European countries have denounced the last Venezuelan elections as fraudulent. I’m sure they were. That’s for Venezuelans to straighten out with the Maduro government. I ran as an independent socialist candidate against Clinton & Trump but of course it’s impossible for most third-party candidates to get on the ballot in systematically rigged elections. In the 2016 rigged election, Clinton won. But the Electoral College of establishment flunkies handed it to Trump. So why didn’t those European countries go ballistic then? If they’re so concerned about democracy? In truth, the US ranks way up there among the most undemocratic electoral systems in the world.

(Photo of Venezuelan protester on January 23, 2019 by Fernando Llano/AP)

Justin Trudeau, who usually expresses his fake emotions with buckets of crocodile tears, is fulminating up a storm against Maduro’s “illegitimate dictatorship” responsible for ‘terrible oppression the likes of which South America has not seen in a very long time’ & for a massive refugee crisis. Maybe he doesn’t know about the US economic & military role in Chile, Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, & Nicaragua that has sent hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing north to the US. But contrast his vituperations against Maduro to his approach to Saudi Mohammed bin Salman who beheads & dismembers dissidents & has been bombing Yemen for almost four years. In a face-to-face exchange, Trudeau told bin Salman “better answers about the killing of Jamal Khashoggi are required.” How hard-hitting can you get!? He also “pushed” the issue of bombing Yemen to smithereens. Hard to push that issue too hard though since much of the heavy weaponry used by Saudi Arabia came from Canada.

This photo of Trudeau with Aung San Suu Kyi was taken in June 2017 after the 2012 onslaught against the Rohingya people which sent tens of thousands fleeing for their lives; after the 2015 crisis where 25,000 Rohingya refugees fleeing in boats remain unaccounted for in the Andaman Sea; after the 2016 renewal of violence in Arakan state & the 2017 onslaught had already begun. We won’t blame Trudeau that it took Canada many months & hundreds of thousands more Rohingya refugees to revoke Suu Kyi’s honorary citizenship. But we do wonder why Trudeau, since he cares so much about human rights, has not pulled Canadian mining operations out of Burma or imposed sanctions on the country? Canada could also offer asylum to thousands of Rohingya but has only offered to take a limited number, including victims of sexual violence. Why limited since he cares so much about human & refugee rights?

This is not a defense of Maduro but a protest against Trudeau’s war mongering & crocodile-tear hypocrisy.

(Photo from Trudeau’s Twitter wall, June 2017)

Teach our children young how to stand their ground against injustice & every form of social hatred. Teach them to love & respect the whole damn human race. Let that be our legacy.

(Photo via Jeff Neff)

It appears that Stalinists, Assadists, libertarians, & confusionists are all on the same side as principled antiwar activists on the issue of US military intervention in Venezuela. It’s likely we will be rallying with them against US saber-rattling. That’s the chaotic nature of politics when you can no longer distinguish the left from the right. But what distinguishes our opposition to US war from theirs is that their concern is regime-change & ours is the carnage of war faced by civilians. We are not defending the repressive regime of Maduro; we are opposing US war against Venezuelans. It is up to them to settle their differences with the Venezuelan government.

The US has no rights of any kind whatsoever to meddle in the affairs of another country. Stalinists, Assadists, et al, really aren’t concerned about the affects of war on civilians as we know so well from Syria where they glorify Assad & demonize civilians he gasses & barrel bombs as all ‘Wahhabi/Salafi jihadi terrorists’. Their sole concern is maintaining the power status quo in international politics with emphasis on supporting the most repressive regimes & vilifying protests against them as fascist.

It isn’t possible to have a united antiwar movement with such reactionary political forces but it is possible to have united antiwar actions demanding “US hands off Venezuela.” Factionalism & differences even of such magnitude cannot deter us from opposing US wars.

Photo is National Police in Caracas shooting tear gas at protesters.

(Photo by Rayner Pena/picture alliance via Getty Images)


A group of 70 Latin America scholars & others have issued an open letter opposing US military intervention in Venezuela. The letter focuses on the regime change aspect of US saber-rattling. It is not the letter antiwar activists might write which would focus on the threat any form of intervention presents to the people of Venezuela but it is not a compromised letter. Several of the signatories are Assad supporters, including Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, Tim Anderson, Vijay Prashad, Medea Benjamin. Their signatures do not invalidate the letter or the importance of speaking out against the threat of US intervention. It is not, as it has been called, ‘apologia for Maduro’ although it is probable many of the signers hold uncritical views of Maduro.

When opponents of the Assad regime call for a humanitarian US military intervention to save the Syrian Arab Spring uprising, they reveal their rightwing political character & allow Assadists to hijack the principles of opposition to war. When they oppose the Maduro regime, support a coup engineered by the US, & are cavalier about US military intervention, they show themselves to be utterly politically bankrupt. What have they missed in their political education that 150 years of US militarism has taught the entire rest of the world–especially the people of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Philippines, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, Granada, Panama, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, Syria, Palestine, Afghanistan, Bahrain, Egypt, Chile, Korea, South Sudan, Hawaii, Mexico, & other countries too numerous to mention?

We mercilessly castigate Tim Anderson & his ilk when they support Assad, deny the Rohingya genocide, deny the Uyghur genocide, support Duterte’s vigilante war against the poor, call Kashmiris ‘jihadi terrorists’, & other such despicable things. We fully understand they support the repressive Maduro regime & don’t give a damn about the people of Venezuela. But if you focus on their signature on this letter rather than the threats of US military intervention, you show yourself to be on the wrong side of justice–in fact, on the side of a coup & US war against the people of Venezuela.

Photo is an injured Venezuelan protester facing off against riot police. Once again it must be reiterated that the Maduro government has no more right to shoot rubber bullets or any other kind of ammo at unarmed protesters than the Assad regime has to bomb civilians or the US to invade Venezuela.

Open letter: https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/01/24/open-letter-united-states-stop-interfering-venezuelas-internal-politics?

(Photo by Federico Parra/AFP/Getty Images)

It is colossally misguided to lobby Facebook to delete accounts whose politics or language are objectionable. Block them instead. They are censoring right & left, especially Palestinians & Kashmiris, & by calling for censorship you are legitimizing their right to censorship & inroads against the Bill of Rights. Those who struggle for freedom need the fullest freedom of speech & always oppose censorship. That’s to protect us, not them.

Today is the seventh anniversary of the titanic Arab Spring uprisings which all began about this time in 2011, including in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, with reverberations in Jordan, Iraq, Morocco, Libya. We should take a moment to pay tribute to the millions of Arab peoples, men, women, & children, who rose up against brutal & repressive regimes to demand human & democratic rights & who have paid such a heavy price. Hundreds of thousands, closer to millions, of people have been murdered, disappeared, incarcerated, tortured, bombed, starved to death. If we want to understand why Islam has become so demonized & maligned, it is because most of those uprisings were in countries with a Muslim majority. Hating on Muslims is a way to justify bombing their countries while at the same time arming the regimes to destroy working people’s dreams of freedom.

This is a photo of Shaimaa al-Sabbagh, a 33-year-old socialist activist in Egypt who on January 24, 2015 was marching with a small group to Tahir Square in Cairo to lay a wreath in tribute to the thousands of activists killed in the 2011 uprising. Masked riot police blasted the group with tear gas & pellet guns shooting Sabbagh in the back of the head, neck, & side of her face. She died almost instantly from shotgun pellets to the heart & lungs. She has since become a symbol of continuing opposition to Egypt’s military junta. Her courage stands as a testimony to the power & the future of the Egyptian Arab Spring uprising. May all who died Rest In Peace. It is the mission of our generations to make sure they did not die in vain.

This photo is the moment Shaimaa was shot. The man holding her is Sayyid Abu el-Ela, a personal & political friend.

(Photo by Islam Osman/Reuters)

The situation in Venezuela has some significant affinities not just with militarization against the Syrian Arab Spring uprising but with the military ouster of Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi in 2013 after one year in office. It’s one of the most misunderstood events in the entirety of the Egyptian Arab Spring & very much to the point of what’s happening in Venezuela.

Those who fetishize elections apparently didn’t follow the military-controlled electoral process leading to Morsi’s election in June 2012. (He was “elected” in the same way Mubarak & Assad were–through fraudulent one-party elections.) Nor did they observe that Morsi functioned as the civilian front office for the military after Generals Hosni Mubarak & Omar Suleiman were ousted. After weeks of massive protests in Tahrir Square, the military junta threw out Mubarak & dispensed with Suleiman but retained control & continued violently attacking protesters. The fatal mistake was trusting the generals or at least not pushing through to dismantle the military which was/is bankrolled by the US in exchange for selling out Palestinians.

Morsi was an elite member of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). The MB played a passive, though not a counterrevolutionary role throughout the revolution but became extremely aggressive after Morsi was elected, including using violence against anti-Morsi & anti-military protesters. Under Morsi, a new Egyptian constitution was formulated which left the military in complete control & denied democratic & human rights to civilians. Arab Spring protests against the new constitution & austerity programs continued while the military junta worked with the MB leadership & incited MB members to attack the Arab Spring protests.

On June 30, 2013, the one-year anniversary of Morsi’s ‘election’, an estimated 32 million Egyptians marched across the country calling for Morsi to step down because he did not present the political program Arab Spring protesters had in mind when they demanded the ouster of Mubarak. (Many contest those crowd estimates but if it were even one-quarter of 32 million, it would still be one of the most momentous political events in human history.) In order to protect itself & neutralize the protests, the military junta stepped in (as they had with Mubarak) & ousted Morsi. Mubarak & Morsi’s ouster in a ‘coup’ was how the military took advantage of a revolution with very weak, compromised leadership. General Sisi & the junta bounced Morsi & openly took over Egypt because the revolution was too massive. They no longer could control it with a civilian front but required wholesale, murderous repression.

After Morsi’s ouster, the military junta that collaborated with elite MB leadership & incited MB thugs to attack Arab Spring protesters began a military onslaught against the MB protesters. The army mowed them down by the hundreds in bloodbaths where bodies were piled on bodies. They massacred working class MB members to intimidate & behead the revolution & to protect military rule. Regardless of MB conduct against the revolution, defending them against massacres by the Sisi regime was not just the humane, moral, & democratic thing to do but it was imperative for defense of the Egyptian revolution.

Using hysteria about “Islamists,” a media propaganda campaign ensued to justify the massacres of the MB. Many erstwhile progressives who claim to stand for democracy fell for the hysteria & supported the massacres. Justifying the massacres of MB members set the stage for defense of the Assad dictatorship in Syria. Media beat the drums of Islamophobia while cynics used the carnage to document their conviction that social transformation is impossible against the mighty fortress of US & Egyptian militarism. Committed human rights supporters did not wait for the tear gas & horror to dissipate before examining with the most careful attention how counterrevolution gained the upper hand in Egypt. Trust in the generals, comparable to trust in the Assad regime, is chief among the problems.

Regime change is an insufficient program for social transformation; the military that runs Egypt must eventually be forcibly challenged & dismantled down to the last bullet & tear gas canister. The Maduro regime may not be a dictatorship but it is massively repressive & committed to the wrong class. It must also eventually be replaced–but by Venezuelan working people, not by the US Pentagon. A full program that addresses the political, social, & economic problems of working people must be developed as an alternative to the generals & tyrants.

This 2013 photo is grieving family & friends of massacred Muslim Brotherhood members who have come to a mosque to identify their loved ones bodies. May they Rest In Peace.

Postscript: Morsi remains in an Egyptian jail today.

(Photo by AP)