This is the blog of José G. Pérez. It is named in honor of the Taíno cacique Hatuey who led a guerrilla against the Spanish conquest of Cuba. After refusing baptism, he was burned at the stake in Yara, Cuba, on February 2, 1512.
Monday, January 30, 2017
All the news that's fit to fake: Polling on Trump's Muslim immigration ban
I was shocked when I saw the headline on Google News from Newsweek.com:
I smelled a rat, because polling on Trump's order could not possibly have started until Saturday and responsible pollsters try to avoid weekend-days-only polling because it is not a random sample and even trying to adjust by weighing doesn't work: for example, the 18-29 year olds you reach on a weekend are not representative of their age group.
And then I looked at the articles. The Quinnipiac poll was done January 5-9, when people could not possibly have supported "Trumps immigration order" because he wasn't even president yet.
And the question did not mention Trump's then-nonexistent order It asked about "suspending immigration from terror prone regions, even if it means turning away refugees."
The Rasmussen folks have been showing for a while that they've become a right-wing propaganda outfit, so I would have discounted them anyways, but their poll was done Jan 25-26, and Trump signed the order late on the 27th.
But curiously, Rasmussen asked specifically about the seven countries in Trump's order:
But it is a bullshit question. Implicit in the question is that there is a big problem screening out potential terrorists but there is simply no evidence of this.
And If it had been instead a ban on folks from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Afghanistan, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Aquinoestan, the same exact number would have said yes, despite all of them being U.S. allies. Well, except Aquinoestan, which doesn't exist.
And if you're going to use Trump's logic, those are the countries that should be banned, starting with Saudi Arabia. It is the most savagely barbaric country on the face of the planet, where the majority of the 9/11 attackers came from, the country where the most Americans have died in terrorist attacks, a hyper militarized absolute monarchy with only 20 million citizens and the third largest military budget in the world, and the purveyor of the ultra fundamentalist Wahabi ideology that is the inspiration for the ideologies of Al Qaeda, the Islamic State and so on.
POLL, TRUMP BACKERS SHOW SUPPORT FOR IMMIGRATION BANSo I clicked to see more stories:
Quinnipiac University poll: Almost half of American voters support Trump’s immigration order
RASMUSSEN POLL: CLEAR MAJORITY OF AMERICANS SUPPORT TRUMP’S TRAVEL BANAnd there were lots more.
And then I looked at the articles. The Quinnipiac poll was done January 5-9, when people could not possibly have supported "Trumps immigration order" because he wasn't even president yet.
And the question did not mention Trump's then-nonexistent order It asked about "suspending immigration from terror prone regions, even if it means turning away refugees."
The Rasmussen folks have been showing for a while that they've become a right-wing propaganda outfit, so I would have discounted them anyways, but their poll was done Jan 25-26, and Trump signed the order late on the 27th.
But curiously, Rasmussen asked specifically about the seven countries in Trump's order:
Do you favor or oppose a temporary ban on refugees from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen until the federal government improves its ability to screen out potential terrorists from coming here?
Do you favor or oppose a temporary block on visas prohibiting residents of Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen from entering the United States until the federal government improves its ability to screen out potential terrorists from coming here?This shows that while Trump's folks did not consult with lawyers from the Justice Department, Homeland Security or the National Security Council, supposedly so the list wouldn't leak, they did give it to Rasmussen.
But it is a bullshit question. Implicit in the question is that there is a big problem screening out potential terrorists but there is simply no evidence of this.
And If it had been instead a ban on folks from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Afghanistan, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Aquinoestan, the same exact number would have said yes, despite all of them being U.S. allies. Well, except Aquinoestan, which doesn't exist.
And if you're going to use Trump's logic, those are the countries that should be banned, starting with Saudi Arabia. It is the most savagely barbaric country on the face of the planet, where the majority of the 9/11 attackers came from, the country where the most Americans have died in terrorist attacks, a hyper militarized absolute monarchy with only 20 million citizens and the third largest military budget in the world, and the purveyor of the ultra fundamentalist Wahabi ideology that is the inspiration for the ideologies of Al Qaeda, the Islamic State and so on.
Saturday, January 28, 2017
The U.S. hasn't won a war in 70 years and Trump's buildup can't fix that
President Trump's plan to greatly increase the size of the U.S. military is likely to have substantial popular support.
According to a Gallup Poll from a year ago, only 49% of Americans think the United States is the strongest military power in the world. To anyone who knows the first thing about the military capabilities of various countries, the statement is beyond absurd. It is like saying an Abrams tank is outclassed by a kid armed with a smurf ball.
The United States has conventional military capabilities much greater than any other country. The United States has conventional military capabilities much greater than all other countries combined. Qualitatively so, by several orders of magnitude.
So why do so many Americans think that we have inferior armed forces?
Because we can't seem to win a war, and we've been in plenty.
The United States has not won a decisive victory in any military conflict it has been directly involved in since we nuked Japan in 1945.
Starting with China in 1945-1949, through Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq, we've either been stalemated or downright defeated. The fiasco in Syria is just the latest installment.
Of course, there was the successful 1983 invasion of Grenada. But sending 7,500 troops to occupy a country of 90,000 people is not a war but a crime.
Nor can the first Gulf War (1990-1991) be considered a decisive victory. It was really one campaign is a war that is still going on, and that campaign was for a limited objective. Active U.S. military operations continued against Iraq afterwards, first in the air and then finally with Bush's 2003 invasion. And they continue to this day.
In fact, the United States has been continuously at war in the Middle East with active military operations for 35 years, since 1982. And there is no end in sight.
Why has the United States failed? Because war is the continuation of politics by other means. That includes political objectives like backing the State of Israel or making sure Persian Gulf oil keeps flowing to market, but that is not the main thing.
It also means that war is an intervention in the internal politics of the region. In this sense politics is about the different layers of the population, ideological currents, social classes, etc., their evolution, the alliances and enmities both within a given state and how these extend beyond its borders and also affect relations between states and the entire system of states in the region and the world.
The problem is that the United States does not realize that when it goes into a country like Iraq or destabilizes Syria, it is creating or qualitatively escalating internal conflicts within those countries and in the region that soon manifest as civil wars (Libya) or as a combination of a civil war and a war against foreign occupation (Vietnam, Iraq).
The United States recognizes the kind of problem it faces with its sporadic campaigns to "win the hearts and minds" of the population.
Sometimes the United States takes under its wing people from some minority nationality, this tribe or that religious group.
Initially, as the much larger intervention is being planned, this typically takes the form of support to exile circles that claim to have a lot of support inside the country but very rarely do (the CIA's 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba being a prime example). Then as the U.S. looks for some way to stabilize the country it will try to lean on some domestic leadership that has ideas and objectives that are different from and often contradict what the U.S. is seeking, or are just a bunch of corrupt opportunists looting American aid and the country's resources.
This kind of imposition from above of rule by some group or faction doesn't work because it produces a puppet regime that will quickly alienate whatever base of support it might have had.
At any rate, the United States does not start by looking at the actual politics of these places and its dynamics, but does so only after the invasion or intervention has gone into a crisis from rising opposition.
No amount of firepower, no increase in the number of planes, tanks or warships, nor tens of thousands of additional troops can provide a solution because the problem is political: the U.S. intervention is floating in mid air; it has no roots in the given society, and by the time the Americans get a clue, it is too late.
According to a Gallup Poll from a year ago, only 49% of Americans think the United States is the strongest military power in the world. To anyone who knows the first thing about the military capabilities of various countries, the statement is beyond absurd. It is like saying an Abrams tank is outclassed by a kid armed with a smurf ball.
The United States has conventional military capabilities much greater than any other country. The United States has conventional military capabilities much greater than all other countries combined. Qualitatively so, by several orders of magnitude.
 |
| Saigon, 1975. The last 10 marines evacuate from the U.S. embassy as heliport ladder full of Vietnamese is kicked away |
Because we can't seem to win a war, and we've been in plenty.
The United States has not won a decisive victory in any military conflict it has been directly involved in since we nuked Japan in 1945.
Starting with China in 1945-1949, through Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq, we've either been stalemated or downright defeated. The fiasco in Syria is just the latest installment.
Of course, there was the successful 1983 invasion of Grenada. But sending 7,500 troops to occupy a country of 90,000 people is not a war but a crime.
Nor can the first Gulf War (1990-1991) be considered a decisive victory. It was really one campaign is a war that is still going on, and that campaign was for a limited objective. Active U.S. military operations continued against Iraq afterwards, first in the air and then finally with Bush's 2003 invasion. And they continue to this day.
In fact, the United States has been continuously at war in the Middle East with active military operations for 35 years, since 1982. And there is no end in sight.
Why has the United States failed? Because war is the continuation of politics by other means. That includes political objectives like backing the State of Israel or making sure Persian Gulf oil keeps flowing to market, but that is not the main thing.
It also means that war is an intervention in the internal politics of the region. In this sense politics is about the different layers of the population, ideological currents, social classes, etc., their evolution, the alliances and enmities both within a given state and how these extend beyond its borders and also affect relations between states and the entire system of states in the region and the world.
The problem is that the United States does not realize that when it goes into a country like Iraq or destabilizes Syria, it is creating or qualitatively escalating internal conflicts within those countries and in the region that soon manifest as civil wars (Libya) or as a combination of a civil war and a war against foreign occupation (Vietnam, Iraq).
The United States recognizes the kind of problem it faces with its sporadic campaigns to "win the hearts and minds" of the population.
Sometimes the United States takes under its wing people from some minority nationality, this tribe or that religious group.
Initially, as the much larger intervention is being planned, this typically takes the form of support to exile circles that claim to have a lot of support inside the country but very rarely do (the CIA's 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba being a prime example). Then as the U.S. looks for some way to stabilize the country it will try to lean on some domestic leadership that has ideas and objectives that are different from and often contradict what the U.S. is seeking, or are just a bunch of corrupt opportunists looting American aid and the country's resources.
This kind of imposition from above of rule by some group or faction doesn't work because it produces a puppet regime that will quickly alienate whatever base of support it might have had.
At any rate, the United States does not start by looking at the actual politics of these places and its dynamics, but does so only after the invasion or intervention has gone into a crisis from rising opposition.
No amount of firepower, no increase in the number of planes, tanks or warships, nor tens of thousands of additional troops can provide a solution because the problem is political: the U.S. intervention is floating in mid air; it has no roots in the given society, and by the time the Americans get a clue, it is too late.
Friday, January 27, 2017
From the archives: How Nicaragua's Sandinista Revolution was defeated
What is below the asterisks was written in the year 2000.
It was one of many posts that for several years beginning in 1999, I wrote on the Marxism email list moderated by Louis Proyect, based on what had by then been three decades as an activist and a journalist. These were not the short, quick notes of the on-line world, but longer, considered essays, relying on my own experiences or extensive research or both.
I had cause to re-read some recently, and it seemed to me they still had some value, so I will be reposting them here.
Yet these were newsgroup-type posts, written as part of ongoing discussions and usually in response to what someone else had written. That is different from simply writing an article about a subject. In keeping with Marxism list rules, at the beginning of my posts I quote only the briefest snippet from the previous post that prompted my own. That material will be between angle brackets.
Subscribers to that list had a common background and sometimes known each other for many years. So there are terms and references that might be obscure to other readers today. I've edited the posts to try to make clear some references as well as clear up typos and unclear syntax. But I've not tried to rewrite to provide more background and context. I'll be happy to amplify what is written here in response to specific queries.
On this particular post, be aware that this is largely a recounting of my own experiences or generalizations drawn from them. I visited Nicaragua repeatedly after the 1979 victory of the revolution until I moved there for several years as a journalist around 1984.
* * *
The Nicaraguan contras (was Re: Chavez and Fighting Back History)
From: Jose G. Perez
Subject: The Nicaraguan contras (was Re: Chavez and Fighting Back History)
Date: Tue, 01 Aug 2000 02:44:08 -0700
>>The contras were soundly defeated as it was. They had no physical or
popular base inside the country and were routed whenever they took on
the army which was rare. Most Nicaraguan veterans told me that the
contra regulars would just thrown down their guns and surrender when
ever confronted by the army.<<
If only it had been so!
The contras were never "soundly defeated." That is why in 1987 the
FSLN decided it had no alternative, after years of refusing, but to
enter into direct negotiations with them and did sign a peace accord
at Sapoá with their commanders. This accord reflected the military
realities in the field. The FSLN was much stronger but unable to
defeat its opponent decisively. The National Resistance was allowed to
concentrate its forces in certain areas and remained armed pending the
holding of elections, which were moved up from the end of 1990 to the
beginning of the year. Press censorship and other similar measures
were lifted; and it was stipulated that after the elections, the
former members of the National Resistance would receive individual
plots of land to farm if they wanted them.
The reason the contras could not be defeated is precisely because
they did have a social base. Initially that social base was especially
concentrated among the Miskitu Indians, and it must be recognized that
this was mostly the result of the FSLN's mistakes. Through the
autonomy formula, they were able to break up the contra-Miskitu
alliance, but as it turned out the FSLN did not have the time nor
resources necessary to win the trust of the Miskitu population.
Beginning in 1984 or so, as the war deepened, throwing the country
into a deep economic and social crisis, the contra's social base grew
to encompass a big fraction of the peasantry of the "agricultural
frontier." They also had significant support in the mayor cities and
towns of agricultural zones, as was evident from their attack on
Ocotal in mid-1984, which they overran and occupied briefly, something
they were able to do even though there was a big military base on the
opposite side of the highway from the town, because some of the
contras slipped into town the night before and were hidden by some
fifth columnists.
The resentment of the peasants towards the revolution came from a
couple of sources. One was that the FSLN took apart the traditional
commercial and financial networks in the countryside after taking
power, but was unable to effectively replace them. The state
established a monopoly in basic grains, buying from the peasants at
fixed prices, but at the same time it made a decision to finance the
war by printing money, which made inflation unstoppable. This meant,
in effect, that the countryside was subsidizing the FSLN's social
program in the cities, and getting ruined economically, making it
dependent on state credits and handouts, which, frankly, many hated.
Nor were the peasants getting as much back in terms of social
change as you might imagine. The agrarian reform prioritized
collectivization, state farms and cooperatives in which people worked
the land together. This was something which peasants in this
agricultural frontier zone were slow to warm to, to say the least.
Even many who joined cooperatives would have preferred to work
individually. Yet in the four years I lived in Nicaragua, I did not
meet a single peasant who had ever received an individual plot of land
and title to it to work it on his own from the revolution.
As the war deepened the issue became more important, for to join
an FSLN cooperative was equivalent to signing up for military duty:
you had to assume the cooperative would be attacked. And, of course,
the military organization of co-op members meant the contras would
view them as a military target. Generally, the further away you got
from the major towns towards the "agricultural frontier", the stronger
the contra sympathies. I remember going on a trip in 1984 to the San
José de Bocay and El Cuá zone (near where Linder was later killed),
and asking one peasant at a tiny settlement where we had stopped for
water and to ask about the road ahead whether there were any contra in
the zone.
"You're pulling my leg," one said. "This is the seed-bed of the
contras. I have three sons with them right now." And that was early
on, near Honduras. Later the whole agricultural frontier strip all the
way down to Costa Rica would become, to a lesser or greater degree,
like that.
As the contra rebellion spread into regions like Boaco and
Chontales, its social character also tended to evolve, and it stopped
being solely or largely a mercenary aggression, and also became a
peasant movement which, under the circumstances, could only have a
politically reactionary character despite its plebeian base.
This peasant wing eventually became disenchanted with the contra
leadership, as the Miskitus had before them, and wound up finally
pushing to one side the civilian contra directorate and the general
staff of the "strategic command" headed by former GN colonel Bermúdez.
The contra leadership that signed the peace agreement with the FSLN at
Sapoá was not at all the same one which has started the war, one of
the reasons why a peace agreement was possible. [GN= Guardia Nacional,
the National Guard, the Somoza dictatorship's army.]
By 1988, it was my estimation, that the revolution was finished,
and that the real turning point, when the revolutionary tide began to
ebb, had come early on, by 1982 or 1983, shortly after the beginning
of the war. This ebbing was reflected politically by a series of
decisions the FSLN adopted in 1983, especially after the Grenada
invasion, like institution of the draft, asking the Cuban teachers to
leave (which meant closing down hundreds of schools in the
countryside), the holding of bourgeois-democratic style elections, the
adoption by the FSLN of a social democratic coloration, the nomination
of Sergio Ramírez for vice-president instead of the person most
popular with rank-and-file FSLNers and who spoke most openly about the
social and class character of the revolution, Tomás Borge.
In 1988, with perhaps isolated pockets in places like Estelí, I
don't believe the FSLN had majority support in the major cities nor in
the countryside. The war and the economic and social crisis it
provoked had atomized and demoralized the population. The FSLN's
intransigent opposition to negotiating with the contra led many
Nicaraguans to blame the Sandinistas for the continuation of the war,
and to turn against the frente. The fact that the FSLN leadership
finally decided it had no choice but to negotiate with the contras
deepened the political damage, because they had been so intransigent
in opposing such negotiations for years.
The social advances that the revolution had initially brought were
largely or completely reversed by 1986 or 1987, or had been dwarfed by
the crisis. Most of the rural schools had closed because they did not
have teachers. The hospitals were in terrible shape, medical posts had
been closed or abandoned, the rationing system had broken down and
Sandinista Defense Committees and other mass organizations had largely
ceased to function, or soon would. The big majority of the population
was pushed into a grinding, demoralizing day-to-day struggle for
survival.
Of all the people I know who were concerned about Nicaragua or
following it for one reason or another, I think I was the only one not
in the slightest bit surprised by Mrs. Chamorro's election victory.
What surprised me, frankly, was that her electoral victory was not
more overwhelming.
People weren't voting for Mrs. Chamorro's social or political
program, nor for her imperialist backers, but for peace and an end to
the terrible, maddening economic dislocation the war had brought, the
galloping inflation, the overnight doubling of prices, the extreme
shortages and so on.
They voted above all for her image as the head of a family who had
maintained at least a minimum level of civil contact between her four
children, one the editor of Barricada, one a contra director, one the
editorial editor of La Prensa and one the FSLN ambassador to Costa
Rica, throughout the war. They voted for her not so much to be
president but national grandmother, someone who, when the naughty
children started shouting and fighting with each other, would bring
them up short with a stern look and a reprimand: I will not have
fighting between brothers in this house. [Baricada was the Sandinista
newspaper; La Prensa belonged to Mrs Chamorro after her hiusband,
its founder and editor, was murdered by the Somoza dictatorship, a
key event that ignited the revolutionary explosion of 1979.]
Rightly or wrongly, they did not trust the FSLN to maintain the
tenuous peace that had been achieved with the contras or to fix the
economy. In the year and a half or two between the cease fire and the
voting, the economic crisis did not abate. In early 1988, the FSLN
carried out a currency exchange where "new" Cordobas replaced the old
ones, I forget if it was 100,000 to one, or a million to one. Between
then and when Mrs. Chamorro took office, inflation took the new
currency from 10 or 20 to the dollar, where it started, to something
like two million to one, a ten million percent inflation in two years.
It must be admitted that the FSLN proved unable to control the
economic crisis, but then again, the only thing anyone could have
done is change the forms in which the crisis manifested itself.
Decisive in stoking the distrust wasn't just economic issues but
also the FSLN's decision to maintain the draft, which was hated by
many Nicaraguans, including the poorest Nicaraguans. In 1988, I saw
with my own eyes a small anti-draft riot in the Monimbó neighborhood,
the poor Indian neighborhood of Masaya, and quite by accident, as I
happened to be there on a personal errand. That neighborhood, which
had been called the "cradle of the revolution" because it was where
the first anti-Somoza urban rising had taken place, is the LAST place
where I would have imagined the FSLN would lose support, but it had.
The disturbance was set off when a former FSLN combatiente refused to
let army recruiters take his younger brother. Unfortunately the army
recruiters lost their cool and started insulting this young man, the
crowd that gathered as the shouting and insults escalated turned
against the recruiters, who had to run away as the people overturned
their jeep and set it on fire. It took several hours for ministry of
the interior forces, acting very cautiously under orders from Tomás
Borge on the spot, managed to quell the disturbance. It was a
heartbreaking sight.
Tied into all of this was a process of bureaucratization of the
revolution, both the use of administrative methods instead of
political methods and the granting or taking of privileges that while,
in many cases small, rubbed salt in the wounds of a population being
suffocated by an incredible economic crisis. The symbol of this in my
own mind was the dollar store in Managua. Originally it started as a
small boutique with duty-free-store-type luxuries, liquor and wine and
electronics, some clothes, things like that, and it was open only to
"official" foreigners, i.e., diplomats, accredited journalists of
international news organizations, functionaries of international
organizations and NGO's. It eventually expanded into a huge
superstore, with basically an American supermarket, all sorts of auto
parts, American magazines and so on. In this store, high-ranking
Sandinista functionaries and opposition deputies to the national
assembly would elbow each other for a place at the checkout line.
It is not surprising that as the economic crisis grew, the small
but glaring privileges of some among the Sandinista elite, as well as
among a layer of opportunists and hangers-on who had latched on to one
or another government ministry or state enterprise although they had
nothing to do with the FSLN itself, led many of Nicaragua's poorest to
say, "son los mismos," "they are the same," meaning the same as the
old regime. At first it was a murmur barely whispered under their
breath, later they shouted it in defiance. People called the FSLN
troops "guardias" meaning Somocista National Guardsmen and Piricuacos,
which is Miskitu for rabid dog and is what the frente called the
national guard during the insurrection. And they would refer to the
contra as "los muchachos," the boys, the same term they had used for
the FSLN insurgents six or eight years before.
I don't want to exaggerate and create the impression this was all
the population or most of it. The FSLN still had the adherence of a
big sector of people, maybe a quarter or a third of the population,
something like that. There was maybe a roughly similar-sized
contingent of anti-Sandinistas, and from all layers of society. Time
and again, I had the experience of meeting people who I had met two or
three years earlier as FSLN supporters and they were now opponents.
This encompassed all social layers, from high-ranking economists or
other functionaries to the lady who would sell me Coca-Cola by the
case. These included former members of the Sandinista militias, people
who had volunteered to go into the mountains and fight the contra when
the war first started. They represented the third contingent of the
population, who initially sided with the revolution but turned
decisively against it in growing numbers in the 1985-1987 period.
That's why I wasn't surprised by Mrs. Chamorro's victory. What did
surprise me was the "piñata" that took place in most government
ministries and departments afterwards, as FSLNers transferred all
kinds of goods and properties that had generally been considered to be
state properties into private hands, their own. The disintegration of
the FSLN central leadership following the electoral defeat also
surprised me. Humberto Ortega is now a well-to-do businessman in Costa
Rica. Luis Carrión went back to complete his university studies in the
states, I heard, and Victor Tirado returned to Mexico. Jaime Wheelock
and Henry Ruiz I've had no news of. Nuñez died, of cancer, I think,
shortly after the FSLN lost the elections. A few of the second-line
leaders have tried to form a new Sandinista movement in opposition to
the official FSLN, and former Vice-President Sergio Ramírez has gone
back to writing. Daniel Ortega, Bayardo Arce and Tomás Borge remain
with the FSLN, which still has the electoral support of about a third
of the population, and functions as an opposition party within the
framework of the Nicaraguan elections and legal institutions.
It may sound from the way I've written this that mostly I blame
the FSLN for the defeat of the revolution, but it is late and I have
no time to rewrite. The main cause of the defeat of the revolution was
the pressure of imperialism, the revolution was beat to a bloody pulp
by the contra war. The things I've pointed to above are largely how
the damage done by imperialism to the revolutionary process then
reflected itself *within* the revolution and its leading contingent. I
did that to show why big layers of the popular masses turned against
the FSLN, which they had hailed as saviors only a few years before,
and to explain how it could be possible that the RN developed a
genuine social base inside the country.
One final point. The contra by and large did not throw down its
guns and surrender when they clashed with Sandinista units. The
Miskitus in particular had a reputation as wily and tenacious
fighters, which won them the respect of the Sandinista commanders.
By and large, the contras, like any guerrilla force not yet ready
to make a final push for power, avoided pitched battles with large
army units. When they came across the army, they did turn and run. The
main Sandinista units in the field were the socalled BLIs, irregular
warfare batallions, and they were trained by recognized experts in
irregular warfare, the Cubans. These were some 600 men strong, and
could overwhelm any contra column, which typically were 100 or 150
men. In addition, the Sandinistas could count with limited air support
from a half dozen or so helicopter gunships (Soviet Mi-24s), and some
air provisioning from about a dozen MI-8 choppers (which were also
outfitted with weaponry, although not really as well suited to play
the role of a gunship). They also had some artillery, including the
BM-24 (if I remember the designation right) multiple tube rocket
launchers, descendants of the justly famous Soviet "Stalin organs" of
world war II that were fairly effective against the motorized units of
the Nazis. The Katyushas, if I remember the Soviet name right, are
very impressive to look at and intimidating, but need roads to operate
and troop concentrations to be fairly effective.
The problem for the FSLN was that they could never really force a
big fight with the contra units. They lacked sufficient air transport
to throw a couple of hundred guys behind the enemy position and cut
off their retreat, and pursuing a retreating guerrilla force that is
basically intact after a light skirmish with regular army units is an
extremely dangerous proposition for the pursuer, as the chances of
getting ambushed or falling victim to a mine are very high.
If the Soviets had given the Nicas adequate military equipment
early on, in 1983 or even 1984, the FSLN might have succeeded in
defeating the contra then, before the rebellion had become deeply
rooted anywhere except for the northern border strip with Honduras,
and a few fighters and a couple of radars would have prevented contra
air resupply from abroad, which is basically how the contras were able
to get to places like Boaco and Chontales and develop a base there.
This would have given the revolution time to catch its breath, it
would have been a huge morale booster to the majority which still
sided with the FSLN at that point, and would have allowed the
Sandinista leadership to confront some of the issues around the policy
towards the peasants as political questions. That the FSLN had the
political capacity to learn from mistakes and shortcomings is
unquestionable; the change in policy towards the Miskitus proves it.
The imperialists took advantage of every line of cleavage in
Nicaraguan society, manipulating religion, the peasantry's desire for
land, the Miskitu's awakening national consciousness, and never gave
the revolution a chance to catch its balance.
The Nicaraguan revolution is rich in lessons, about the
worker-peasant alliance, about policy towards native peoples, about
the need for revolutionary militants to not take privileges, about the
need for internal democracy and accountability within the revolution's
vanguard organization(s), and many others. I hope someday one of its
leading participants will produce such a balance sheet.
José
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sam Pawlett" <rsp@uniserve.com>
To: <marxism@lists.panix.com>
Sent: Monday, July 31, 2000 10:25 PM
Subject: Re: Chavez and Fighting Back History
It was one of many posts that for several years beginning in 1999, I wrote on the Marxism email list moderated by Louis Proyect, based on what had by then been three decades as an activist and a journalist. These were not the short, quick notes of the on-line world, but longer, considered essays, relying on my own experiences or extensive research or both.
I had cause to re-read some recently, and it seemed to me they still had some value, so I will be reposting them here.
Yet these were newsgroup-type posts, written as part of ongoing discussions and usually in response to what someone else had written. That is different from simply writing an article about a subject. In keeping with Marxism list rules, at the beginning of my posts I quote only the briefest snippet from the previous post that prompted my own. That material will be between angle brackets.
Subscribers to that list had a common background and sometimes known each other for many years. So there are terms and references that might be obscure to other readers today. I've edited the posts to try to make clear some references as well as clear up typos and unclear syntax. But I've not tried to rewrite to provide more background and context. I'll be happy to amplify what is written here in response to specific queries.
On this particular post, be aware that this is largely a recounting of my own experiences or generalizations drawn from them. I visited Nicaragua repeatedly after the 1979 victory of the revolution until I moved there for several years as a journalist around 1984.
* * *
The Nicaraguan contras (was Re: Chavez and Fighting Back History)
From: Jose G. Perez
Subject: The Nicaraguan contras (was Re: Chavez and Fighting Back History)
Date: Tue, 01 Aug 2000 02:44:08 -0700
>>The contras were soundly defeated as it was. They had no physical or
popular base inside the country and were routed whenever they took on
the army which was rare. Most Nicaraguan veterans told me that the
contra regulars would just thrown down their guns and surrender when
ever confronted by the army.<<
If only it had been so!
The contras were never "soundly defeated." That is why in 1987 the
FSLN decided it had no alternative, after years of refusing, but to
enter into direct negotiations with them and did sign a peace accord
at Sapoá with their commanders. This accord reflected the military
realities in the field. The FSLN was much stronger but unable to
defeat its opponent decisively. The National Resistance was allowed to
concentrate its forces in certain areas and remained armed pending the
holding of elections, which were moved up from the end of 1990 to the
beginning of the year. Press censorship and other similar measures
were lifted; and it was stipulated that after the elections, the
former members of the National Resistance would receive individual
plots of land to farm if they wanted them.
The reason the contras could not be defeated is precisely because
they did have a social base. Initially that social base was especially
concentrated among the Miskitu Indians, and it must be recognized that
this was mostly the result of the FSLN's mistakes. Through the
autonomy formula, they were able to break up the contra-Miskitu
alliance, but as it turned out the FSLN did not have the time nor
resources necessary to win the trust of the Miskitu population.
Beginning in 1984 or so, as the war deepened, throwing the country
into a deep economic and social crisis, the contra's social base grew
to encompass a big fraction of the peasantry of the "agricultural
frontier." They also had significant support in the mayor cities and
towns of agricultural zones, as was evident from their attack on
Ocotal in mid-1984, which they overran and occupied briefly, something
they were able to do even though there was a big military base on the
opposite side of the highway from the town, because some of the
contras slipped into town the night before and were hidden by some
fifth columnists.
The resentment of the peasants towards the revolution came from a
couple of sources. One was that the FSLN took apart the traditional
commercial and financial networks in the countryside after taking
power, but was unable to effectively replace them. The state
established a monopoly in basic grains, buying from the peasants at
fixed prices, but at the same time it made a decision to finance the
war by printing money, which made inflation unstoppable. This meant,
in effect, that the countryside was subsidizing the FSLN's social
program in the cities, and getting ruined economically, making it
dependent on state credits and handouts, which, frankly, many hated.
Nor were the peasants getting as much back in terms of social
change as you might imagine. The agrarian reform prioritized
collectivization, state farms and cooperatives in which people worked
the land together. This was something which peasants in this
agricultural frontier zone were slow to warm to, to say the least.
Even many who joined cooperatives would have preferred to work
individually. Yet in the four years I lived in Nicaragua, I did not
meet a single peasant who had ever received an individual plot of land
and title to it to work it on his own from the revolution.
As the war deepened the issue became more important, for to join
an FSLN cooperative was equivalent to signing up for military duty:
you had to assume the cooperative would be attacked. And, of course,
the military organization of co-op members meant the contras would
view them as a military target. Generally, the further away you got
from the major towns towards the "agricultural frontier", the stronger
the contra sympathies. I remember going on a trip in 1984 to the San
José de Bocay and El Cuá zone (near where Linder was later killed),
and asking one peasant at a tiny settlement where we had stopped for
water and to ask about the road ahead whether there were any contra in
the zone.
"You're pulling my leg," one said. "This is the seed-bed of the
contras. I have three sons with them right now." And that was early
on, near Honduras. Later the whole agricultural frontier strip all the
way down to Costa Rica would become, to a lesser or greater degree,
like that.
As the contra rebellion spread into regions like Boaco and
Chontales, its social character also tended to evolve, and it stopped
being solely or largely a mercenary aggression, and also became a
peasant movement which, under the circumstances, could only have a
politically reactionary character despite its plebeian base.
This peasant wing eventually became disenchanted with the contra
leadership, as the Miskitus had before them, and wound up finally
pushing to one side the civilian contra directorate and the general
staff of the "strategic command" headed by former GN colonel Bermúdez.
The contra leadership that signed the peace agreement with the FSLN at
Sapoá was not at all the same one which has started the war, one of
the reasons why a peace agreement was possible. [GN= Guardia Nacional,
the National Guard, the Somoza dictatorship's army.]
By 1988, it was my estimation, that the revolution was finished,
and that the real turning point, when the revolutionary tide began to
ebb, had come early on, by 1982 or 1983, shortly after the beginning
of the war. This ebbing was reflected politically by a series of
decisions the FSLN adopted in 1983, especially after the Grenada
invasion, like institution of the draft, asking the Cuban teachers to
leave (which meant closing down hundreds of schools in the
countryside), the holding of bourgeois-democratic style elections, the
adoption by the FSLN of a social democratic coloration, the nomination
of Sergio Ramírez for vice-president instead of the person most
popular with rank-and-file FSLNers and who spoke most openly about the
social and class character of the revolution, Tomás Borge.
In 1988, with perhaps isolated pockets in places like Estelí, I
don't believe the FSLN had majority support in the major cities nor in
the countryside. The war and the economic and social crisis it
provoked had atomized and demoralized the population. The FSLN's
intransigent opposition to negotiating with the contra led many
Nicaraguans to blame the Sandinistas for the continuation of the war,
and to turn against the frente. The fact that the FSLN leadership
finally decided it had no choice but to negotiate with the contras
deepened the political damage, because they had been so intransigent
in opposing such negotiations for years.
The social advances that the revolution had initially brought were
largely or completely reversed by 1986 or 1987, or had been dwarfed by
the crisis. Most of the rural schools had closed because they did not
have teachers. The hospitals were in terrible shape, medical posts had
been closed or abandoned, the rationing system had broken down and
Sandinista Defense Committees and other mass organizations had largely
ceased to function, or soon would. The big majority of the population
was pushed into a grinding, demoralizing day-to-day struggle for
survival.
Of all the people I know who were concerned about Nicaragua or
following it for one reason or another, I think I was the only one not
in the slightest bit surprised by Mrs. Chamorro's election victory.
What surprised me, frankly, was that her electoral victory was not
more overwhelming.
People weren't voting for Mrs. Chamorro's social or political
program, nor for her imperialist backers, but for peace and an end to
the terrible, maddening economic dislocation the war had brought, the
galloping inflation, the overnight doubling of prices, the extreme
shortages and so on.
They voted above all for her image as the head of a family who had
maintained at least a minimum level of civil contact between her four
children, one the editor of Barricada, one a contra director, one the
editorial editor of La Prensa and one the FSLN ambassador to Costa
Rica, throughout the war. They voted for her not so much to be
president but national grandmother, someone who, when the naughty
children started shouting and fighting with each other, would bring
them up short with a stern look and a reprimand: I will not have
fighting between brothers in this house. [Baricada was the Sandinista
newspaper; La Prensa belonged to Mrs Chamorro after her hiusband,
its founder and editor, was murdered by the Somoza dictatorship, a
key event that ignited the revolutionary explosion of 1979.]
Rightly or wrongly, they did not trust the FSLN to maintain the
tenuous peace that had been achieved with the contras or to fix the
economy. In the year and a half or two between the cease fire and the
voting, the economic crisis did not abate. In early 1988, the FSLN
carried out a currency exchange where "new" Cordobas replaced the old
ones, I forget if it was 100,000 to one, or a million to one. Between
then and when Mrs. Chamorro took office, inflation took the new
currency from 10 or 20 to the dollar, where it started, to something
like two million to one, a ten million percent inflation in two years.
It must be admitted that the FSLN proved unable to control the
economic crisis, but then again, the only thing anyone could have
done is change the forms in which the crisis manifested itself.
Decisive in stoking the distrust wasn't just economic issues but
also the FSLN's decision to maintain the draft, which was hated by
many Nicaraguans, including the poorest Nicaraguans. In 1988, I saw
with my own eyes a small anti-draft riot in the Monimbó neighborhood,
the poor Indian neighborhood of Masaya, and quite by accident, as I
happened to be there on a personal errand. That neighborhood, which
had been called the "cradle of the revolution" because it was where
the first anti-Somoza urban rising had taken place, is the LAST place
where I would have imagined the FSLN would lose support, but it had.
The disturbance was set off when a former FSLN combatiente refused to
let army recruiters take his younger brother. Unfortunately the army
recruiters lost their cool and started insulting this young man, the
crowd that gathered as the shouting and insults escalated turned
against the recruiters, who had to run away as the people overturned
their jeep and set it on fire. It took several hours for ministry of
the interior forces, acting very cautiously under orders from Tomás
Borge on the spot, managed to quell the disturbance. It was a
heartbreaking sight.
Tied into all of this was a process of bureaucratization of the
revolution, both the use of administrative methods instead of
political methods and the granting or taking of privileges that while,
in many cases small, rubbed salt in the wounds of a population being
suffocated by an incredible economic crisis. The symbol of this in my
own mind was the dollar store in Managua. Originally it started as a
small boutique with duty-free-store-type luxuries, liquor and wine and
electronics, some clothes, things like that, and it was open only to
"official" foreigners, i.e., diplomats, accredited journalists of
international news organizations, functionaries of international
organizations and NGO's. It eventually expanded into a huge
superstore, with basically an American supermarket, all sorts of auto
parts, American magazines and so on. In this store, high-ranking
Sandinista functionaries and opposition deputies to the national
assembly would elbow each other for a place at the checkout line.
It is not surprising that as the economic crisis grew, the small
but glaring privileges of some among the Sandinista elite, as well as
among a layer of opportunists and hangers-on who had latched on to one
or another government ministry or state enterprise although they had
nothing to do with the FSLN itself, led many of Nicaragua's poorest to
say, "son los mismos," "they are the same," meaning the same as the
old regime. At first it was a murmur barely whispered under their
breath, later they shouted it in defiance. People called the FSLN
troops "guardias" meaning Somocista National Guardsmen and Piricuacos,
which is Miskitu for rabid dog and is what the frente called the
national guard during the insurrection. And they would refer to the
contra as "los muchachos," the boys, the same term they had used for
the FSLN insurgents six or eight years before.
I don't want to exaggerate and create the impression this was all
the population or most of it. The FSLN still had the adherence of a
big sector of people, maybe a quarter or a third of the population,
something like that. There was maybe a roughly similar-sized
contingent of anti-Sandinistas, and from all layers of society. Time
and again, I had the experience of meeting people who I had met two or
three years earlier as FSLN supporters and they were now opponents.
This encompassed all social layers, from high-ranking economists or
other functionaries to the lady who would sell me Coca-Cola by the
case. These included former members of the Sandinista militias, people
who had volunteered to go into the mountains and fight the contra when
the war first started. They represented the third contingent of the
population, who initially sided with the revolution but turned
decisively against it in growing numbers in the 1985-1987 period.
That's why I wasn't surprised by Mrs. Chamorro's victory. What did
surprise me was the "piñata" that took place in most government
ministries and departments afterwards, as FSLNers transferred all
kinds of goods and properties that had generally been considered to be
state properties into private hands, their own. The disintegration of
the FSLN central leadership following the electoral defeat also
surprised me. Humberto Ortega is now a well-to-do businessman in Costa
Rica. Luis Carrión went back to complete his university studies in the
states, I heard, and Victor Tirado returned to Mexico. Jaime Wheelock
and Henry Ruiz I've had no news of. Nuñez died, of cancer, I think,
shortly after the FSLN lost the elections. A few of the second-line
leaders have tried to form a new Sandinista movement in opposition to
the official FSLN, and former Vice-President Sergio Ramírez has gone
back to writing. Daniel Ortega, Bayardo Arce and Tomás Borge remain
with the FSLN, which still has the electoral support of about a third
of the population, and functions as an opposition party within the
framework of the Nicaraguan elections and legal institutions.
It may sound from the way I've written this that mostly I blame
the FSLN for the defeat of the revolution, but it is late and I have
no time to rewrite. The main cause of the defeat of the revolution was
the pressure of imperialism, the revolution was beat to a bloody pulp
by the contra war. The things I've pointed to above are largely how
the damage done by imperialism to the revolutionary process then
reflected itself *within* the revolution and its leading contingent. I
did that to show why big layers of the popular masses turned against
the FSLN, which they had hailed as saviors only a few years before,
and to explain how it could be possible that the RN developed a
genuine social base inside the country.
One final point. The contra by and large did not throw down its
guns and surrender when they clashed with Sandinista units. The
Miskitus in particular had a reputation as wily and tenacious
fighters, which won them the respect of the Sandinista commanders.
By and large, the contras, like any guerrilla force not yet ready
to make a final push for power, avoided pitched battles with large
army units. When they came across the army, they did turn and run. The
main Sandinista units in the field were the socalled BLIs, irregular
warfare batallions, and they were trained by recognized experts in
irregular warfare, the Cubans. These were some 600 men strong, and
could overwhelm any contra column, which typically were 100 or 150
men. In addition, the Sandinistas could count with limited air support
from a half dozen or so helicopter gunships (Soviet Mi-24s), and some
air provisioning from about a dozen MI-8 choppers (which were also
outfitted with weaponry, although not really as well suited to play
the role of a gunship). They also had some artillery, including the
BM-24 (if I remember the designation right) multiple tube rocket
launchers, descendants of the justly famous Soviet "Stalin organs" of
world war II that were fairly effective against the motorized units of
the Nazis. The Katyushas, if I remember the Soviet name right, are
very impressive to look at and intimidating, but need roads to operate
and troop concentrations to be fairly effective.
The problem for the FSLN was that they could never really force a
big fight with the contra units. They lacked sufficient air transport
to throw a couple of hundred guys behind the enemy position and cut
off their retreat, and pursuing a retreating guerrilla force that is
basically intact after a light skirmish with regular army units is an
extremely dangerous proposition for the pursuer, as the chances of
getting ambushed or falling victim to a mine are very high.
If the Soviets had given the Nicas adequate military equipment
early on, in 1983 or even 1984, the FSLN might have succeeded in
defeating the contra then, before the rebellion had become deeply
rooted anywhere except for the northern border strip with Honduras,
and a few fighters and a couple of radars would have prevented contra
air resupply from abroad, which is basically how the contras were able
to get to places like Boaco and Chontales and develop a base there.
This would have given the revolution time to catch its breath, it
would have been a huge morale booster to the majority which still
sided with the FSLN at that point, and would have allowed the
Sandinista leadership to confront some of the issues around the policy
towards the peasants as political questions. That the FSLN had the
political capacity to learn from mistakes and shortcomings is
unquestionable; the change in policy towards the Miskitus proves it.
The imperialists took advantage of every line of cleavage in
Nicaraguan society, manipulating religion, the peasantry's desire for
land, the Miskitu's awakening national consciousness, and never gave
the revolution a chance to catch its balance.
The Nicaraguan revolution is rich in lessons, about the
worker-peasant alliance, about policy towards native peoples, about
the need for revolutionary militants to not take privileges, about the
need for internal democracy and accountability within the revolution's
vanguard organization(s), and many others. I hope someday one of its
leading participants will produce such a balance sheet.
José
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sam Pawlett" <rsp@uniserve.com>
To: <marxism@lists.panix.com>
Sent: Monday, July 31, 2000 10:25 PM
Subject: Re: Chavez and Fighting Back History
Thursday, January 26, 2017
Phil Ochs: music for the Trump era
Have spent much of the past week listening obsessively to political songs from a half century ago, when I was a teenager. Especially Phil Ochs.
If you've never heard of him, but have this image of Bob Dylan as the righteous artist-activist who backed every just cause and went to every rally, the person that was really like that was Phil Ochs.
Which is part of the reason you probably haven't heard of him. The other reason is that he's been dead for four decades. Committed suicide in April 1976, the year following his last public performance at the "War is Over" concert that he organized in Central park following the victory of the Vietnamese over the American government and its South Vietnamese client regime.
If you listen to his last albums, starting with "Pleasures of the Harbor" you will follow his descent into melancholy and eventually madness. Around 1970 he released "Rehearsals for Retirement."
The cover was a tombstone listing his birth in El Paso in 1940 and his death in Chicago in 1968, referring to the Democratic Party convention and the savage police riot against antiwar protesters as the party bosses imposed vice president Hubert Humphrey, who was totally identified with President Johnson's Vietnam War, as the presidential candidate. This choice so thoroughly alienated liberals and progressives that Republican retread Richard Nixon won the presidency.
But 1968 was also the year of the Vietnamese Tet Offensive, which showed the claims about how the United States was winning in Vietnam were a lie; of the assassination of Martin Luther King in April and Bobby Kennedy who was the leading Democratic presidential candidate two months later; the false dawn of the French May-June student rebellion and its East European counterpart, the "Czech Spring" with its hopes for a "socialism with a human face" crushed under the treads of invading Soviet tanks; and then, on the eve of the first anniversary of the death of Che Guevara, the crushing of the Mexican student movement in a bloodbath, the Tlatelolco massacre of October 2 and finally the election of Nixon.
But even before then his music was becoming darker, whereas his earlier albums had been full of an an almost naive optimistic, can-do American spirit even when most outraged at what the government was doing.
Anyways, I hadn't really focused on how much I'd been listening to Phil Ochs since Friday until I saw this blog post on the Washington Post, of all places. The writer refers to the earlier, more political work, whereas I think for some people may also relate to his later work, which I've always called in my own mind "music to commit suicide by."
Portrait of the president as the bullshitter in chief
Everyone involved with these issues who can do so should read Obama's Trump's immigration orders. They are 99% blah blah blah.
Basically they say apply this law and that law, as if it weren't already happening. On the "wall," one order makes clear "wall" doesn't necessarily mean "wall" but any sort of physical barrier judged most effective, as specified in that scumbag Bill Clinton's 1996 immigration law and the 2006 secure fence law that Hillary Clinton (along with many other Democrats) supported. [BTW, now you know why so many Latinos think it is no accident that the word "Democrat" ends in "rat."]
The reports in the Mainstream Media about how Trump just ordered the beginning of the building of the wall and so on are all the result of reporters having orgasms from press secretary's Sean Spicer blowing smoke up their ass when they should have been reading what Trump actually signed instead.
Also, the supposed attack on "sanctuary" cities is smoke and mirrors. The statute it cites for triggering sanctions is about exchanging *information*. Trump says the Homeland Security secretary should withhold all aid to those cities that violate the requirements as permitted by law except for law enforcement and security aid. But the secretary of homeland security only handles law enforcement and security matters, and there is no law cited that allows the withholding of any federal resources whatsoever on this basis.
The main thing about these mis-named "sanctuary" jurisdiction is not that they don't comply with reporting requirements that are in the laws, but that they refuse to honor "detainers," a little form signed by an immigration cop saying to hold someone in jail without charges.
These "detainers" violate the very explicit, plain language of the Fourth Amendment saying you have to have a warrant to arrest people, and warrants can only be issued "upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation" with the specific reasons why the person is being arrested.
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals as well as District Courts on the West Coast have found local governments liable for tens of thousands of dollars in damages because obeying a "detainer," is false arrest and illegal imprisonment because a "detainer" is not a "warrant."
So all this stuff about Trump cracking down with these memos is bunk.
He may crack down anyways, with or without "executive orders," but these are clearly hot air.
The biggest problem is that they will whip up even more the racists inside and outside the government.
But they are not a legal escalation. The problem Trump has is that, in fact, he has taken office after the most viciously racist, anti-immigrant administration ever in U.S. history, the Obama regime.
It had a lot of pretty words and then said, "bend over, I have this hot poker I'm going to stick up your ass."
Trump on the other hand has a lot of nasty words and then says, "bend over, I have this hot poker I'm going to stick up your ass," the very same one Obama was using.
Immigrant rights and Latino activists should get used to going to the blog or press room at whitehouse.gov to read the actual measures that Trump has signed, and not simply join in the psychological warfare campaign the mainstream media is carrying out for Trump against the immigrant communities.
Basically they say apply this law and that law, as if it weren't already happening. On the "wall," one order makes clear "wall" doesn't necessarily mean "wall" but any sort of physical barrier judged most effective, as specified in that scumbag Bill Clinton's 1996 immigration law and the 2006 secure fence law that Hillary Clinton (along with many other Democrats) supported. [BTW, now you know why so many Latinos think it is no accident that the word "Democrat" ends in "rat."]
Also, the supposed attack on "sanctuary" cities is smoke and mirrors. The statute it cites for triggering sanctions is about exchanging *information*. Trump says the Homeland Security secretary should withhold all aid to those cities that violate the requirements as permitted by law except for law enforcement and security aid. But the secretary of homeland security only handles law enforcement and security matters, and there is no law cited that allows the withholding of any federal resources whatsoever on this basis.
The main thing about these mis-named "sanctuary" jurisdiction is not that they don't comply with reporting requirements that are in the laws, but that they refuse to honor "detainers," a little form signed by an immigration cop saying to hold someone in jail without charges.
These "detainers" violate the very explicit, plain language of the Fourth Amendment saying you have to have a warrant to arrest people, and warrants can only be issued "upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation" with the specific reasons why the person is being arrested.
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals as well as District Courts on the West Coast have found local governments liable for tens of thousands of dollars in damages because obeying a "detainer," is false arrest and illegal imprisonment because a "detainer" is not a "warrant."
So all this stuff about Trump cracking down with these memos is bunk.
He may crack down anyways, with or without "executive orders," but these are clearly hot air.
The biggest problem is that they will whip up even more the racists inside and outside the government.
But they are not a legal escalation. The problem Trump has is that, in fact, he has taken office after the most viciously racist, anti-immigrant administration ever in U.S. history, the Obama regime.
It had a lot of pretty words and then said, "bend over, I have this hot poker I'm going to stick up your ass."
Trump on the other hand has a lot of nasty words and then says, "bend over, I have this hot poker I'm going to stick up your ass," the very same one Obama was using.
Immigrant rights and Latino activists should get used to going to the blog or press room at whitehouse.gov to read the actual measures that Trump has signed, and not simply join in the psychological warfare campaign the mainstream media is carrying out for Trump against the immigrant communities.
President Peña Nieto should be shot for helping Trump humiliate México
Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto recently appointed Luis Videgaray as his new foreign minister. Videgaray is a long-time and very trusted Peña collaborator who last August arranged the infamous and disastrous (for Peña Nieto) Trump visit and had to leave his cabinet post as a result.
Back then Peña Nieto did not have the balls to publicly insist in front of Trump that México would not pay for Trump's wall.
Worse, Trump used the publicity around the visit to focus attention on a viciously anti-immigrant speech he gave right after he returned.
You'd think Peña and Videgaray would have learned, but they repeated the exercise. Videgaray arranged to meet with White House aides on Wednesday.
Tuesday evening, the White House leaked that Trump would sign executive orders on the border wall and immigration enforcement the next day.
What Peña and Videgaray should have done is to tell Washington that the Mexican government would have to analyze the content of the two orders before coming to visit.
The visit in and of itself was a Trump dissing of Mexico. Videgaray is foreign minister but he was going to meet with Trump advisers in the White House, not any cabinet-level official, and he did not even get a courtesy hand-shake photo op with Trump to compensate for the snub.
Of course the insult was self-inflicted. Videgaray was in such a hurry to kiss Trump's rump that he could not wait until the new Secretary of State was ratified by the Senate before coming.
On Wednesday, when Trump signed his orders, Videgaray and Peña didn't do the minimally dignified thing and say that obviously the Mexican government would need to study these documents and their repercussions before continuing.
Even after the meeting Videgaray told the media there had been "extremely positive" and "encouraging" exchanges and that Peña Nieto's Jan. 31 visit to Washington was still on, instead of giving at least a non-committal response, never mind a righteous one.
Nevertheless, outrage was so high in México that last night Peña Nieto went on TV for a couple of minutes to say that Mexican consulates would help immigrants in the United States and that Mexico loved the United States and so on but no, it would not pay for the wall.
Yet still he did not cancel his upcoming visit.
So this morning Trump had to take a piss on Peña Nieto's face, saying if Mexico wasn't going to accept paying for the wall then the meeting might as well be canceled.
With that wording basically Trump *ordered* Peña Nieto to be the one to officially call off the session which Peña did in a tweet a couple of hours later, but followed by another tweet about how much Mexico looked forward to continuing a great relationship with the United States and so on.
This is the typical response of a spouse that is in an abusive marriage and has so internalized the victimization that even after being slapped around, they are begging the abuser to take them back.
People in that situation or who have survived it need all the love and respect and support that can be mustered to help them escape and heal.
But what a president who acts this way on behalf of their country deserves is to be shot for treason.
Back then Peña Nieto did not have the balls to publicly insist in front of Trump that México would not pay for Trump's wall.
Worse, Trump used the publicity around the visit to focus attention on a viciously anti-immigrant speech he gave right after he returned.
 |
| Trump with his Mexican punching bag |
Tuesday evening, the White House leaked that Trump would sign executive orders on the border wall and immigration enforcement the next day.
What Peña and Videgaray should have done is to tell Washington that the Mexican government would have to analyze the content of the two orders before coming to visit.
The visit in and of itself was a Trump dissing of Mexico. Videgaray is foreign minister but he was going to meet with Trump advisers in the White House, not any cabinet-level official, and he did not even get a courtesy hand-shake photo op with Trump to compensate for the snub.
Of course the insult was self-inflicted. Videgaray was in such a hurry to kiss Trump's rump that he could not wait until the new Secretary of State was ratified by the Senate before coming.
On Wednesday, when Trump signed his orders, Videgaray and Peña didn't do the minimally dignified thing and say that obviously the Mexican government would need to study these documents and their repercussions before continuing.
Even after the meeting Videgaray told the media there had been "extremely positive" and "encouraging" exchanges and that Peña Nieto's Jan. 31 visit to Washington was still on, instead of giving at least a non-committal response, never mind a righteous one.
Nevertheless, outrage was so high in México that last night Peña Nieto went on TV for a couple of minutes to say that Mexican consulates would help immigrants in the United States and that Mexico loved the United States and so on but no, it would not pay for the wall.
Yet still he did not cancel his upcoming visit.
So this morning Trump had to take a piss on Peña Nieto's face, saying if Mexico wasn't going to accept paying for the wall then the meeting might as well be canceled.
With that wording basically Trump *ordered* Peña Nieto to be the one to officially call off the session which Peña did in a tweet a couple of hours later, but followed by another tweet about how much Mexico looked forward to continuing a great relationship with the United States and so on.
This is the typical response of a spouse that is in an abusive marriage and has so internalized the victimization that even after being slapped around, they are begging the abuser to take them back.
People in that situation or who have survived it need all the love and respect and support that can be mustered to help them escape and heal.
But what a president who acts this way on behalf of their country deserves is to be shot for treason.
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