President Trump’s insatiable appetite for regime change

White House National Security Advisor John Bolton talks to reporters about the security and political turmoil in Venezuela and called for a peaceful transition to a government controlled by acting President Juan Guaido, outside of the White House West Wing on Tuesday, April 30, 2019 in Washington, D.C. (Olivier Douliery/Abaca Press/TNS)
By Jesse Jackson           05/06/2019

Push is coming to shove in Venezuela.

President Donald Trump has decided that the government of President Nicolás Maduro must go.
Senior officials — led by John Bolton, Trump’s super-hawk national security adviser, and Elliott Abrams, stained by his cover-up and lies about death squads in El Salvador and contras in Nicaragua in the 1980s — boast publicly about their plots for regime change.

They have recognized an obscure right-wing Venezuelan politician — Juan Guaido — as head of state. They’ve tightened sanctions again and again, adding directly to the dire suffering of the Venezuelan people.

OPINION

They’ve encouraged the military to revolt. And when the failure of Guaido’s latest coup attempt embarrassed them last week, they’ve threatened direct military intervention.

“All options are on the table,” Trump repeats.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that Trump has a “full range of options” when it comes to next moves against the Venezuelan government, claiming that Trump doesn’t need congressional authorization to act.

John Bolton announced that the “Monroe Doctrine is alive and well. It’s our hemisphere.” He noted that he wasn’t prepared to apply Teddy Roosevelt’s corollary that asserted the U.S. power to intervene unilaterally anywhere in the hemisphere “yet.”

In fact, military intervention in Venezuela would be blatantly illegal under both international law and the U.S. Constitution. The Constitution gives Congress the right to declare war, something that the right-wing justices who claim to be guided by the text somehow ignore.

The entire system of international law constructed in the wake of World War II by the United States is based upon non-intervention and state sovereignty. Even the so-called right to protect — the right to intervene to avoid a human rights catastrophe — requires approval by the Security Council. Unilateral action violates the law.

The Trump administration’s insatiable appetite for regime change is more than a crime, it is a blunder.

For decades, the U.S. claimed to be the “indispensable nation” because we would enforce a “rules-based” world order fairly. Now Trump and his band of armchair warriors are turning the U.S into a lawless rogue nation, following in the errant footsteps of their predecessors.

Recent forays into regime change — in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Honduras, Syria — have all ended in disaster, ruinous not only for the people of the country but also for U.S. lives and treasure as well.

Venezuela poses no threat to the U.S. It is a bitterly divided country, politically, racially and economically. The U.S. was party to a failed coup attempt against Hugo Chavez in 2002.

Maduro’s misrule, the falling price of oil, U.S. sanctions have all combined to crater the Venezuelan economy, spreading misery with millions deciding to leave. Bolton recklessly boasts about U.S. plans to help rebuild the economy once Maduro is gone — “planning for what we call the day after.”

No doubt, Trump will want the U.S. or U.S. companies to “take the oil,” as he claims we should have done in Iraq. This folly is likely to put us in the middle of a civil war that will only add to the humanitarian disaster in Venezuela.

Surely, we should have learned from Libya that a bad state is not nearly as bad as a failed state.

Instead of Teddy Roosevelt and the days of gunboat diplomacy, the U.S. should be following the prudent advice of Franklin Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy.

FDR outlined principles for good hemispheric relations, including respect for the integrity of other states; self-restraint and acceptance of the equal rights of neighbors, non- intervention in the domestic affairs of neighbors, and settlement of disputes by negotiation, not force.

Venezuela is a sovereign nation and a neighbor. Maduro is supported by Russia, China and Cuba.

So what?

We don’t believe that Russia has the right to overthrow the governments of Ukraine or Georgia simply because we support their governments. We should be acting to alleviate the humanitarian crisis afflicting the Venezuelan people, not add to it. No matter how hateful we think Maduro is, it is up to the Venezuelan people to decide who will govern them.

The last thing we should do is attempt to dictate — particularly through threat or use of force — who will rule a land of nearly 30 million people.

Now is the time for Congress to act, to pass a resolution to prevent U.S. military action in Venezuela.

If Trump and his bellicose henchmen have their way, we will surely regret it.

Jesse Jackson

GOP, not Russia, is greater threat to free elections

 In Wisconsin, Jesse Jackson writes, voter suppression laws have been passed by a conservative Republican legislature despite the fact that there is no evidence of voter fraud to justify them. Karie Angell Luc~for Sun-Times Media
   By Jesse Jackson           4/29/2019

We all have heard about WikiLeaks and Russian interference in the 2016 election. The report of Special Counsel Robert Mueller has once more put that on the front pages. Too often lost in the furor, however, is the far more damaging TrikiLeaks — the tricks and laws used to suppress the vote by partisans, largely Republicans here at home.

After the Supreme Court’s right-wing gang of five gutted key sections of the Voting Rights Act in Shelby v. Holder, Republican-controlled states immediately ramped up efforts to create obstacles for voting, particularly for people of color. They mandated specific forms of state ID, made it harder for students to vote, eliminated same-day registration, reduced early voting days, closed polling booths in African American neighborhoods leading to long delays, purged voters from the rolls, perfected partisan gerrymandering and more. In some cases, as in North Carolina, their discriminatory intent was so public that the laws were overturned in federal court, but in most places, the new barriers were in place in 2016.

EDITORIAL
Did it make a difference? Voting rights expert Ari Berman says, “absolutely.” Overall 14 states had new restrictions in place, passed since the Shelby decision. Look at Wisconsin. Trump won by 22,000 votes. In Wisconsin, 300,000 African American voters didn’t have the newly required strict photo ID. Black voter turnout in Milwaukee declined by 51,000 votes from 2012, while as Lawyers Committee President Kristen Clarke noted, voter turnout rates were depressed across the state.

Now we’re headed into 2020. Republican bastions like Texas, Tennessee and Arizona witnessed surges of Democratic support in 2018. Not surprisingly, they are launching new efforts to suppress the vote. In Texas, the secretary of state announced a plan to purge 95,000 people from the voter rolls because they weren’t citizens. Independent research then demonstrated that in Harris County, which includes Houston, 60 percent of the 30,000 people on the list had received citizenship long ago. Some of the supposed research was 25 years old. Once more citizens had to go to court to try to stop the suppression.

In Texas, state lawmakers are also moving to add criminal penalties for people who improperly fill out voter registration forms, an effort to intimidate nonprofit groups that work to register people to vote. In Arizona, Republicans are making it harder to cast an early ballot. In Tennessee, GOP lawmakers are pushing legislation to fine voter registration groups that submit incomplete forms, even by mistake, up to $10,000. Tequila Johnson, co-founder of the Equity Alliance that focuses on registering people of color, called them out: “We have never seen a bill like this on the floor, until we dared to register 86,000 black and brown people to vote. This screams racism.”

Much, much more attention should be paid to this battle. Happily, the new Democratic majority in the House of Representatives has made voting rights a priority. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD.), chair of the House Oversight Committee, has launched an investigation of voter suppression in Georgia in 2018, where the victor, Brian Kemp, oversaw the election as secretary state. And, as Cummings detailed, 1.4 million people were purged from the voting rolls from 2012 to 2016, 53,000 — 80 percent of them people of color — had their registrations put on hold; 214 polling places were shuttered, contributing to lines of more than four hours in heavily black precincts.

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Some states, happily, are moving to make voting easier and more accessible. Florida citizens passed a historic referendum restoring the right to vote for felons who have paid their debt to society. (Now, Republicans in the legislature are trying to undermine that initiative). Automatic Voting Registration laws have passed in several states. More states are providing longer times for early voting, adding voting booths to reduce long lines and more. Cases to rollback partisan gerrymandering have been successful in federal courts — and now are headed to the Supreme Court. The Brennan Center reports that bills that expand voting rights have seen some movement in 35 states, while those restricting rights have moved in 10 states.

What’s clear is that interference with our elections and with the right to vote will come far more from the efforts of domestic politicians than it will come from whatever mischief the Russians plan. It is revealing that the Trump White House has little to say about Russians. It is even more telling that the Justice Department is absent without leave in the fight against voter suppression at home. The right to vote — the most basic right of a democracy — is still contested in too many states — and must be fought, state by state, by citizens of conscience.

Jesse Jackson

My Sweet Lovely Friend

Howdy Sweetie,
Dear Shadow of 'Genie',
No thanks needed ... that's what friends do  .I was so happy to know  you were up and around  and out in the sunshine .  Now you take  your time  and stop being in such a rush  . I will enjoy our chat   ... we take our chats  slow  at the beginning ...

The  Knights  will write  you something on WAG ... Charles / Charlene  want to write  you  , Sha told them   to email it  and they will put it in the secret place , I hear Gil /Harvey  will welcome you back also ... Harvey was  just  dancing around  , Helen , his  daughter  asked  what was  wrong  with him  , Jonny told her  Harvey  was happy because their  aunt Jeannie  was  back on her  feet  and she  was  going to  tell him  how to introduce  himself  as  the  Roving Reporter  .

I will definitely  lay into him now  we   haven't  been posting  much  we wanted  you see all the posts  Hahahahaha!!!  You have  a birthday post  on WB.


Love  Witchy   

 

 

 

Dear Witchy

 

Thank you for being such a patient friend. It feels good to be up and around and out in the sunshine. I will pick up where I left off so long ago. I have so missed hanging around the blogs and trading comments with you. I will set up a chat with you

I do hope you are well and full of your usual pep and energy. I see you are still giving Trump hell. That's my girl. See you soon

Love Shadow