January 25, 2019

Canadian labour group blasts Ottawa’s ‘provocative’ stance on Venezuela, Thursday 24 January, 2019


Canadian labour group blasts Ottawa’s ‘provocative’ stance on Venezuela
By Levon Sevunts | english@rcinet.ca
Thursday 24 January, 2019 


An umbrella group of Canadian labour and civil society organizations says Canada’s recognition of Venezuela’s opposition leader Juan Guaido as the country’s interim president will only lead to more internal conflict and polarization, and sets in motion a diplomatic showdown between Caracas and Ottawa.
Canada joined the United States, the Organization of American States, and ten other Latin American states on Wednesday in recognizing Guaido, Venezuela’s parliamentary speaker, as the country’s interim president and reaffirmed its refusal to recognize the legitimacy of President Nicolas Maduro.

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland called on Maduro “to cede power to the democratically elected National Assembly.”
Common Frontiers, which lists among its active participants labour and civil society organizations such as the Canadian Labour Congress (CLS), the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), Unifor, and The United Church of Canada among others, says it is “deeply concerned” by these actions of the Liberal government.
“This provocative action on the part of Canada is a violation of Venezuela’s sovereignty and democratic norms,” said a statement by Common Frontiers. “They reflect interventionist polices that seek nothing less than regime change in Venezuela.”
‘Free and fair elections’

Raul Burbano of Common Frontiers said the organization, which sent observers to monitor the Venezuelan presidential election in May of 2018, also took issue with Ottawa’s assertion that the election was a sham.
The Canadian delegation, which was composed of members of Unifor, the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, The United Church, Common Frontiers and Rabble.ca, concluded in its final report that the May 20, 2018 elections “were fair, transparent and represented the will of the Venezuelan people.”
However, opposition politicians in Venezuela decried electoral fraud and contested the official results, which showed that Maduro won with nearly 68 per cent of the vote, well ahead of his nearest rival Henri Falcón, who received nearly 21 per cent of votes.
In her statement Freeland said Canada will support Guaido’s commitment to lead Venezuela “to free and fair presidential elections.”
“We reiterate that a resolution of the crisis in Venezuela can only be achieved through the leadership and courage of Venezuelans themselves,” Freeland, who is attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, said in a statement.
“Canadians stand with the people of Venezuela and their desire to restore constitutional democracy and human rights in Venezuela.”

‘A path towards chaos?

Canada has also imposed targeted sanctions against 70 Venezuelan officials and, in collaboration with five other countries in the Americas, referred the situation in Venezuela to the International Criminal Court, she added.
Canada has also taken steps to downgrade diplomatic relations and restrict engagement with Venezuela, Freeland said.
Maduro, however, has received strong support from Russia and China.
A statement by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that actions by the United States, Canada and other members of the so-called Lima Group “can only deepen the social divide in Venezuela, aggravate street protests, dramatically destabilise the Venezuelan political community and further escalate the conflict.”
“The deliberate and obviously well-orchestrated creation of dual power and an alternative decision-making centre in Venezuela is a direct path towards chaos and erosion of Venezuelan statehood,” the Russian statement said. “Several people have already died. We firmly condemn those who are pushing Venezuelan society into the abyss of violent civil discord.”
China said on Thursday it opposes outside interference in Venezuela and supports its efforts to protect its independence and stability.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying called for all sides to calmly and reasonably find a peaceful solution.
“China supports the efforts made by the Venezuelan government to uphold national sovereignty, independence and stability,” Hua said. “China always upholds the principle of non-interference in other counties’ internal affairs and opposes foreign interference in Venezuela’s affairs.”

January 24, 2019

Declaration of Cuban Government: Aggression against Venezuela must stop granma.cu



The e Revolutionary Government of the Republic of Cuba condemns and strongly rejects the attempt to impose, through a coup, a puppet government serving the United States in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, and expresses its unwavering solidarity with the Government of Cuba. Constitutional President Nicolas Maduro Moros.
The real goals of the actions against Venezuela are to take control of the vast resources of this brotherly country and to destroy the value of its example, as a process of emancipation and defense of the dignity and independence of Our Lady. America.
As President Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez said: "The sovereignty of our peoples is decided today in the attitude adopted against Venezuela. To support the legitimate right of the brother country to define its destiny is to defend the dignity of all ".
We can not forget other attempts, such as the 2002 military coup and the 2003 oil coup, the United States' aggressive Executive Order calling Venezuela "an unusual and extraordinary threat to national security and foreign policy". " superpower, unilateral coercive measures, the call to the military coup against the constitutional government of Venezuela, the warning of President of the United States to use " possible military option " and the assassination attempt against President Maduro on 4 August.
The actions of a group of countries and the shameful role of the OAS is yet another desperate attempt to implement a policy of regime change that could not be imposed because of the unswerving resistance of the Venezuelan people and his will to defend his national sovereignty.
Havana, January 23, 2019

Overthrowing other people’s governments: The Master List By William Blum

Overthrowing other people’s governments: The Master List

By William Blum
Instances of the United States overthrowing, or attempting to overthrow, a foreign government since the Second World War. (* indicates successful ouster of a government)
  • China 1949 to early 1960s
  • Albania 1949-53
  • East Germany 1950s
  • Iran 1953 *
  • Guatemala 1954 *
  • Costa Rica mid-1950s
  • Syria 1956-7
  • Egypt 1957
  • Indonesia 1957-8
  • British Guiana 1953-64 *
  • Iraq 1963 *
  • North Vietnam 1945-73
  • Cambodia 1955-70 *
  • Laos 1958 *, 1959 *, 1960 *
  • Ecuador 1960-63 *
  • Congo 1960 *
  • France 1965
  • Brazil 1962-64 *
  • Dominican Republic 1963 *
  • Cuba 1959 to present
  • Bolivia 1964 *
  • Indonesia 1965 *
  • Ghana 1966 *
  • Chile 1964-73 *
  • Greece 1967 *
  • Costa Rica 1970-71
  • Bolivia 1971 *
  • Australia 1973-75 *
  • Angola 1975, 1980s
  • Zaire 1975
  • Portugal 1974-76 *
  • Jamaica 1976-80 *
  • Seychelles 1979-81
  • Chad 1981-82 *
  • Grenada 1983 *
  • South Yemen 1982-84
  • Suriname 1982-84
  • Fiji 1987 *
  • Libya 1980s
  • Nicaragua 1981-90 *
  • Panama 1989 *
  • Bulgaria 1990 *
  • Albania 1991 *
  • Iraq 1991
  • Afghanistan 1980s *
  • Somalia 1993
  • Yugoslavia 1999-2000 *
  • Ecuador 2000 *
  • Afghanistan 2001 *
  • Venezuela 2002 *
  • Iraq 2003 *
  • Haiti 2004 *
  • Somalia 2007 to present
  • Honduras 2009 *
  • Libya 2011 *
  • Syria 2012
  • Ukraine 2014 *

January 23, 2019

VENEZUELA UPDATE, Jorge Martin 23 Jan 2019

Jorge Martin

VENEZUELA UPDATE:
Today was clearly a crucial day in the ongoing Trump - Bolsonaro - Almagro attempted coup.
Juan Guaidó appointed himself as president in charge of the Republic. Not only the whole thing has no constitutional basis whatsoever (article 233 which he mentioned provides for the vicepresident to take over in case of a "permanent absence of the president", which is not the case, not for the president of the national assembly to do so), he took the oath in the middle of the street during a political rally, rather than being voted by his own NA members. A complete farce.
However, a coup only attempts to disguise itself in legalistic robes but fundamentally it is never decide on the fine points of the law, but on the question of force.
As if on cue, Trump immediately jumped in to recognise Guaidó as the legitimate president. He was followed, of course, by Almagro and the loyal presidents of Brazil, Canada, Chile, etc.
Maduro responded, at the end of a chavista rally, by breaking all diplomatic relations with the US and giving its diplomatic staff 72h to leave the country. Guaidó then issued a statement to all embassies to remain in the country. Senator Marco Rubio called on the US to expel Venezuelan diplomatic staff and accept a new set of diplomats appointed by Guaidó. The US has declared that it will not evacuate its personnel from Venezuela "due to the fact that the president recognized by the United States has not asked them to".
Clearly, the US is going for broke.
Then the White House issued very serious threats against Maduro. He said that if Guaidó or other NA members were arrested or harmed "all options were on the table". This was later repeated by Trump in Davos.
Significantly, the statement from the EU offered its support for the national assembly, called for a democratic process, rejected violence, etc but did fall short of endorsing Guaidó as PRESIDENT.
Mexico, Russia, Bolivia and Turkey reaffirmed that they recognised president Maduro.
What next? A country cannot have two presidents for any length of time. Either or the other must prevail. The crucial test is who has the monopoly of violence and control of the territory, not who is more or less legitimate from a constitutional point of view.
The chief of the armed forces, Vladimir Padrino took his time to make a statement and when he made it he didn't even mention Maduro nor the defence of the elected president. The statement (https://twitter.com/marxistJorge/status/1088192772300066818) clearly rejected Guaidó, without mentioning him, but was couched in terms of defence of the Constituion and sovereignty.
A separate statement from the CEOFANB (joint chiefs of staff) account did mention Maduro as the legitimate president. There was however no press conference with the army top brass in uniform, which could have been expected. What all this means as to the depth of loyalty of the army is anyone's guess. What is clear for now is that Army has not broken nor has it supported Guaidó. This is a key question.
As for the support of the chavista ranks, the demonstrations today were sizeable in Caracas though much smaller elsewhere.
This is now a game of chess in which each move will be carefully calculated and in which the players each have access to information that is not necessarily in the public domain as to what is happening within the army, etc.
In the next few hours and days we can expect more events, big and small as we approach a denouement.
Will the US staff be expelled? Will Guaidó be arrested (he seems to have gone to the Colombian embassy "for lunch")? Will there be some high profile incident designed to provoke a reaction on the part of the army or perhaps justify foreign intervention of one sort or another.
A situation like this can easily escape out of the control of the main actors. In the opposition there are armed groups as there are amongst the chavista ranks. There are also groups amongst the peasantry and in some working class communities which have a lot to lose if the coup succeeds and they would be prepared to defend their gains, arms in hand if need be.
The policy of the Bolivarian leadership is cautious. Maduro's speech today was weak. Other than the expulsion of US diplomatic staff there were no real measures proposed in order to fight the coup attempt, nor any clear indication of what the people should do to fight it. When the people present started shouting about prices, he evaded the question.
In reality the only way to effectively fight the coup attempt would be through a revolutionary policy of leaning on the workers and peasants to strike blows against the capitalists and imperialism who are the ones behind the coup plot. Nothing of that was even hinted at.
The ability of the opposition to botch their own plans should not be underestimated. The strength of the anti-imperialist feeling amongst the Venezuelan masses should not be underestimated either.
From the point of view of imperialism, a civil war scenario is not desirable. Their plan is to exert enough pressure to either force Maduro to resign (offering him an "honourable" way out, they've been talking of a "Chilean style" transition), or to force the Army to intervene. That cannot be ruled out.
Finally, a scenario in which the contending forces are paralysed and unable to prevail over each other is tailor made for Bonapartism. An "independent" intervention on the part of the Army to impose its own terms on a "transition" is a possibility in that context.
Meanwhile, our tasks are clear: to agitate against and denounce the imperialist reactionary coup, to advocate revolutionary means to fight it, to build the forces of Marxism in Venezuela and internationally.

VID The Real News :Is the US Orchestrating a coup in Venezuela?

Lucas Koerner in Venezuela analyzes the current developments withTRNN's Sharmini Peries and Greg Wilpert

Trump, Almagro and Guaidó - The Troika of insanity, by Nino Pagliccia 23 JANUARY 2019

Trump, Almagro and Guaidó - The Troika of insanity
NINO PAGLICCIA·WEDNESDAY, 23 JANUARY 2019
Nino Pagliccia
23 January 2019
As I write this comment events in Venezuela are still developing this January 23. The date marks the day Venezuelan dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez was overthrown 61 years ago. It is an important date for all Venezuelans. It is understandable that the government and its supporters want to celebrate it with their banner of “Marcha por la Paz y la Soberania” (March for Peace and Sovereignty). But so does the opposition in Venezuela although their goal is quite different. They seek a coup d’état for a regime change publicly called for today by the vice-president of the US government, Mike Pompeo, on his own video tweet.
We have seen many different ways to achieve regime change when the US puts its mind to it, but this one today maybe the first, at least in my recollection (pending more research).
As the government supporters march in some areas of Caracas, opposition groups are not only marching, they are actually committing the most outrageous, albeit expected, action: they observe as Juan Guaidó, recently declared president of the in-contempt National Assembly, declares himself interim president of Venezuela!
US president Donald Trump and OAS Secretary General, Luis Almagro, quickly, evidently already prepared, announced their recognition of their choice of president for Venezuela; not the one that was legitimately and democratically elected. It is to be expected that the Canadian government will follow suit.
I am still trying to overcome my outrage as I write. Outrage at the stupidity of some humans when they have some power and they feel entitled to abuse it. That goes to Trump and Almagro. They have a total disregard for the international laws they are called to abide to, for the sovereignty of nations and for the will of 6.3 million Venezuelans who gave a majority vote to Maduro. Outrage at the level of blindness of some Venezuelans who do not recognize when they are being manipulated and become cheap political pawns in a dangerous game. Ambition? Greed? Inflated ego? Ignorance? Certainly it is not modesty and sanity.
As events are still developing we have more questions than answers. We know the reaction of the US government and Luis Almagro, but what will the legitimate government of Venezuela do? If this is an overt case of treason and real usurpation of power by the opposition, how will the constitution be applied? We remember how the Venezuelan people came to the rescue of then president Hugo Chavez in the attempted coup of 2002, how will the people in Venezuela react now? Under this unusual scenario in Venezuela, what is the role of the United Nations? How will other governments react?
We will watch developments in the next few days. In the meantime the early conclusion I can draw is that today we have Trump, Almagro and Guaidó as the Troika of insanity!

January 22, 2019

Time to Break the Silence on Palestine Martin Luther King Jr. courageously spoke out about the Vietnam War. We must do the same when it comes to this grave injustice of our time. January 20, 2019 Michelle Alexander


Time to Break the Silence on Palestine
Martin Luther King Jr. courageously spoke out about the Vietnam War. We must do the same when it comes to this grave injustice of our time.
January 20, 2019 Michelle Alexander  NEW YORK TIMES


"We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak,” the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. declared at Riverside Church in Manhattan in 1967., John C. Goodwin

On April 4, 1967, exactly one year before his assassination, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stepped up to the lectern at the Riverside Church in Manhattan. The United States had been in active combat in Vietnam for two years and tens of thousands of people had been killed, including some 10,000 American troops. The political establishment — from left to right — backed the war, and more than 400,000 American service members were in Vietnam, their lives on the line.
Many of King’s strongest allies urged him to remain silent about the war or at least to soft-pedal any criticism. They knew that if he told the whole truth about the unjust and disastrous war he would be falsely labeled a Communist, suffer retaliation and severe backlash, alienate supporters and threaten the fragile progress of the civil rights movement.
King rejected all the well-meaning advice and said, “I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice.” Quoting a statement by the Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam, he said, “A time comes when silence is betrayal” and added, “that time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.”

It was a lonely, moral stance. And it cost him. But it set an example of what is required of us if we are to honor our deepest values in times of crisis, even when silence would better serve our personal interests or the communities and causes we hold most dear. It’s what I think about when I go over the excuses and rationalizations that have kept me largely silent on one of the great moral challenges of our time: the crisis in Israel-Palestine.

I have not been alone. Until very recently, the entire Congress has remained mostly silent on the human rights nightmare that has unfolded in the occupied territories. Our elected representatives, who operate in a political environment where Israel's political lobby holds well-documented power, have consistently minimized and deflected criticism of the State of Israel, even as it has grown more emboldened in its occupation of Palestinian territory and adopted some practices reminiscent of apartheid in South Africa and Jim Crow segregation in the United States.

Many civil rights activists and organizations have remained silent as well, not because they lack concern or sympathy for the Palestinian people, but because they fear loss of funding from foundations, and false charges of anti-Semitism. They worry, as I once did, that their important social justice work will be compromised or discredited by smear campaigns.

Similarly, many students are fearful of expressing support for Palestinian rights because of the McCarthyite tactics of secret organizations like Canary Mission, which blacklists those who publicly dare to support boycotts against Israel, jeopardizing their employment prospects and future careers.

Reading King’s speech at Riverside more than 50 years later, I am left with little doubt that his teachings and message require us to speak out passionately against the human rights crisis in Israel-Palestine, despite the risks and despite the complexity of the issues. King argued, when speaking of Vietnam, that even “when the issues at hand seem as perplexing as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict,” we must not be mesmerized by uncertainty. “We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.”

And so, if we are to honor King’s message and not merely the man, we must condemn Israel’s actions: unrelenting violations of international law, continued occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, home demolitions and land confiscations. We must cry out at the treatment of Palestinians at checkpoints, the routine searches of their homes and restrictions on their movements, and the severely limited access to decent housing, schools, food, hospitals and water that many of them face.

We must not tolerate Israel’s refusal even to discuss the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes, as prescribed by United Nations resolutions, and we ought to question the U.S. government funds that have supported multiple hostilities and thousands of civilian casualties in Gaza, as well as the $38 billion the U.S. government has pledged in military support to Israel.

And finally, we must, with as much courage and conviction as we can muster, speak out against the system of legal discrimination that exists inside Israel, a system complete with, according to Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, more than 50 laws that discriminate against Palestinians — such as the new nation-state law that says explicitly that only Jewish Israelis have the right of self-determination in Israel, ignoring the rights of the Arab minority that makes up 21 percent of the population.

Of course, there will be those who say that we can’t know for sure what King would do or think regarding Israel-Palestine today. That is true. The evidence regarding King’s views on Israel is complicated and contradictory.
Although the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee denounced Israel’s actions against Palestinians, King found himself conflicted. Like many black leaders of the time, he recognized European Jewry as a persecuted, oppressed and homeless people striving to build a nation of their own, and he wanted to show solidarity with the Jewish community, which had been a critically important ally in the civil rights movement.

Ultimately, King canceled a pilgrimage to Israel in 1967 after Israel captured the West Bank. During a phone call about the visit with his advisers, he said, “I just think that if I go, the Arab world, and of course Africa and Asia for that matter, would interpret this as endorsing everything that Israel has done, and I do have questions of doubt.”
He continued to support Israel’s right to exist but also said on national television that it would be necessary for Israel to return parts of its conquered territory to achieve true peace and security and to avoid exacerbating the conflict. There was no way King could publicly reconcile his commitment to nonviolence and justice for all people, everywhere, with what had transpired after the 1967 war.

Today, we can only speculate about where King would stand. Yet I find myself in agreement with the historian Robin D.G. Kelley, who concluded that, if King had the opportunity to study the current situation in the same way he had studied Vietnam, “his unequivocal opposition to violence, colonialism, racism and militarism would have made him an incisive critic of Israel’s current policies.”
Indeed, King’s views may have evolved alongside many other spiritually grounded thinkers, like Rabbi Brian Walt, who has spoken publicly about the reasons that he abandoned his faith in what he viewed as political Zionism. To him, he recently explained to me, liberal Zionism meant that he believed in the creation of a Jewish state that would be a desperately needed safe haven and cultural center for Jewish people around the world, "a state that would reflect as well as honor the highest ideals of the Jewish tradition.” He said he grew up in South Africa in a family that shared those views and identified as a liberal Zionist, until his experiences in the occupied territories forever changed him.

During more than 20 visits to the West Bank and Gaza, he saw horrific human rights abuses, including Palestinian homes being bulldozed while people cried — children's toys strewn over one demolished site — and saw Palestinian lands being confiscated to make way for new illegal settlements subsidized by the Israeli government. He was forced to reckon with the reality that these demolitions, settlements and acts of violent dispossession were not rogue moves, but fully supported and enabled by the Israeli military. For him, the turning point was witnessing legalized discrimination against Palestinians — including streets for Jews only — which, he said, was worse in some ways than what he had witnessed as a boy in South Africa.
Not so long ago, it was fairly rare to hear this perspective. That is no longer the case.
Jewish Voice for Peace, for example, aims to educate the American public about “the forced displacement of approximately 750,000 Palestinians that began with Israel’s establishment and that continues to this day.” Growing numbers of people of all faiths and backgrounds have spoken out with more boldness and courage. American organizations such as If Not Now support young American Jews as they struggle to break the deadly silence that still exists among too many people regarding the occupation, and hundreds of secular and faith-based groups have joined the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights.

In view of these developments, it seems the days when critiques of Zionism and the actions of the State of Israel can be written off as anti-Semitism are coming to an end. There seems to be increased understanding that criticism of the policies and practices of the Israeli government is not, in itself, anti-Semitic.

This is not to say that anti-Semitism is not real. Neo-Nazism is resurging in Germany within a growing anti-immigrant movement. Anti-Semitic incidents in the United States rose 57 percent in 2017, and many of us are still mourning what is believed to be the deadliest attack on Jewish people in American history. We must be mindful in this climate that, while criticism of Israel is not inherently anti-Semitic, it can slide there.
Fortunately, people like the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II are leading by example, pledging allegiance to the fight against anti-Semitism while also demonstrating unwavering solidarity with the Palestinian people struggling to survive under Israeli occupation.

He declared in a riveting speech last year that we cannot talk about justice without addressing the displacement of native peoples, the systemic racism of colonialism and the injustice of government repression. In the same breath he said: “I want to say, as clearly as I know how, that the humanity and the dignity of any person or people cannot in any way diminish the humanity and dignity of another person or another people. To hold fast to the image of God in every person is to insist that the Palestinian child is as precious as the Jewish child.”

Guided by this kind of moral clarity, faith groups are taking action. In 2016, the pension board of the United Methodist Church excluded from its multibillion-dollar pension fund Israeli banks whose loans for settlement construction violate international law. Similarly, the United Church of Christ the year before passed a resolution calling for divestments and boycotts of companies that profit from Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories.

Even in Congress, change is on the horizon. For the first time, two sitting members, Representatives Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, and Rashida Tlaib, Democrat of Michigan, publicly support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. In 2017, Representative Betty McCollum, Democrat of Minnesota, introduced a resolution to ensure that no U.S. military aid went to support Israel’s juvenile military detention system. Israel regularly prosecutes Palestinian children detainees in the occupied territories in military court.

None of this is to say that the tide has turned entirely or that retaliation has ceased against those who express strong support for Palestinian rights. To the contrary, just as King received fierce, overwhelming criticism for his speech condemning the Vietnam War — 168 major newspapers, including The Times, denounced the address the following day — those who speak publicly in support of the liberation of the Palestinian people still risk condemnation and backlash.

Bahia Amawi, an American speech pathologist of Palestinian descent, was recently terminated for refusing to sign a contract that contains an anti-boycott pledge stating that she does not, and will not, participate in boycotting the State of Israel. In November, Marc Lamont Hill was fired from CNN for giving a speech in support of Palestinian rights that was grossly misinterpreted as expressing support for violenceCanary Mission continues to pose a serious threat to student activists.

And just over a week ago, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute in Alabama, apparently under pressure mainly from segments of the Jewish community and others, rescinded an honor it bestowed upon the civil rights icon Angela Davis, who has been a vocal critic of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and supports B.D.S.

But that attack backfired. Within 48 hours, academics and activists had mobilized in response. The mayor of Birmingham, Randall Woodfin, as well as the Birmingham School Board and the City Council, expressed outrage at the institute’s decision. The council unanimously passed a resolution in Davis’ honor, and an alternative event is being organized to celebrate her decades-long commitment to liberation for all.
I cannot say for certain that King would applaud Birmingham for its zealous defense of Angela Davis’s solidarity with Palestinian people. But I do. In this new year, I aim to speak with greater courage and conviction about injustices beyond our borders, particularly those that are funded by our government, and stand in solidarity with struggles for democracy and freedom. My conscience leaves me no other choice.


Michelle Alexander became a New York Times columnist in 2018. She is a civil rights lawyer and advocate, legal scholar and author of “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.” 

Socialist Anti-utopia By Nicolas Maduro Moros on January 19, 2019

Socialist Anti-utopia

By Nicolas Maduro Moros on January 19, 2019
Photo: Marco Bello
They fight for a socialism that doesn’t exist. They fight against an anti-utopia that doesn’t belong to anyone. They imagine a world without family, without order, without market, without freedom. The right-wing liberals of the world invented a ghost, hung the sign of socialism on it and now they are seeing it everywhere, above all, and every now and then in Venezuela. But enough is enough.
Because the socialism they fight against, is not the one which we, the inclusive democracies, full of people, want to implement in the 21st century. Our socialism is a particular one, popular and deeply Latin American. As we clearly stated during the United Nations Assembly last September, ours is an autonomous project of democratic revolution, of social demand, it is a model and a path of its own that is based on our own history and culture.
And of course, our democracy is different because it was founded neither by nor for the elites, as were the liberal democracies of Europe and the United States. We rebelled against that model and that is why we proposed, 20 years ago, a democracy of ours, based on the sovereign heart of the Venezuelan people.
What happened is that, at the end of the twentieth century, when in Latin America we came out of the period of dictatorships promoted by the United States, they tried, with the idea of liberal democracy, to wrap us a gift package – like a Trojan horse – with all the values of their own concept of modernity. But we want to tell you that here in Latin America we also have an identity and values, and that we want to wrap our own values in our democracy, rather than those of others. It is not just for the benefit of the individual and capital but those of solidarity and community. For us the homeland is that.
We have learned the lesson, for it had happened to us for centuries. Instead of enriching their own culture with that of the outside, Latin American elites and their liberal fashions permanently tried to re-discover Europe in the heart of America. Destroying  along the way everything that seems different. Elites for whom the rest of us, the Indian and the black, we were considered the monkey before the human.
We fervently believe in our Latin American democracy, because we believe and work in Venezuela with three fundamentals that are essential and necessary: First, because we carry out elections systematically and peacefully. During the past 20 years we have held 25 elections, all of them endorsed by national and international institutions and political observers. Some of these elections we have won overwhelmingly, others we have lost. Second, because in the citizens of Venezuela, through the mechanisms of direct democracy, fundamentally with neighborhood organizations and political parties, have access to and have control over public resources. And third because in Venezuela it is the people who rule, not the elites. Before me Chávez governed, a soldier of black and Indian descent who became the father of the country. Today Venezuela is governed – and for six years – by a modest trade unionist and bus driver. In Venezuela it is the people who govern themselves, because it was their Constituent Assembly that conceived and wrote their own constitution.
We are not and do not want to be a model of democracy. We are, on the other hand, the democracy that defined and defends its people, the one that goes forward in a daily effort against lies and false positives. An imperfect democracy that works day by day to be everyone’s and one that is fairer.

Source: La Jornada. Translation, Resumen Latinoamericano, North America bureau.

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