Tag Archives: #HumanRights

Karl Marx in the Rose Garden

By Jim Hodgson

I take my title today from a subhead in a column by Enrique Galvan Ochoa in the Mexico City daily La Jornada. I’ll translate and summarise from his text here:

Not even Karl Marx would dare to imagine such a spectacular coup against neoliberalism and globalization as that carried out by President Donald Trump with his explosion of tariffs to the whole world on April 2 in the Rose Garden of the White House. The cathedrals of capitalism tumbled, from Wall Street to all the other global stock markets. In just a week, investors fled in search of refuge for their money: in gold, government bonds—swallows in search of a nest. The blow from that unpredictable businessman installed in Washington will have lasting effects. And it will hit the poor as well as the rich.

With respect, I am not so sure that it was a blow against neoliberalism so much as its logical next step: away from unrestricted movement of capital and toward concentration of wealth in ever-fewer hands. 

But that’s my point: I’m not sure. Daily—this has been going on since Trump began his run for political office a decade ago—new opinion pieces land in my inbox, many of them making strong historical analogies. Is he trying to restore a golden age/Belle Époque—think of the 1870s through to the start of the First World War and the beginning of income tax—for oligarchic billionaires and their closest allies, the mere millionaires? 

I loved seeing the rapper Lizzo on Saturday Night Live this past weekend wearing a cropped t-shirt emblazoned TARIFFIED. On the right: Trump in a storm.

What to make of these tariff wars and consequent stock market losses? I find myself pushed to go deeper.

You don’t have to be a Marxist—I think here of sociologist Max Weber and Canadian social democrat Tommy Douglas—to see how societies (including the liberal ones) are divided between the dominant structures defended by the elites and the counter movements supported by those with fewer privileges. 

And you don’t have to be a Marxist to appreciate his writing. A passage in The Communist Manifesto describes how love and poetry, religion and community, are “drowned in the icy waters of selfish calculation.”  All of these are drowned so that personal worth becomes exchange value—you sell your labour—and numberless freedoms are abolished in favour of “that single, unconscionable freedom—Free Trade.” * 

We might be forgiven if we thought free trade was invented at the time of the great debates ahead of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, or the Canada-U.S. agreement in 1989, or the advent of the common market in Europe in the 1960s. Some might know that elections in Canada were fought and lost at the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries over various proposals for free trade with the United States: “No truck or trade with the Yankees!” cried the Conservatives in 1911, defeating the Liberals of Sir Wilfred Laurier. 

Just before Marx and his co-author Friedrich Engels published their Manifesto in 1848, debate raged in Britain over the “Corn Laws.” These were tariffs and other trade restrictions on imported food enforced between 1815 and 1846. Large land-owners wanted the tariffs kept high to keep out competition. Industrialists wanted them lowered because cheaper food meant they could pay workers less. (The industrialists won.) In a speech in Brussels in January 1848, Marx said protectionism was conservative and free trade was destructive. But he also saw that free trade in that context “hastens the social revolution” and thus merited his support. 

I like to say that I have been fighting free trade since 1848. But truth is the first time I wrote about the free trade debate was in 1986 (above).

My issue wasn’t so much having about rules for international trade—and we always press for protection for labour, the environment and human rights—as it was the protections that were built into the trade agreements for corporations (always referred to as “investors”). Under those waves of free trade deals, governments were blocked from protecting public health or the environment. Corporations would bring their complaints to an “investor-state” dispute resolution tribunal. Most times, the tribunals would rule in favour of the corporation and the state would be on the hook for the corporation’s imagined future earnings. Or they would succumb to the threat of the suit, as Panama is doing now in the face of a $20-billion suit.

Now that Trump has thrown away the rule book, it may seem that people like me are suddenly defending free trade. I think we’re defending the idea of at least having rules. Even as we fight specific battles (I think of the lawsuit brought by Canadian mining companies against El Salvador), we learned to live with economic integration: even after the havoc caused in Canada to industrial jobs and farmers after the 1989 FTA with the United States; even after U.S. abandonment of its industrial workers; and even after two million Mexican farmers were forced from their land and into the cities and across the border after NAFTA in 1994. 

But let’s not lose sight of longer-term objectives. In the face of this crisis in capitalism, what are the opportunities? The “social revolution” envisioned by Marx may be distant, but in these last 40 years, social movements have never ceased to uphold human rights broadly understood: economic, social, cultural and environmental. 

Manuel Pérez Rocha works now with the Institute for Policy Studies and writes an occasional column for La Jornada. (In the late 90s, we both worked with the Mexican Action Network on Free Trade, RMALC). Recently, he pointed to a long list of actions taken together by Mexican, Canadian and U.S. organizations. He continued: 

“Under Trump, we suffer from a savage neoliberalism that evades treaties, written rules, and multilateral organizations. He sees no friends and only enemies. The only laws are those of the strongest and ‘I’m in charge.’ Mexico must respond by demanding a thorough review of the USMCA [called CUSMA in Canada and T-MEC in Mexico], chapter by chapter, since its purpose and content are largely the same as those of NAFTA: to make Mexico an export platform to take advantage of cheap labour. Together with Canada, we must promote this review by generating spaces and resources for democratic participation, not only for business leaders but also for grassroots organizations in all three countries.”

Meanwhile, Charlie Angus continues his resistance campaign. (In the current federal election, he is not running again.) On April 14, he reminded his Substack readers of Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky.

Angus points to what Alinsky would say about our collective sense of loss over what is happening in the world today:

“Do one of three things. One, go and find a wailing wall and feel sorry for yourselves. Two, go psycho and start bombing – but this will only swing people to the right. Three, learn a lesson. Go home, organize, build power.”

* Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1848), The Communist Manifesto in Essential Works of Marxism (18th ed., 1979), New York: Bantam, p.15.

Right to Truth Day sparks reflection on human rights in Argentina, El Salvador and the United States

A headline and a photo in the Buenos Aires newspaper Página 12 caught my eye today. Together with a photo of Saint Óscar Romero was this phrase: “Justice and snakes only bite bare feet.” *

The writer, Alejandro Slokar, is a judge in Argentina’s federal court for appeals of criminal cases (Cámara Federal de Casación Penal). Here, he is writing about the International Day for the Right to the Truth Concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and the Dignity of Victims—or more simply, the Right to Truth Day, marked now every March 24.

March 24 is not only the date when we recall the martyrdom of San Salvador’s archbishop, the human rights defender Óscar Romero in 1980. It’s also when Argentineans recall the 1976 military coup that ushered in a “dirty war” against the popular movements of the impoverished—those with bare feet—along with trade unionists, journalists, writers, artists and human rights defenders. As many as 30,000 people were killed or disappeared over the next five years.

In El Salvador, about 80,000 people were killed or disappeared between 1979 and the end of the civil war in 1992.  In both countries, as elsewhere across Latin America, movements to find the “historical truth.” 

In recent weeks, families of people who disappeared during Mexico’s long “war on drugs” have drawn attention to a half-hectare farm in Teuchitlán, about 60 km west of Guadalajara in the state of Jalisco. The farm had been used to recruit new traffickers, but also to execute those who refused the cartel’s orders. State and federal authorities had known about the site since last September but did nothing to secure it or to identify human remains and other items found on the land. Predictably, state and federal authorities point fingers of blame at each other.

About 120,000 people have gone missing in Mexico since 2006 when then-President Felipe Calderón launched a military-led offensive against the drug cartels in an attempt to curb their violent turf wars. Instead, the violence became worse. And Calderón’s security chief, Genaro García Luna, was convicted in October in a U.S. court for his deep ties to the Sinaloa cartel. 

Among the disappeared (still) are 43 students from a training school for rural teachers in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero state, taken in 2014.

The “right to truth” cannot only be about historical cases. It must be the demand now in the case of the young men taken by the Trump regime and dumped into El Salvador’s infamous Terrorism Confinement Centre (CECOT). Certainly, some of the 238 Venezuelans may be criminals who were members of the “Tren de Aragua” gang but, as stories leak out, it’s clear that some of those deported were never accused, much less tried or convicted, of any crime. 

TIME magazine published a stunning photo essay about the deportations. The photojournalist, Philip Holsinger, included this description of one of his encounters: “One young man sobbed when a guard pushed him to the floor. He said, ‘I’m not a gang member. I’m gay. I’m a barber.’ I believed him. But maybe it’s only because he didn’t look like what I had expected—he wasn’t a tattooed monster.”

Drop Site News reported that another deportee was a Venezuelan professional soccer player and youth soccer coach with no criminal record. “The family only discovered that their loved one, Jerce Reyes Barrios, had been sent to El Salvador when they saw him in viral videos posted by the Trump administration, in which it celebrated what it said was the mass deportation of violent members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.”

The LGBTQIA+ Advocate magazine shared reporting on PBS by Rachel Maddow about a gay makeup artist who was among the deported prisoners—forcibly removed from the United States without a court hearing or deportation order.

Those stories, combined with reports of detentions of visa holders and other visitors, and harassment of legal residents and citizens, suggest that what happened in Argentina and El Salvador has begun in the United States. Can paramilitary death squads be far behind?

Writing of historical events and of the present-day right-wing populist regimes of Nayib Bukele in El Salvador and Javier Milei in Argentina, Slokar’s article argued that such abuses derive from the “neocolonial models”—European feudalism—applied in throughout the Americas. “While those responsible die in their beds without sanction, the consequences are almost infinite, farce and tragedy at the same time, and expressed in the inhumane neoliberal experiment that laughs at the Constitution, bitcoin, extractivism and punitive demagoguery that converge in the present.”

* The quote is variously attributed to both Óscar Romero and to the Uruguayan journalist Eduardo Galeano. It may be that Galeano was quoting Romero, but I cannot find the original source: just partial citations.

With a dizzying array of executive orders, Trump attacks the vulnerable

The White House, February 1982, just after the inauguration of Ronald Reagan. (Jim Hodgson photo)

by Jim Hodgson

“American inauguration day was a grim business, like someone slamming a baseball bat into the concept of human decency all day long until it was bleeding and paper-thin,” wrote Heather Mallick today in the Toronto Star.
In a blizzard of speeches, insults and executive orders, Donald Trump erased anything positive about the legacy of the interregnum president, Joe Biden. “Que sigue la continuidad” (follow the continuity) is the inept slogan of a local politician in the village in Chiapas where family responsibilities have placed me for a few months, but it could well have been the title of Trump’s work plan for the day.
I started keeping a list. Eventually, my journalist brain took over. I had to make choices and prioritize. 
The one specific action that I expected with dread came in the evening: revocation of Biden’s announcement six days earlier that some of the cruel U.S. sanctions levelled against Cuba would be eased. Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel responded on social media late on Monday, calling Trump’s decision to revoke Biden’s measures an “act of mockery and abuse.”
Here’s my list, drawn partly from Associated Press and the Toronto Star, with additional sources as noted below. At the end, a treat: an eloquent plea for mercy spoken in Trump’s presence by Washington’s Episcopal bishop, the Right Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde.


Trump suspends U.S. foreign aid for 90 days pending reviews
Because this blog is broadly about issues related to development, let me start here: Trump temporarily suspended all U.S. foreign assistance programs for 90 days pending reviews to determine whether they are aligned with his policy goals. (From other statements, it’s pretty clear he is going after support for women’s sexual and reproductive health.) It was not immediately clear how much assistance can be affected by the order. Funding for many programs has already been appropriated by Congress and must be spent. And there are contracts that must be honoured.

Mexico is not alone in feeling nervous over Trump’s designation of cartels and gangs as “terrorist organizations.” Right: La Jornada reports that the deportations have already begun in Ciudad Juárez and Matamoros.


Trump declares a border emergency
As he had promised, Trump declared a national emergency on the U.S.-Mexico border, suspending refugee resettlement and ending automatic citizenship for anyone born in the U.S. La Jornada reported that he suspended the U.S. government’s CBP One app that asylum-seekers waiting in Mexico use to make appointments for their claim to be heard by officials on the U.S. side of the border.
Trump acknowledged an imminent legal challenge to overturning birthright citizenship, which has been enshrined in the U.S. Constitution since 1868. He said automatic citizenship was “just ridiculous” and that he believes he was on “good (legal) ground” to change it.
Rainbow Railroad newsletter, Jan. 21: Trump signed an executive order that suspended the U.S. Refugee Admission Program, halting the processing of LGBTQI+ refugees already approved for resettlement, and leaving vulnerable and displaced queer and trans individuals stranded in dangerous and precarious conditions.


Use of wartime power act to deport gang members
Trump raised the possibility of using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 (last used during World War II to detain Japanese people) to deport gang members who are deemed members of a foreign terrorist organization. His executive order paves the way for criminal organizations such as MS-13 to be named “foreign terrorist organizations.” His government will also return “millions of foreign criminals” to their places of origin. 

Late Tuesday, Trump ordered that all U.S. government staff working on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) schemes be put on immediate paid administrative leave, and called for an end to the “dangerous, demeaning and immoral” programs.


Ending protection from discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation
Trump rescinded a 2021 order (Title IX) that the Education Department used to protect against discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation.
A couple of paragraphs from the Rolling Stone’s excellent coverage:
Earlier in the day, Trump declared in his inaugural address: “As of today It will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female.” 
Trump intends to sign an executive order that prohibits federal recognition of transgender Americans. The anticipated order, leaked to the right-leaning Free Press, will reportedly bar government issued identification like passports from listing anything other than a person’s birth gender, remove transgender individuals from protection of laws barring sex-discrimination, end funding for transition surgeries for federal prisoners, and purport to protect the First Amendment and other rights of those who flout “preferred pronouns” or refuse to recognize the reality of transgender individuals. 

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and their respective ministers are preparing responses to whatever comes from Trump after Feb. 1 with regard to tariffs. Both leaders are trying to ease tension about their borders with the United States. Trump may go after China with tariffs that day too.


In addition to a federal hiring freeze, other measures include:

  • Pardons and commutations that Trump said would cover about 1,500 people criminally charged in the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021
  • Halting 78 Biden-era executive actions
  • A regulatory freeze preventing bureaucrats from issuing regulations until the Trump administration has full control of the government
  • A freeze on all federal hiring except for military and a few other essential areas
  • A requirement that federal workers return to full-time in-person work
  • A directive to every department and agency to address the cost of living crisis
  • Withdrawal from the Paris climate treaty as Los Angeles burns [Canada’s environment minister Steven Guilbeault called the move “deplorable”]
  • Withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO)
  • A government order restoring freedom of speech and preventing censorship of free speech
  • Ending the “weaponization of government against the political adversaries of the previous administration”

Episcopal bishop asks Trump ‘to have mercy’ on LGBTQ+ communities and immigrants
video
Washington’s Episcopal bishop, the Right Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde:
“Let me make one final plea, Mr. President. Millions have put their trust in you, and as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian, and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and independent families, some who fear for their lives. The people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meatpacking plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals, they may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues, gurdwara, and temples.
I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear their parents will be taken away, and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land. May God grant us the strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being, to speak the truth to one another in love, and walk humbly with each other and our God, for the good of all people, the good of all people in this nation and the world. Amen.”

A day later, Trump called the bishop a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater,” “ungracious,” “nasty” and “not compelling or smart.”