Party itself, social movements are divided.

Those made up of urban residents and indigenous Aymara people of Bolivia’s high plateau region lean towards President Arce. Others supportive of Morales consist of federations of indigenous peoples in Bolivia’s tropical regions. Castro sees the two factions competing within the state apparatus not about ideology but over “perks, advantages, benefits, and nominations.”

President Luis Arce on May 18 warned that “the right is sharpening up for next year’s elections.” He denounced as “economic blockade” the Bolivian Senate’s recent refusal to authorize foreign loans. Meeting recently in the United States, extreme right-wing opposition politicians were “unifying against MAS,” he claims.

Morales warned that TSE recognition of the Arce-inclined El Alto Congress would signify “genocide against the indigenous movement.” He urged followers to “have patience,” to no longer resort to blocking highways, and to expect legal struggles.

Interviewed, Morales referred to an audio-recording of statements of U.S. chargé d’affaires in Bolivia, Debra Hevia. Her remarks, supposedly leaked on April 27, may be head here. They include mention that, “We have been working for a long time to achieve change in Bolivia, time is vital for us, but for it to be a real change, Evo and Arce have to leave power and close that chapter.”  A subsequent report attributes Hevia’s voice to artificial intelligence.

Weeks earlier, an inflammatory article from the same leaking platform, El Radar, had already reverberated across Latin America. It explains that, “Information leaked from the U.S. Embassy in Bolivia, systematized… by the Center for Multidisciplinary Geopolitical Studies (CEGM) reveals a new U.S. plan.” The article includes a document titled: “Latin America in the Eye of the Storm. Possible Victory of the United States and Recolonization of Latin America (Plan Simón Bolívar).”

The origin of the Plan is unclear. Our Internet search for the CEGM provided no information. Article and document cite serious threats to U.S. worldwide hegemony posed by China, India, the BRICS alliance itself, and by “economic power [for Latin America] through trade with the two Asiatic giants, China and India.”

As regards the article’s recommendations for Bolivia: “the strategy would be focused on its natural resources and on consolidation of a servile, rightwing government,” and on break-up of the MAS political movement. It mentions “Debra Hevia, the new U.S. chargé d’affaires, who has been meeting with different parties and organizations throughout the country.”

A report elsewhere on the supposed Simón Bolívar Plan accuses Hevia of “having initiated a new phase of hybrid war whose politics are those of ‘regime change’ within the framework of the presidential elections of 2025.” Diplomat Hevia serves in place of a U.S. ambassador, absent in Bolivia since 2008. Evo Morales expelled the last ambassador Philip Goldberg, alleging interventionist activities.

Among revealing aspects of Hevia’s work and history are these:

  • She worked at the State Department Operations Center that handles intelligence and counter-insurgency work.
  • Stationed in Nicaragua, she helped arrange for opposition groups to join the failed coup attempt against the Daniel Ortega government in 2018.
  • During an earlier stay in Bolivia she “sought to reconstruct the armed wing of the [fascist-inclined] Santa Cruz Youth organization” and arranged for funding the activities of Svonko Matkovik, “formerly jailed for anti-Morales terrorist activities.”
  • Hevia’s husband, a Bolivian, is a former DEA agent.  He must have “reunited with his contacts and old acquaintances” on return to Bolivia,speculates reporter Martin Agüero. Morales expelled the DEA from Bolivia for interventionist activities in 2008.

Uncertainties prevail. The origin of revealing leaks attributed to the U.S. Embassy is obscure. With elections approaching, the two wings of the MAS Party are far apart.

Declaring the recently-completed MAS Congress to be invalid, the TSE on May 23 rejected the election of Grover García as party leader, leaving Morales in charge. The TSE had previously invalidated the Congress held by the Morales faction in October 2023.

García told a reporter that Evo Morales afterwards had been urged to join the more recent Congress. Morales reiterates that the gathering set for July 10 in Cochabamba will be a “unity congress,” although the TSE is unlikely to rule in its favor. Understating the matter, La Razón news service sees the MAS as “caught up in a vicious cycle.”

W.T. Whitney Jr. is a retired pediatrician and political journalist living in Maine.

War and Plunder in Eastern Congo and a US Hand / By W. T. Whitney

Congo’s borderlands with Rwanda have become one of the continent’s deadliest conflict zones | Credit: Guardian (UK)

South Paris, Maine

The United States Institute of Peace on February 27 awarded its “Women Building Peace” award to Pétronille Vaweka. She responded: “I weep because at this moment, in … Goma women and children are dying … [and] thousands of families are forced from their villages.”  Goma, population two million, is the capital of North Kivu province in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

For Guardian reporter Owen Jones, the DRC “is the site of the deadliest war since the fall of Adolf Hitler, and yet I doubt most people in the west are even aware of it.” Diminished U.S. and European press coverage of the region’s humanitarian crisis contributed to massive human suffering as, unwatched, lethal violence enabled the wholesale stealing of natural resources.

One million refugees entered eastern DRC from neighboring Ruanda during and after that country’s genocide in 1994. By early 2023 one million newly displaced people had arrived in the Goma region. Within months there would be half a million more. Of the 7.1 million displaced persons in the region now, 97% were displaced due to violent attacks by non-state military forces. The 1.1 million children and 605,000 women who are malnourished exemplify the suffering there.

The UN Refugee Agency describes “targeted attacks against civilians” with “killings, kidnappings, and the burning of homes.” The International Organization for Migration reports that “violence and brutal attacks …  loss of life, mass displacement, and increasing instability” are devastating and that “[a]cross the country, over 26 million people need humanitarian aid.”

War in the eastern DRC has killed six million people over 30 years, according to reporter James Rupert. He indicates that, “More than 250 local and 14 foreign armed groups are fighting for territory, mines or other resources in the DRC’s five easternmost provinces.” Troops fromUganda, Rwanda and Burundi are present. A United Nations peacekeeping contingent will be leaving soon.

The March 23 Movement (M23), formerly troops of the DRC army, figures prominently in the turmoil. This irregular military force, allegedly controlled by Ruanda, occupied Goma in late 2012 and was soon ejected by DRC and UN forces. Having broadened their operations after 2022, M23 detachments regularly execute civilians and force boys and men into their ranks. U.S. press coverage of this brutal war remains skimpy, and the U.S. public is largely uninformed.

The media also steers clear of humanitarian crises associated with war in Sudan and displacement of the Rohingya people from Myanma, in both instances perhaps because U.S. vital interests are not at risk. The U.S. approach toward Sudan apparently is one of watchful waiting, despite reports of growing Russian and Chinese influence and of combatants allying with extremists.

Israel’s war against Palestinians and humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza are different. The U.S. government and weapons manufacturers are unreservedly involved and the media and public pay close attention. Maybe there’s a correlation. As long as war, social catastrophe, and U.S. self-interest play out together, the U.S. public is informed. Drop the U.S. involvement, and they are not.

If that’s a rule, troubles in eastern DRC are an exception. U.S. powerbrokers are strongly attracted to the region, but even so, the U.S. public remains oblivious to the situation. James Rupert explains:

“The DRC is a treasury of minerals …, including an estimated 70 percent of the world’s known cobalt, a vital component of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles and other green energy products. …Since 2020, the U.S. Energy and Interior Departments have maintained a list of minerals, currently 50 of them, that they judge vital to America’s economy, energy grid or national defense. Many are difficult to access through reliable supply chains and many, including cobalt, copper, lithium, tantalum, tin and titanium, are mined in the DRC, often from illegal mines controlled by armed groups and smugglers, or in industrial mining that is significantly dominated by China.”

Rupert describes U.S. initiatives aimed at promoting mining in Africa, for example, securing investments for “building a $2.3 billion railroad to carry copper and cobalt from Congo and Zambia to Angola’s seaport of Lobito.”

He blames the multitude of “industrial and artisanal mines” in the DRC for human suffering. Paramilitary groups provide security and “hundreds of thousands … who are effectively enslaved” do the work. Importantly, “more than 250 local and 14 foreign armed groups are fighting for territory, mines or other resources in the DRC’s five easternmost provinces.”

With its cheery message of March 14, 2024, the International Trade Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce wins points for salesmanship:

“The DRC offers opportunities large and small.  The DRC’s vast mining wealth attracts top mining companies from around the world … [and] is home to globally significant deposits of hard-rock lithium … Energy is another sector with huge potential for renewable energy, including hydropower and solar. The country has the potential to generate over 100,000 MW of hydropower, which is more than half of Africa’s total hydropower potential.”  

Continuing: “Oil and gas discoveries in the east of the country give the DRC the second largest crude oil reserves in Central and Southern Africa … The DRC has the highest agricultural potential in Africa … [and] the potential to feed over 2 billion people with appropriate investment …There are many infrastructure construction opportunities for U.S. companies, with most projects structured as public-private partnerships.” 

This U.S. presentation of opportunities for extraction and expropriation of resources does not explain how to pursue them.  A promotion piece, it is far removed from Pétronille Vaweka’s portrayal of, as she sees it, a system “based on brutal, illegal mining of these minerals from our soils and by people working in conditions of slavery.”

Wide dissemination of this grim news would likely shed light on the dark side of capitalism. Capitalism’s much-vaunted magic of the market and its autonomous mode of operating would turn out to be proxies for a kind of anarchy that, built on greed, assures that anything goes. This is a kind of insight that, for those in charge, is best avoided.    

To limit the flow of news on human suffering is offensive on other grounds.  Doing so violates “the commons,” items such as water, oxygen in the atmosphere, and knowledge that, essential to human living, must be accessible to everyone. The restriction also hits at the revolutionary notion of human solidarity, the idea that someone else’s pain is ours too.

W.T. Whitney is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.

President Biden Must Remove the Designation of Cuba as Terrorist-Sponsoring Nation / By W. T. Whitney

Via Cuba Solidarity Campaign UK

South Paris, Maine

President Obama in 2015 removed Cuba from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism (SSOT). President Trump reversed that action in January 2020, thereby aggravating economic difficulties for Cuba. President Joe Biden needs to end the designation. The time is now for representatives, senators, and other elected officials to pressure him.

Cuba is no terrorist-sponsoring nation. In accusing Cuba of hosting terrorists, the Trump administration disregarded Cuba’s invitation to Colombian guerrillas to join representatives of Colombia’s government on the island to negotiate peace.

The SSOT designation requires that targeted nations not use dollars in international transactions. The U.S. Treasury Department punishes institutional offenders. Dollars are the world’s dominant currency, and in normal circumstances, banks would use them in transactions involving Cuba. Now, however, foreign lenders steer clear of Cuba. Payments for exported goods and services may not arrive. Cuba is financially paralyzed.

Cubans are suffering. Food is short, as are spare parts, raw materials for domestic production, school and healthcare supplies, spare parts, consumer goods, and cash.  The aim of U.S. policy, as specified by a State Department memo of April 1960, is to cause shortages, despair and suffering serious enough to induce Cubans to overthrow their government.

The labeling of Cuba as a terrorist-sponsoring nation is part of the decades-long U.S. policy of embargo, which is more accurately characterized as an economic blockade, this in recognition of its worldwide reach. Reasons for removing the SSOT designation are the same ones for ending the blockade.

After all, ending the blockade is the Cuba solidarity movement’s prime goal. The campaign to persuade congresspersons to pressure the president to remove Cuba from the SSOT list must refer to the blockade, even as it pursues the more limited goal.

Congresspersons know that, as per the Helms-Burton Law of 1996 congressional action is required for the blockade’s end. They know that current political realities are unfavorable for such action.  Were they to agitate for presidential action on the SSOT matter, they would, in effect, be preparing for a fight against the whole blockade. That’s why it makes sense to use the one rationale to back up each fight.

Ending the blockade (and SSOT designation) has its uses

·        Producers and manufacturers would sell goods in Cuba.

·        With despair and discouragement having diminished, fewer Cubans would be heading to the United States; 425,000 Cuban migrants arrived in 2022 and 2023.

·        U.S. citizens could visit Cuba for recreation, cultural enrichment, and education. Their exposure to Cuban artists, scientists, and educators visiting in the United States would be gratifying.

·        For the blockade to end would disappoint proponents.  They should have been disappointed by the results of the decades-long experiment showing that the blockade did not work. Regime change did not happen. Blockade apologists could reasonably enough move on to something else.

·        An end to the U.S. blockade (and SSOT designation) would gratify nations in the UN General Assembly that annually, and all but unanimously, vote to approve a resolution calling for the blockade’s end. Critics of U.S. interventionist tendencies, wherever they are, would be pleased. The U.S. government would earn some love.

Ideals and values

·        The blockade is cruel. It causes human suffering.

·        It violates international law: “Whatever view is adopted, either that of coercion or aggression, it is quite evident that the imposition of the U.S. economic blockade of Cuba constituted an illegal act … the blockade is a fragrant violation of the contemporary standard which is founded on … sovereign equality between states.” (Paul A. Shneyer and Virginia Barta, The Legality of the U.S. Economic Blockade of Cuba under International Law, 13 Case W. Res. J. Int’l L. 451 (1981)

·        The blockade is immoral. It contributes to sickness and deaths: “By reducing access to medicines and medical supplies from other countries and preventing their purchase from US firms, the embargo contributes to this rise in morbidity and mortality.” (Richard Garfield, DrPH, RN, commenting on Cuba’s “Special Period” of shortages following the fall of the Soviet Bloc – Am. J. Public Health 1997, 877, 15-20.)

·        The blockade exposes certain failings of U.S. democracy. U.S. political leaders remain oblivious to polling data showing strong support for normal U.S.-Cuba relations and for ending the blockade. Leaders of the Cuban exile community have long exerted undue influence in determining U.S. policies toward Cuba. The appearance is that of an important aspect of foreign policy having been farmed out to a strident minority. 

Contradictions

The U.S. government claims the blockade serves as punishment of Cuba for allegedly violating human rights. But the United States has easily co-existed with governments famous for disregarding human rights, like Nicaragua’s Somoza regime, Chile under Pinochet, Haiti ruled by the Duvaliers, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

U.S. policymakers see Cuba as a Communist dictatorship and, on that account, as deserving of economic blockade. Even so, the United States trades with Vietnam and China, where Communist parties are in power.

Vice President Joe Biden presumably backed President Obama’s action in removing Cuba from the SSOT list. Contradicting himself, he refuses to reverse former President Trump’s placement of Cuba back on the list.

Contradictions point to Cuba as special case in the history of U.S. relations with other countries. Only Cubans find an open door on arrival in the United States as irregular migrants. Such red-carpet treatment stands alone in the record of how the U.S. government handles immigration. 

The Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 ensured that Cubans arriving in the United States without documents would at once receive social services and a work permit and a year later be granted permanent residence and the opportunity for citizenship.

The fact of U.S. hegemonic intent and actions regarding Cuba for 200 years must be extraordinary in the history of international relations. From Thomas Jefferson’s time until the 20th century, leaders in Washington sought to own or annex Cuba. They would later on find other modalities.

U.S.- Cuba relations have long been on automatic pilot. Pursuing justice and fairness, elected officials in Washington would be moving beyond that history. They would go against the grain as they pressure a U.S. president to no longer designate Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism. Persevering, they would fight to relieve Cuba of all U.S. harassment.

W.T. Whitney is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.

In Distress, Niger Expels US Military, Resurrects Hope / By W. T. Whitney

Supporters of Niger’s governing military council, gather for a protest called to fight for the country’s freedom and push back against foreign interference, in Niamey, Niger, Aug. 3, 2023. A top Pentagon official says that the U.S. has not yet received a formal request from Niger’s rulers to depart the country. | Sam Mednick / AP

Reposted from the People’s World

On March 16, Amadou Abdramane, spokesperson for Niger’s governing military council, announced that Niger was dropping its 12-year-old military-cooperation agreement with the United States. Niger’s military council had assumed power following the coup in July, 2023 that removed Mohamed Bazoum, the elected president.

U.S. military intervention in Niger is now a poor fit with grim realities in the western Sahel region of Africa and with the Nigerien people’s needs and aspirations.

The U.S. military presence there co-exists with danger posed by Islamic extremist military groups. These expanded after 2011 when NATO destroyed the Libyan government, a stabilizing force in the region. Niger faces a humanitarian crisis worsened by environmental disaster. The military council is seeking alternative arrangements for security cooperation and looking to China for help with societal development.

Abdramane denounced “the attitude of the [recently visiting] U.S. delegation in denying the sovereign right of Niger’s people to choose partners and allies capable of really helping them fight terrorism.” General Michael Langley, delegation member and head of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), “expressed concerns” that Niger was pursuing close ties with Russia and Iran.

AFRICOM, headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, operates 20 bases in Africa. The two largest are air bases in Djibouti, in East Africa, and Agadez, in central Niger. Niger hosts two other U.S. bases, an airbase nearNiamey, the capital city, and a CIA base in the northeast.

According to a report, the Agadez base cost $110 million to build and costs $30 million annually to maintain. It is “the largest Air Force-led construction project in history.” By means of these two large bases, the United States conducts air war, with drones, over a significant portion of the earth’s surface.

In moving to end U.S. military involvement, the coup government had backing “from the trade unions and the protest movement against French presence.”  The new government had already pressured France, Niger’s colonizer, to remove its military units from the country; the last of them departed in January, 2024. Coup governments in Mali and Burkina Faso expelled French troops in February 2022 and February 2023, respectively.

Also in January 2024, the three countries abandoned the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). France had led in forming this trade bloc in 1975; it would include 15 African nations. Critics cited by the BBC claim that France, through ECOWAS, was able to “meddle … in the politics and economics of its former territories after independence.”

The French government failed in an attempt to mobilize an ECOWAS military force to punish Niger for leaving the trade bloc. Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger reacted by forming their Alliance of Sahel States. They “are exploring alternative security relations, including with Russia.” Niger also looks to Iran for security assistance.  

Investigator Nick Turse points to U.S. failures to explain why Niger is looking elsewhere for military assistance. He documents the vast number of deaths in the western Sahel region at the hands of extremist Islamist groups over the course of 20 years. The killings skyrocketed despite the U.S. military presence in Niger.

Niger may have given up on the United States also on considering that U.S. and NATO military action in Libya in 2011 contributed to worsening living conditions in the region now. A commentator notes that, “The toppling of Gaddafi created a power vacuum that fostered civil war and terrorist infiltration, with disastrous regional ramifications.”

Additionally, in a Niger unable on its own to adequately fulfill human needs, U.S. focus on military advantage without attention to human suffering would have been disheartening. The scale of suffering is the Sahel region is immense, as evidenced by diminished food production and migration, with climate-change contributing to both.

The International Rescue Committee reports that, “The Central Sahel region of Africa, which includes Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, is facing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. Over 16 million people need assistance and protection, marking a 172 percent increase from 2016.”

China responded and Washington officials are perturbed. A report from Mali indicates that, “In Niger, the main areas of [Chinese] investment are energy ($5.12 million); mining ($620 million) and real estate ($140 million), other aspects of cooperation include: the construction of stadiums and schools, medical missions, military cooperation, infrastructure (roads, bridges, rolling stock, thermal power plants).”

A “Nigerien security analyst” told investigator Nick Turse that “the trappings of paternalism and neocolonialism” have marred Niger’s military-cooperation agreement with the United States. 

Expanding upon these polite words while commenting on Niger’s current situation, Casablanca academician Alex Anfruns observes that, “international capitalism has destroyed the hopes of entire generations of Africans while inflicting its policies like a thug with white gloves. Actors like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank are complicit as key functionaries of the neocolonial system.”

U.S. policy-makers, enablers of world capitalism, look longingly at Africa. Africa claims “98% of the world’s chromium, 90% of its cobalt, 90% of its platinum, 70% of its coltan, 70% of its tantalite, 64% of its manganese, 50% of its gold, and 33% of its uranium.” Even more: “The continent holds 30% of all mineral reserves, 12% of known oil reserves, 8% of known natural gas, and 65% of the world’s arable land.”

Alex Anfruns sees hope: the leaders of Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso,  with their Alliance of Sahel States, “have sent a powerful message of solidarity to millions of Africans who share a vision and an emancipatory project, that of pan-African unity.” Indeed, “From now on neither the United States or France under the flag of NATO can destroy an isolated African country, as happened in Libya in 2011.” 

Burkina Faso president Thomas Sankara expressed a far-ranging kind of hope in 1984, at the United Nations: “We refuse simple survival. We want to ease the pressures, to free our countryside from medieval stagnation or regression. We want to democratize our society, to open up our minds to a universe of collective responsibility.”

We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today. Thank you!

W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.

Enlightened Working People Expect a Lot from Their Political Party: Reply to Brooks / by W.T. Whitney Jr.

Photo via CPUSA

South Paris, Maine

White working-class voters who recently switched to the Republicans have not yet returned to the Democratic Party. They should do that, New York Times columnist David Brooks points out. After all, the Biden administration has “pursued an ambitious agenda to support the working class … [and] economic results have been fantastic.”

He outlines a divide between Republican voters, who mostly lack college degrees and may live in rural areas and small towns, and Democrats, whom he reports as being urban-based, college-educated, and snobby. He mentions a “seismic political realignment,” which “is more about culture and identity than it is about economics.”

Brooks suggests that, if the Biden administration matched the commitment shown by the New Deal, a Democratic Party legacy, many former Democrats voting Republican would return home. Those less attentive to working-class interests and more susceptible to demagoguery and myth-making would presumably remain where they are.

Brooks doesn’t explain why cultural phenomena and the political use of people’s identity led to voters moving to another party. These played out in a way that encouraged a kind of politics that overwhelmed political undertakings crucial to various sectors of the working class.

The object here is to examine some of these political projects and thereby identify certain causes that are off limits to working people who vote Republican. Whether they are compelling enough to persuade errant Democrats to return to the fold is uncertain. So too is the Biden Administration’s dedication to pursuing such struggles.

In any case aspirations inspiring the kinds of activism described below are not far removed from urgings toward a coherent and consistent working-people’s political movement or political party.

Culture and its variations

Brooks’s use of the term “culture” seemingly embraces religious beliefs, persisting racial prejudice, views on abortion and gender nonconformity, rural distrust of city life, and support for gun ownership.

Working-class history is about another kind of culture. The French and American Revolutions of the late 18th century left behind a culture of democracy. It involved popular elections, expanded legislative power, and guarantees of political rights. Royalty and feudal remnants mostly disappeared. Political newspapers and public debate flourished.    

Some of the founders thought George Washington ought to be king. Fearful of democracy, they provided for indirect presidential and Senate elections, gave big and little states equal representation in the Senate and Electoral College, counted enslaved people as three-fifths of a person, and denied women the vote.

Democratic malaise manifests now as: disappearing consensus that elections decide who becomes president, gerrymandered congressional districts, elections given over to money-power, and the Electoral College’s disregard of the idea of one person-one vote.

But democratic forces return. Even as the Constitution took effect, struggling farmers and backwoodsmen rebelled against wealthy politicians in charge of new state governments. Agitation for democracy would resurface in fights for women’s suffrage, voting for the racially excluded and propertyless, economic justice for small farmers (in the progressive era), better wages and working conditions, and civil rights – and fights also to abolish corporate monopolies, slavery, child labor, and police violence.

Working people, socialists included, have long defended democracy. Socialists have realized that the democratic rights achieved by early revolutionists enabled struggles later on for social and economic change.

Presently, working-class voters allied to the Democratic Party most certainly prioritize renewed struggle for democratic guarantees aimed at shoring up a U.S. democracy in trouble.

Hazards of identity politics

Brooks doesn’t explore exactly how misuse of people’s identity disturbs U.S. politics. He implies that working people are somehow hurt.

The identity of being a woman often leads to trouble. Their political struggles have provoked anti-women biases and stereotypes. The origins and evolution of these are so nebulous as to not provide a basis for criticism that would actually end them. They recur, as with current fight over abortion. No end is in sight.

There is another way. Many women struggle now to overcome remnants of the dependency and obligation visited upon them at the beginning of industrialization. It’s an unfinished battle.

Men, and even women and children, were working in the new factories as independent contractors. The state and employers were oblivious to their domestic circumstances. Families were on their own to raise children, find and prepare food, and seek protection. Women were the ones who were responsible.

Factory owners and other capitalists even now regard women’s work at home as a “free gift.” Although less onerous, women’s state of dependency verging on oppression remains.

The manufacturing and service industries today cannot do without women’s work; it has long served them well in quality and quantity. That factor, and women’s struggle too, have induced power-brokers reluctantly to attend to women’s collective demands for fairness and basic equality. Women’s fight continues, but on the basis of realities in their lives, not on their identity.

As women and their families gain access to the social and economic resources needed for preparing new generations, women work toward a new independence freeing them from governmental intrusions in their private affairs, notably their freedom to choose an abortion.

Racial identity

The idea of affirmative action was to open up access to higher education and jobs for previously excluded persons. Racial and gender identity has been the marker of such exclusion. That’s what admissions officers and employers pay attention to. 

The process of expanding admissions to colleges and universities is unfair. Large numbers of U.S. young people eligible for affirmative action through their racial identity can’t aspire towards higher education. Their families are poor and vulnerable to social catastrophe. Their schools likely are inadequate. 

The families of most students benefiting from affirmative action have economic resources. Those students usually have originated from the middle and upper strata of the various minority groupings.  Most have attended good schools. They thrived from encouragement and high expectations at home.

A fix is at hand in the form of economic security for all, better schools, and universal availability of decent jobs. Capable young people of the working class would understand that they are due high-quality education from start to finish. It would be a kind of affirmative action that leads to hope and overcomes division.

David Brooks credits the Biden administration for creating new jobs, including jobs for workers without a college degree. Wondering why working-class people don’t return to the Democrats, he could have produced a more direct answer than one based on speculation about effects of culture and identity. 

Working people’s needs other than jobs go unrecognized. Brooks might have mentioned good schools, healthcare for all, housing for all, and guaranteed income. He would then have been entering territory of the unspeakable, which is redistribution of wealth.

W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.

Anti-Petro Coup Imperils Historic Pact Government in Colombia / by W.T. Whitney Jr.

Colombians protest outside the Attorney General’s Office in Bogota, Feb. 8, 2024. | Photo: X/ @hugomilenio

South Paris, Maine

President Gustavo Petro, head of the left-leaning Historic Pact coalition, took office on August 8, 2022. He is Colombia’s most progressive president ever. Now he faces a coup. The fate of Petro’s government connects with prospects for peace in Colombia

On social media Petro indicated that, “Unions have been raided and witnesses have been tortured and otherwise pressured so as to accuse the president (himself)  …  Narcotrafficking sectors, perpetrators of crimes against humanity, corrupt politicians and sections of the attorney general’s office are desperately looking to remove him from … office.”  

The lead coup-plotters have been former Attorney General Francisco Barbosa and Vice-Attorney General Martha Mancera, hold-overs from previous administrations.  Peculiarities of Colombian governmental arrangements have officials installed in the top levels of government whom the president did not select and does not control.  

Barbosa is the public face of the opposition. He ended his four-year term of office on February 12. The Supreme Court of Justice, charged with replacing him, failed to choose one of the three candidates Petro offered for the post. The Court named Mancera as temporary attorney general.

According to one commentator, Mancera has long had actual charge of the attorney general’s office; Francisco Barbosa was “a façade.” She is accused of protecting corrupt officials and drug traffickers.

Provocateur

Barbosa charged the Colombian Federation of Educators with illegally providing Petro’s presidential campaign with funds amounting to the equivalent of $128,000. Searching for evidence on January 22, his agents trashed the union’s headquarters.

Barbosa announced December 1, 2023 he would detain young people whom Petro had released from prison, praising their dedication to peace.  The release would occur long after they had been jailed originally following participation in protest rallies in mid-2021.

Barbosa in January visited the Justice Department in Washington. He reported on “his stewardship [as attorney general] and sought U.S. support for Martha Mancera to become Colombia’s new attorney-general.”

Inspector general Margarita Cabello on February 2 ordered a three-month suspension of Chancellor Álvaro Leyva Duran. His ministry, she charged, had illegally contracted the preparation of passports to a new company. A defender claimed he was breaking a monopoly in passport preparation held by an “old Bogota family.”

In street demonstrations taking place throughout Colombia on February 8, unionists, students, and teachers demanded that the Supreme Court name a Petro nominee as Colombia’s new attorney general.

Military intelligence reports revealed plans for expanded use of social media to broadcast news of destabilizing activities. Reserve and retired army officers, a powerful sector, have held anti-government protests.

Commentators liken Colombia’s evolving coup to the other “soft coups,” or exercise of “lawfare,” that removed Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo (2012), Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff (2016), Bolivian President Evo Morales (2019), and Peruvian President Pedro Castillo (2023).

Distant dream

For the Petro government to disappear would deliver a major blow to Colombians who for decades have sought and struggled for peace in their country. Petro had campaigned for “total peace.” It was a signature cause for him.

The signing of a Peace Agreement between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Colombian government in 2014 came close to satisfying the longings of peace advocates. From then on, however, it was downhill. In that very year, rightwing political forces engineered a watered-down version of the Agreement reached months earlier. Subsequently, the governments of Presidents Juan Manuel Santos and Iván Duque, Petro’s predecessor as president, failed to implement crucial parts of the Agreement.  

Beginning in 2015, 419 former FARC combatants and 1596 social and community leaders have been assassinated – 188 of them in 2023, while Petro was president.  Continuing armed conflict has led to 154 instances of “massive forced displacement” affecting 56,665 persons.

Dissident FARC groups, the National Army of Liberation, and paramilitaries – often in the service of narco-traffickers – account for most of the killings and turmoil.  The current government is negotiating with the remaining insurgencies.

Information from the historical record, recent and remote, suggests that causative factors accounting for violent conflict and the incipient coup are identical.

September 26, 2016 saw a revealing moment. The Peace Agreement was being signed in Cartegena, Colombia. “Timochenko,” the FARC leader, was speaking to notables assembled from several continents. At precisely that point, fighter planes of the Colombian Air Force zoomed by overhead. As noted by an observer: “The face of ‘Timo’ gave the impression of being under a bombardment.” 

Colombia’s U.S.-supported military was weighing in. The nation’s military forces have long been at the disposal of the established sectors of Colombian society. A well-to-do landowning, religious, and commercial elite has charge of Colombia, now and ever since the Europeans’ arrival. That sector is not happy with either Petro or with peace in the countryside.

Analyst Carlos Rangel Cárdenas sees Petro’s “total peace” as “constructing peace by involving civil society in binding dialogues.” He points out that violence in the countryside increased so much during the presidency of Iván Duque as to approach the excesses of earlier eras.  Dialogues do not thrive in conditions of war, presumably. The coup plotters and their soulmates who tolerate war in the countryside are linked.

An urban-based oligarchy, with cooperation from big landowners, controls the financial, commercial, business and media entities in Colombia that shepherd economic development in rural areas. The heavy hitters there, economically, are industrial-scale agriculture, mining operations, energy production, and narcotrafficking. These activities attract investment and enable wealth accumulation.

Colombia’s majority population is different. They are marginalized urban inhabitants, often refugees from an inhospitable countryside.  They are rural people, overwhelmingly poverty-stricken and poorly-educated, who, most of them, have limited access to social services and to land that would allow for subsistence farming.

Defenders of the Historic Pact government confront a set of rulers equipped with money power, a big army, ample police, and ready access to U.S. military resources. They have been on the losing side of struggle between one social class and another. They are quite unable to project the appearance or reality of the kind of political power that matters.

Social movements have more of a hold on Colombians, especially in rural areas, than do political parties. Writer Sidney Tarrow concludes that parties “seek to gain or retain power” while “Movements are more ideological.” The latter, he implies, are weaker. 

In a 2021 interview, Petro suggested that, “The necessities of Colombian society are not based on building socialism, but on building democracy and peace, period.” He is pondering the matter, evidently. On February 9, he indicated that, “We believe and desire that the means of production are in the hands of the people and not the state.”

In any event, an opinion survey shows young Colombians turning increasingly to “rightwing ideological views,” from “7% in May, 2021 to 37% in October, 2023.” 

W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.

Letter from Congress to Biden: Cuba is No Sponsor of Terrorism / by William T. Whitney Jr.

South Paris, Maine

The Massachusetts congressional delegation was irritated. The Biden administration, taking office, had promised to remove Cuba from the U.S. list of State Sponsors of Terrorism (SSOT). Massachusetts Representative Jim McGovern, favoring the change, took comfort from Congress having been informed at some point that the process was underway. However, in a closed-door congress briefing in early December, 2023, State Department official Eric Jacobstein indicated no action had been taken.

McGovern and Representatives Ayanna Pressley, Lori Trahan, Seth Moulton and Stephen Lynch and Senators Elizabeth Warren and Edward Markey, all Democrats, were indignant. That any removal of Cuba from the list would require a six-month long review process beforehand aggravated their displeasure.

They wrote a letter to President Joe Biden on December 14, 2023. Unaccountably, it did not become public knowledge until January 2.

The letter credited “President Obama and yourself after thorough review” for having removed Cuba from the list of SSOT nations in 2015, for declaring “the designation is without merit.” The authors decry “vindictive action taken by the Trump Administration in January 2021” in restoring the designation. They inform Biden that, “We believe the time to act and remove Cuba from the SSOT list is now – not months from now.”

The congresspersons note that, “In fact, Cuba and the United States have a functioning bilateral cooperation agreement on counterterrorism.” They mention that Colombian President Gustavo Petro had called for lifting of the designation, thus shattering one argument favoring the designation, the allegation that Cuba had hosted Colombian terrorists.

These, of course, were the representatives of the FARC and ELN insurgencies who were negotiating peace agreements, in Havana.

They pointed to mounting humanitarian disaster in Cuba now: “From the poorest and most vulnerable to the struggling private sector to religious, humanitarian and cultural actors, the Cuban people are enduring the most dire deprivations in recent memory – everyone is suffering.”

The letter identified placement of Cuba on the SSOT list as a “significant contributing factor” to the suffering. To explain: under U.S. law, the U.S. Treasury Department penalizes international banks and lending institutions that handle dollars on behalf of presumed terrorism-sponsoring nations.

To avoid fines, often immense, international financial institutions steer clear of transactions with Cuba, more specifically, the large universe of transactions involving dollars, the dollar being the dominant currency in international banking and commercial activities. Cubans suffer because of a great wall that prevents borrowing, buying supplies, and sometimes receiving payments for exported goods, and so money is short.

In their letter, the congresspersons cite hardship in Cuba as contributing to irregular Cuban migration into the United States, that now is massive. Their implied message is that removing Cuba from the SSOT list will alleviate humanitarian crisis in Cuba and so will reduce migration.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López, conferring recently with Secretary of State Antony Blinken on migration, asked that Cuba be removed from the list. But Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, in a congressional hearing in March, 2023, indicated that Cuba had not met “the requirements to be removed from the list.”

The idea that Cubans are suffering so much that they are going to rebel has long circulated in official Washington circles. That approach to Cuban affairs dates from a memorandum on suffering in Cuba presented by State Department official Lestor Mallory in 1960.

Interviewed by Prensa Latina, Merri Ansara, board member of Massachusetts Peace Action, associated the letter with “a campaign initiated eight months ago to unify the state of Massachusetts in calling for Cuba to be removed from the SSOT” list. She indicated “We will now ask our elected representatives and senators in the state legislature to send a similar letter to Biden, and then we will ask our governor.”

By no means is this people’s campaign for removing Cuba from the SSOT list new. By mid-September in 2022, “[m]ore than 10,000 people and 100 progressive advocacy groups” had signed the Code Pink advocacy group’s open letter demanding that Biden do exactly that.

Calling for definitive action to remove Cuba from the U.S. list, Chris McKinnon, Chair of the Communist Party of Maine, urged Maine people, and progressive organizations, to register their backing for the Massachusetts congresspersons’ letter to Biden.

The time is now, he explained, “for everyone to update their information on U.S. – Cuban relations, think through their positions, reach out to unions, faith-based social justice committees, and others willing to listen, and meet with the Maine congressional delegation, and other elected officials, to insist upon this policy change.”

W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.

U.S. military appears to favor Israeli plan for permanent Gaza occupation / By W.T. Whitney Jr.

Israeli soldiers eye their targets at the Israel-Gaza border on Monday, Dec. 18, 2023. | AP

Reposted from the People’s World

Nearly 20,000 Gaza civilians, mostly children and women, have died from bombs and gunfire in Israel’s war so far. Many more will be dying soon from lack of medical care, food, water, and the spread of infectious diseases. Healthcare and social service facilities—along with the homes of a million or more—have been reduced to rubble.

The U.S. government provides the support for all of this to happen, as it continues to financially and militarily back Israel in its war against Hamas in Gaza in retaliation for the latter’s attacks of Oct. 7.

Prospects for Gazans who survive the war are grim, or worse. The families of many are gone, and international aid agencies have mostly disappeared. Dire shortages of necessities are on the horizon.  Repairing the physical damage won’t happen anytime soon, and Israeli settlers are already eyeing prime Gaza lands.

With humanitarian disaster on full display, Human Rights Watch points out that, “by continuing to provide Israel with weapons and diplomatic cover as it commits atrocities…the U.S. risks complicity in war crimes.”

Either the charge or the fact of complicity will very likely bedevil the United States for as long as Gazan civilians are dying in large numbers or being removed to camps somewhere else and, all the while, the U.S. goes on supplying Israeli occupiers with weapons.

A recently released Israeli military analysis raises the possibility that the U.S. government courts very serious condemnation if it provides material support for a permanent Israeli occupation of Gaza.

Dr. Omer Dostri, the study’s author, is associated with the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security and the Israel Defense and Security Forum. Each is oriented to Israel’s military establishment. His study appeared Nov. 7 in the Military Review, the self-described “Professional Journal of the U.S. Army.”

As reported by journalist Dan Cohen, Dostri declared on social media that, he “authored [the study] on behalf of the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Army’s Military Review journal.” For the Military Review’s editors to have invited Dostri’s submission suggests they already knew about and were at least tolerant of, Dostri’s iron-fist approach toward Gaza.

The author and editors alike presumably expected their respective military superiors to accept some or all of the views expressed in the paper. Perhaps, then, the two military leaderships have common ground regarding Gaza. Publication of this Israeli analysis becomes a straw in the wind as to future U.S.-Israel military collaboration on Gaza, and, on that score, to U.S. war crimes.

The title of Dostri’s article reads in part, “The End of the Deterrence Strategy in Gaza.” He notes the failure of Israeli military intelligence, Israel’s lack of combat readiness, and Hamas’s “exceptional military and professional approach.” Referring to Israel’s “disregard for the fundamentalist religious dimension of Hamas as an extreme Islamic terrorist organization,” he diagnoses faulty “political perception”

Dostri reviews options for control of Gaza following the envisioned defeat of Hamas. They are: a local Gazan administration, the Palestinian Authority taking charge, a mandate exercised by another government or an international agency, or occupation and governance by Israel’s military. He favors the latter, “from a security perspective.”

The main reason for establishing Israeli settlements in Gaza, he states, is that “seizing and securing land constitutes a more substantial blow to radical Islamist terror groups than the elimination of terrorist operatives and high-ranking leaders.”

Summarizing, Dostri indicates that:

“[A] robust ground campaign in the Gaza Strip, encompassing the occupation of territories, the creation of new Israeli settlements, and the voluntary relocation of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to Egypt with no option for return will greatly fortify Israeli deterrence and project influence throughout the entire Middle East.”

Dostri examines Israel’s conduct in the ongoing Gaza war. He calls for a military strategy aimed at securing “a swift surrender of the enemy” that would allow “political maneuverability to make decisions.” The goal “is to defeat Hamas and assume control of the Gaza Strip for the benefit of future generations.”

Israel, he says though, runs “the risk of a multifront war.” Planners are “in the process of altering…policy and military strategy, not only concerning Gaza but also across other fronts.” The Gaza experience is instructive: “Successive Israeli governments…regarded Hamas in the Gaza Strip as a legitimate governing entity that could be managed and engaged through diplomatic and economic means. Not anymore.”

Now “Israel should shift from a strategy of deterrence…[to a] strategy of unwavering decisiveness and victory.” In particular, “Israel will have no choice but to invade Lebanon and defeat Hezbollah.” In addition, “Israel cannot afford to allow the Houthis [in Yemen] to significantly bolster their military strength over time.”

U.S. political leaders for the most part have yet to weigh in on the fate of Gazan civilians in the post-war period. Dostri’s view of Gaza’s future, seemingly acceptable, more or less, to the militaries of the two countries, leaves no room for the niceties of civilians being abused and dying as part of the coming occupation.

By Dec. 1, the U.S. Congress was considering a proposal for assisting Israeli forces as they clear Gaza of Gazans:  Egypt, Turkey, Yemen, and Iraq would receive U.S. monetary support for taking in Gazans fleeing from Israeli attacks.

The next day, however, Vice President Kamala Harris indicated that “Under no circumstances will the United States permit the forced relocation of Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank.”

At issue for U.S. policymakers are competing realities: the suffering of Gaza civilians, obligations to U.S. ally Israel, the prospect of a region-wide war, and the control of oil, whether Israeli or Palestinian.

Reporting on counterpunch.org, Charlotte Dennett cites “oil and natural gas, discovered off the coast of Gaza, Israel, and Lebanon in 2000 and 2010 and estimated to be worth $500 billion.” The Palestinians in 2000 claimed that the “gas fields…belonged to them.”

Yasser Arafat, the then-President of the Palestinian National Authority, “learned they could provide $1 billion in badly needed revenue. For him, this [was] a Gift of God for our people and a strong foundation for a Palestinian state.”

Dennett adds that “In December 2010, prospectors discovered a much larger gas field off the Israeli coast, dubbed Leviathan.” In addition, “work has already begun on…the so-called Ben Gurion Canal, from the tip of northern Gaza south into the Gulf of Aqaba, connecting Israel to the Red Sea and providing a competitor to Egypt’s Suez Canal.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to “convince international lenders to support his long-held scheme of turning Israel into an energy corridor.”

With such riches at stake, does anyone really believe that a truly free Palestinian state will be allowed to come into existence?

We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today. Thank you!

W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.

Mexico’s Left Takes to the Street, Celebrates Achievements / by W. T. Whitney Jr

Supporters of Mexican President Andrés Mexican President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador stand on a statue’s platform as they cheer him during a march in support of his administration, in Mexico City, Sunday, Nov. 27, 2022. | Fernando Llano/AP

“Sometimes there are revolutions but people keep on thinking the same way. But now we are seeing a peacetime transformation process and there is a change of mentality …  I said yesterday that we are winning the battle against racism, classism, discrimination. This is not about material things, not about welfare programs. There’s been a change of mentality”.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) was commenting on events of November 27, which was the fourth anniversary of his taking office.  AMLO and his Moreno Party administration had staged a march and then a rally in the Zócalo plaza in Mexico City. They sought to demonstrate the Mexican people’s support for what AMLO calls Mexico’s Fourth Transformation.

Supporters gathered at the Angel of Independence Monument and walked three miles along Reforma Avenue to arrive at the Zócalo. The crowd was such that the walk, with AMLO walking too, lasted five hours. And, “Not even a window was broken,” according to Claudia Sheinbaum, who heads Mexico City’s government.

AMLO spoke before 1.2 million people. He highlighted what he regarded as outstanding achievements of his government and promised that work would be continuing “under the premise of attending first to the poorest and most vulnerable people.” He attached the name “Mexican humanism” to his government’s “socio-political model.” Noting the high representation of youth in the crowd, AMLO proclaimed a “generational change.”

In his remarks, AMLO catalogued achievements in providing for people’s needs. A report from La Jornada news service is the basis for the following summary.

Security is improvising, he indicated.  His government “on a daily basis has to confront the scourge of violence; corruption and impunity are not tolerated.   Crimes that fall within federal jurisdiction are down 27.3%.

AMLO listed social advances in various areas:

·        35 million families, 85% of the total, directly receive “at least a little portion of the national budget,” and the others benefit from reduced taxes and reduced costs for essentials.

·        The minimum salary has more than doubled, “something never seen in the last 40 years” – and will be increasing more in the coming year.

·        Labor reforms include secret voting in union elections, elimination of subcontracting, and a doubling of profit-sharing arrangements. 

·        Almost 28 million new workers are enrolled in social security, and the salaries of workers has reached “historically” high levels.  There are 1.3 million new government jobs.

·        Now 283,535 single mothers working outside of the home receive 800 pesos each month; 3.7 million families with children in elementary schools receive 1,680 pesos every two months; and 4.2 million upper-level students receive the same amount. Some 410,000 university students from poor families receive 2,450 pesos monthly, 128,950 postgraduate students and researchers receive scholarships.

AMLO emphasized the construction by his government of 145 free public universities where 1,168 professors are teaching and 45,581 young people studying. The aim is to establish 200 such institutions within the so-called “Benito Juárez System” which, according to a government website, is “dedicated to young people excluded by economic reasons” and those whose geographic access to higher education is limited. 

The president mentioned that funds are available that enable parents of school children to maintain and rehabilitate 113,971 school buildings. Teachers’ salaries are up 21%, and schools now provide a “labor base” for 650,000 education workers.   He noted that his government’s “relation with teachers is one of respect and gratitude … There have been no strikes or work stoppages in the public schools.”

AMLO emphasized that IMSS-Bienestar, the federal healthcare system, has extended into new regions where medical generalists and specialists are for the most part working “two shifts” every day. He is “committed to extending the IMSS-Bienestar system throughout the country to make people’s right to healthcare a reality.”

According to its website, “The IMSS-BIENESTAR Program provides first and second level health care services in its health units. The latter covers the specialties of gynecology-obstetrics, general surgery, internal medicine and pediatrics.” With “43 years of experience,” the program “combines medical care with health promotion actions in the community.”  Care is provided gratis to patients without social security benefits.

Mexico’s social security system has expanded; 300,000 handicapped people, mostly children, are receiving more generous pensions and 10.5 million seniors now receive 2,800 pesos bimonthly, with more on the way after January 1, 2023. In a program called “Young People Building the Future,” 2.4 million young people are apprenticing in preparation for future work.  The minimum wage they receive is a social security benefit.

AMLO’s reference to a “Fourth Transformation” raises the question of what about the first three transformations. These were three periods of significant change, specifically: independence from Spain 1810-1821; reforms, mainly separation of church and state, undertaken by President Benito Juárez in 1858-1861; and Mexico’s Revolution in 1910-1917 that accounts for the present Constitution.

The march and mass gathering of Moreno and AMLO supporters annoyed individuals such as Sandra Cuevas, the mayor of Cuauhtémoc. She denounced a “march of hate, division, inequality and corruption” while claiming that government officials at all levels and beneficiaries of social programs had been forced to participate.

One observer writes that for Morena to be “winning the streets” doesn’t detract from the advantage conservative political parties enjoy with an overwhelming presence on social media and on newspaper front pages.  Their power there, and in their organizations and the judiciary, enables them to “hinder, obstruct, and sabotage” Morena’s work of governing.   In any case, opinion polls are pointing to a large Morena Party victory in the elections of 2024.

W.T. Whitney Jr. is a retired pediatrician and political journalist living in Maine.

People’s World, November 29, 2022, https://www.peoplesworld.org/

Labor Voices: A vision of true democracy – Organizing the vast majority to take collective control of their lives / by E. Martin Schotz, MD

I am writing for anyone who is concerned about the lack of a serious worldwide approach to climate chaos, anyone who is concerned about racism, poverty, patriarchy, violence, poor health of so many, anyone who is concerned about peace — anyone who wants to participate in and see political change on these issues.

The great German physician Rudolph Virkow, a pioneer in the field of public health, once remarked, “Politics should be practiced as if it was medicine on a grand scale.”  I am thinking about this as I ponder the weakness of the labor movement in the United States, the weakness of the peace movement, and the left in general.  What is the diagnosis?  And where does a cure lie?

If these questions concern you, I am writing to request that you gather a group of like-minded people in order to explore three  books and how the wisdom in them can be developed and applied.  These three books were written by the same author, Jane McAlevey.  Their subject is complex and of the utmost importance. — how the vast majority can be organized to take collective control of their lives.  The books are entitled in order of their appearance Raising Expectations and Raising Hell: My Decade Fighting for the Labor Movement; No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age; and A Collective Bargain:  Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy.

Who is Jane McAlevey?  She has a long history as a leader and political organizer beginning in high school and college around issues of women’s equality, the dangers of nuclear power, and the struggle against apartheid in South Africa.  After traveling and working in Central America she worked for the Earth Island Institute educating the environmental movement in the US about ecological consequences of US military and economic policies in Central America and then worked at the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tennessee on environmental issues.  From there the New Voices leadership of the AFL-CIO recruited her for an experimental AFL-CIO organizing in Stamford Connecticut.   The Stamford Organizing Project was working on a model for rank and file worker-based social movement unionism.  In this project, in addition to focusing on workplace issues, unions connected workers to non-workplace issues that affected their communities.  Union members utilized their connections to churches and faith based institutions, sports clubs, and social groups of all kinds to build alliances between labor struggles and community struggles.  Following this work she joined the SEIU where she worked as Director of Strategic Campaigns and then as Executive Director and Chief Negotiator for SEIU Nevada in the process demonstrating the power of the Stamford approach.

The reason I recommend reading all three books is that taken together you get a rounded picture of McAlevey’s background, development, experience in and practice of an approach to union organizing and community organizing that is needed, if the vast majority are to be effectively engaged in tackling the pressing problems that confront us as capitalism collapses.  If three books seems like too much, start with one.   I want to emphasize that although union organizing and community organizing are not the same thing, what McAlevey discusses seems to me to be of great relevance to community organizing as well as union organizing.

The roots of McAlevey’s approach go back to the industry-wide organizing that was critical to the emergence of the CIO in the 1930’s.    The books focus on the most difficult kinds of labor struggles, in which it is necessary to organize 90% of the shop floor and 90% of the community in support of the union, if the union is to be able to win. As described above, in order to accomplish this, it is not enough to approach workers as just people on a job.  It is also necessary to see workers as whole people, as community members whose needs and interests extend beyond just wages and benefits.   For McAlevey the union is there to aid in the struggle for wages and benefits, but it is there primarily as a means by which workers can take collective control of their lives.  McAlevey’s approach is radically democratic with no such thing as a “labor aristocracy” or “labor bureaucracy”.  There are the workers and there are the employers.  The union belongs to the workers completely.

It is not by accident that this approach, which communists helped develop, was largely abandoned after World War II.    Coming out of World War II “the powers-that-be” in the United States wanted to quiet the unrest that had developed in the 1930’s and to be able to pursue US corporate imperial interests at home and throughout the world.  The population had to be propagandized to support the “Cold War” and to see the Soviet Union as their enemy.  And there was a determined effort during the McCarthy Period to demonize communists and exclude them not only from the labor movement but from the life of our society generally.  The “powers-that-be” needed to turn the US labor movement away from class struggle and toward what McAlevey calls “class snuggle”.   “Class snuggle” is a process in which employers and certain labor leaders collaborate to narrowly define workers’ interests and in the process help labor bureaucrats become powerful, wealthy and corrupt.

Fortunately the approach that McAlevey describes was not completely abandoned, and where it is still being practiced, it has yielded some big wins.  As examples amongst other campaigns McAlevey discusses the recent teachers’ union organizing and strikes in Chicago and Los Angeles.

As I read through McAlevey’s books I was stunned by the fact that what she was talking about was completely new to me despite years working within the left.  Of the many things that impressed me I will mention here only four.

First, McAlevey emphasizes the importance of setting concrete goals so that you can know if you are succeeding or not.  Contrary to this,  most of the organizations, with which I have been associated, have pursued a line of action that could never fail and consequently could never succeed, because the goals of the organization’s activity were always vaguely defined.

Second McAlevey discusses the importance of making a power analysis of the community or group you are hoping to organize.  Who knows whom?  Who influences whom?  Who are the community’s “organic leaders”, the people to whom others listen.  These “organic leaders” often don’t see themselves as activists or leaders, but their opinions carry great weight with many others.  If you are going to organize 90%,  reaching these “organic leaders” and winning their active involvement is critical.

Third, McAlevey describes in detail what she calls the “Structured Organizing Conversation”, a specific way an organizer can go about connecting with organic leaders and uniting with them in the organizing effort.

Fourth, McAlevey makes a clear distinction between what she calls “advocacy”, “mobilizing” , and “organizing.”  Advocacy involves advocating for something.  This essay is an example of advocacy.   Mobilizing involves calling out the people who are already on your side.  Organizing involves reaching and involving in the struggle the vast majority, those who don’t yet understand that they have a vital interest in being actively involved.  From this perspective, the organizations, with which I have worked, have been involved in education, advocacy, and mobilization, but not really organizing.  This is why what these books can teach us is so critical.

Becoming an accomplished organizer is no small achievement.  It is every bit as complex as becoming a true artist in any field.  So reading these books won’t turn anyone into an accomplished organizer.  But they can provide crucial insight into the science and art of organizing.  Reading them as a group may ignite a desire in some to begin experimenting with organizing in a different way.  Such an endeavor will need the support of a group.   At the very least these books will help partisans of a people’s movement to more concretely conceive of how radically democratic labor unions and communities can be organized for the political battle that is needed.

Dr. Schotz is a child psychiatrist who is active in the peace movement in Western Massachusetts