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September 1, 2018 - No. 29 The Dignity of the
Working Class Is
Found
Political
Affairs Labour Day 2018 The Dignity of the Working Class Is Found in
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The Marxist-Leninist Party of
Quebec (PMLQ) is fielding at
least 25 candidates in the election. When the election was called,
there were 21 political parties authorized by the Chief Electoral
Officer of Quebec. The candidates of the officially recognized
political parties and independent candidates have until September 15 to
be registered as candidates in this election. All others who want to
participate in the election and spend money, including citizens, have
to register as a "third party." 
Any notion that an election
is to bring to power
representatives of the people is non-existent. The fictional
account of what the people want has been reduced to an
increasingly hysterical plethora of promises about more day care
spaces, more homes for seniors, free dental care and the like.
According to this fiction, the youth of Quebec, who are in the
forefront of the striving to humanize the natural and social
environment, just want to make money, find a niche for themselves
in the system and have fun. The concerns the workers have been
expressing and fighting on are totally ignored. The dictate of
the oligopolies is imposed on a supranational basis making the
national question a million times more relevant than ever as not
only the rights of workers and their defence organizations and
the farmers and small producers are trampled in the mud but even
governments can exercise no control over what happens to the
country. 
To divert the attention of
the people from the actual
developments in Quebec and their significance, the Quebec workers
are being criminalized and attacked to make them out to be the
enemy, a mafia whose demands for wages commensurate with the work
they perform, health and safety at work, and security in
retirement hold employers hostage and cause damage to the
economy. It is ridiculous. Every attempt is also made to divide
the people on the basis of so-called identity politics -- an
irrational sort of opposition to cultural appropriation that
blames the people for discrimination, racism and genocide which
are in fact promoted by the rulers not the people. 
For example, the "No to
proportional representation in BC"
group, claims that proportional representation will "allow extremist
parties into the BC
Legislature with just five per cent of the vote -- and to potentially
hold the balance of power." Using this logic, the group argues
that it is a good thing under first past
the post that what it calls "extremist"
small parties have diminished or no representation in
legislatures and parliaments, despite even substantial support
from voters. How this is in any way democratic the group does not
explain.
No matter their endless
broken promises, corruption
scandals,
anti-democratic measures, or other misdeeds, the big parties keep
their grip on power using spin doctors, computer analytics, a
compliant monopoly media and, most importantly, an electoral
process which disempowers the citizenry. Their first commandment
is to reduce people to spectators and keep them out of any
decision-making or even serious discussion about the problems the
society faces. Their second commandment is to demonize or dismiss
anyone who questions the status quo.
The White Helmets, also
known as Syria Civil Defence, claim to be a volunteer humanitarian
organization whose members rush to the scene of airstrikes and bombings
to rescue civilians, but only in so-called rebel controlled areas. They
many times called for foreign military intervention in the form of "no
fly zones" to be imposed against the Syrian government in its own
national territory. A December 2016 
In May a State Department official
told CNN that the U.S. had provided $33 million to the White Helmets
since 2013. Its largest single backer, though, is said to be the
British
Foreign Office. A spokesperson for Global Affairs Canada said recently
that Canada had given $7.5 million to the group over two years. The
money was said to be for training in explosives-removal techniques, and
to recruit volunteers, particularly women -- a typical attempt by the
Trudeau Liberals to give their interfering, pro-war activities a
progressive appearance, as is the case with their special envoy's
"affirmative action" work to recruit and train women to be part of the
imperialist-backed Syrian Opposition's High Negotiating Committee that
has repeatedly foiled attempts to put an end to the war through
dialogue.
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When Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union on June 22,
1941, the pact
was immediately voided and, as history shows, the preparations prior to
the invasion permitted the Soviet Union to play a major role, at
tremendous sacrifice, in ending the twisted Nazi dreams of world
conquest.
Standard Anglo-American imperialist anti-communist propaganda is
to equate the Nazis, who are well-known as the biggest war criminals of
all time, with the Soviet Union, which played the major role in
defeating the Hitlerites and freeing the world of the scourge of
Nazism. After falsifying history in his speech, Trudeau added: "Today,
I join Canadians and our international partners to pay tribute to the
victims of Communism and Nazism in Europe. We stand with the survivors
and their descendants as they continue to cope with the trauma caused
by these cruel regimes."
Trudeau and his ilk deliberately use the word "totalitarianism" to
falsely equate Nazism with communism, while waging their own wars of
aggression against sovereign countries in the name of a market economy,
"humanitarian intervention" and a multi-party "democracy" where voters
are forced to choose which party of the rich will implement the agenda
of the monopolies.
Again, falsely equating the Soviet Union with Nazi Germany,
Trudeau stated: "Many of those who escaped the Soviet and Nazi
regimes found a welcoming home in Canada to start their lives anew.
These refugees and their descendants have made remarkable contributions
to our country, helping to shape our Canadian identity and build the
strong, diverse, and prosperous Canada we know today." Trudeau failed
to mention that the government of Canada, like the U.S.
government and others, actively worked to bring known Nazi war
criminals and collaborators to Canada, including 2,000 members of the
Galician Division of the Waffen SS.
Trudeau ended his mention of refugees with the usual platitudes: "It is
with their stories in mind that we will continue to
promote and protect human rights, freedom, and democracy." This is of
course a ludicrous statement from a government that just sold $15
billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia, one of the world's biggest
violators of human rights. Or, from another perspective, what would
Canada's Indigenous peoples, Métis and Inuit people have to say
about the
Liberals' claim of their commitment to "human rights, freedom and
democracy"?
Each August 23 since 2009, Trudeau and his predecessor Harper have
attended
meetings and made official statements and speeches to mark Black Ribbon
Day on behalf of the most reactionary dregs of society who link human
rights to the rehabilitation of Hitlerite crimes against humanity, all
in the name of high ideals. They deliberately promote the view that the
Hitlerite Nazis and their collaborators who slaughtered the peoples of
Europe, Britain, and the Soviet Union were heroes and the anti-fascist
forces who fought them to the death, especially the communists, should
be erased from the historical record.
Trudeau's August 23, 2018 speech demonstrated once again how the ruling
circles of Canada and other countries define human rights and
humanitarianism on a Cold War anti-communist basis to cover up their
crisis of governance today and their inability to resolve a single
problem facing their societies at this time. They are spending millions
of dollars to launch campaigns to instill anti-communism in the minds
of the people in order to sabotage the workers' movement, the movement
in defence of immigrants and refugees, the movement in defence of the
hereditary rights of Indigenous peoples and the anti-war movement, and
lead
them into an abyss.
Trudeau has also taken up Harper's pet project, a publicly funded
monument officially called "A Memorial to Victims of Totalitarian
Communism -- Canada, a Land of Refuge." The project is based on and
linked to the U.S. Victims of Communism Memorial,
dedicated in 2007, whose honourary chairman is war criminal George W.
Bush and whose benefactors include monopolies such as defence
contractor Lockheed Martin and the Amway Corporation owned
by the dominionist DeVos family. In Canada, the project was given the
go-ahead in
2009 behind closed doors by the federal government's National Capital
Commission (NCC), which oversees the use and development of National
Capital Region land.
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The monument began as a private project initiated by
Tribute to Liberty, an anti-communist organization led by
various individuals with very shady pasts. Tribute to Liberty's private
anti-communist
monument project was made a public project by Harper and a number of
his cabinet ministers and MPs, including Jason Kenney. NDP MP Alex
Atamanenko and Green Party leader Elizabeth May have also shown their
true colours by signing the list of project supporters and promoting
the monument.
Tribute to Liberty at first crowed that the anti-communist monument
would raise money
from the "public." When this failed miserably due to lack of public
support, the Harper dictatorship stepped in to save the doomed project
by donating $1.5 million in public funds. A Tribute to Liberty
spokesperson suggested
at the time that the anti-communist monument project was unable to
raise funds from the people of Canada because, "It's a difficult
project for a lot of the public to understand."
An alternative explanation is that the working class and people of
Canada understand the project very well and strongly oppose its
virulent anti-communist, pro-Nazi content. Many people still remember
the major role played by the Soviet Union in defeating the Hitlerite
Nazis. Many workers are aware of the key role played by the communists
in helping build Canada's trade unions to defend the interests of the
workers. Further, the people of Canada include the freedom-loving
peoples who have fought U.S. crimes in Korea, Vietnam, the Congo,
Indonesia, Greece, Iran, Cuba, Guatemala, Chile, Argentina, Grenada,
Colombia, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and
Yugoslavia and, most recently, Libya and Syria, to name only a few.
The people of Canada support real freedom and democracy and not
the phony abstractions of Trudeau and Harper. They are much more likely
to support a monument commemorating the real victims of the world, that
is, the countless millions of victims of imperialism who have been
slaughtered in the false name of opposing communism and "terrorism,"
including all of those who were killed opposing the very Nazis whom
Harper and now Trudeau continue to glorify.
Latin America and the Caribbean
Hands Off Venezuela!
Venezuelan people fill the streets of Caracas, August 6, 2018, in
support of President Maduro and the Bolivarian Republic, two days after
the assassination attempt against him.
The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) condemns the continuing campaign of violence and terror perpetrated by the U.S. imperialists and their proxies within Venezuela to overthrow the democratically-elected government in that country. For the last 20 years the government, first under the legendary Commander Hugo Chávez and now under the guidance of President Nicolás Maduro, has defended the sovereignty and independence of Venezuela and implemented many pro-social initiatives by ensuring that the country's resources are directed to meeting the basic needs of the people. This has been achieved against all odds, including the August 4 assassination attempt against President Maduro and other officials of the Venezuelan government and armed forces during the 81st anniversary celebrations of the Bolivarian National Guard.
President Maduro, who was
delivering a speech, and other leaders as well as members of the
country's diplomatic corps were on a reviewing stand overlooking a
large military parade when the attack occurred. Seven soldiers were
injured in the failed assassination attempt.
Two drones -- more commonly used to carry cinematic cameras -- loaded with C-4 plastic explosives, were used in the attack. One of the drones, reported to have been thrown off course by electronic signal blocking put in place by the military as a security measure during the event, exploded in mid-air just in front of the reviewing stand. The second crashed into an apartment building two blocks away, not far from where it was being controlled, and caused a fire.
Shortly after the attack Venezuelan security forces
were able
to capture six individuals found in possession of incriminating
evidence. Those arrests led to some confessions and the
uncovering of other material evidence about those allegedly
involved in the planning and financing of the terrorist act.
Among those subsequently arrested were two high-ranking military
officers and an opposition member with a seat in the National
Assembly. Venezuelan authorities have announced that a total of
34 people are implicated. Many of those still being sought are
reported to be either in Colombia or the U.S. and Venezuela has asked
for their extradition. There are reports that organizers of the
assassination attempt were promised U.S.$50 million and asylum
in the U.S.
After the assassination attempt, Venezuelans filled the streets of their towns and cities in a show of solidarity with President Maduro. Governments, political parties and personalities from around the world issued statements denouncing the assassination attempt. The Canadian government brought shame on itself by remaining silent.
The Canadian government has
played a criminal role in
attempting to undermine the Venezuelan people and their
Bolivarian Revolution by supporting the counter-revolutionaries
and playing a leading role in the so-called Lima Group of
countries organized by the U.S. to isolate Venezuela and destroy
its economy. This cabal's stated aim is to achieve regime change
in Venezuela under the pretext of defending human rights
and democracy, but in fact it is to impose a neo-liberal
regime that would destroy the achievements of the
Bolivarian Revolution, allowing imperialism to once again seize
control of the country's vast resources and enslave the
Venezuelan people.
CPC(M-L) calls on Canadians to stand firm in defending the Venezuelan people and their Bolivarian government at this critical time and to resolutely oppose the Government of Canada's support of the U.S.-instigated campaign of terror and violence against the Venezuelan people.
Hands Off Venezuela!
Dismantle the Lima Group!
Strengthen Fraternal
Unity Between the Venezuelan and
Canadian Peoples!
August 6, 2018
August 9, 2018
August 13, 2018
(Photos: C. Melendez, P. Infanti, VTV Canal 8, T. Maniglia)
24th São Paulo Forum Held in Havana
The 24th meeting of the São Paulo Forum was held July 15-17 at the National Convention Centre in Havana, Cuba. The Forum was created in 1990 when left and progressive parties from Latin America and the Caribbean came together in Brazil to discuss the new international scenario after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the consequences of the neo-liberal policies that a majority of the region's governments had been pushed to adopt. Fidel Castro and former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva played a decisive role in its development. It is currently composed of more than a hundred Latin American and Caribbean political parties and organizations.
This year's meeting, which
had as its theme Latin American and Caribbean Unity and Integration,
was dedicated to Fidel and Lula. There was a record 625 delegates and
guests from 51 countries, representing 168 organizations, including
more than 60 parliamentarians and over 120 representatives of social
movements. The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) has
attended most meetings of the Forum since its inception and sent a
delegation to this year's proceedings as well.
Several current and former heads of state and government and political leaders from different parts of the world spoke at plenary sessions during the three-day gathering, showing that the Havana meeting represented an important converging point for progressive forces in the region. These included Miguel Díaz-Canel, President of the Councils of State and of Ministers of Cuba; Raúl Castro, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba as well as other leading members of the Communist Party of Cuba which was the host organization; Ralph Gonsalves, Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines; Nicolás Maduro, President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela; Evo Morales, President of the Plurinational State of Bolivia and Salvador Sánchez Cerén, President of El Salvador.
Former presidents and prime minister: (left to right) Dilma Rousseff
of Brazil, Joaquim Chissano
of Mozambique, and Kenny Anthony of Saint
Lucia.
Former presidents and prime ministers who participated included Dilma Rousseff of Brazil, Manuel Zelaya of Honduras, Kenny Anthony of Saint Lucia, Denzil Douglas of St. Christopher and Neves, Martín Torrijos of Panama, and Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique.
In addition to daily plenary sessions, delegates and guests were able to participate in meetings of women, youth and parliamentarians and a dialogue with social movements, as well as workshops on topics such as art and culture, political communication and the media.
Central themes addressed in most parts of the program included:
- the need to defend and give life to the Declaration of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace signed in 2014 by the governments of all the countries in the region organized in the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC);
- that the U.S. must not be permitted to succeed in dividing and destabilizing the region, whether through the provocations of the Organization of American States and its Lima Group, parliamentary, judicial and media coups and organized violence aimed at destabilizing and overthrowing governments that refuse to come under its baton, or by destroying regional integration projects such as CELAC;
- the rejection of the notion pushed by the U.S.
imperialists and
their local allies that the progressive cycle in the region has
come to an end, in the same way that the "end of history" thesis
was rejected when it was put forward after the fall of the
Soviet Union; and
- the need for the people's forces to respond to this
counter-revolutionary plan with a plan of their own based on
building the broadest possible unity in action against
imperialism -- inside the region and beyond.
The final day featured a special plenary dedicated to The Thought of Fidel Castro, at which Cuban political leaders and other invited dignitaries spoke about what Fidel represented to them and the peoples of their countries as well as his immense contribution to the cause of humanity.
Special plenary July 17, 2018 was dedicated to the Thought of Fidel
Castro.
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In addressing himself to Fidel's legacy and its importance for dealing with the challenges the São Paulo Forum and others are facing today, President Miguel Díaz-Canel reminded participants that Fidel warned us that a true revolution has to be capable of confronting, with its own forces, the powerful dominating forces both within and outside of its social and national domains. For Fidel, he said, this would be impossible without the active, organized and conscious participation of the people, given his firm conviction that a project would only endure if the people defended it and appreciated it as their own. "We firmly believe this to be the case," he said, "otherwise, we would not be here."
In practical terms, Díaz-Canel said that
redirecting
the
fight to concretize a plan of action put together by
all and achievable, based on the unity and integration of the
political forces and social movements of the region, would be the
best homage to Fidel.
São Paulo Forum Action Plan for 2018-19
Activities the São Paulo Forum plans to undertake
this year
include:
- launching campaigns for the immediate release of Lula and against the political persecution of popular leaders in Latin America and the Caribbean;
- actions to defend Latin America and the Caribbean as a zone of peace, including participating, with the Party of the European Left, in the São Paulo Forum's second Political Observation Mission to Colombia to follow up on the implementation of the Peace Agreement and the building of peace in Colombia;
- strengthening and expanding the Forum's training schools and foundations;
- encouraging unions and peasants and farmers' organizations to hold events in their countries to denounce the increase in the precariousness of working conditions and the lowering of living conditions through outsourcing and other means;
- strengthening communications among member parties;
- paying attention to elections being held around the region;
- engaging in joint actions with the Party of the European Left involving:
- deepening the study of free trade agreements between the European Union (EU) and MERCOSUR and with different Latin American countries for the conditions they seek to impose on our peoples;
- campaigning to oppose the EU's sanctions against Venezuela, the blockade of Cuba, and EU interference in the internal affairs of Latin American and Caribbean countries to destabilize them;
- combating big media's information war that distorts and manipulates reality;
- sending joint teams of observers to countries in the region where electoral fraud could occur;
- strictly monitoring the peace processes in Colombia for full compliance; and
- waging a common campaign in defence of peace and solidarity among peoples, starting with putting into practice the Declaration of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace.
(Photo: TML, S. Sanchez, Trabajadores, Cubadebate)
U.S. Plans for Using Facebook to Disseminate Propaganda in Cuba
Prensa Latina reports on a recent article published in the Miami New Times that reveals U.S. plans to use Facebook to spread propaganda and foment dissent clandestinely in Cuba.
Citing existing documents on the subject, the August 22 digital version of the Miami weekly pointed out that at the centre of the plans is the U.S. Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB), a government agency currently headed by the former mayor of Miami, Tomás Regalado, which operates Radio Martí, TV Martí and Martí Noticias.
According to the Miami
New
Times, the aims are detailed in budget
documents for fiscal years 2018 and 2019 of the 
U.S. Broadcasting
Board of Governors.
Prensa Latina notes that at a time when there is a big stir in the U.S. over alleged Russian interference in the 2016 elections, the documents indicate that the agency has plans to use Cuban "native" and "non-branded" Facebook accounts to disseminate content created by the U.S. government without informing Cuban Facebook users.
The Miami New Times article indicates that the U.S. government's shift to social media was based on metrics that place YouTube, Google and Facebook among the most visited sites in Cuba, and that with the use of audio and video for radio (AVRA) technology, Radio Martí programs began to be transmitted through Facebook Live along with the TV Martí programming.
Prensa Latina links the OCB's focus on a social media offensive with the effectiveness of Cuban authorities in blocking the signals of Radio and TV Martí, which Cuba has denounced for violating international norms pertaining to the use of the airwaves.
According to the Miami New Times, in fiscal 2018 the OCB planned to establish teams of people inside Cuba to create native and non-branded Facebook accounts to spread propaganda as domestic pages would increase the chance of appearing in the newsfeed of Cuban Facebook users. The same strategy was to be replicated in other preferred social networks.
It reported, "The documents don't explain what the feds mean by 'non-branded' or 'native' Facebook pages. But it's clear they would be meant to look like the pages of regular social media users in order to evade censors and persuade Cubans to read Martí propaganda," emphasizing that the idea was to deceive Cubans into believing the information came from fellow Cubans and not Regalado's office.
If Facebook's propaganda plan really took off, "it would fit into a long history of trying to use modern technology to shoehorn propaganda into Cuba," University of Pennsylvania professor John S. Nichols told the Miami New Times.
"There are certainly red flags here," said Nichols,
co-author of the 1987 book Clandestine Radio Broadcasting.
"It's the most recent of a very long line of efforts by Radio
and TV Martí and its predecessors to try to overcome the laws of
physics... Every time they fail in getting their message into
Cuba, they say there has got to be a technological solution," he said.
Instead, he said, Congress "just can't seem to recognize that the stations are a colossal failure. It's sad because they're spending taxpayer money. But what it really wastes is our credibility as a great nation by doing these silly, stupid things."
Social Media: The Ideological Apparatus in Dispute
TML Weekly is publishing below an article regarding
the role of mass media in Honduras that assisted the 2009 coup against
democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya and similar phenomena
throughout the region now taking place via social media. The author,
Gilberto Ríos Munguía, is a director of the Liberty and
Refoundation (Libre) Party and social media activist in Honduras. The
article was originally published in El Pulso, August 25, 2018.
***
It is important to begin by clarifying that the concept of an "Ideological Apparatus" refers to all the mechanisms used to control the thinking of the masses and dates back hundreds of years. The following reflection is merely an adaptation of these ideas to the new information and communication technologies from an amateur perspective, but emphasizing the need for a more effective "militancy" in the use of these alternative media.
My participation in an event in São Paulo, Brazil in the months following the coup d'état comes to mind. A national congress of a left-wing political party was being held and they had invited us specifically to denounce what was taking place in Honduras. At one point during my intervention I mentioned the mainstream media's concentration in a few hands -- a few families -- in my country, when someone came up behind me to whisper in my ear: "It's the same here."
In reviewing what we call the Oligarchic Model, that is, the new stage of the concentration of capital in a few hands -- which is a sharpened form of the capital/labour contradiction -- we find that throughout our continent not only are the means of production in a few hands, the mass media are in those same hands and obviously reproduce the ideas that are necessary for them to maintain the regime of exploitation, corruption and violence that generates so much profit for them.
Another important detail of this oligopolistic model of communication is its synchronization with the agendas of the international media that are, in turn, representatives of big transnational capital. We see it in the television news, written press, radio programs and social media in the hands of the corporate media, which repeat editorial positions on the international situation, obviously always favouring the interests of those same sectors.
The Microphone, the Classroom and the Pulpit
The same thing occurs in formal education and in the churches, an important part of the Apparatus in question dedicated to numbing the consciousness of the students and their worshippers, respectively, with honourable exceptions of course. The discourse is repeated until a consensus of right ideas is achieved on the concrete reality the population is experiencing. Incidentally, Marx called this the "metamorphosed consciousness" of reality, that is, the incredible phenomenon of living a reality but interpreting it from a point of view that suits the enemy. For example, in the case at hand it is to see the crisis positively and to blame the opposition for its negative effects.
It is precisely the duty of the political opposition then to dismantle the conservative thinking pattern useful to the oligarchy by interpreting reality with a different, eminently liberating, consciousness and managing to spread those ideas by all possible means. This new awareness of reality can be generated by specialists on specific topics who manage to unravel that fictitious web, but it is also discovered, created or recreated through discussion and collective thought, for which popular organization is essential.
This is where "militancy" also becomes necessary in the alternative media, undoubtedly a very sensitive subject in Honduras, a country in which from 2009 -- right after the military coup -- to date, more than 70 journalists, social communicators and media workers have been murdered, showing the oligarchy's need to maintain tight control over ideas.
Fortunately, in our country there have been truly heroic efforts to maintain alternative and independent voices that have fought against their marginalization by the ruling party and corporate advertising guidelines, as well as against death threats, shutting down of the media and various other forms of persecution and intimidation. This type of journalism has maintained a captive market of readers seeking truth, a critical perspective and an unofficial interpretation of political and social phenomena.
The same thing is happening now in social media, also called the Fifth Power, because of its closeness to the thinking of the huge majorities that have managed to win important battles against the media hegemony of the elites. This participation takes on vital importance because of the crisis of governability the regime is going through in Honduras, and the evident deterioration of the capitalist system and its neo-liberal model.
Constant denunciation by social media users, on top of what the systematic denunciation and organized participation of the "militancy" could signify in these networks, would contribute to a great advance being made in the people's consciousness of their true executioners and enemies. That was the motivation for this reflection, in the sense of taking another look at our phones, personal computers, online connections and social media accounts, to see them as powerful weapons of a new Popular Ideological Apparatus that must be used as one more tool for our liberation. The intent is not to assign credentials to social media that are unwarranted. I wish to make clear: in social media we inform ourselves and we complain; in neighbourhoods, study centres and workplaces we organize ourselves; and in the streets, we protest.
(Translated from the original Spanish by TML.)
The Legal War Against Democracy
Lula da Silva, former Brazilian President and candidate in the 2018
election, currently
imprisoned on spurious corruption charges, speaks to a rally
in Sao Paulo, January 24, 2018.
On September 1, 2016 the Brazilian Senate removed Dilma Rousseff from the presidency of the country in a "political trial" in which she was convicted of allegedly manipulating the public budget.
Between November 2, 2017 and March 6, the Argentinian president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner received three indictments, two for alleged crimes of corruption and one for allegedly interfering in the investigation of the bombing of the AMIA [Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association] in Buenos Aires in 1994.
On January 24, the Supreme Court of Brazil upheld the sentence against the former president of the country and current best placed candidate in the polls for the upcoming presidential election, Lula da Silva, who was sentenced to 12 years in prison for corruption. In April he ended up in prison and disqualified from being re-elected president. [Both are being appealed by Lula -- TML Ed. Note]
On April 9, the Colombian Prosecutor's Office executed
an arrest warrant for extradition to the U.S. against the elected
deputy of the FARC [People's Alternative Revolutionary Force] party,
who is also one of those responsible for the implementation of the
Peace Agreement, Jesús Santrich, purportedly for conspiring to
export cocaine to the U.S.A. Since that time he has been in prison,
banished from implementing the peace agreement and unable to assume his
seat in the Legislative Chamber despite there being no charges against
him in Colombia.
On July 3, an Ecuadorian court ordered the detention of former President Rafael Correa and put out an international warrant for his arrest. Previously, on December 14, 2017, Vice President Jorge Glas was sentenced to six years in prison, accused of corruption. And on June 17, Pablo Romero, who was a member of Rafael Correa's government, was arrested in Madrid at Ecuador's request.
"The legitimacy conferred on the judicialization of politics arises from the consensus that 'corruption' is the main problem in Latin America." This premise, replete with formal reasoning, was put forward by international financial institutions and agencies of the U.S. government that promoted the Structural Adjustment of the State in the 1990s. It has been used to attack governments, political forces and left-wing leaders in Latin America that oppose the neo-liberal adjustments dictated by the IMF, with claims of "left populism" giving rise to a structural problem of corruption, leaving out that corruption is inherent to neo-liberalism and its adjustment and austerity policies.
"Lawfare," the "asymmetric legal warfare" that has replaced the National Security doctrine -- counterinsurgency war -- taught at the Schools of the Americas, has been used against all those who have successfully implemented alternatives to neo-liberal policies. Now it is from law schools that the North is spreading its strategy to get rid of left governments by politically disabling those leaders who seek to rescue the national sovereignty of their peoples.
"Lawfare" or legal warfare is an English word corresponding to a grammatical contraction of the words "law" and "warfare," to describe a form of asymmetric warfare. A "legal war" that is deployed through the illegitimate use of domestic or international law with the intention of damaging the opponent, thus achieving victory on a battlefield of public political relations, paralyzing the opponents politically and financially, or immobilizing them judicially so they are unable to pursue their objectives or present as candidates for public office. This is how "lawfare" is described in the 2010 "Report of the meeting in Cleveland of experts on September 11 and its consequences."
"Lawfare" is now on display in full force. Planning for it began years ago as the left in Latin America with majority support set in motion more participatory and egalitarian democratic systems. While this was occurring, neo-liberal forces led by the U.S. "establishment" were designing the new strategy of fighting and discrediting those political movements that were garnering victories for the left.
Let us go back to October 16, 1998. The former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, accused of crimes against humanity, was arrested in London by an order issued by Judge Garzón at the request of groups of victims' defenders. The end of the "cold war" led to the strategic disorientation of its victor, the U.S.A. It was imperative to define a new enemy that would allow it to maintain the military-industrial conglomerate base of the capitalist system that had brought down the socialist countries. That period of disorientation permitted the carrying out of criminal proceedings in third countries. The "universal jurisdiction" contemplated for years in national laws, but impossible to apply during the "cold war," became a powerful tool against authoritarian regimes responsible for crimes against humanity, illicit conduct engaged in to suppress the peoples' yearning for change.
There were years of expansion of "universal jurisdiction." The arrest of Pinochet was followed by judicial proceedings initiated by groups of victims against members of the Argentinian, Uruguayan, Colombian, Congolese, American and Israeli militaries and politicians... responsible for massive human rights violations.
The response of Western democracies was not to extend universal jurisdiction, but to combat the open opportunity to enforce international law and end impunity for international crimes. The legal counter-reforms to "universal jurisdiction" in Belgium in 2003 and Spain in the years 2009 (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) and 2014 (Partido Popular) are examples of this retrogression, justified thusly:
"[...] Universal jurisdiction may be used for political reasons or for humiliating purposes, and may adversely affect the world order by causing unnecessary friction between States, potential abuses of legal procedures and deprivation of individual human rights" (IBC Revue internationale de droit Penal, 2008/1, Vol. 79).
Those who support the current world order learned lessons about the potential of "universal jurisdiction" -- easy accessibility, low cost and high efficiency -- to use in their own interest. They began to devise new strategies that would allow them to maintain their power and ability to intervene when necessary. Due to the counterproductive political effects of the National Security doctrine -- torture, forced disappearances, dictatorships, social protests ... -- since the end of the "cold war" the United States has not used the installation of authoritarian regimes as a first option if it is possible for them to maintain control over a country by means more democratic in appearance.
Legal intervention becomes an effective option where there is a plan to achieve the desired end. The plan requires a tactic -- legal-political intervention to co-opt the judiciary and legal practitioners; some resources -- schools and training programs for judges and lawyers; and objectives -- to overthrow governments that seek to rescue the national sovereignty of their peoples. The strategy is to discredit the political forces leading those governments and to disqualify electorally and destroy politically their top leadership.
The precedents for this legal-political strategy are found in the so-called war against terrorism launched in 2001 after 9/11. The U.S. tried to create a new interpretation of the law governing armed conflicts, attempting to make the huge difference between domestic criminal law and international humanitarian law gradually disappear. They tried to impose new legal categories not provided for in domestic or international law, such as "illegal enemy combatant" or their unilateral right to "monitor and execute," which they use to justify the use of killer drones.
Another step has been the massive judicialization of politics based on the consensus concerning "corruption" applied in a generalized way to the leaders of the Latin American alternative left who have sought to guarantee national sovereignty against interference.
Since the beginning of the 21st century, they have begun investing resources in co-optation programs of the judicial institutions of many countries, especially in Latin America. The "Schools of the Americas" for the military have been replaced by law schools and judicial training programs, both in the United States -- where judges and legal practitioners go to receive indoctrination -- and in the countries of South America -- where through generous funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), judicial training schools have been created and controlled politically.
In Colombia, since the creation of the "Rodrigo Lara Bonilla" training school for the judiciary, funded by USAID, the legal system of a "continental" nature -- the rule of written law -- provided for in the Constitution, has been transitioned to a system based on legal precedents -- U.S. "common law" -- which lacks constitutional support. Now it is the justices of the Constitutional Court who draft the laws through the constitutional review process. In cases where they determine that a law is not in conformity with the Constitution, they proceed to re-write it, acting as a second and final legislative chamber.
In Latin America we are witnessing the gradual substitution of inquisitorial or mixed criminal systems by the accusatory criminal system modelled on that of the United States, leading to the disproportionate empowerment of the national prosecutor's offices, that in practice operate on instructions, information and "indictments" from the U.S. justice system.
The plan devised for the expansion of "lawfare" has begun to achieve its objectives. Dilma Rousseff, Fernando Lugo, Cristina Kirchner, Lula, Jesús Santrich, Rafael Correa ... all of them have been the object of this political-legal strategy that is immobilizing them politically in this new legal war. The objective is to discredit them and their political forces by equating them with common criminals and to disqualify them electorally.
The judiciary that permitted Latin America to be one of the continents with the most institutional corruption -- in many cases benefiting from it -- and that was never capable of combatting it, has now become a weapon of direct intervention in internal political affairs, in the service of the interests of foreign and local oligarchies and conservative forces.
Legal warfare represents a big setback in the processes of institutional strengthening of Latin American countries. The judiciary should stay out of political fights to avoid repeating the institutional breakdowns of other times that caused it to experience serious crises of legitimacy and popular disaffection. This interference in political affairs implies the nullification of the judiciary's independence due to its conscious politicization, and it results irremediably in the disappearance of the separation of powers that sustains the Rule of Law. Lawfare has become one of the greatest dangers to democracy throughout the world and especially in Latin America.
(Originally published in El Diario,
August 21, 2018.
Translated from the original
Spanish by TML.)
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