California Free Press

Off the Top of My Head

Peace is Not Just the Absence of War

by John Lawrence

As an advocate for a Department of Peace, I do not advocate eliminating the Department of War (Defense Department) altogether. I think both are necessary but in a more balanced way. Most efforts toward peace in the world should take place outside the arena of war, that is as a preventative to war. This includes economic development in parts of the world that are liable to gang control. In fact I would advocate the use of the US military to go after the gangs that are controlling certain parts of the world, for example in Mexico where gangs are trafficking humans to the US border and controlling the inflow of drugs into the US. Haiti is another candidate for the use of the US military to eliminate the gangs while the Peace Corps is helping with economic development. In areas of the world that don't have mature institutions that can provide security for the populace, the US military could provide that while the Peace Corps is building infrastructure. The two should operate hand in hand. What China is doing with its Belt and Road Initiative is instructive. China is winning friends and influencing people by building infrastructure in many parts of the world. But much more needs to be done that China is not doing. Low level infrastructure such as clean water and sanitation needs to be built out. Approximately half the world does not have clean water or adequate sanitation facilities.  3.6 billion people are still living with poor-quality toilets that damage their health and pollute their environment. Inadequate sanitation systems spread human waste into rivers, lakes and soil, contaminating water resources.China is building high level infrastructure such as ports, railroads and trains. The US should complement their efforts.

There are around 750 U.S. military bases in at least 80 countries. Most of these bases are unnecessary and represent a waste of money. They are also sitting ducks for attacks by the likes of ISIS. They should be eliminated and the resources redirected elsewhere. With US sea borne and satellite military resources there is no need for land based resources. The efforts should instead be put into developing  infrastructure both in terms of economics and in terms of political institutions. What is important is helping to create stable institutions in parts of the world where instability results in chaos ^e.g. Haiti. Also if life was good in countries where there is a lack of stability and economic development, people would not be flocking to the US and European borders and asking for asylum. So military assets as well as Peace Corps assets could work hand in hand. Once war breaks out these efforts at creating peace in the first place are useless. A Department of Peace needs to have a diplomatic aspect as well as the Peace Corps division. Also person to person exchanges help to build understanding. In fact the largest efforts need to be made with those who are considered our worst enemies.

As an anti-war protester in the 1960s, I am still one today. Peace efforts or efforts at creating peace in the world today do have both an economic and a military component. In some countries peace workers would be slaughtered by gangs if they weren't adequately protected by the US military while they go about doing their jobs. So while I am anti war, I am not anti military. I just think that the balance of human and financial resources is completely out of whack. Less money and manpower (womanpower?) needs to be devoted to the military and more money and womanpower needs to be devoted to the Department of Peace which should include the Peace Corps (economic development), the diplomatic corps (institutional development)  and exchange corps ( person to person friendship). Less effort needs to be spent on proving to the rest of the world that the US way is the best way and more effort needs to be spent on creating stable societies with the economic and institutional resources so that people in all parts of the world can have comfortable and secure lives.

Bringing the rest of the world up to economic and institutional speed is of utmost importance today because, unless the whole world is operating cooperatively, it will be impossible to do much about our common enemy - global warming. In fact we have met the enemy and it is us. Economic development in the developed world has proceeded in such a way as to have created the global warming crisis. Now it must proceed in such a way as to eliminate it. Sustainable development and environmental responsibility should be the order of the day. Countries that have vast fossil fuel resources have no incentive to curtail the economic development of those resources if they are considered to be pariah nations by the rest of the world. Nations that are considered pariah nations have no incentive to convert from war time expenditures to peace time expenditures if they are not brought into the community of nations in a respectful way. Nations that are at war right now have no incentive to negotiate a peaceful resolution if their interests and concerns are not taken into account.

Off the Top of My Head

The World's Policeman Cannot Even Police Its Own Borders

by John Lawrence

The U.S. has about 750 military bases across 80 countries in the world and had deployed 173,000 troops in 159 different countries as of July 2021. Yet it can't patrol or defend its own borders. This is the height of ridiculousness. While Congress persons debate some Rube Goldberg solution to border security, the Biden administration should do this if it wants to neutralize Trump's stand on border security: the Democrat policy should be "not one illegal border crossing should be tolerated. We stand for increasing legal immigration while decreasing illegal immigration to ZERO." The US spends more on defense than the next 10 countries combined, and yet is willing to tolerate people entering the country illegally. What a joke! If Biden wants to defeat Trump, he should take this issue away from him by declaring that his goal is: NOT ONE ILLEGAL ENTRY INTO THE UNITED STATES.

This means that, instead of spending money on 750 military bases in 80 countries all over the world, the US needs to spend money instead on policing its own border including, but not limited to, physical barriers. In addition there must be electronic barriers, satellite surveillance, and other sophisticated means of surveillance. Why not use AI, the supposed cure all for everything that ails us. Why not put 10 or 100 of those military bases circling the world right on the US border? To be clear I am not advocating withdrawing from being involved in world affairs, but that involvement which is manifested in being the world's policeman has got to change. It has been of very little value if you add it all up. The US can effectively patrol the whole world anyway from the sky, from space and from the sea. It doesn't need land based military bases. The US should be involved in the world by expanding its Peace Corp, building infrastructure like China is with its Belt and Road Initiative and mitigating climate change in vulnerable countries. In other words the US should be a force for good in the world not just a force for preserving US interests or the status quo.

Three U.S. soldiers were killed on January 28, 2024 in Jordan, while more than 40 other service members were injured following an uncrewed aerial system attack at a military base near the Syrian border. Then of course the US has to retaliate to avenge the deaths of those soldiers. Soldiers on many of these bases are sitting ducks and are provocative to those seeking to damage US interests.Yet the role of the US as the world's policeman is not even debated by politicians and probably won't be as the election season heats up. Instead the border debate is a big deal as it should be. Biden needs to assert that his goal is that not one person should enter the US illegally, but that legal immigration should be expanded. He should outTrump Trump on border security if he wants to be elected, and, while he is at it, he should demand that at least 25% of the bloated military budget which amounts to about a trillion dollars a year be redirected to border security. There is no reason why the US should not have the most sophisticated border security system in the world.

Off the Top of My Head

The Bipartisan Senate Border Legislation is Not Sufficient Even if Passed

by John Lawrence

Simply put it doesn't go far enough, and I'm a Democrat and a supporter of President Biden. I've written previously that Biden should go full Trump at the border. This vaunted Senate bill, that Trump doesn't want the House to take up and implement, is a step in the right direction. However, it doesn't address the fact that it doesn't really secure the border. It deals with what to do after people enter the country illegally and getting them processed more quickly. It has a provision that the border can be shut down after the number of illegal entries reaches 5000 people a week. Really? The goal should be zero illegal border crossings. In order to do that, security at the border needs to be stepped up. Although a border wall has become a political football, a wall in and of itself is necessary but not sufficient. There should be no place where someone can just walk across the border. There is already a wall along much of the border. It needs to be strengthened, but, more importantly, it needs to be augmented by electronic means including satellite surveillance. The national guard needs to be deployed because the border patrol does not have sufficient manpower to deal with the situation there. More manpower along the border is of utmost importance.

Here's an alternative. People seeking asylum should be required to apply with an app on their phone while remaining in Mexico or another country or to apply at a legal port of entry. People entering the country illegally should not be tolerated. Anyone entering illegally should be instructed to apply for asylum through the app or at a port of entry and immediately deported or at least denied entry onto American soil. They shouldn't be allowed to remain in the US until their case is heard. In fact their cases could be heard while they wait in a third country, not in the US. The point is that illegally entering the country and applying for asylum shouldn't be tolerated. The Senate bill allocates a lot of money for more judges and more ways to speed up asylum hearings so that cases can be decided in 6 months rather than 6 years as is the present case. This is an improvement over the present situation but not good enough. More money needs to be spent on securing the border itself rather than in processing people who have entered having crossed the border illegally. It's a question of how to best spend money to resolve the situation, Rather than spending more money processing people who have entered illegally, border security should be beefed up making it very difficult if not impossible for people to enter illegally in the first place.

Stepping up border security dos not prevent people from applying for asylum, and, therefore, does not violate the asylum law. It just channels potential asylum seekers to apply for asylum in a manner other than crossing the border illegally and then asking for asylum. Now Trump would just deport everyone crossing the border illegally and the hell with the asylum law. He just would give them no path to entry. However, when someone from abroad applies for asylum, they are not guaranteed that, even if they do qualify and are successful, they will necessarily wind up in the US. So right now what is important is border security in and of itself. All the other talk about a pathway to citizenship and all the other aspects of immigration and naturalization that Democrats want to throw into the mix, those things, while important, are not of paramount importance right now. Border security is. In that respect the Senate bill was apropos. On the other hand legal immigration is important. Most Americans are for legal immigration and so am I. However, it needs to be in an orderly process, not the chaotic situation of people crossing into the US because of a porous border. No other country would tolerate it and neither should the US.

Off the Top of My Head

Many Essential Workers are Undocumented

by John Lawrence, September 12, 2020

Trump said: "When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. ... They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists." Guess what else they are? Essential workers. Most essential agricultural workers are undocumented. Immigrant field workers have been told to keep working despite stay-at-home directives, and given letters attesting to their “critical” role in feeding the country. They live in fear of being deported despite the fact that America now calls them "heroes." Heroes work here, and most of them are undocumented. They are ordered to go to work and risk getting COVID for minimum wages. What's wrong with this picture. Trump is in effect saying well OK you can stay for now as long as you keep picking our vegetables and packing our meat.

The New York Times reported:

For many workers, the fact that they are now considered both illegal and essential is an irony that is not lost on them, nor is it for employers who have long had to navigate a legal thicket to maintain a work force in the fields.

“It’s sad that it takes a health crisis like this to highlight the farmworkers’ importance,” said Hector Lujan, chief executive of Reiter Brothers, a large family-owned berry grower based in Oxnard, Calif., that also has operations in Florida and the Pacific Northwest.

Mr. Lujan, whose company employs thousands of field workers, described them as unsung heroes for guaranteeing that Americans have food security.

“Maybe one of the benefits of this crisis is that they are recognized and come out of the shadows,” said Mr. Lujan, whose company has been lobbying Congress to pass a bill that would legalize immigrant farmworkers.

About half of all crop hands in the United States, more than one million, are undocumented immigrants, according to the Agriculture Department. Growers and labor contractors estimate that the share is closer to 75 percent.

In addition to picking our vegetables and packing our meat, undocumented workers are also employed heavily in the construction and leisure and hospitality industries. They are building houses and cleaning hotel rooms in large numbers. So far from being a crisis in illegal immigration as Trump suggests, undocumented workers are keeping what remains of the US economy running in the age of COVID and taking chances with their lives in doing so. Oh and by the way they pay American taxes with no hope of ever getting social security. So when is Trump going to put up a big sign on his "wall" that says "Thank you Mexican workers for bailing out the US economy and keeping the food chain up and running."

Pew Research Center estimates that about 11.3 million people are currently living in the U.S. without authorization, down from a peak of 12.2 million in 2007. More than half come from Mexico, and about 15 percent come from other parts Latin America. CBS News reported:

Further studies show that the importance of this population of workers will only grow in coming years. For example, in 2014, unauthorized immigrants made up 24 percent of maids and cleaners, an occupation expected to need 112,000 more workers by 2024. In construction, the number of additional laborers needed is estimated at close to 150,000. And while only 4 percent of personal care and home health aides are undocumented, the U.S. will soon require more than 800,000 people to fill the jobs necessary to take care of retiring baby boomers.

So Trump can demonize "illegal aliens" all he wants to gain political points. Let's see his supporters who are irate about losing their jobs go to work in the fields picking vegetables and working in meat packing plants after all the undocumented workers are sent back to Mexico. And after he has exacerbated the relationship with China where American corporations have sent all the American manufacturing jobs, let's see if Americans will still have access to all the products they consume which are manufactured there. It sure didn't help that in the initial stages of the pandemic critical supplies were unavailable because most of them were manufactured in China. Antagonizing essential workers in the American economy as well as the US' major trading partner will only land up the US in a pickle in which not only food but consumer goods might be unavailable in the future.

Off the Top of My Head

Crisis at the Border

by John Lawrence, July 8, 2019

The temporary solution is simple: they arrive in busloads. It's intolerable that they are kept here in the US under horrible conditions. So... bus them back as fast as they arrive. Humanitarian crisis solved! They are being brought here by human traffickers. They are not arriving due to spontaneous decisions to walk to America. They are coming basically to escape poverty. The US asylum laws were never meant to deal with a situation like this. They are being flaunted by people who arrive on US soil and ask for asylum. Then according to law they have to be given a court date months or years away. In the meantime they melt into US society and never show up for their court date. They are relying on the dysfunctionality of the US government to do anything coherent. The immigration situation could have been resolved years ago, but US government is totally incapable of doing anything rational.

Having said all that, here's the more comprehensive solution. The US should work with Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador to rid those countries of the gangs which are threatening the people and giving them a plausible excuse to become migrants. The US needs to allocate a large amount of financial resources to those countries, and even have a physical military presence on the ground. Think about it. The military never does anything constructive like rooting out M-13 and other gangs that are involved in the drug traffic with the US and with committing violence towards indigenous people. The US has been involved in various coups in Central and South America at the behest of the oil and exploitive industries, American corporations and right wing dictators, but never on the side of the people to improve conditions in their lives. It's only the lefties who have tried to improve conditions of the hoi polloi. US forces have only served right wing regimes and American corporations seeking to exploit resources.

Medium reports:

At the margins of the mainstream discursive stalemate over immigration lies over a century of historical U.S. intervention that politicians and pundits on both sides of the aisle seem determined to silence. Since Theodore Roosevelt in 1904 declared the U.S.’s right to exercise an “international police power” in Latin America, the U.S. has cut deep wounds throughout the region, leaving scars that will last for generations to come. This history of intervention is inextricable from the contemporary Central American crisis of internal and international displacement and migration.

The liberal rhetoric of inclusion and common humanity is insufficient: we must also acknowledge the role that a century of U.S.-backed military coups, corporate plundering, and neoliberal sapping of resources has played in the poverty, instability, and violence that now drives people from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras toward Mexico and the United States. For decades, U.S. policies of military intervention and economic neoliberalism have undermined democracy and stability in the region, creating vacuums of power in which drug cartels and paramilitary alliances have risen. In the past fifteen years alone, CAFTA-DR — a free trade agreement between the U.S. and five Central American countries as well as the Dominican Republic — has restructured the region’s economy and guaranteed economic dependence on the United States through massive trade imbalances and the influx of American agricultural and industrial goods that weaken domestic industries. Yet there are few connections being drawn between the weakening of Central American rural agricultural economies at the hands of CAFTA and the rise in migration from the region in the years since. In general, the U.S. takes no responsibility for the conditions that drive Central American migrants to the border.

The interventions of the US on the side of right wing dictators and American corporations in El Salvador are too numerous to mention. Suffice it to say that the dates are 1932, 1944, 1960, 1980-1992, 1990, 2006, 2014, 2015. These included massacres of civilian women and children by right wing dictators with full US support. In Honduras there have been numerous interventions in support of Dole foods and Chiquita bananas, US owned corporations.

1980s: In an attempt to curtail the influence of left-wing movements in Central America, the Reagan administration stations thousands of troops in Honduras to train Contra right-wing rebels in their guerrilla war against Nicaragua’s Sandinistas. U.S. military aid reaches $77.5 million in 1984. Meanwhile, trade liberalization policies open Honduras to the interests of global capital and disrupt traditional forms of agriculture.

2009: Left-leaning and democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya, who pursued progressive policies such as raising the minimum wage and subsidizing public transportation, is exiled in a military coup. The coup is staged after Zelaya announces intentions to hold a referendum on the replacement of the 1982 constitution, which had been written during the end of the reign of U.S.-backed military dictator Policarpo Paz García. Honduran General Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, a graduate of the U.S. Army training program known as the School of the Americas (nicknamed “School of Assassins”), leads the coup. The United States, under Hillary Clinton’s Department of State, refuses to join international calls for the “immediate and unconditional return” of Zelaya.

Guatemala:

1954: Fearing the Guatemalan government’s steps toward agrarian reform and under the influence of United Fruit propagandist Edward Bernays, President Eisenhower authorizes the CIA to overthrow democratically elected President Jacobo Árbenz, ending an unprecedented ten years of democratic rule in the country, colloquially known as the “ten years of spring.” In Árbenz’s place, the U.S. installs Carlos Castillo Armas, whose authoritarian government rolls back land reforms and cracks down on peasant and workers’ movements.

1965: The CIA issues Green Berets and other counterinsurgency advisors to aid the authoritarian government in its repression of left-wing movements recruiting peasants in the name of “struggle against the government and the landowners.” State Department counterinsurgency advisor Charles Maechling Jr. would later describe the U.S.’s “direct complicity” in Guatemalan war crimes, which he compared to the “methods of Heinrich Himmler’s extermination squads.”

1971: Amnesty International finds that 7,000 civilian dissidents have been “disappeared” under the government of U.S.-backed Carlos Arana, nicknamed “the butcher of Zacapa” for his brutality.

It just goes on and on. Most recently, the good ol American playbook of supporting right wing turnovers of democratically elected regimes didn't turn out so good for US interests in Venezuela where American supported Juan Guaido failed to oust Maduro.

Why aren't American politicians, the American media and the American people studying this history? Oh, I know: they are too busy watching vacuous and inane TV shows and attending sporting events when they are not buying new cars or pleasuring themselves in a multitude of other ways. Or listening to Trump's inane tweets which lead politicians like Joshua Gardner, a career DOJ attorney to utter "I am doing my absolute best to figure out what's going on."

It's just too much to ask that the US government stop supporting right wing murderous dictatorships and start alleviating the conditions which led to the migration crises from these Central American countries. But maybe AOC and the other Congressional members of Latin American descent can finally come to grips with this terrible history perpetrated by the US government and the CIA against the people of Central and South America and lead the way to an America which facilitates retribution and economic development for the people themselves. Or perhaps that will be left up to China with its Belt and Road Initiative. In just a decade, trade between China and Latin America has multiplied more than 20 times as regional partners have signed hundreds of agreements and broken ground on dozens of key energy, transport and infrastructure projects in strategic locations. China better watch out. The US doesn't appreciate them or anyone else doing some good in its own back yard.

Ocasio-Cortez Details 'Horrifying' Conditions at Migrant Detention Facility

Congresswoman said people were ‘drinking out of toilets’ and denounced alleged sexual threats by CBP officers towards her

 

• From the Guardian

Tom McCarthyin New York

 @TeeMcSee

 

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Mon 1 Jul 2019 20.57 EDTFirst published on Mon 1 Jul 2019 17.45 EDT

 

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 Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at the border with congressman Joaquin Castro, whose brother Julian is running for president. Photograph: Christ Chavez/Getty Images

Following a visit to a migrant detention center in Texas on Monday, the New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called conditions “horrifying” and denounced sexualized threats against her – allegedly made by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers – in the lead-up to the visit.

Ocasio-Cortez and Democratic colleagues were en route to a facility in Clint, Texas, when ProPublica revealed the existence of a secret Facebook group, branded as a forum for CBP officers, with 9,500 members, some of whom ProPublica linked to public Facebook pages for verified officers.

The numbers game: how migrants at the border await their fate

 

 

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Posts in the Facebook group included one that encouraged officers to throw a “burrito at these bitches”, one saying “Fuck the hoes”, one saying “There should be no photo ops for these scum buckets”, and one depicting Ocasio-Cortez engaged in oral sex at a detention center. Another post questioned the veracity of a recently published photo of a drowned father and daughter in the Rio Grande.

“9,500 CBP officers sharing memes about dead migrants and discussing violence and sexual misconduct towards members of Congress,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted in reaction to the report. “How on earth can CBP’s culture be trusted to care for refugees humanely? PS I have no plans to change my itinerary & will visit the CBP station today.”

What Ocasio-Cortez saw inside the facility, which has been plagued by recent reports of abusive treatment of detained children, was “horrifying”, she tweeted.

She reported officers forcing women to drink out of toilets:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

 

✔@AOC

 

 

Just left the 1st CBP facility.

I see why CBP officers were being so physically &sexually threatening towards me.

Officers were keeping women in cells w/ no water & had told them to drink out of the toilets.

This was them on their GOOD behavior in front of members of Congress.

 

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Ocasio-Cortez said she saw officers making light of conditions inside the facility:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

 

✔@AOC

 

 

Now I’ve seen the inside of these facilities.

It’s not just the kids. It’s everyone. People drinking out of toilets, officers laughing in front of members Congress.

I brought it up to their superiors. They said “officers are under stress & act out sometimes.” No accountability.

 

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She said detainees told her officers were abusing them:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

 

✔@AOC

 

 

After I forced myself into a cell w/ women&began speaking to them, one of them described their treatment at the hands of officers as “psychological warfare” - waking them at odd hours for no reason, calling them wh*res, etc.

Tell me what about that is due to a “lack of funding?”

 

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With serial visits by Democratic presidential candidates and elected officials to migrant detention centers in recent days, the Trump administration has forcefully rejected claims of systemic abuse of detainees, calling them “unsubstantiated”.

Late on Monday, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (Ice) confirmed the death in their custody of a 30-year-old Honduran man, Yimi Alexis Balderramos-Torres, marking the sixth person to die in ICE custody since October 2018. The death was first reported by BuzzFeed News.

Democratic congressman Joaquin Castro, who also visited the centers, tweeted footage of a crowded cell, writing that some detainees had been separated from their children:

 

Joaquin Castro

 

✔@JoaquinCastrotx

 

 

This moment captures what it’s like for women in CBP custody to share a cramped cell—some held for 50 days—for them to be denied showers for up to 15 days and life-saving medication. For some, it also means being separated from their children. This is El Paso Border Station #1.

 

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As Ocasio-Cortez visited the Texas facility, NBC News revealed an internal Department of Homeland Security report that said conditions inside an El Paso center were so dire that as early as May, border agents were arming themselves against possible riots.

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Inspectors at the facility noted “only four showers were available for 756 immigrants, more than half of the immigrants were being held outside, and immigrants inside were being kept in cells maxed out at more than five times their capacity”, NBC reported.

“A cell meant for a maximum of 35 held 155 adult males with only one toilet and sink. The cell was so crowded the men could not lie down to sleep,” the report went on. “With limited access to showers and clean clothing, detainees were wearing soiled clothing for days or weeks.”

The Department of Homeland Security did not reply to a request for comment.

At a news conference last week, the homeland security secretary, Kevin McAleenan, assured the public that the detention centers were “clean and well managed”, despite a legal report that documented children inside the centers given insufficient food and wearing soiled clothing and diapers.

Drowned father and daughter mourned in private El Salvador ceremony

 

 

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“All of this received relatively little attention and little action until this past week on the Hill,” McAleenan said. “But unsubstantiated allegations regarding a single border patrol facility in Clint station in Texas created a sensation.”

However, the California congresswoman Judy Chu, also on the trip with Ocasio-Cortez, said she met a woman who had been told by a border agent: “If you want water, just drink from a toilet.”

“These are the same CBP personnel who threatened to throw burritos at members of Congress,” Chu tweeted. “Changes must be made.”

Ocasio-Cortez tweeted that migrants were being treated “like animals”.

She wrote: “This has been horrifying so far. It is hard to understate the enormity of the problem. We’re talking systemic cruelty [with] a dehumanizing culture that treats them like animals.”

Off the Top of My Head

The US Creates the Migrant Situation in Latin America

by John Lawrence, February 3, 2019

Here's the playbook: 1) The US identifies a regime it doesn't like such as the Maduro regime in Venezuela. 2) The US applies economic sanctions. 3) The economy is ruined. 4) People flee the country looking for a better life. 5) Migrants show up at US border. 5) Trump builds a wall to keep them out.

If the US played a more constructive role in Latin America instead of promoting regime change such as the CIA backed coups in Argentina, Peru, El Salvador and Guatemala, there might be fewer economic migrants showing up at the US border. Some of these regimes that were overthrown were democratically elected. The US doesn't care. They were more interested in protecting the interests of United Fruit Corporation.

In the case of Venezuela there is a new twist. China is heavily invested in Venezuela's oil production. Venezuela has the highest know oil reserves in the world. However, US National Security Advisor John Bolton wants Venezuela's oil. He told Fox News: “It will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela." Well, Dick Cheney wanted Iraq's oil too especially when Saddam Hussein threatened to trade it for currencies other than the US dollar. How did that work out? Never mind that oil should be left in the ground and not exploited economically if the earth is to survive climate change.

Hugo Chavez wanted to use Venezuela's oil riches to benefit the people of Venezuela. But due to mismanagement the oil industry went downhill. Then he died. Maduro took over with the same goal, but hasn't been able to pull it off. Meanwhile, the US applied economic pressure through sanctions. Reuters reported last September:

Venezuela has sold 9.9 percent of shares in oil joint venture Sinovensa to a Chinese oil company, President Nicolas Maduro said on Tuesday, adding the OPEC nation expected some $5 billion in joint investment with China to boost its crude output.

He did not say how much Venezuela received or which company bought the shares in Sinovensa, which is partly owned by state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC). China will own 49 percent in Sinovensa after the sale, he said.

Maduro traveled to China, his key foreign financier, last week in search of fresh funds for his cash-starved government, which is presiding over a grueling economic depression. But it remains unclear whether he secured any new credit lines.

Maduro said the Sinovensa sale formed part of plan to invest $5 billion over the next year in Chinese projects to double oil production and be able to send a million barrels per day to China. Venezuela’s oil production is at a 60-year low after years of little investment and crumbling infrastructure. ...

Over a decade, China invested over $50 billion in Venezuela through oil-for-loan agreements, securing energy supplies for its fast-growing economy while bolstering an anti-U.S. ally in Latin America....

Maduro on Tuesday said he could count on China as an ally to survive an “economic war” he accuses the United States of waging against Venezuela. U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has levied several rounds of sanctions on Maduro’s government.

So the US will have to confront China if it wants to take over Venezuela's oil fields. The US better be careful as to how it treats Latin American migrants. It seems they're the only potential friends the US has in Latin America. For the rest, it's "Yankee Go Home." Seriously though, the US could play a positive role by helping to take out the drug gangs and supporting the economies of Latin American countries instead of seeking to destroy them in order to effect regime change. It has provoked China enough already with the sanctions it applied to Huawei and other Chinese corporations for selling things to Iran. Not to mention the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou. The US is definitely poking the bear, but this time the bear is China, not Russia.

Ripping Into Trump for Treating Children Worse Than Seized Property, Judge Orders Reunification of Separated Families

Published on Wednesday, June 27, 2018 by Common Dreams

"This ruling is an enormous victory for parents and children who thought they may never see each other again."

by Jessica Corbett, staff writer

 

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Protesters walked though the streets of El Paso, Texas on June 21, 2018 to protest against the Trump administration's immigration policies. (Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

A federal judge in San Diego, California ruled late Tuesday that the more than 2,000 migrant children separated from their parents under the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy must be reunited with their families within 30 days—and children under age 5 must be returned to parents within two weeks.

"This ruling is an enormous victory for parents and children who thought they may never see each other again," declared Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, which fought for the families in court. "Tears will be flowing in detention centers across the country when the families learn they will be reunited."

<

📣 The judge ruled that the Trump administration must reunite separated families within 30 days, and children under 5 must be reunited with their parents within 14 days. #FamiliesBelongTogether

— ACLU (@ACLU) June 27, 2018

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"The facts set forth before the court portray reactive governance—responses to address a chaotic circumstance of the government's own making. They belie measured and ordered governance, which is central to the concept of due process enshrined in our constitution," wrote (pdf) U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw. "This is particularly so in the treatment of migrants, many of whom are asylum seekers and small children."

The Trump administration's family separation policy was implemented without any standards for adequately tracking detained children taken from their parents, so as Sabraw noted, the "startling" and "unfortunate reality is that under the present system migrant children are not accounted for with the same efficiency and accuracy as property."

Karen Tumlin, director of legal strategy for the National Immigration Law Center, drew attention to the court's pointed criticism of federal officials treating children with less care than a detainee's personal effects:

Court rips into the U.S. government for the "startling reality" that it has failed to have any process for keeping track of kids ripped apart from their parents & has done a worse job keeping track of children it jails than it does of "property." #FamiliesBelongTogether 2/

— Karen Tumlin (@KarenTumlin) June 27, 2018

In addition to setting deadlines for reunification, Sabraw also issued a nationwide injunction to block officials from separating any more families—unless a parent "affirmatively, knowingly, and voluntarily declines to be reunited with the child...or there is a determination that the parent is unfit or presents a danger to the child"—and mandated that the government establish phone contact between separated children and their parents within 10 days.

While the ruling, which allows the case to proceed as a class action suit, was welcomed by the immigrant rights community, it is still unclear how officials will actually go about reuniting families, particularly if a parent already has been deported and their child remains in government custody.

Congratulations to the @ACLU for this enormous victory. The fight is not over, we are still unclear about what will happen to parents, including our clients, who were already deported without their children. The admim must clarify. #FamiliesBelongTogether https://t.co/AXW9NstHOB

— Texas Civil Rights Project (@TXCivilRights) June 27, 2018

Prior to Tuesday night's ruling, 17 states and the District of Columbia—all led by Democratic attorneys general—filed suit (pdf) with the U.S. District Court in Seattle over President Donald Trump's recent executive order that called for an end to the policy but which critics say trades "one form of child abuse for another."

"The new federal executive order does not bring back together the thousands of families that were torn apart by the Trump administration's policy, and it does not prevent families from being separated in the future," explained Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan. The attorneys general have not yet updated or withdrawn their case following the ruling in California.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said at a Senate hearing on Tuesday that 2,047 children remain in government custody and claimed they could not be reunited with their parents because of the 1997 Flores agreement, which puts a 20-day limit on detaining families.

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'Both Illegal and Unconstitutional': Trump Brazenly Suggests Immediate Deportations, Zero Due Process

Published on Sunday, June 24, 2018 by Common Dreams

"When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came," the president tweeted Sunday.

by Andrea Germanos, staff writer

 

3 Comments

President Donald Trump speaking at Arlington National Cemetery on May 28, 2018. President Donald Trump on Sunday called for immediately deporting immigrants—a group he referred to people who "invade our country"—without due process.

The ACLU hit back at president's proposal, calling it "both illegal and unconstitutional," as the right to due process extends to those who've entered the U.S. without documentation.

At roughly 11am, Trump sent out a pair of tweets, saying in part, "When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came."

We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country. When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came. Our system is a mockery to good immigration policy and Law and Order. Most children come without parents...

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 24, 2018

....Our Immigration policy, laughed at all over the world, is very unfair to all of those people who have gone through the system legally and are waiting on line for years! Immigration must be based on merit - we need people who will help to Make America Great Again!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 24, 2018

📣 What President Trump suggested here is both illegal and unconstitutional.

Any official who has sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution and laws should disavow it unequivocally. https://t.co/qsy58VACSB

— ACLU (@ACLU) June 24, 2018

"That's not how any of this works," the ACLU added in a comment about Trump's tweet.

It was just a year and half ago Trump swore he would "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States"—a point noted by Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.):

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Dear @realDonaldTrump: Remember the oath you took to the Constitution at your relatively small inauguration? You should read the Constitution. The Due Process Clause applies to all persons, not just US citizens.

As @POTUS, you of all people need to follow law and order. https://t.co/CK8VSVrp8h

— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) June 24, 2018

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Ethics expert Norm Eisen, meanwhile, suggested the tweets were a sign the president's attack on the rule of law would widen its scope:

He's trying to use the most vulnerable as a battering ram in his ongoing attack on the rule of law. But if he can deprive them of due process, American citizens will be next. How long before new chant at his rallies is "lock them all up"? Now is the time to hold the line https://t.co/38wSQj3ghK

— Norm Eisen (@NormEisen) June 24, 2018

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"These Are Prisons for Babies": Forcibly Separated From Parents, Youngest Kids Sent to So-Called "Tender Age" Detention

Published on Wednesday, June 20, 2018 by Common Dreams

Those who have visited the facilites describe "play rooms of crying preschool-age children in crisis." 

by Jessica Corbett, staff writer

 

5 Comments

The Associated Press reports that young migrant children forcibly separated from their parents are being sent to facilities that critics described as "prisons for babies." (Photo: @NIJC/Twitter)

Under the Trump administration's cruel and widely condemned family separation policy, immigrant babies and young children torn from their parents at the Southern border have been sent to a trio "tender age" shelters that, according to lawyers and medical professionals who have visited the South Texas facilities, feature "play rooms of crying preschool-age children in crisis."

"They've created a jail for babies," tweeted ThinkProgress editor and founder Judd Legum, in response to the "absolutely soul-crushing" Associated Press report. "Creating prisons for babies and toddlers is not just another screwed up policy. These are crimes against humanity."

These are prisons for babies.

Prisons. For babies. https://t.co/417dScJZLi

— Women's March (@womensmarch) June 20, 2018

As of Tuesday, at least 2,342 children had been separated from their families since May 5. Images of children in cages and audio of young migrants crying for their parents have fueled international outrage and demands that the administration immediately halt the policy, which critics say amounts to a serious abuse of human rights, and even torture.

With the number of children detained in U.S. custody expected to continue rising as long as the policy remains in place, the AP reports that the government plans to convert a fourth facility in Houston, despite protests from local leaders. Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner says the fourth facility is a warehouse that was used to house people after Hurricane Harvey, and could hold up to 240 children.

Turner has met with the contractor for the fourth shelter, Austin-based Southwest Key Programs—which is reportedly slated to make some $458 million off of operating child detention centers—to ask the nonprofit to reconsider the plans. At a press conference on Tuesday, Turner said he told the contractor: "I do not want to be an enabler in this process. I do not want the city to particiapte in this process."

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner voiced opposition to a plan to house migrant children separated from their families at the border in a private facility in his city, saying he doesn't want to be an "enabler" of the Trump administration practice https://t.co/xoN842gUSM pic.twitter.com/nv9vhIHuJS

— CNN (@CNN) June 20, 2018

"The thought that they are going to be putting such little kids in an institutional setting? I mean it is hard for me to even wrap my mind around it," Kay Bellor of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, which organizes foster care and other services to migrant children, told the AP. "Toddlers are being detained."

Toddlers are being detained. Toddlers.

This is why we filed a class action. This is why we won’t stop fighting until families are reunited.#FamiliesBelongTogetherhttps://t.co/hHTpmBB7jB

— ACLU (@ACLU) June 20, 2018

The three existing facilities for young migrants are located in Combes, Raymondville, and Brownsville, and, according to the report, "have been rapidly repurposed to serve needs of children including some under 5."

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), who recently attempted to visit a facility in Texas, called out Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen—who has been sharply ridiculed for lying about then defending the family separation policy, and even left a Mexican restaurant where she was dining Tuesday evening after being confronted by members of the Democratic Socialists of America's Metro D.C chapter.

Taking babies from their moms and putting them in mass shelters is horrific. @SecNielsen: Look in a mirror. Is this how you want to be remembered?https://t.co/i5YVxkJ4E8

— Senator Jeff Merkley (@SenJeffMerkley) June 20, 2018

While the Trump administration continues to claim the policy is necessary to deter immigrants from coming to the United States and that the shelters are specially equipped to meet the needs of children—despite news reports to the contrary—as South Texas pediatrician Marsha Griffin, who has visited many facilities, concluded, "The shelters aren't the problem, it's taking kids from their parents that's the problem."

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow broke down on air Tuesday night while trying to read the breaking AP report to her viewers. Maddow addressed the moment in a series of tweets following the broadcast.

This is the clip of Rachel Maddow in tears when she found out about the report of "tender age" shelters for babies and young children separated from their parents.pic.twitter.com/ELMj1ylrwT

— Erick Fernandez (@ErickFernandez) June 20, 2018

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Elizabeth Warren Says Let's Be Clear: Trump Is Holding "Thousands of Kids Hostage to Try and Get Congress to Pay for His Stupid Wall"

Published on Tuesday, June 19, 2018 by Common Dreams

"This is his policy," says senator, "and he can stop it."

by Jon Queally, staff writer

 

4 Comments

Demonstrators protest the Trump administration policy that enables federal agents to separate migrant children from their parents at the border on June 5, 2018 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images)

With national outrage boiling over the Trump administration's cruel and unprecedented policy of separating children from their migrant or asylum-seeking parents, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is calling out the president directly for both creating the crisis in the first place and now doing nothing to end it.

"The Trump administration's decision to prosecute parents for illegal entry was taken in order to create an excuse to separate mothers from children."  
—Brianna Rennix, Current Affairs

 

President Donald Trump, declared Warren in a tweet Monday night, "could pick up the phone and stop the separation of families seeking refuge in the US. Instead, he continues to hold thousands of kids hostage to try and get Congress to pay for his stupid wall. This is his policy, and he can stop it."

Warren's tweet also included a video highlighting the damage the atrocious policy is having on the children detained (in places that look like this and sound like this); detailing the origins of the policy; and countering the repeated false claims made by the Trump administration as it continues to defend ripping apart families:

.@realdonaldtrump could pick up the phone and stop the separation of families seeking refuge in the US. Instead, he continues to hold thousands of kids hostage to try and get Congress to pay for his stupid wall. This is his policy, and he can stop it. #FamiliesBelongTogether pic.twitter.com/pDw4eoFK8n

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) June 18, 2018

While child safety, immigrants rights groups, and progressive organizations announced a national march against the family separation policy for June 30th, administration officials—including Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, and press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders—continue to obfuscate and lie about the nature of the policy and who is responsible for ending it.

Janet Gwilym, managing attorney for the Seattle branch of Kids in Need of Defense (Kind), which offers assistance to immigrant children and their families in  Washington state, told the Guardian, that it is an affront to treat these children and their families this way instead of welcoming and protecting them. "We have a moral responsibility to take them in. It's international law to take in refugees; that's who these people are – and instead we are just adding to the trauma that they are going through."

"This is as shocking an immigration policy as we've seen from this Trump administration, but frankly," Gelernt added, "I've been doing this work for approaching three decades, and this is the most horrific immigration policy I have ever seen."

"I've been doing this work for approaching three decades, and this is the most horrific immigration policy I have ever seen."
—Janet Gwilym, attorney

 

But it's not a mistake or a miscommunication, say experts. It's an intentionally cruel policy with a specific political design.

Writing for Current Affairs, Brianna Rennix, a journalist who has written extensively on U.S. immigration policy, offered a detailed explanation of Trump's "monstrous" child separation. Exploring a crucial point—and one worth quoting at length—she worries many people do not recognize, Rennix writes:

Children are NOT being taken from their parents simply because the government wishes to prosecute their parents for illegal entry and the children cannot accompany them to jail. That makes it sound like these separations are simply incidental to a separate enforcement policy that the government decided to pursue.

The reality is actually just the opposite. The Trump administration's decision to prosecute parents for illegal entry was taken in order to create an excuse to separate mothers from children. As I’ve said, the irritating problem the Trump administration has been struggling to overcome, with reference to the many thousands of bona fide asylum seekers that come to the border, is that a) lots of them are moms with kids, b) kids can’t legally be kept in more restrictive custody than absolutely necessary, and c) there is a federal court decision, legally binding on Trump administration, that states that when you release children from detention who are detained alongside their mothers, the mothers have to be released too.

This is what Trump and Sessions have meant when they have talked cryptically about “loopholes” that are “forcing” them to release asylum-seekers into the interior. There are lots of asylum-seeking moms that the government would otherwise have preferred to have kept locked up in hidden border facilities, without any meaningful ability to recruit counsel, for the entire duration of their cases. But because these moms had a child detained with them, they couldn’t do this.

Separating kids from moms thus serves two purposes. One is deterrence. It's designed to send a gruesome message to women contemplating fleeing Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Mexico: If you come here looking for protection, we will take your child away from you. As a deterrence tactic, this is likely to be extremely effective. Even if you were trapped in a house with someone you thought might murder you and your child, would you readily run for help to a next-door neighbor who happens to be a notorious child kidnapper? That alternative is so horrific that you would teeter a long while before you chose it. You might think to yourself that trying to placate the would-be murderer is a better bet than throwing yourself on the mercy of the kidnapper. A lot of women are going to get murdered as they hesitate over this monstrous ultimatum. (Jeff Sessions, who is apparently a Christian, had better hope that Christianity turns out to be bunk, because otherwise he is going to burn for eternity. I myself am rooting strongly for Christianity to be real!)

The second and perhaps even more critical purpose of family separation is to ensure that moms who are still brave enough and desperate enough to come here will lose their cases. There are not nearly enough competent immigration lawyers along the border to meet the needs of all the people who come to ask for asylum. In the past, when the government was forced to release moms with kids, these families could go settle anywhere in the country they chose, and have their case adjudicated in the local immigration court in their new place of residence. Because they weren’t detained, they had the ability to actually recruit a lawyer to help them. And a lot of them settled in parts of the country, like California or New York, where the immigration judges actually, you know, sort of care about people not being murdered, as opposed to border judges, who are mostly looking for any colorable reason to say “no” to a case. Now that the government is starting to separate moms from kids on a large scale, it is possible we will start to see moms detained in border facilities for the entire duration of their cases. They will be unrepresented and facing unfriendly judges. They will lose.

I think it is important to understand that these family separations are not just a byproduct of brute over-prosecution of "illegal" entry. Rather, they are part of a concerted strategy to allow the government to avoid granting people asylum, and to circumvent the courts' few, limited attempts to legally impose humane limits on their treatment of asylum-seekers.

So the policy is cruel. That is really clear. What's also important to remember is this: the Trump administration is carrying out this policy precisely because of its cruelty. It's not a side effect—it's the whole point.

In May Attorney General Sessions announced a "zero tolerance" policy at the US-Mexico border that results in children being separated from their parents. It's a policy that is cruel by design. If you think it should be stopped, sign this petition, donate to the ACLU, make a call. https://t.co/7Q0ez3Q5Yo

— nate dern (@natedern) June 18, 2018

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Off the Top of My Head

Children Separated From Families: It's Happening All Over the World

by John Lawrence, June 19, 2018

There is a migrant crisis not only on the US southern border, but in Europe as well and it's ten times worse. There migrants are fleeing war torn countries that are victims primarily of US started wars in those countries. Even though the US is directly responsible, European countries are bearing the brunt of this crisis. Boatloads of people trying to land in Italy recently were turned away. They ended up in Spain. Many have drowned in capsized boats in the Mediterranean. European countries are trying to absorb all these people but not very successfully. There is a political backlash brewing because many of these countries want to preserve their ethnic identity and not be overrun by people from a different ethnic and religious background.

One way to stem this flood of migration is to make conditions livable in the migrants' home countries. Central Americans from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras are fleeing because of gang violence related to the drug and human trafficking trade. The US has no qualms about invading other countries so why doesn't it invade Central America and take out the drug gangs and cartels? They could also improve the economic conditions of peoples' lives there because poverty is a big reason why people migrate and a big reason why people join gangs. But the US is only interested in making Central America safe for corporate exploitation, not in improving peoples' lives who happen to be at or near the bottom of the economic spectrum.

The cartels in Mexico are a real threat to both Mexico and the US. If Mexico can't do anything about them, the US should step in. They are using migrants as pawns to distract the US border patrol and tie up US resources so they can smuggle in opioids now that their pot business has dried up.

The Federalist reports:

The cartels don’t just benefit from being paid by these migrant families desperate to get away from the violence in Central America. Every family group the cartels send across ties up the Border Patrol for hours. Back in 2014 when unaccompanied minors were flooding across in large groups, U.S. authorities were well aware that the cartels were taking drugs just a few miles upstream while they dealt with the minors, but there was nothing they could do about it. They were hamstrung by their own humanitarian policies.

There’s something going on here that brings to mind the ignorance of the U.S. military when it came to the early days of ISIS. It’s as if we refuse to acknowledge that the enemy reads the same media we do – that they can’t follow coverage of the issues, and understand how to manipulate the story lines to their advantage. That’s clearly what is going on here, and the Trump administration’s zero tolerance crackdown in response to this increased migration is playing into their hands.

When will the US take into account the larger picture of what is going on here? It is not enough to put these families through a review process and decide which ones should stay in the US and which ones should be sent back. If the US is concerned about what is happening in its own hemisphere, it should focus resources here not half way around the world. The US should step in and eliminate the gang and drug culture in Central America, create a safe and prosperous atmosphere for people there to live in, and then there would be no migrant crisis. Building a wall is just plain stupid. Creating prosperity and safe living conditions in Central America is the way to go.