Puerto Rico: incompetence, indifference and colonialism

It is going to be a staple of the liberals and the left that the way the United States has allowed Puerto Rico to become a humanitarian catastrophe in the wake of Hurricane María is a result of  incompetence and indifference powered by Trump's racism.

But behind that is a more fundamental cause: Puerto Rico is a colony of the United States, and has been since 1898, when Washington wrested it from Spain along with Cuba and the Philippines.

What is a colony? A country that does not govern itself. From its origins the United Nations has had a formal principle against colonialism, but the United States pays it no mind.

In the early 1950s, Washington lied to the U.N. saying that Puerto Rico had become a self-governing "commonwealth," but as recently as June of 2016, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that Puerto Rico is an "unincorporated territory." As defined by the court when the United States first acquired the island, Puerto Rico is a place that belongs to, but is not part of, the United States.

Congress exercises unlimited power over Puerto Rico. It can do whatever it wants, can (and does) create special laws that apply only to Puerto Rico, and even the constitutional rights of American citizens can be ignored.

Congress just did that a year ago, refusing to let it file for judicial protection under the bankruptcy laws (unlike every other jurisdiction under the U.S. flag), and instead imposing a seven-member banker's junta to dictate budgets and policies to the island's government.

(Puerto Rican journalist Juan González gave a major speech a year ago going into detail on how U.S. colonial domination has bled Puerto Rico, driving the country into an unending depression, massive emigration to the United States, and bankruptcy).

Puerto Ricans have no say in what the United States does with their country. They do not vote for President. There are no Senators from Puerto Rico, nor any members of the House of Representatives either, just a non-voting "resident commissioner" who is little more than a glorified lobbyist.

There is only one way Congress can surrender its unlimited power over Puerto Rico, which is to transfer Puerto Rican sovereignty to someone else, just as Spain transferred it to the United States in 1898. Congress should renounce its authority, allowing the people of Puerto Rico to determine the island's future, including its future relationship with the United States.

Right now all sorts of politicians and journalists are saying that Puerto Rico is part of the United States but that is not true, strictly speaking: it is a separate, distinct country, but one that the United States owns.

But you will also hear politicians --especially Puerto Rican ones who are aware of the reality-- arguing on behalf of the island by saying Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens. That is true, but by a 1917 act of Congress, and not the Fourteenth Amendment which was adopted after the Civil War and makes citizens "All persons born or naturalized in the United States." Under the law, people born on the island do not do so "in the United States."

At least until the last few days, half of the U.S. population did not even know that Puerto Ricans were American citizens. And it's not just racism, but the obvious, self-evident fact that Puerto Rico is a different country (combined with the encyclopedic ignorance produced by American schooling).

There is a reason for Washington's indifference to what had happened in Puerto Rico, especially evident in the first week after María. It is the indifference of a colonial power towards a country it has conquered.

Bury my heart in Old San Juan

Hurricane María brought home that Puerto Rico played a special role in my life. Decades ago, that is where I learned what colonialism means -- not in a legal description or economic treatise, but on the ground, in real life.

Published in 1976

In the early 1970s, barely out of my teens, I was living in "Loisaida" (New York's Lower East Side) and visited Puerto Rico multiple times, including an almost continuous longer stay, interrupted by some visits back. I was working for a socialist newspaper sponsored by one of the largest left groups in the United States and also trying to build bridges between my group and the Puerto Rican independence movement.

That past made the coverage of Puerto Rico in the aftermath of María gut wrenching in a way I did not expect. Hearing the names of places once so familiar --Carolina, Río Piedras, Aguadilla, Ponce, Mayagüez-- brought back memories and feelings I didn't know were still inside me.

And talking about the island on the daily talk show I co-host on Radio Información more than once brought me to tears -- tears of sadness, yes, but mostly tears of rage.

I am learning again what colonialism means.

Bullshit alert: the non-existing grand bargain on immigration and DACA

The headline on the Telemundo web site says it all: "Trump announces agreement with Democrats on DACA."

The only problem is that Trump hasn't announced a damn thing. It was Pelosi and Schumer (the top House and Senate Democrats) who announced a no-details supposed deal after a cozy White House dinner with Herr Trump.

Two things:

• Thing one: When there really is an agreement, both sides announce it jointly. And there are details that have been written down and signed by the parties.
• Thing two: We've already seen this movie. And we know how it comes out: with the undocumented and their communities getting screwed.

It's time to stop playing Charley Brown

For 16 years the DREAM Act to legalize people brought to the United States as minors has been kicked around in Congress. It is the obvious legislative solution: DACA was a stop-gap measure because Obama had failed to get the DREAM Act approved in Congress and he wanted Latino votes in the 2012 election.

Since the Latino immigrant rights mega-marches of 2006, it's been rolled into various proposals for "comprehensive immigration reform,” supposedly a "grand bargain" that would grant legalization in exchange for "border security" (meaning militarization and repression).

And what has been the result? Nothing, nada, zip, zero.

Except millions of deportations, hundreds of thousands of families broken up, and God knows how many deaths in the badlands and deserts of the Southwest.

And except for the 2006 bill that extended the physical barriers along the and used to be called a fence but has now become a "wall," on account of Trump.

That's the law Trump is using as authorization for his "new" wall (mostly the old "fence" that is already there).

The 2006 law (supported by both Hillary Clinton and Obama) supposedly was a "down payment" to the racists. But it never, ever got the corresponding concession of legalization that had been promised.

Not in 2006. Not in the 2007-2008 Congress when the Democrats won both Houses. Not in 2009-2010 when the Democrats had control of both Houses, a super-majority in the Senate so they could do whatever they wanted, and Obama in the White House. Not in ...

Well, you get the picture. It reminds me of the "Peanuts" comic strip, where Lucy is always taking away the football just when Charley Brown is about to kick it.

It’s time to tell our Democrat “friends:“ been there, done that, and we’re not doing it anymore.

Thomson Reuters is helping ICE find immigrants targeted for deportation

The parent company of the Reuters News Agency has a hitherto little-known relationship providing private, personal information on immigrants targeted by the U.S. government's deportation machinery.

Data mercenaries own the Reuters News Agency

The relationship is revealed in a Request for Information from the government to private contractors that might be able to provide a "continuous monitoring and alert system" that handles: "FBI numbers; State Identification Numbers; real time jail booking data; credit history; insurance claims; phone number account information; wireless phone accounts; wire transfer data; driver’s license information; Vehicle Registration Information; property information; pay day loan information;  public court records; incarceration data; employment address data; Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) data; and employer records."

A Response to Questions document published in conjunction with the request says, "this service is currently being provided by Thomson Reuters Special Services, LLC." It also says that "CLEAR and other Thomson Reuters data services" are the ones being used now to "aggregate data from."

The Thomson Reuters web site describes CLEAR this way:

• CLEAR is the next-generation online investigative platform designed specifically to meet unique needs of investigative customers....
• CLEAR makes it easier to locate people, assets, businesses, affiliations, and other critical facts. With its vast collection of public and proprietary records, investigators are able to dive deep into their research and uncover hard to find data.

The details of the offer are a police state nightmare:

• LIVE CELL PHONE RECORDS
  Billions of cell phone, landline, TracFone, business, and VoIP records delivered in real-time ensure your phone searches bring back comprehensive results
• REAL-TIME INCARCERATION & ARREST GATEWAY
  Real-time booking information from more than 2,200 facilities and from the most complete network of 90 million historical arrest records and intake photos
• LICENSE PLATE RECOGNITION
  Live access to more than 6 billion license plate scans from Vigilant Solutions® to make data driven connections to discover the “who” in an investigation
• SOURCE TRANSPARENCY
  See where the data came from, when it was supplied, and who supplied it 

The documents were brought to light by the Center for Investigative Reporting in an article detailing Immigration and Custom Enforcement's request for information on a program to outsource data collection on 500,000 people a month.

The current relationship with Thomson Reuters is revealed in very fine print toward the end of the Q&A document.

This relation by another division of the same company is an unacceptable conflict of interest for a news organization. It is receiving money (for whatever reason) from one side in a controversy it covers

And this isn't just any controversy, but one that affects many millions of people, an issue that was the signature theme of Donald Trump's presidential campaign.

As if that weren't bad enough, the Reuters news service has never disclosed the conflict.

And the relationship is the absolute worst, providing information on immigrants targeted by ICE.

This places the immigrant rights movement, Latino groups and progressive organizations in the very uncomfortable position of having to bar Reuters reporters and camera crews from their events.

Why? Because Reuters provides intelligence services to ICE (and as it turns out, other police agencies). You wouldn't welcome FBI and ICE agents with microphones and cameras to your events, would you? And if you discovered that one had snuck in, you'd tell them to leave.

It is not a question of the integrity of individual reporters or editors, or even the news division as a whole. The material Reuters gathers as a news organization --for example, video footage of a confrontation between undocumented activists and white supremacists-- belongs to the parent organization and there is no way a reporter could stop it from being handed to the cops, or even discover that this had been done surreptitiously.

I've been a journalist for four and a half decades and can't recall another case like this involving what has been generally considered a reputable news organization.

Journalists have ethical obligations, not just to confidential sources, but to people we come across in our coverage. We are allowed privileged access to all sorts of events and situations and the implicit commitment that comes from asking for that access is that it will be used for reporting and only for reporting. Right now there is no way a Reuters journalist can assume that commitment.

Press freedom in Mexico: record number of murders, no coverage

June 21, 7:00 PM -- Listening to NPR there was a very short item that caught my attention: the month of May saw the highest number of homicides in Mexico of any month in 20 years.

So preparing material for tomorrow's edition of "Hablemos con Teodoro," the 2-hour news and commentary show that I produce and second-fiddle host on radioinformacion.org, I did a Google news search in Spanish.

I found one (count 'em: 1), just one story -- on the web site of El Heraldo from the city of Saltillo in northern México, which is at the center of a metro area of 800,000 people.

The story was from XINHUA, the official press service of the People's Republic of China.

I did the same search in English and found stories in at least a dozen web sites, some from Reuters, others from AP.

The English-language stories made clear that they said it was the bloodiest May in 20 years because earlier figures were not available.

I suspect that simply means that figures from the pre-Internet era are not online, and this may well be the bloodiest May ever or at least going back many decades.

This is what happens when you have six journalists murdered so far this year, and more than 100 in this century, and hundreds of other attacks on the media, in addition to the spying that the New York Times revealed on Monday. And a grand total of three of these crimes have been solved. Three.

By tomorrow morning I'm sure, a few more outlets, perhaps many, will cover the story. But first there will be panicked conversations in the offices of editors and publishers:

"We have to have it -- it's too important to ignore.
"Agreed, but let's not be among the first -- the nail that sticks out is the one that gets hammered
"Perhaps Televisa will have it tonight ...

Of course, it will be different in those areas where newspapers and TV stations have announced they simply will not cover crime news, because to do so is suicide.

CNN bans not 'respectful' dissent, just the contempt Trump deserves

First it was Kathy Griffin. Now it's Reza Aslan. Coincidence that it was a woman and now someone of Persian heritage? If you really believe that, I want some of whatever it is you've been smoking. The issue is Trump and "respect" for the office of the presidency. Trump is beneath contempt, and so is "the office of the president" with him in it. But you can't express that and be on CNN. You can't treat Trump as the vulgar, lying, misogynist, racist, and authoritarian piece of shit he is and be on CNN. Tens of millions of people in the United States look at Trump just that way, but don't look for that point of view on CNN, nor on any other TV network, nor in any daily newspaper, nor in any "serious" web site devoted to news or analysis of current affairs. You can't say this guy is a flaming asshole. Even if you use nicer words or a pun. CNN says it's not censorship. They're open to all points of view. You can say you disagree with Trump, even that you think he is totally bonkers. Just don't call him an asshole, or hold up a decapitated plastic replica of his head dripping with blood, even though that represents exactly what he is doing to civilians in Syria and elsewhere, even children. You can disagree, but not disrespect. But after roughly a half century thinking and writing about politics and protests, if there's one thing I've learned is that tone and attitude are usually way more important than your "position" or "program." Because politics at bottom is not about policies but about different social forces and the interaction, jostling and clashes between them. Your stance expresses that much better than a position paper. The group that *respectfully* disagrees with the "our" president's executive order may be against Trump's muslim ban like I am. But if that is their real attitude, of respectful disagreement with "our" president, then they are at most frenemies. Attitude is what you are not allowed to express on CNN, or even appear on CNN if you've expressed it in another venue. The funny thing is that CNN is still fighting hard to become America's Pravda. I don't think they'll ever wake up to the fact that Trump already has Breitbart and the Daily Stormer.

Condemn Kathy Griffin? No way

CNN cut ties with Kathy Griffin because she disrespected The President. But I'm with her. Because you can't disrespect someone who is beneath contempt.

As for the bloody severed head ...

And no bloody jokes about our dear, great, respected and
beloved leader Comrade ... I mean President Donald Trump

Kathy Griffin's was just plastic.
But the real thing is what Trump endorsed with his love-fest in Saudi Arabia. They're about to execute by decapitation a young man tortured into confessing that he took part in an anti-government protest. Protesting is a capital offense. Even if you didn't do it.

We should not be aghast at Kathy Griffin, but at the bestial and barbaric House of Saud.

But even more we should be aghast at the United States, at ourselves. Just last Thursday and Friday, American bombs killed more than 100 civilians including at least 42 children, in the Syrian town of Mayadeen.

And like good Germans, we condemn Kathy Griffin.

And then we wonder where the depravity of the Portland white supremacist murderer comes from.