Look to the past and remember no empire rises that sooner or later won't fall. - Al Stewart

  

Crisis Of Empire                                                                                  THE CRISIS OF US HEGEMONY 

By Michele Berti: In recent months, with the arrival of Trump, the concept of imperialism has reappeared strongly in public discourse as a catch-all term for interpreting the current international phase. It is used after adjectives such as aggressive, cruel, and ruthless. In reality, none of the adjectives used is capable of accurately defining the concept of imperialism, which by definition has always had these characteristics. But what is meant by imperialism in the historical and political sense? The genesis of the term must be attributed to Hilferding, although its widespread use is due to the work of Lenin, who defined it as the monopolistic phase of capitalism, which corresponds to a social and economic formation characterized by an enormous concentration of production and capital in a monopolistic manner, the fusion of banking capital with industrial capital in a form of finance capital managed by a small financial oligarchy, extensive use of capital exports, and the division of the world among international trusts.

American imperialism is, therefore, an economic and social formation that cannot be labeled on a president, but rather a configuration predisposed to dominating foreign space through conventional and unconventional methods, assuming the role of leader with allied subjects and dominant with adversaries. There is, therefore, no imperialism branded as Trump or Biden, but rather an American imperialism that, depending on the phase, acquires certain characteristics in the management of the relationship between governed and rulers in international relations. 

 The dynamics to which the adjectives combined with the term imperialism refer, resulting from the discontinuity presented by Trump's election, can instead be interpreted effectively and coherently with some Gramscian categories such as the concepts of hegemony, crisis of hegemony, and organic crisis. 

In the Prison Notebooks, Gramsci draws on his studies of dialectics and the interaction between different groups, managing to develop some useful reasoning to decode the events of this confusing historical phase. 

Let's begin by defining the crisis of hegemony as the political-ideological dimension of an organic crisis, or rather, a transitional phase in which the distance between the ideological apparatuses and the narratives functional to a particular economic structure (superstructures) becomes so great with respect to the economic structure itself that the latter cannot be sustained. Superstructures must therefore, at a certain point, reattach themselves to the economic structures, precisely through an organic crisis. 

The organic crisis in the United States has different origins and is intertwined with several levels; we can list some of them without claiming to be exhaustive. 

 In the economic and financial sphere, we can undoubtedly observe a retreat in the United States, which in recent years has sacrificed the real economy in favor of financial income and profits. De-dollarization, or the process that began years ago to replace the US dollar as the reserve currency in many commercial transactions, and the explosion of US debt. The international division of labor that has led China to transcend its status as a global manufacturer and assume a central economic role as a point of reference for the global South. The identity crisis of a superpower without an alter ego and the failure of the universal and unipolar project of a "global sheriff." The current social crisis in the United States, with the division between wealthy coasts and deindustrialized and impoverished continental areas, a dynamic clearly evident in the geographical analysis of the November election results. 

All these elements lead to the fracture between the narrative of the American Dream and the "best of all possible worlds"—free and democratic but rigorously unipolar and supremacist—and the reality of increasing difficulty in sustaining economic efforts on a global scale in terms of tools for power projection and a widespread military presence. 

All of this has transformed, from a political-ideological perspective, into a profound crisis of hegemony—that is, a crisis of international consensus—that undermines the credibility and authority of the United States and forces it to increasingly resort to coercion to pursue its own national interests. 

This trend has existed for years, but it accelerated with the launch of Russia's special military operation in Ukraine in February 2022. We are now witnessing what increasingly appears to be a global strategic realignment in light of the challenge posed by China in the coming years.

 The need arises for a recalibration of US spheres of influence, with a possible retreat to a continental imperial area, the Americas, with a new and updated Monroe Doctrine on an appropriate geographic scale from the perspective of resources and raw materials, including Canada, Greenland, Cuba, and Venezuela.

The case of the Panama Canal is also interesting, as it fits into this dynamic and demonstrates, for those who still have some doubts, that multinationals like BlackRock are above all instruments of US power and that the myth of the 1% of multinationals against the 99% of the world is merely a veil to hide the direction of US imperialism. The only exception to this reasoning, a novelty at this stage, is the role of Musk, who, having achieved undisputed superiority in the space game, enjoys unprecedented degrees of freedom compared to the past.

In this context, it is necessary to fully understand and understand the instruments of power of US national interests, codified in numerous military doctrine publications. These are the DIMEFIL (economic instruments) or arms of the US domination system: Diplomacy, Information, Military, Economic, Financial, Intelligence, and Law Enforcement. Each of these instruments has a corresponding organizational structure and precise references, and all are effectively coordinated with each other to achieve US national objectives and interests.

Delving into the details of the economic instrument (defined in the manuals as "economic warfare" or "economic weapons"), the cuts to agencies like USAID or foundations like the NED (National Endowment for Democracy) indicate the need for continued reorganization and are clearly reducing US soft power capacity. The large budgets allocated to these instruments funded NGOs, foreign journalists, activists, and even, apparently, some terrorist groups used as "proxies" or "surrogates." The attack on USAID certainly has a component linked to the presence of elements of the democratic Deep State within these structures, but it is also linked to the need to reduce the costs of these consensus-building activities, because they are no longer sustainable.

By shifting attention to Europe, the old continent will be forced to deal with this dynamic by inventing autonomy and a "European imperialism" after seventy-five years of US-led NATO and its economic arm, the EU. We can define this desire for European imperialism as a castle-in-the-air imperialism, rhetorical and passionate, but without an economic and financial basis, as Gramsci and Crispi defined Italian imperialism. In Europe, it is evident that the "clerics" of the past historical phase, employed in the consensus machine, risk their careers, and this can lead to very dangerous dynamics, linked to the survival of a political and media ruling class and its bellicose and warlike reaction.

The crisis of hegemony, which represents the fracture between the governed and the rulers, also at the international level, as Gramsci asserts, can be traced to two main reasons: the failure of a political enterprise for which the ruling class has demanded consensus and/or the entry of new forces onto the political scene.

Undoubtedly, the failure of the unipolar world and European integration falls into the first category; the birth of the BRICS, to which the entire South of the world looks with hope, falls into the second possible cause.

The solution to a crisis of hegemony could be precisely the arrival of the "man of providence," a Trump who, however, in this reasoning, becomes the consequence and product of a process, not a foreign and exogenous element to whom all evil can be attributed. He is the monster that is born when "the old world is dying and the new is slow to emerge."

The most visible effect of a crisis of hegemony, a current element, is the emergence in every context of true power relations, pure and unmediated by the superstructure, and the return to the purely economic nature of processes without narratives to support them.

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 These power relations can be clearly understood by going beyond the activities of Trump's front man and studying the political activities of Secretary of the Department of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and the statements of Vice President JD Advance, who are building a network of bilateral agreements, rebuilding lost strength, based on the need to distance Russia from China. 

 At its core, in fact, lies what John Pilger defined, in his wonderful and timely documentary, as "the coming war," a new phase in which US objectives will be linked to containing China's win-win globalization at all costs, with the relative concentration of power resources in the Indo-Pacific quadrant. 

 This phase of deep crisis could be an excellent opportunity to rethink the European ordoliberal construction and its international role. It's a shame that a reckless, diplomatically incompetent, and disconnected ruling class has fallen into a dead end that condemns Europe to irrelevance in international relations, and from which it seems the only way out—we are told—is with weapons and a war against the Russian invader. Meanwhile, however, the military on our territory is American, not Russian, which reminds us of the old saying: "A sheep spends its entire life fearing the wolf. In the end, the shepherd eats it." In short, the old and artificial fear of seeing Cossacks drinking from the Trevi Fountain seems destined to come back into fashion.

“The world's most elusive criminal is the government.” ― Tamerlan Kuzgov

 

 RIGHT-HANDED DISHONESTY

By admtlsur: They say that right-wing business politicians don't need to steal because they already have enough money. Their followers also claim that politics is a form of pollution. That the direction of a society must be in the hands of business leaders, whom they euphemize as "markets."

In some ways, anti-politics, questioning activists, and the perpetual thematization of corruption related to public administration are some of the most widely used devices to defenestrate and obstruct social commitment in government.

While the media's gaze persists in dissecting the faults—more or less serious—of those who promote social inclusion, wealth distribution, and the fight against all forms of discrimination, the tentacles of conservative power hide the scams, crimes, embezzlement, and outright theft of public assets generated by corporations and businessmen-turned-politicians. The operations of criminalizing politics, known as lawfare, have as their counterpart the camouflage of the gigantic corruption cases of the global right. The mainstream media portrays them as exceptions and seeks to disconnect one from the other. Javier Milei's scam involving the Libra cryptocurrency, the greed of his sister, and his entourage, speak volumes of an obsessive attraction to money.

                                     “Open your eyes as wide as you can and take note of where you are, why you are, and who you are with?”  .- Qamar Rafiq

The same orientation that drives the New York tycoon, now president, who began as an associate of mafia families to develop his real estate empire. Trump has surfed the sexual abuse case in which he was convicted. He has managed to obscure a second sentence for defaming his victim. He has managed to paralyze the cases for promoting a coup d'état in 2021 and has obscured the case of disbursements to a prostitute to obtain her silence, falsifying her sworn accounting statement. Once he assumed his second term, the red-faced tycoon fired twelve prosecutors working on the criminal cases against him.

Conservatives, neoliberals, and neofascists often champion republicanism and the separation of powers. That enthusiasm ends when some judicial official decides to remain faithful to the Constitution and rules that the frauds must be brought to trial. Mauricio Macri has been convicted in the Argentine Post Office Case. He owes the state and society $700 million, but he managed to halt the case thanks to the sympathy of the Supreme Court. Previously, while he was president, he shamelessly attempted to benefit from a 98 percent discount on that amount. Macri came to power with 214 cases accumulated between 2007 and 2015. He added another 144 criminal charges during his four-year term.

 “Anyone who wants to tackle corruption must be willing to go all the way. There are no shortcuts.” — Oby Ezekwesili.

In Spain, the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, is accused of benefiting her partner and brother with healthcare-related businesses during the pandemic, the same period in which 7,291 elderly people died in nursing homes due to the negligence of authorities led by Ayuso. In France, Marine Le Pen was sentenced to four years in prison and barred from running for office after it was proven she embezzled European Union funds. In Brazil, fascist military leader Jair Bolsonaro is preparing to face a jury after the Federal Supreme Court charged him with an attempted coup d'état, following his loss to Lula da Silva. One of the most cited intellectuals of neoliberalism is Ludwig von Mises, who died in 1973. In his 1927 book, Liberalism in the Classical Tradition—five years after Mussolini's March on Rome and four years after Hitler's attempt to seize power through his Munich Putsch—he established his position on these political maneuvers, which helped avoid the ramifications of socialism: "It cannot be denied that fascism and similar movements that seek to establish dictatorships are full of the best intentions, and that their intervention, for the moment, has saved European civilization."

  “One politician can not make a government. He needs accomplices.”- Ljupka Cvetanova

Trump, Milei, Bolsonaro, Ayuso, and Le Pen are the most revealing expression of dishonesty. They make the fight against corruption a smokescreen for their triple constitutive intention: to enrich themselves at the expense of the sacrifice of the rest of society, to favor the privileged sectors, and to discipline those who try to build more equitable models of coexistence. They are not decent. They are boastful criminals and—above all—bloodthirsty fratricidals.

Author: Jorge Elbaum

President Petro to: Ms. Kristi, the Aragua train gang, which is a murderous criminal gang, was strengthened by yourselves by blockading Venezuela

 

 Petro: The US strengthened the Tren de Aragua gang with its blockade of Venezuela

The Colombian president accuses the US of being responsible for strengthening the Tren de Aragua criminal organization with its blockade and hostile policy toward Venezuela.

Gustavo Petro, in a message addressed Saturday night to Kristi Noem, the US Secretary of Homeland Security, highlighted how coercive measures against Venezuela have affected the country's youth.

"The blockade has forced hundreds of thousands of young Venezuelans, who were living well in Venezuela, into total exclusion in foreign neighborhoods and countries, and exclusion only leads to more violence, as demonstrated by the 76-year experience of Colombian violence."

In this regard, he accused the US of strengthening the Tren de Aragua gang by "blockading Venezuela."

This message from the Colombian president, published on his X account, comes amid new diplomatic tensions between Washington and Bogotá, following controversial statements by Noem about a meeting with Petro in Bogotá on March 27, which the US official described as "a rather tense encounter."

The US Secretary of Homeland Security accused the Colombian president of defending members of the Tren de Aragua gang and saying that some "were his friends." Petro responded, "I don't know why you say I had friends in the Tren de Aragua gang or in the cartels. I hope it's media speculation or friends of the mafia who want to keep Colombia and the US from talking to each other. I've never met a single cartel member in my entire life."

Ultimately, the president added in his letter to X, "the best way to end the violence of the Aragua Train is to allow the youth of Venezuela to live well in their country. It is the inclusion of Colombian youth populations that has allowed us to reduce violence in my country, and we still have a long way to go."

Similarly, and in reference to the discriminatory US policies toward migration implemented by the current Trump Administration, the head of state emphasized that migrants "are not criminals and their rights must be respected."

Noem, in her statements regarding the visit to Bogotá two weeks ago, alleged that Gustavo Petro had criticized the US government at that meeting, to which the president responded that these statements lack truth and asserted that the official "did not exactly understand" what he was saying, attributing the misunderstanding to a lack of language skills, acknowledging that he does not speak English.

Noem's visit to Bogotá was part of a tour of the region that began in El Salvador, where she visited the prison where the United States has sent dozens of undocumented immigrants under the justification that they are members of the Tren de Aragua criminal gang that emerged in Venezuela.

At the end of March, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro criticized U.S. policies and stated that "Venezuelan migrants are doubly victims," ​​explaining that "in Venezuela they were victims of sanctions and the U.S. economic war, which forced them to migrate as economic migrants," and now they are "victims of shame" when Washington calls them "members of a gang of murderers, the Tren de Aragua, which was defeated" by Venezuela.

Maduro attacks the US for the "cruel kidnapping" of Venezuelan migrants

He asserted that Washington intends to characterize "all Venezuelan migration as a migration of criminals" and called for the immediate release of Venezuelan migrants kidnapped in El Salvador after being deported by the US.

gec/ctl/tmv

 

 Post To: The Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security under the leadership of @POTUS Trump Conversation Gustavo Petro @petrogustav

                                              Post
To: The Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security under the leadership of @POTUS Trump
Conversation
Gustavo Petro
@petrogustavo

Ms. Kristi, the Aragua train gang, which is a murderous criminal gang, was strengthened by yourselves by blockading Venezuela.

I demonstrated that Venezuelan migration to all of the Americas was stopped, simply by formalizing diplomatic relations and opening the closed border, a huge mistake by former President Duque.

The blockade has forced hundreds of thousands of young Venezuelans, who were living well in Venezuela, into total exclusion in foreign neighborhoods and countries. Exclusion only leads to more violence, as the 76-year experience of Colombian violence demonstrates.

More love for youth, end drug abuse, that's what I told you. Societies where youth lose hope and their individuals live in solitude fill their emptiness with noise and drugs. I told you that noisy societies have a silent soul. More inclusion for excluded youth around the world and in exile, more inclusion for young people who leave in desperation due to economic blockades, and the monsters of violence will end.

I told you my opinion frankly because you asked me. I understand diplomacy based on frankness; lies only bring wars, truth, peace. I told you my truth about the Colombian experience and migration. Colombia is the country of 100 years of solitude, which is nothing more than having killed each other for 100 years.
That's why I invited you to see Gabriel García Márquez's exhibition.

The best way to end the violence on the Aragua train is to allow the youth of Venezuela to live well in their country.

It is the inclusion of Colombian youth that has made it possible to reduce violence in my country, and we still have a long way to go. Many more universities, art and sports, community and solidarity, much more love.

I'm sorry you don't understand my words. Migrants are not criminals and their rights must be respected, as my adversary, Duque, has demonstrated, and as my government has demonstrated.

There will only be more violence if 14-year-old children are imprisoned or the Venezuelan population, who believed the US government, is taken to Bukele's prisons.

Love ends violence, Kristi, Jesus taught that a long time ago.

I don't know why you say I said I had friends on the Aragua train or in the cartels. I hope it's media hoaxes or friends of the mafia who want Colombia and the US not to talk to each other. I've never met a single cartel member in my entire life.

I said that by breaking the ties between political power and drug traffickers, the mafia would be weakened, and that I expected their collaboration to do so. That there would only be understanding between our intelligence agencies to imprison the most powerful bosses and examine their global finances, not to fumigate farmers.

That the mafia had been in the Casa de Nariño and in Congress, and in In Miami, Madrid, and Dubai, but he didn't wander around the peasant house.

I said there would be intelligence and cross-referencing of biometric data, but on criminals, not on the Colombian population.

I said I would help destroy the mafia to the core, because they were murdering my people, peace, and democracy, but that I wouldn't help destroy my people.

We talked about a meeting between Colombian peasants and American farmers, and despite this incident, I stand by my word. I think they are very similar in their hopes, and in their desire to own the land. In Colombia, millions of farmers are landless, and that's why we have violence and drug trafficking.

I told them that many Colombian leaders deceived them by showing them the fumigation and imprisonment of thousands of farmers and telling them that this would put an end to the mafia. Instead, they hugged the bosses in clubs and palaces, drinking whiskey, and together they compiled lists of those to be killed next.

I said that if less dangerous substances were legalized, the Colombian mafia would immediately be eliminated, and if that wasn't done, their ties with the political establishment would have to be severed.

"Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world." - Nelson Mandela

 

What do education workers do?

By Fernando Buen Abad Dominguez: It is one of the most devilishly difficult jobs. It seems to be a constant need to remember the significance of the work of those who coordinate to provide education, which, by the way, is not just any dedication or any job. It cannot be understood as a "gold mine," a "gold mine," or an easy "job," because it is one of the most complex and delicate challenges, extraordinarily sensitive, at the heart of social needs and reality, under the current material contradictions and class struggle.

 

It is crucial to understand the significance of work in education, with its administrative or academic varieties, within the dominant class structure and ideological reproduction. It has the responsibility to keep the critique of bourgeois education alive, subjecting it to a dialectical examination that explains theory and praxis, structure and superstructure, consciousness and materiality. It must permanently question the problems of education in the ideological reproduction of one of the institutions of the status quo, through which the ruling class imposes its conditions of existence. This is how crucial and demanding work in education is. Millions of people are under its responsibility.

 

If the ruling class controls the means of production, it controls the production of ideas, and education is one of the main objectives of such domination. In the bourgeois educational system, education is a space for the manipulation of thought and the subordination of people. From childhood, there is a danger of being trained to accept the social structure of exploitation as something "natural." "The bourgeoisie has stripped all the once venerated professions of their sacred aura and turned them into mere wage earners" (Communist Manifesto).

 

It is a danger for any family that education reproduces the ideology of the ruling class, which manipulates minds to insert them into its productive apparatus. This is how difficult the work of those who educate in such a context of contradictions is. From primary school to university, obedience, competitiveness, and submission to authority are imposed as individualistic values. This education in capitalism is instrumentalized for the reproduction of the labor force: "The education of the worker, to the extent that it is not an ideological mystification, is limited to the development of skills that make him useful to capital" (Capital).

 

 

A priest’s creature comforts: Chickens, grandchildren and God. The globe and Mail                                         In capitalism, education is not oriented toward integral development, but rather toward the production of meek and grateful workers. The most conscious educators are committed to confronting the bourgeois divide, even among the workers themselves. As Marx thought: "The educator himself must be educated" (Theses on Feuerbach). We must coordinate and educate in practice so that this vocation, which seeks to train individuals capable of developing the capacities of all, is not weakened or defeated. Education must not be a commodity; that is, we must end the privatization and commodification of knowledge. We must overcome the separation between theory and practice.

We must defend the certainty that education cannot be limited to the transmission of abstract knowledge, but must be critically engaged with productive activity and the transformation of society. How can we change education without first changing society? Education under capitalism cannot be entirely liberating if education workers are trapped, hemmed in, or extorted by the dominant ideology. Achieving a truly emancipatory education requires a dynamic social revolution, driven by its own dialectic.

 

Here, pedagogy finds one of its most crucial missions: to train critical individuals who not only understand the world, but also transform it. Lenin believed that “the proletarian school must educate not only educated workers, but revolutionaries” (On Proletarian Education, 1920). This is a very special task with a very high historical responsibility. In the pursuit of an emancipatory and emancipatory education, it is clear that the coordination of education workers is not a mere blind consequence of the economy, but a field of dispute for the emancipation of the working class. Defending the workers who defend education, with the most conscious and combative theses and actions, must produce unbreakable solidarity as an act of consciousness-raising and emancipation, because “education does not change the world, but it changes the people who can change the world” (Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1968).

 

Hence the importance of coordination for teacher struggles, popular education projects, and the construction of a critical pedagogy. There is no liberating education without collective organization, without combative unions, without resistance to neoliberal reforms and bureaucracies that attempt to turn education into a market and students into commodities. In the face of the neoliberal offensive, revolutionary education must reaffirm itself.

 

In struggles, the history of popular struggles is taught, political economy is understood, and the media is denounced as instruments of domination. As José Martí said: "Be cultured to be free." These struggles of education workers are a trench of ideas and coordinating consciousness. "Education is either praxis or it is the chain of the oppressed." Thus, whether in the Zócalo or in Chiapas, the education worker in struggle does not shy away from the challenge. Let us not forget Ayotzinapa. 

 

Bureaucrats fear education workers because they study and train on the edge of class struggle and science, against bureaucracies and with miserable wages.

 

Every struggle of education workers is a school that teaches from the people and from rebellion, teaches us to break the cages, teaches revolution. "Educate yourselves, because we will need all our intelligence": Gramsci, or as Martí wrote: "Be cultured to be free." Or as Marx exclaimed: "Education must be emancipatory, never an instrument of oppression." That education workers should not give in is a morality; that they should not bend their voice is an ethic; that they should not forget to sow insurrection is a new humanism. Because their struggle is a tool of knowledge and wisdom for an extraordinarily sensitive revolution. It makes sense.

"They want to treat us like criminals simply because we have a tattoo, a tattoo with my son's name."

 Hunt for Venezuelans in the US 

 

By Guillermo Cieza: They left because of the economic crisis, caused primarily by the economic sanctions and blockade imposed by Western powers. 

 Many of them also left because they were opponents of Nicolás Maduro's government. The Trump administration hunts them like wild animals and deports them to their countries of origin, and in some cases to Guantánamo or the prisons of El Salvador. The vast majority of Venezuelans stand in solidarity with those who emigrated with the hope of living "the American dream" and are now treated like criminals

 

 The stories of Venezuelan migrants expelled from US soil are chilling. "They attacked me with blows and took my belongings. They took my money, my ID, and my phone." "They kicked me." "They treated us so badly. They left us like slaves, and we want justice." “Those of us detained have no crimes, we don't even have a fine. They want to treat us like criminals simply because we have a tattoo, a tattoo with my son's name.” “They caught me 10 months ago, 10 months detained, 8 months deported. The immigration treatment has been extremely brutal. Thank God, today we are close to reaching our country, which is what we want.”

 "My son went in search of the American dream and now he's trapped in El Salvador."

 The hunt for Venezuelan migrants has already begun to generate the first reactions in the US justice system. 

 Federal Judge Patricia Ann Millett of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled against the deportation of Venezuelans to El Salvador's prisons: “There were planes full of people. There were no established procedures to notify people. The Nazis received better treatment under the Enemy Alien Act.” 

 Judge James Boasberg opposes the "express" deportations of Venezuelans, believing that these citizens have the right to appear before a court and defend themselves against accusations linking them to being members of the Tren de Aragua (Aragua Train)

 The accusation of belonging to this criminal organization has been used relentlessly, for propaganda purposes by the Trump administration, to justify deportations to El Salvador or Guantánamo. The conditions in these prisons violate basic human rights. Among many testimonies has emerged the story of Audry, a barber, who was accused without any evidence of links to criminal organizations and suffered the worst humiliations at the CECOT (Center for the Confinement of Terrorism) in El Salvador. 

 

The defense of exiles in the US and the reception of deportees has become a national cause in Venezuela. The Venezuelan right, which for years was funded by the US government, remains silent. Meanwhile, new voices are joining the government's call for respect for exiled Venezuelan families.

 Elías Jaua, one of Chávez's closest leaders who distanced himself from Maduro's administration for not sharing some of the guidelines adopted to maintain his power, joined the call, stating that the most serious thing the US is currently doing against Venezuela, beyond the oil sanctions, is "the criminalization of our nationality, of our identity." He calls for a public trial, with full legal guarantees, against all those far-right spokespeople who have sought to harm Venezuela. 

 huelladelsur.ar

 BY HISPANTV NEWS                                                                                                      Cuba slams the US for using migration as a business opportunity

 

 Cuba criticizes the Trump administration for using migration as a business opportunity by selling residencies and violating migrants' basic rights.

 

“The immigration problem in the United States has become the US government's new business. While they expel illegal migrants, violating the most basic human rights, they sell permanent residency in that country for $5,000,000,” Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez denounced on his X account this Wednesday.

 

NYT: US immigration policy toward Cuba is “irrational”

 

He denounced the US capitalist system in which the rich enjoy privileged rights, saying that the sale of residency occurs in the “country of differences, privilege, and plutocracy.”

 

His statements come after US President Donald Trump announced his decision in late February to create a "gold card" visa offering a path to citizenship for $5,000,000, which would replace a 35-year-old investor visa.

 

"They will be rich and successful. They will spend a lot of money, pay a lot of taxes, and employ a lot of people. We believe it will be extremely successful," the Republican magnate had stated.

 

Cuba: US uses immigration policy as a weapon against Cubans | HISPANTV

 

                

 THE IMMIGRANT HOLOCAUST REACHES CUBANS .- La Jornada

                                                                                                                                                   Cuba's Deputy Foreign Minister emphasized that the US uses immigration policy as a tool of destabilization against the island.

 

US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said in February that the "Trump Gold Card" will replace EB-5 visas within two weeks. EB-5s were created by Congress in 1990 to encourage foreign investment and are available to individuals who invest around $1 million in a business that employs at least 10 people.

 

This comes as the Trump administration continues raids to capture and expel undocumented migrants—estimated at 13 million—denying the United Nations' fundamental principles on migration as a right.

 

Pope Francis condemns Trump's deportations: They will end badly

 

Trump has promised to carry out the largest mass deportation campaign in US history and curb immigration, primarily from Latin American nations. This comes as human rights organizations denounce the US's inhumane treatment of the immigrant community.

 

US judge on deported Venezuelans: 'Nazis received better treatment'

Contradictions of the American Dream: for some, the poor face deportation and the horror of imprisonment, while others pay for their entry into hell. -R. Capote

                                                       Canadian Regimes and Terrorist Groups of 'CAS and CPS' Damned Violence Against Children and Parents?

The Hell of Nayib Bukele's Prisons
                                                                                                                                                                            1. Cruel and inhumane behavior, savagery, is being carried out in El Salvador's prisons before everyone's eyes, as if it were nothing.

2. Evil in the body of another, cruelty, is being carried out as if it were part of the culture of our people.

3. No one is prepared to resign themselves to physical or moral harm. Enduring or coping is not part of the normal way of life.

4. What is happening to Salvadoran and Venezuelan prisoners in the kind of ergastulas of ancienoran and Venezuelan prisoners is an affront to all of humanity. It is crt Rome is intolerable in the 21st century.

5. What is happening to Salvaduelty and sadism combined with brutal atrocity. 6. Forcing a handcuffed man to bend his knees to shave his head is an atrocity, a bestiality, pure barbarity.

7. Seeing men forced to comply in a humiliating manner diminishes civilized humanity and contradicts our desire to live in a world of happiness and equal opportunity.

8. The degradation and mortification of another person, for being undocumented, should be repugnant to any sensitive person opposed to ignominy.

9. In El Salvador, in Bukele's prisons, there are nationals, victims of the system, and Venezuelans who in their native lands have no place in the labor market.

10. What is happening in Salvadoran prisons to house poor human beings classified as antisocial must be rejected by those of us who oppose dehumanization in any of its forms. 11. Humiliating, vexatious, ignominious, and infamous rulers like Bukele and Donald Trump cannot demean, mistreat, insult, or hurt the self-esteem of human beings.

12. What is happening to Bukele's and Donald Trump's prisoners in Salvadoran prisons must be denounced, rejected, and firmly condemned.

13. The hateful and cruel methods carried out against prisoners in El Salvador must be censured as inhumane, disapproved of as contrary to human rights, and repudiated for hurting the noblest sentiments of our people.

14. There is no justification or excuse of any kind to justify the torture of national and Venezuelan prisoners in the Salvadoran prison hells.

15. From no point of view are horror, humiliation, atrocities, the execrable, sinister, and repulsive acceptable for reducing the human being.

16. Human principles can never be implemented in society through cruel measures. It is absurd to think that happiness can be established at the cost of unhappiness.

“Los nazis obtuvieron mejor trato bajo la LEE (Ley de Enemigos Extranjeros)” porque tuvieron derecho a “audiencias” antes de ser deportados, afirmó Karen Henderson.

It is better to annoy with the truth than to please with Lies.

                      Unpacking Trump’s Immigration Lies

The narrative that the Democrats should counter with is that immigration is a good thing, but right-wing policies create illegal immigration by pushing people out of their home countries and denying them a legal way to come to the U.S.

 

By Orion Hall: On March 4, 2025, President Donald Trump gave a speech to a joint session of Congress. Although this speech may be labeled by some as a State of the Union address, it is actually not a State of the Union address because those are delivered by a president in January or February after they’ve completed their first year in office.

 

Of course, a president is free to speak in front of Congress anytime he or she wants to, but I think a fake State of the Union address that is filled with lies spewed out by a man who was convicted of 34 felony counts of fraud, whose company has been found guilty of fraud, who ran a fraudulent university that defrauded its students, who filed numerous fraudulent lawsuits to overturn the 2020 election, and who orchestrated a multi-state fraudulent elector scheme to stop the 2020 election certification, is very on brand.

 

It’s important to remember that Trump likes to find things that already exist, slap his name on them, and take credit for them.

 

Donald Trump tells lies like a fish swims through the water, but some of his most egregious lies are related to immigration and immigrants. Perhaps his most notorious and dehumanizing lie about immigrants was about Haitian migrants eating cats and dogs. However, his speech to Congress on March 4 contained numerous lies about immigration that are worth debunking. I cannot possibly write about all of the lies contained in his speech, but I want to highlight the ones that stood out to me, and that I can help provide important context on.

 

Immigration Lie No. 1: Lowest Number of Border Crossings

 

Within minutes of starting his speech, Trump shot out the following lie: “Within hours of taking the oath of office, I declared a national emergency on our southern border, and I deployed the U.S. military and Border Patrol to repel the invasion of our country, and what a job they’ve done. As a result, illegal border crossings last month were by far the lowest ever recorded, ever. They heard my words, and they chose not to come.” This is actually multiple lies tied together to push a false narrative, which again, is very on brand.

First, the military was already deployed to the border by former President Joe Biden in 2023. It’s important to remember that Trump likes to find things that already exist, slap his name on them, and take credit for them. Second, the Border Patrol was already at the border, because that’s their entire mission. His lie makes it seem like the Border Patrol wasn’t there before, but that he, in his infinite wisdom, sent them to the border and now they are stopping people from crossing. Third, the U.S. is not being invaded at the southern border. An invasion implies a foreign army or some other militant group, but we know that the people who come to the border are increasingly families and other desperate people seeking help, many of whom are fleeing from the effects of decades of right-wing U.S. policy. Characterizing these people as invaders is not only extremely loathsome, but it is just plain incorrect, and it serves the greater narrative that Trump is pushing that we are under attack.

 

Remember, the purpose of framing migration at the southern border as an “invasion” is to build support for himself and his brutal, militarized immigration policies that will cause suffering to a vulnerable group of people who need help, as well as enriching his private prison corporate campaign donors and increasing the power of the federal police state, which he will almost certainly use for nefarious purposes.

 

If he were not a U.S. citizen, he would be deported and barred from ever returning to the U.S., not only for his felony fraud convictions, but for stealing national security documents and lying to the FBI about it.

 

Fourth, Trump claims that as a result of his actions, “illegal border crossings” dropped to the “lowest ever recorded” in February 2025. Of course, he doesn’t cite to a specific number, so it’s impossible to know what exactly he is referring to when he makes this claim. The best guess is that he is referencing the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s February 2025 border “encounter” numbers, which haven’t even come out yet. Because the number hasn’t been released, we can’t definitively fact check him, but there are months from the past that already have lower numbers than what’s been reported by news agencies for February 2025. However, the bigger issue is that Trump is conflating “border crossings” with border apprehensions. This is an important distinction. The number of arrests decreasing doesn’t mean that fewer people tried to cross the border illegally: it just means fewer people were caught.

 

It’s also important to understand that many of the illegal crossings were people crossing the border and then immediately turning themselves in so they could claim asylum. If we had a well-functioning immigration system, there would be a way for people to come to the border, claim asylum, do their credible fear screening, get a background check, and then be legally paroled into the country to pursue their asylum claim. This is what the CBP One app was designed to facilitate, but it was woefully inadequate. Instead, the only practical way for most people to claim asylum was to cross illegally and then turn themselves in. The status quo before Trump was already a failure in our immigration system, caused by a lack of funding and the right-wing policy that treats asylum-seekers like an invading army.

 

To make matters worse, one of Trump’s first executive actions after the inauguration was to cancel the CBP One app, and completely suspend asylum at the border. Suspending asylum is not only illegal, but it will cause people to cross the border and disappear into the interior instead of crossing the border and turning themselves in to start the asylum process. Trump is pointing to the lower number of arrests and lying to you by saying that illegal crossings are down, when in reality, he has likely just pushed more of them into the shadows.

 

The best way to reduce illegal border crossings is to: 1) give people pathways to come to the U.S. legally; and 2) stop the right-wing policies that disrupt living conditions in the countries to the south of us that cause people to flee and seek refuge in the U.S. Trump wants to push the narrative that immigrants are invaders and the best way to stop them from crossing the border is with walls and militaristic border policies. Nothing could be further from the truth.

 

Immigration Lie No. 2: Insane Asylums

 

The next immigration lie from Trump is that under the Biden administration, there were “…hundreds of thousands of illegal crossings a month, and virtually all of them, including murderers, drug dealers, gang members, and people from mental institutions and insane asylums, were released into our country.” I’m not going to spend much time on this, but this is false. He previously said it was millions of people, so he can’t even get his story straight, but this has been debunked numerous times. This is one of his favorite immigration lies, and I am sure he will keep repeating it for the foreseeable future.

 

Immigration Lie No. 3: Gold Card

 

Trump briefly touched on the so-called “gold card” he had announced recently. “With that goal in mind, we have developed in great detail what we are calling the Gold Card, which goes on sale very, very soon. For $5 million we will allow the most successful job-creating people from all over the world to buy a path to U.S. citizenship. It’s like the green card, but better and more sophisticated.” He says they have developed this “in great detail” but there is actually no detail as to how this would work. It appears that he is saying that people would be able to buy permanent residency by paying $5 million dollars, but that would have to be enacted by Congress because the president cannot create new green card categories. Also, there is already an EB-5 investor green card, that actually requires investment in a U.S. business and creation of jobs, whereas the “gold card” apparently doesn’t actually require that any U.S. jobs be created. He is lying to the American public by implying that rich people will create jobs in the U.S. if we allow them to just buy their way into the country.

 

Remember when they called former President Barack Obama a tyrant because he tried to help Dreamers with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)? DACA is well within the purview of presidential authority because it is simply prosecutorial discretion coupled with employment authorization. I wonder if the GOP will make the same critique if Trump illegally creates a new category of permanent residency that he admits will allow Russian oligarchs to effectively buy U.S. citizenship. He also said of the gold card holders, “They won’t have to pay tax from where they came, the money that they’ve made, you wouldn’t want to do that.” Since he doesn’t have the authority to suspend tax laws in the home countries of these people, this is clearly a lie, or possibly just incoherent rambling.

 

Immigration Lie No. 4: 21 Million People Poured into the U.S.

 

Trump claimed that, “Over the past four years, 21 million people poured into the United States.” Not only does this use dehumanizing language, likening people fleeing from desperate situations to some kind of flood, but it’s completely incorrect. The narrative that the Democrats should counter with is that immigration is a good thing, but right-wing policies create illegal immigration by pushing people out of their home countries and denying them a legal way to come to the U.S.

 

Immigration Lie No.5: The Dangerous Immigrant

 

Trump’s last major immigration lie was the “immigrants are dangerous” narrative that he has been poisoning American discourse with for nearly a decade. He pushed this lie by making a spectacle out of the deaths of Laken Riley and Jocelyn Nungaray and cynically using their families as political props. This exploitative appeal to emotion is meant to obscure the basic fact that immigrants, both documented and undocumented, commit crime at a lower rate than U.S. citizens and U.S. citizens are the primary smugglers of fentanyl into the U.S. through ports of entry. Statistically speaking, if you were walking down the street and there was a U.S. citizen walking toward you from one direction and an undocumented immigrant walking toward you from the other direction, you’d be safer if you walked toward the undocumented immigrant.

 

To bring it full circle, the ultimate irony is that Donald Trump is himself a convicted felon. If he were not a U.S. citizen, he would be deported and barred from ever returning to the U.S., not only for his felony fraud convictions, but for stealing national security documents and lying to the FBI about it. He would have you believe that immigrants are a threat to public safety, while he is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths due to his Covid-19 mismanagement, responsible for freezing USAID funding that will lead to thousands of deaths around the world, and many more.

 

Every single thing that Trump says about immigrants should be scrutinized and not taken at face value because there is a good chance it is a lie or misleading. They say that every Republican accusation is a confession. We should all keep that in mind the next time Trump tries to fearmonger about immigrants.

Everything has its beauty, but not everyone sees it. - Confucius

                                                   Imperialism in the WC

By Fernando Buen Abad: The geopolitical ideology of inequality for sanitation meets in the WC. In a world that sells “smart toilets” as a new capitalist luxury, while the sanitary infrastructures of Asia, Africa and Latin America suffer from abandonment, delay and exasperating insalubrious.

All the merchandise and symbols of imperial power, of individualistic consumerism and of ideological-cultural colonialism meet in the “bathroom”, starting with furniture for washing the body (whole or in parts), for “exoneration of the womb”, and for other purposes such as rest and recreation when purchasing power allows it. All functional thanks to water, converted into a privatized commodity, under the cloak of neoliberal corruption and under corporate and multinational mafias. Water mafias, such as Nestlé, Veolia and Suez. Unclean symbols.

 

Because of its importance in everyday life, it has a multitude of names: bathroom, service, toilet, washbasin, toilette, toilet, bathroom, toilet, restroom, lavatory, salle de bains, cabinets, banheiro, bagno… In some cultures, euphemisms or colloquial expressions are also used: “The throne”, “The little retreat”… are names that not only reflect linguistic diversity, but also cultural and ideological ones, all of them overwhelmed by imperial brands.

 

With soap, for example, myths have been fabricated of a civilization washed with colonial inventions that have used the “hygiene of the whites” against the “filth of the poor”, as a publicity and racist syllogism that uses soap as a corporal and symbolic “whitener”. There, in the intimacy of the bathroom, Unilever and Colgate-Palmolive reign, among many other brands. There is cosmetics associated with the colonization of bodies with bourgeois standards of beauty, cleanliness and neatness, imposed globally. Soaps such as Pears Soap used racist and paternalistic images, presenting colonized peoples as “dirty” and “backward”, while cleanliness was associated with European order and progress. The Guardian report (2019) on the cosmetics market in India highlights how 61% of the cosmetics market is dominated by skin-lightening products, with brands such as Fair & Lovely (now Glow & Lovely, by Unilever) benefiting from the internationalization of beauty stereotypes.

 

Moreover, the “bathroom” is now dominated by “sophisticated” verbiage, full of “exotic” ingredients, looted from very diverse countries (argan, shea, aloe vera). “Natural” and “organic” are used as labels for the commercialization of green demagogy. There are also sanitary pads, even scented ones, for the female body market. Monopolies such as Procter & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson market menstrual hygiene in disregard of all inequalities to impose the dominance of pads and tampons, which are humiliatingly overpriced, while advertising “sustainable alternatives” and the “menstrual cup” subject to imperialist business. The menstrual products market is monopolized by a few large corporations, such as Procter & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson, which control production and distribution. A report by Plan International (2021) reveals that more than 500 million women and girls around the world lack access to menstrual products, which limits their ability to participate fully in working life.

 

The geopolitical ideology of inequality for sanitation is at play in the WC. In a world that sells “smart toilets” as the new capitalist luxury, while the sanitary infrastructures of Asia, Africa and Latin America suffer from exasperating neglect, delay and unsanitary conditions. According to the World Health Organization report (2021), more than 3.6 million people lack access to safe sanitation. And all covered up with perfumes and deodorants, with the dictatorship of the colonial sense of smell, of the “smell of cleanliness”, the plutocratic, white and wealthy “cultural revolution”, capable of selling “indigenous essences” and perfumes with ingredients against the “bad smells” of “races” with dubious hygiene, according to the bourgeois mentality of advertisers. Meanwhile, companies like Kimberly-Clark destroy primary forests to sell “toilet paper”; dental hygiene and the colonization of the mouth sells toothbrushes and flashes of whiteness like that of Colgate's fangs, plundering ingredients with orthodontic marketing and dental aesthetics from the North. Multinational companies like Kimberly-Clark and Procter & Gamble cut down thousands of trees a day in countries like Brazil, Indonesia and Canada so that you can have toilet paper rolls in your bathroom.

 

They have turned the bathroom into a consumerist circus with mostly unnecessary products, invented by the cosmetics industry as a symbol of bourgeois status and its personal hygiene routines with the ideology of the perfect bathroom as a pure, white, modern space and as a class privilege, a stage for aspirations of well-being and self-care. Imperialism has infiltrated the bathroom, even the most reserved spaces of daily life, traditionally understood as an intimate place of cleanliness and personal care, but now converted into perfect stages to infiltrate the ideology of the dominant class, the dynamics of unbridled consumerism and global imperialism poisoning the everyday. From the privatization of water to the imposition of brands and hygiene, they plague daily life with the structural inequalities of capitalism.

 

It is urgent, of course, to decolonize the Bathroom, which is a very sensitive microcosm subject to the mercantile and monopolistic interests of the Yankee empire. From the privatization of water to the commercialization of personal hygiene and the imposition of colonial aesthetic standards, this space of diverse fragility reflects the power dynamics that shape manipulations of behaviour against everyday life threatened by capitalism. To decolonize the bathroom, it is necessary to question and resist the forms of exploitation and domination that are reproduced as temptations of “comfort” through products and services associated with hygiene and well-being.

 

This implies democratizing water as a human right, against the privatization and exploitation of water resources; questioning bourgeois stereotypes of imperialist beauty; promoting diversity and acceptance of bodies and their diversities; ensuring self-sustainability in the market for menstrual products and cosmetics, combating the consumer logic of monopolies; denouncing and combating the predatory production of toilet paper and other products, opposing it with ecological and ethical production that does not allow environmental destruction. A semiotic revolution and a humanist ethic that understands the bathroom as a space of hygiene and privacy, but also as a crucial scene of symbolic dispute where the global dynamics of exploitation, domination and alienation are manifested today.

"CANADA THE LIVING HELL THAT NOBODY DOESN’T KNOW" A MONSTROUS PRISON THAT WE CHOOSE TO LIVE!

 

 

What are crimes against humanity? 

 Crimes against humanity: meaning 

The Spanish Legal Dictionary is more specific, and offers some examples that can help you understand it better. It defines a crime against humanity as one “of particular gravity, such as murder, extermination, slavery, deportation or forced transfer of population, serious deprivation of liberty or torture, which is committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population and with knowledge of said attack.” 

 "CANADA THE LIVING HELL THAT NOBODY DOESN’T KNOW" A MONSTROUS PRISON THAT WE CHOOSE TO LIVE! 

 

 Thus, according to this definition, in order to qualify the facts as crimes against humanity, there must not only be a serious violent action, but also other circumstances. For example, an isolated action is not considered a crime against humanity. It must be part of a larger objective against a sector of the population. In addition, there must be intent on the part of the person committing it. Or what we legally call ‘intent’. And they are only considered crimes against humanity if they have been committed against the civilian population. According to this definition, attacks against soldiers in combat are excluded.

  Crimes against humanity in the Rome Statute 

 Canada is a country of pain and mourning, a land of aberrant crimes, of human misery; without any hope! "An ocean whose fierce waves drag millions of lacerated lives." .- Nadir Siguencia

The definition of the Spanish Legal Dictionary is, in any case, a summary or interpretation of the original concept. Since the end of the 19th century, and especially after the world wars, International Law has been classifying the criminal conduct that it considered most serious, those that attacked fundamental rights. And it included some of these in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, of July 17, 1998. This is where the foundations of the concept of crimes against humanity are laid. 

They are defined, specifically, in article 7. It cites, as in the previous definition, murder, extermination, slavery, deportation, torture or deprivation of physical liberty in violation of the rules of International Law. But, in addition, other crimes are added. Among them, the “persecution of a group or collectivity with its own identity based on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender reasons…”. And apartheid or the forced disappearance of people are mentioned, among them. 

 In addition, sexual crimes are added. “Rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution, forced pregnancy, forced sterilization or other sexual abuses of comparable gravity.” Like the rest, all of them will be considered crimes against humanity as long as they are also committed “as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population and with knowledge of said attack.” Widespread or systematic attack on a population, whether by a third party or by some State authority. Example: “The persecution of people for their political ideas is a crime against humanity.” 

 CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY 

ATROCITY AFTER ATROCITY:Canadian Hospitals “Chambers of Torture”

 

Dr. Hans J.Kreder – An Act of Sadism, Madness….

 Art. 7 of the Rome Statute: “For the purposes of this Statute, “crime against humanity” means any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population and with knowledge of such attack: a) Murder; b) Extermination; c) Enslavement; d) Deportation or forcible transfer of population; e) Imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law; f) Torture; g) Rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, enforced pregnancy, enforced sterilization or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity; (h) Persecution of any identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender-based grounds as defined in paragraph 3, or other grounds universally recognized as impermissible under international law, in connection with any act referred to in this paragraph or with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Court; (i) Forced disappearance of persons; (j) The crime of apartheid; (k) Other inhuman acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering or serious harm to physical integrity or mental or physical health.” https://www.oas.org/36ag/espanol/doc_referencia/Estatuto_Roma.pdf. G.O.E. No. 5,507 of December 13, 2000. 

Crimes against humanity do not have a statute of limitations 

There is no time limit for reporting or prosecuting a crime against humanity in order for the alleged perpetrators to be tried. 

Furthermore, crimes against humanity can be reported and prosecuted in any country. In theory, their seriousness allows any State, without the need for the victims or perpetrators to be of its nationality, or for the crimes to occur in its territory, to accuse and condemn these crimes under its legal system. However, this is usually exceptional, given the complementary work of the ICC.

OUR NIGHTMARES REVEALED

 

 

 “SATANIC NOTES”  

I live in fear; I’m scared and shocked, every day at all. You know my Honor’s, It’s true, the true, the only truth I’m terrified of this inexcusable police force at all They are horrifying liars and brutes against me.

 Reviewing the lawless police notes indicate Nadir is... Six feet tall, two hundred and twenty pounds You know my honor; I’m not a giant with that weigh “I’m not, a cruel, a sadist, a brute, a beater and a killer”

The true is only five feet five, one hundred sixty five What? Flawless intentions of criminals, murderers and assassins Over the years the police force labeled me, as a Violent, crazy….. Don’t blame me for yours unmercifully beatings and crazy killings. 

 “Nosotros somos oportunistas y prostitutas intelectuales”                                                            

 

 El negocio de los sacerdotes y periodistas es destruir la verdad; mentir abiertamente; pervertir; difamar; adular de rodillas las riquezas, vender su país y su carrera por su pan de cada día. Tú lo sabes y yo lo sé, y qué locura es ésta…tueste una prensa independiente! Somos las herramientas y vasallos de hombres ricos detrás de las escenas. Somos los que damos saltos, ellos mueven los hilos y nosotros bailamos. Nuestros talentos, nuestras posibilidades y nuestras vidas son propiedad de otros hombres. “Nosotros somos las prostitutas intelectuales”