Category Archives: Colonialism and Resistance

Trump says U.S. is ‘starting to talk with Cuba’ even as he tries to block oil imports

by Jim Hodgson

In the face of U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats to impose new tariffs on any nation that exports oil to Cuba, we all need to stand firm. Here are two ways to send messages to Canadian leaders.

First, the Take Action proposed by Canadian churches, trade unions and NGOs. Yes: it pre-dates the current crisis, but its message is vital. Canada cannot be silent.

Second, the Canadian Network on Cuba has an on-line petition to Canadian parliamentarians. It too pre-dates the immediate crisis, but is still an important means to communicate.

Of course you can write your own letters to leaders in whichever country you live.

Take heart from increasingly strong messages from Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.

Today, she denied Trump’s claim a night earlier that they had talked about Cuba, much less that he had asked her to stop sending Mexican oil to Cuba and that she would comply.

La Jornada

The only such conversation, she said while travelling in Sonora state, had been between her foreign affairs secretary, Juan Ramón de la Fuente, and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Sheinbaum has said several times this week that her country will continue to send humanitarian aid including oil to Cuba. Various sources report that Cuba has only enough oil to satisfy needs for another 15 to 20 days.

For his part, de la Fuente told Mexican legislators today that Mexico considers it “unacceptable that there not be humanitarian aid where it is needed, when some country in the world requires it.”

Saturday night, while travelling from Washington DC to his home in Florida, Trump said the United States was beginning to talk with Cuban leaders. (There is no confirmation as of Sunday evening from Cuba that such talks have begun.)

In comments to reports on Air Force One, he added: “It doesn’t have to be a humanitarian crisis. I think they probably would come to us and want to make a deal,” Trump said Saturday. “So Cuba would be free again.”

He predicted they would make some sort of deal with Cuba and said, “I think, you know, we’ll be kind.” (U.S. interventions since 1812 have not been known for their kindness.)

The comments follow more than six decades of U.S. sanctions aimed at inducing regime change in revolutionary Cuba, the kidnapping four weeks ago of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, and Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on any country that continued to sell oil to Cuba. 

On Wednesday night, Jan. 29, he declared a “national emergency” to protect “U.S. national security and foreign policy from the Cuban regime’s malign actions and policies.”

Granma photo: Ricardo López Hevia

Cuban leaders have condemned and denounced this new escalation of the “U.S. economic blockade.”

“Surrender will never be an option, and hard times like these must be faced with courage and bravery,” said President Miguel Díaz-Canel Saturday.

The Trump regime’s tactic of confiscating Venezuelan oil tankers has worsened a fuel and electricity crisis in Cuba. The Cuban people face rolling blackouts and struggle to cope without reliable fuel and electricity supplies.

"Another World is Possible," World Social Forum, Porto Alegre, Brasil (2005)

The old order is dead. Let’s make a new, more just order.

by Jim Hodgson

It was too much to hope that the well-heeled audience at Davos would boo Donald Trump from the stage a day after they had offered Mark Carney a standing ovation. But by the end of Wednesday, it seemed that the wall of resistance to any U.S. take-over of Greenland was successful, and the president backed down. An important victory.

Still, “la rupture de l’ordre mondial” of which Carney spoke remains. And he’s right: we shouldn’t mourn it. The international financial institutions invented in 1944 at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, gave overwhelming power to the rich countries of the Global North. 

And the United Nations system that followed, with a veto given to each of the five most powerful countries, has protected their interests – even in the face of overwhelming contrarian votes in the UN General Assembly. Think, for example, of the annual vote to end the cruel U.S. blockade of Cuba.

That order was designed by the nations that existed at the end of World War II, especially the colonial or neo-colonial states of Europe and the Americas. Most of the Caribbean, Africa and large parts of south Asia were still under colonial rule. That order imposed and perpetuated a Global North-based order on all the new nations that were born in the 25 years or so after the war: the majority of nations that exist today.

And that order, at least in the eyes of three of the five veto-holders, effectively imposed capitalism as a synonym for democracy. The United States and its allies were satisfied with a sort of formal democracy, a certain alternance between parties of the right and centre-right, and if that failed, then a military government was a useful interlude until the real order could be re-established and markets were safe. 

Canada would “go along to get along,” as Carney admitted. 

Just as it did less than three weeks ago when the United States bombed Venezuela and kidnapped its president. And just as it has for more than two years over Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

In his speech, Carney seemed to offer a vision of capitalism without the now-erratic United States. It’s still reliant on resource extraction, military spending, and massive capital investment.

But if we are all to grow and thrive, we must demand more. We require an end to practices that exploit social inequities and our shared ecology. 

Alternatives

Because of the paths on which my life has taken me, one that is especially close to my heart is the call from the Indigenous people of Zapatista communities in southern Mexico for “a world with room for all” – “un mundo donde quepan muchos mundos.” But other visions come from other places, including three decades of gatherings of the World Social Forum.

More than 50 years ago, the majority world united behind a vision of economic decolonization, sovereign development, and international cooperation across areas such as debt, trade, finance, and technology. That vision became known as the New International Economic Order (NIEO) and was adopted by the UN General Assembly. But, power relations being what they are, it was never implemented. (Progressive International put together a set of reflections that trace its history and update the proposals for the 21st century.)

In March last year, the World Council of Churches and several global communions of churches repeated their call for a New International Financial and Economic Architecture (NIFEA). “It is immoral that over a billion people – half of them children – subsist in poverty whilst billionaires increased their wealth by over 15% in 2024 to US$15 trillion. It is outrageous that the richest 10% of the global population receives more than half of global income, whereas the poorest half earns merely 8.5% of it,” they said in a statement.

They expressed deep concern about “a rapidly escalating climate and biodiversity emergency that jeopardises livelihoods and poses an existential threat to all life.” It notes that “several tipping points are close to being crossed or have already been crossed, leading us to recognise that we may be beyond a point of no return.”

The old order is dead. The time in which we are living demands we do better.

Canada must be #ElbowsUp in solidarity with Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, Cuba, Greenland…

by Jim Hodgson

For those who expect Canada to extend its #ElbowsUp approach to relations with the United States into solidarity with other parts of the hemisphere, here’s a chance to demand our leaders do just that: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/actiononvenezuela.

Illustration: Rachel K. Lim, Common Frontiers.

As you know, early Saturday morning, Jan. 3, the United States dropped bombs in several parts of Venezuela and kidnapped President Nicolás Maduro and his spouse, “First Combatant” Cilia Flores. They were flown to New York to face trumped-up charges of drug-trafficking and weapons possession. Venezuela’s interior minister says 100 people died in U.S. attack.

Days later, two coalitions of Canadian labour unions, aid NGOs, human rights groups and churches followed up on a Nov. 13 joint statement regarding U.S. attacks on small boats by sending a new letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney and Foreign Minister Anita Anand.

Statements by Canadian leaders were tepid at best, especially given Trump’s history of threatening Canada’s independence.

The Americas Policy Group and Common Frontiers say that Canada must take urgent action with international partners to oppose U.S. threats to rights, sovereignty and peace in Venezuela and the Americas. 

“We join our many partners across Latin America, the Caribbean and beyond who are vigorously condemning the U.S. military operation of Jan. 3, President Trump’s stated intention to ‘run Venezuela’ and sell seized Venezuelan oil, his recorded threats to send U.S. troops into Colombia and Mexico, and threats against Cuba,” the groups said Jan. 8.

Another group, Lead Now, offers a petition to the government of Canada that you can sign.

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