with the American 2012 presidential campaign on the move, The immigrant rights movement is once more at a crossroads iii Part D. Democracy Now: The Amy Goodman Interview With Javier Rodriguez

BECAUSE YESTERDAY mARCH 2513TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE 1.7 MILLION IMMIGRANT GRAND MARCH AGAINST THE INFAMOUS HR4437 SENSENBRENNER BILL IN LOS ANGELES AND 1.5 MILLION MORE IN 75 CITIES NATIONALLY, I AM PUBLISHING THIS EXTENSIVE HISTORICAL ARTICLE ON THE “2006 IMMIGRANT SPRING” WHICH OF COURSE INCLUDES A BRUSHNG VIEW OF THE MAKING OF MARCH 25. THE SECOND PART IS THE WRITTEN TEXT OF THE DEMOCRACY NOW VIDEO OF MARCH 27, 2006 THAT I APED FROM LA, WHICH WAS TELEVISED AND ON RADIO NATIONALLY AND WORLDWIDE. YOU CAN ALSO WATCH THE VIDEO BY RESEARCHING DEMOCRACY NOW WEBSITE AND GO TO CALENDAR OF PAST PROGRAMS THEN GO TO MARCH 27, 2006 AND ALSO WATCH THE PROGRAM I TAPED AFTER THE SUCCESSFULL MAY 1ST “A DAY WITHOUT AN IMMIGRANT” WHICH WAS TELEVISED AND TAPED ON MAY 2, 2006, ZAZ

larayueladejavier

By Javier Rodriguez- Isabel Rodriguez-Antonio Rodriguez 11 Dec 2011

 

“AMY GOODMAN: On the heels of such a massive turnout, what is being called the largest day of protest in U.S. history, where does the immigrant rights movement go from here? To help us recap this historic day and look at what’s next, we’re joined by two organizers on both sides of the country. Joining us from Los Angeles, Javier Rodriguez, longtime immigrant rights activist, spokesperson for the March 25th Coalition Against HR 4437, the umbrella group that organized one of the two marches in Los Angeles and spearheaded the nationwide economic boycott.”
As part of the extended series of analytical pieces to enhance the debate on the making of Dec 12, 2012 and directed at the nation’s immigrant rights activists and Latino and progressive media, we are including a relevant interview done on Democracy Now with brother Javier, New…

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As Mueller Finds No Collusion, Did Press Overhype Russiagate? Glenn Greenwald vs. David Cay Johnston

As Mueller Finds No Collusion, Did Press Overhype Russiagate? Glenn Greenwald vs. David Cay Johnston

StoryMarch 25, 2019

Links: David Cay Johnston on Twitter Glenn Greenwald on Twitter

Transcript: This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

TRUST ME FRIENDS AND FAMILY, DEBATE ON THE CONCLUSION OF THE MUELLER INVESTIGATION PRESENTED BY DEMOCRACY NOW WITH PULLITZER PRIZE WINNERS GLENN GREENWALD, WHO BROKE THE SNOWDEN STORY AND CO-FOUNDED THE INTERCEPT AND DAVID JAY JOHNSTON, FORMERLY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES AND AUTHOR OF “IT’S EVEN WORSE THAN YOU THINK – WHAT THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION IS REALLY DOING TO AMERICA”. AFTER YOU WATCH THE VIDEO OR READ THE DEBATE, OR BOTH, YOU’RE GONNA BE ENRAGED BUT WITH A CLARITY TO CHANNEL YOUR ENERGY.  SO TAKE ACTION, SHARE THE DEBATE, MAKE CALLS AND DONATE/SUBSCRIBE TO DEMOCRACY-NOW, DO IT, ZAZ

“And we’ve been in the forefront, and I have, in my writings and TV appearances, of pressing that we need to be understanding what Trump is doing to corrupt our government and damage our Constitution. So, yes, I expect those to go forward. And we need to also remember that Donald Trump is a man whose experience, right within the period since the campaign, shows that crime pays. He ripped off people with Trump University for $40 million. He didn’t pay any penalty. He only had to return $25 million of the $40 million. You know, Donald Trump’s life experience is crime pays. He’s the only—he owned the only casino in which there is a known case of cheating customers in Atlantic City, was at Trump’s Castle. And so, you know, we need to recognize we have a man in the White House who is a third-generation head of a white-collar crime family”. David Jay Johnston

 “How can you say Donald Trump is a stooge of the Kremlin when he’s right now trying to remove one of Vladimir Putin’s client regime states in Venezuela? Or when he’s trying to bully Angela Merkel out of buying Russian natural gas, probably the thing that’s most important to the Russian economy? Or when he sold lethal arms to the Ukrainians, something Obama refused to do on the grounds that it would be provocative to Russia? Or when he bombed Putin’s client state in Syria? Over and over, the Trump administration has taken actions far more adverse and aggressive and belligerent to the Russians than the Obama administration did. That’s why this whole narrative that Trump all along was being blackmailed by Putin, that he’s an asset of Russian intelligence, this is idiocy. It is completely irrational. It is contrary to all facts”. Glenn Greenwald”

 AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. To talk more about the Mueller report, we’re joined by two guests. Glenn Greenwald, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, one of the founding editors of The Intercept, has been one of the most prominent skeptics of the Russiagate probe. He’s speaking to us from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. David Cay Johnston is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter previously with The New York Times, now founder and editor of DCReport.org. He’s been reporting on Donald Trump since the 1980s, has written, well, most recently, two books on him, his most recent, It’s Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Let’s begin with David Cay Johnston in Rochester, New York. David, your response to the Mueller report and to William Barr’s summary of what he found?

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, we don’t know what’s in the Mueller report. We only know the brief interpretation offered by Bill Barr. But that interpretation opens whole new cans of worms. The standard here should not be beyond a reasonable doubt. That’s the criminal standard. The standard is the constitutional requirements, which are faithful execution of the office and high crimes and misdemeanors, which doesn’t require any criminal offense of any kind, as the 18 impeachment proceedings we’ve had in this country have established beyond a doubt.

We need to see the full report. We need to have Mueller’s testimony. We need to know what it was that Mueller learned about such matters as Jared Kushner asking to use secret Russian diplomatic communications gear to contact the Kremlin without the knowledge of American intelligence, something the Russians made available to us to know by the way they transmitted a cable, knowing it would be read by intelligence agencies. We need to know why Don Jr., who said, “Love it,” when offered help by the Kremlin, was not questioned or indicted—most likely because his lawyers said he would take the Fifth Amendment. But why was he not charged? And we need to know about why he didn’t call FBI counterintelligence, which is the only thing any decent and patriotic American would do when given an offer by a foreign government to interfere in our election. And there’s a lot more that we need to know. We need to see the report in full. We need to hear Mueller’s testimony about it, not just Bill Barr’s interpretation of it, especially given that Barr sought this job and has positioned himself as someone who believes, essentially, the president virtually cannot commit a crime under our Constitution, certainly not obstruction of justice.

AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, your response?

GLENN GREENWALD: This is the saddest media spectacle I’ve ever seen, since I began practicing journalism in 2005. And what makes it even sadder is to watch all of the people who vested their journalistic credibility into what proved to be a complete and total fraud and scam continue to try and cling to some vestige of credibility by continuing to spin conspiracy theories that are even more reckless and more unhinged than the ones to which we’ve been subjected for three years. The great journalist and writer Matt Taibbi wrote in an article over the weekend, and I agree with him completely, that as humiliating as the media debacle was leading up to the Iraq War, what they did over the last three years in the Trump-Russia story makes all of that look like a pimple. Even though obviously the Iraq War was much more destructive because it led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, the errors and lies and falsehoods and recklessness and speculation that we’ve been subjected to, over and over and over, that Robert Mueller just definitively debunked, is far more humiliating journalistically, far more unjustifiable journalistically. And who knows where it will lead to? It’s ratcheted up tensions between the two most dangerous nuclear-armed powers in the world, Russia and the United States, that the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists says has brought us to two minutes before midnight on their Doomsday Clock. So it’s also been extremely dangerous in ways that we don’t yet know.

Let me just say two things. Number one, everybody knows—and I don’t care how many people try and rewrite history—that the central question that everybody was obsessed with for three years was: Did Donald Trump, his family members and his aides conspire and collaborate and collude with the Russians to interfere in the election? And contrary to what David just said, it is absolutely false that Robert Mueller simply said there’s not enough evidence to convict with a reasonable doubt. He said something much, much, much, much more important than that. He said that after 20 months of investigation, with a huge team of FBI agents and prosecutors, heralded as being the most aggressive and skilled in the world, we found no evidence that this happened. That’s what Robert Mueller said. The whole thing was a scam and a fraud from the beginning. And The New York Times headline today says that as clearly as it can: Robert Mueller finds no collusion between Trump and Russia. That was the focal point of the entire narrative, no matter how much people try and change the focus.

The second point, this idea that, “Oh, we haven’t heard from Robert Mueller yet, we’ve only heard Bill Barr’s summary of him,” yes, that’s true. But Bill Barr has been friends with Robert Mueller for 30 years. They come from the same Republican circles in the Department of Justice. They both worked together at the Bush Justice Department, the Bush 41 Justice Department. All we heard for 20 months is that Robert Mueller is a man of the greatest integrity and patriotism. The idea, the very idea—just think about this—that he would allow Bill Barr to run around making false and misleading distortions about what the Mueller team found, and not one person on the Mueller team, including Bob Mueller himself, would stand up and say, “Wait a minute, he is distorting what our findings was,” that is laughable. That’s exactly the kind of conspiracy theories that led to this entire mess in the first place, and we should no longer tolerate this. Rachel Maddow and MSNBC are the Judy Millers of this story, except, unlike Judy Miller, who was scapegoated for doing things that her male colleague did and had her career destroyed, Rachel Maddow will continue to make $10 million a year for NBC because she’s their most valuable brand, and there will be no reckoning and consequences for this story that the media got radically, fundamentally and deliberately wrong for almost three years now in a very dangerous way.

AMY GOODMAN: David Cay Johnston?

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, you notice Glenn doesn’t dispute what are established facts. We know that the Russians offered to help the Trump campaign. We have the emails proving that. And we know that Don Jr. was not interviewed. We know, as a matter of fact, unless the Russians fabricated the cable, in which case you would have expected denials from the Trump camp, that Jared Kushner sought to use the communications gear of the Russian diplomats and that they put their cable on this out in a way knowing it would be intercepted. We know, and Glenn certainly wouldn’t dispute, that the Russians tried to interfere in our election.

Now, all of these facts are fundamental to what matters here. And the issue that matters is this began as a counterintelligence investigation, not a criminal investigation. And I don’t think [William] Barr has completely, as Glenn suggested, distorted what was said here. But I think his four-page summary doesn’t give us the full picture. After all, he quoted—the only place he quoted the Mueller report was that it did not exonerate Donald Trump on the issue of obstruction of justice. We need to see the report. And we can’t draw the kind of conclusions that Glenn is drawing without actually seeing the document. There’s a lot of gray area here. And the standard for the conduct of the president is not the standard of criminal liability.

And just one other point, let’s remember that Donald Trump, who studied at the foot of Roy Cohn, as a young man, beat four grand jury investigations. He escaped scrutiny for his role in the international drug trafficking of Joseph Weichselbaum, whom he wrote a letter saying he was a standup guy who shouldn’t be punished, and engaged in behavior that made no sense unless the two of them were in the business together, that Trump has a long and thoroughly documented history of lying, of filing false reports, of cheating on his taxes, having been tried twice for income tax fraud and lost both of those cases—they were civil cases, but lost both. So, I don’t think you can draw the conclusions Glenn has drawn without seeing the Mueller report in full.

AMY GOODMAN: David Cay Johnston, let me ask, I mean, you have been exposing Donald Trump for decades—not around the issue of collusion with Russia. Is it possible that what Donald Trump is guilty of is corruption, not collusion? I don’t think Glenn Greenwald is saying that Donald Trump is innocent in all areas, but he is saying, of this investigation, of these charges, he is.

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, I personally have never once said or suggested that this is a criminal issue that should be treated as a criminal matter. I mean, I disagree with the Justice Department’s two Office of Legal Counsel memoranda, as do a lot of people who study and write about and, like I do, teach our Constitution. But that’s the broader issue here. What was the level of conduct? We know that Donald Trump invited the Russians to interfere in our election. So what did Mueller find? Let’s understand what he found. That it didn’t rise to the level of a crime, I just don’t think is that significant. I want to know what they found. And one of the key questions I want to know is: Did Don Jr., did Jared Kushner, and did Donald Trump’s lawyers say that if questioned, they would take the Fifth Amendment? Now, we all have a Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate ourselves, but it would be untenable for a sitting president of the United States to take the Fifth Amendment. He would be a unique case in that matter, he and the vice president, if the Fifth Amendment was put forward.

AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald?

GLENN GREENWALD: Well, let me just say a couple of things. First of all, prior to Bob Mueller’s appointment, I was calling for a full-scale investigation in which all of the facts at the conclusion of the investigation would be publicly revealed, so that we would stop having to rely on media leaks that the CIA and the NSA and the FBI were engineering and manipulating and lying to us, as we now know, so that we could see the full picture. So I continue to believe that we should see the full Mueller report. I support that completely.

Secondly, let me say, as well, that I believe that Donald Trump is one of the most corrupt people ever to occupy the White House. I am certain that he’s guilty of all kinds of crimes—war crimes as president, financial crimes as a business person. One of the reason why those of us who were so angry about this obsession on Russia and collusion, aside from the fact that it was so dangerous to ratchet up tensions between two nuclear-armed powers this way instead of trying to forge a peace between these two countries, is precisely because it took the oxygen away from all of the things that the Trump administration is doing that is so damaging, in lieu of this idiotic, moronic, Tom Clancy-type espionage thriller, where we were talking about Putin blackmailing Donald Trump with pee-pee tapes and Donald Trump being a Russian agent since 1987, which was a cover story that was on New York magazine, that Chris Hayes put on MSNBC. Just all kinds of moronic conspiracies, that we love to mock other countries’ medias for circulating and disseminating, drowned out our airwaves and our discourse for three years, preventing us from focusing on the real, substantive damage that the Trump administration is doing and that Donald Trump’s corruption entails.

But the reality is, the media chose to focus on this. Everybody knows this. David Cay Johnston was on your show, Amy, a week ago, and he said, “Donald Trump, I believe, is a Russian agent.” We now have a full-scale, 20-month investigation by somebody that everybody agreed was a man of great integrity who would get to the bottom of all of this, who had full subpoena power. And David keeps trying to imply, which is totally false, that all that Mueller said was, “Oh, it just doesn’t rise to the level of criminality.” That is not what he said. He said, after 20 months of a full-scale investigation—which, by the way, included hours of interrogating Donald Trump Jr. before Congress, all of the transcripts of which were made available to Mueller, which he could have prosecuted Trump Jr. on for perjury and obstruction had Donald Trump Jr. lied about anything, but he chose not to. He said, “After reviewing all of this evidence, I am concluding that this did not happen,” not that it doesn’t rise to the level where I can criminally prosecute. He’s saying there was no collusion.

The game is over, and it’s time to be honest about it. And the more we try to cling to this and invent new—you know what it reminds me of? In 2003, when the neocons finally had to face the truth that there were no WMDs, that they had fabricated that, that the media had misled millions of people around the world for years, and they started saying, “Um, maybe Saddam hid them in Syria. Maybe they’re buried in places we just haven’t looked yet.” It’s time to face the truth. The media got this story wrong. They obsessed on this for three years, and all this time there was no evidence for it. It was just a conspiracy theory. Rachel Maddow, the most influential liberal TV host in the country, every single night misled millions of liberals into believing something that was totally false, and there will be no media consequences for it. And that is extremely grave and serious, no matter how much is true about how corrupt Donald Trump is in his financial dealings or any of the other stuff that people are now trying to deflect our attention onto.

AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, I want to ask you to imagine for a moment if this investigation didn’t happen for the last three years, or whether it did but the press didn’t pay it much attention until Mueller came up with his results, as he has now, what the press could have been doing. You alluded to it in the last answer, dealing with issues. For example, we’re moving into the 2020 presidential election now. Coming out of the defeat of Hillary Clinton, what could the media have done, if it wasn’t saying it was simply stolen from her, but exactly what the policies the Democrats were representing that might have led to her defeat?

GLENN GREENWALD: Right, that’s the question. Why did millions of people vote for a complete joke of a game show host? And how did the Democrats lose the presidency to one of the most embarrassing spectacles of a candidate in U.S. history? What is the prevailing ideology of the ruling class that has turned millions and millions of people, and to this country, into such angry citizens that they either refuse to vote or vote for the person who promises to burn down the entire system? Why are they so angry? What has happened to their economic security? What ideology and what group of people are responsible for that? What has Donald Trump been doing in realigning the United States away from the Western Europe and to Saudi despots, and the collusion that actually happened, which was from the Israeli government during the election in order to undermine Obama’s policies? All those kinds of questions could have been asked and should have been asked, but it all got drowned out because we were all so much more fascinated by this superficial, kind of very appealing and melodramatic espionage thriller, that has completely destroyed the credibility of the U.S. media and so tragically vindicated Donald Trump in a way that probably is the greatest gift that has been given to him throughout his entire presidency.

AMY GOODMAN: David Cay Johnston, you’ve continually raised over the last years of the Trump administration, and the decades before, the corruption of Donald Trump. Aren’t you concerned now, now that he has been, in his own words, exonerated, although Mueller didn’t exactly say that when it came to obstruction of justice, but when it came to collusion, he absolutely exonerated him—yes, we haven’t seen the underlying report—that the issues you have raised for decades, you won’t be able to be taken seriously about them, because Donald Trump will move forward with new moral force, because he says he has been victimized for the last few years, since he became president, by this investigation by a man he claimed to have hated, who ultimately vindicated him?

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, indeed, Amy, you know, and I suspect Glenn has not read my books. My trilogy on the American economy, that you had me on when it came out—Perfectly Legal, Free Lunch and The Fine Print—explains why a man like Donald Trump could rise. Because of government policies nobody knew about, until I spent years digging them out of the public record, showed how we are picking the pockets of ordinary Americans and transferring money upward to other people. And even people that don’t understand that know that their economics today are worse than they were in the 1960s. So I was in the vanguard of explaining those things.

My two books on Donald Trump say almost nothing about Russia. And in particular, the most recent book is about what Donald Trump is doing to our government. And what is DCReport, the little news organization that friends and I run as a mostly volunteer project? It is about what he’s doing to our government. We’ve done very little reporting about the Russians, other than things like Wilbur Ross’s deep involvement with the corrupt Bank of Cyprus, which is well known for Russian money laundering. Other than that, it’s been about what’s the Interior Department doing, what are other government agencies doing.

So, Glenn’s complaints, well, you know, arguably have good merit; they don’t apply to me by any stretch. And I’ve never said that Donald Trump is an agent. I said he’s an asset. If I did say “agent,” I should not have. But I’ve said repeatedly he is what the old Soviet would call a “useful idiot.” He has advanced their cause. He called, during the campaign, for breaking up NATO. That’s a Putin item. He has said he trusts Vladimir Putin and not the American intelligence agencies. Those should all be things that deeply disturb us. And if the Mueller report, when we see it, shows that this is all malarkey, have me on, and I’ll say, “You know what? Got it totally wrong,” because I go wherever the facts go. But I don’t think the news media in this country has been totally discredited. And I notice that Glenn’s focus is on one cable TV show. By the way, I think I’ve been on once since Donald Trump’s election, on Rachel Maddow, when I got the tax return of Donald Trump from 2005. I don’t appear on her show otherwise.

And so, I think, fundamentally, we do need to focus on the real economic issues. Donald Trump wants to make healthcare in America worse. He has not fulfilled any of his promises. There’s no infrastructure bill. There is this focus on the wall with Mexico, which is never going to be built, and certainly not paid for by the Mexicans. He has stirred violence against people of color and people whose religions he doesn’t like. And he is utterly and completely unfit to hold office. He is, in the classic meaning of the Greek word, an “idiot,” which originally meant someone who only cares about himself and has no regard for the society around him.

AMY GOODMAN: David, yeah, on this show last week, you did say “Russian agent,” that Donald Trump is a Russian agent.

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: OK.

AMY GOODMAN: Are you saying you misspoke?

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: I should have said “asset.” That’s a misstatement by me. And “asset” is the term that I’ve used. And I do believe that, you know, you can unwittingly be an asset, and I believe that Donald Trump is a Russian asset. I think the kindest thing you can say about Donald Trump is that he has divided loyalties between the United States of America and the Kremlin, based on his own public statements, his secret meetings with Vladimir Putin, his destruction of notes and not taking other people with him to those meetings—that the kindest thing you can say is he has divided loyalties. And that alone makes him unfit under our Constitution, because it means he cannot and is not faithfully executing his office.

AMY GOODMAN: To be exact, You said “Kremlin agent,” but you’re saying you should have said “Kremlin asset”?

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: yes.

AMY GOODMAN: So, data from the TV News Archive show, on average, every day in 2018, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC devoted 3 percent of their news coverage, not counting commercials and non-news programming, to the Robert Mueller investigation. Upon hindsight, David Cay Johnston, do you think that the corporate media was wrong and should have focused on some of the issues that Glenn Greenwald has just laid out?

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, I mean, absolutely. I think we should have focused much more on Donald Trump’s not fulfilling his promises. I will tell you there’s clearly a limited audience for that. I mean, we are covering governance at DCReport. We have broken, on a budget of $5,000 or $6,000 a month, about 20 stories that other people have picked up on about what’s being done to our government. But our audience, compared to all the other places, we’re little tiny pipsqueaks down here. It’s unfortunate, but most Americans not only don’t know what’s in their Constitution, but they also really don’t care about governance. They do care about pocketbook issues. And the influence Trump is having on healthcare, the expansion of pollution, the coziness with oil companies and uranium mining companies, the damage to our forests and national parks, that should all be big news. You know, there was almost no reporting about what I thought was one of the most delicious scandals of this year: When all the national parks and monuments were shut down during the government shutdown, one place remained open with a ranger. That’s the clock tower atop the Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C. It was exempted. Nothing better illustrates Donald Trump’s complete corruption and abuse of power.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think that both Congress and also the other investigatory bodies, like the New York attorney general, Southern District in New York, etc., are going to continue investigating him, now that, you know, he’s saying he has been victimized, since he became president, on charges that were found to be completely unfounded?

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, I think that the Congress is going to continue to press for answers and a full—to see the full Mueller report. There are all sorts of other issues beyond this that need to be thoroughly investigated. And we’ve been in the forefront, and I have, in my writings and TV appearances, of pressing that we need to be understanding what Trump is doing to corrupt our government and damage our Constitution. So, yes, I expect those to go forward.

And we need to also remember that Donald Trump is a man whose experience, right within the period since the campaign, shows that crime pays. He ripped off people with Trump University for $40 million. He didn’t pay any penalty. He only had to return $25 million of the $40 million. You know, Donald Trump’s life experience is crime pays. He’s the only—he owned the only casino in which there is a known case of cheating customers in Atlantic City, was at Trump’s Castle. And so, you know, we need to recognize we have a man in the White House who is a third-generation head of a white-collar crime family.

But I also think, firmly, that we need to understand his relationship and his attitudes and his treatment regarding the Kremlin, which is a hostile foreign power that was attacking our elections. Mueller’s report, as explained by Bill Barr, says they were attacking our election. And Donald Trump encouraged that attack. That should disturb us deeply.

AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, before we go to break and then come back, respond to what David Cay Johnston said and also this alert from FAIR, more than a year—from July of last year. They put out an alert stating, ”ACTION ALERT: It’s Been Over a Year Since MSNBC Has Mentioned US War in Yemen.”

GLENN GREENWALD: Yeah, that’s the tragedy of everything that just happened. I mean, David and I have known each other for many years. We have respect for each other’s work. I mean, I’ll be presumptive enough to say that. I certainly have respect for his. And part of the reason why I find this whole thing so tragic is because all of the things he just named, that do deserve attention and investigation, have received none, because completely drowning out all of that has been this utter fairy tale.

But let me just say one thing about this idea that he’s a Kremlin asset or that we need to find out what his relationship is with the Russians. We just had a 22-month investigation where the media and Bob Mueller did nothing but look into that exact question. He’s saying it like nobody’s ever asked this before or nobody’s ever—we have the answer. And as for him being a Russian asset, it’s so irresponsible to say that, because the reality is that the conflict between the U.S. and the Russians are at a worse and higher level than they’ve been in many years, probably decades.

How can you say Donald Trump is a stooge of the Kremlin when he’s right now trying to remove one of Vladimir Putin’s client regime states in Venezuela? Or when he’s trying to bully Angela Merkel out of buying Russian natural gas, probably the thing that’s most important to the Russian economy? Or when he sold lethal arms to the Ukrainians, something Obama refused to do on the grounds that it would be provocative to Russia? Or when he bombed Putin’s client state in Syria? Over and over, the Trump administration has taken actions far more adverse and aggressive and belligerent to the Russians than the Obama administration did. That’s why this whole narrative that Trump all along was being blackmailed by Putin, that he’s an asset of Russian intelligence, this is idiocy. It is completely irrational. It is contrary to all facts.

And Bob Mueller’s investigation, who spent 22 months examining that core question—what is the relationship between Trump and the Russians?—concluded that there is no relationship. It’s time to stop these dangerous conspiracy theories that are ratcheting up tensions between the two most dangerous countries on the planet. The reality is, the Trump administration has been constantly belligerent to Putin, has constantly acted adverse to the Kremlin’s interests, and there’s zero basis for thinking or believing or finding evidence to assert that Trump in any way is beholden to Vladimir Putin and to Russia. The whole thing has been a joke and a fairy tale from the start.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break and then come back to this discussion. Glenn Greenwald, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, founding editor of The Intercept. David Cay Johnston, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter, formerly with The New York Times, now founder and editor of DCReport.org. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: “I Put a Spell on You” by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. We’re joined by two Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists, Glenn Greenwald and David Cay Johnston, as we look at the results of the 22-month investigation by special counsel Mueller. I want to continue, as we discuss the Mueller report, to turn to Noam Chomsky, when he appeared on Democracy Now! last August.

NOAM CHOMSKY: So, take, say, the huge issue of interference in our pristine elections. Did the Russians interfere in our elections? An issue of overwhelming concern in the media. I mean, in most of the world, that’s almost a joke. First of all, if you’re interested in foreign interference in our elections, whatever the Russians may have done barely counts or weighs in the balance as compared with what another state does, openly, brazenly and with enormous support. Israeli intervention in U.S. elections vastly overwhelms anything the Russians may have done, I mean, even to the point where the prime minister of Israel, Netanyahu, goes directly to Congress, without even informing the president, and speaks to Congress, with overwhelming applause, to try to undermine the president’s policies—what happened with Obama and Netanyahu in 2015.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s MIT professor emeritus Noam Chomsky, world-renowned linguist, a well-known dissident, is a writer of over a hundred books. Glenn Greenwald, can you respond?

GLENN GREENWALD: Well, that’s been the other critical point this entire time, is this kind of melodrama over the outrage that any country would dare to interfere in our sacred and glorious democracy, when, as Noam Chomsky just pointed out and has spent the last 40 years pointing out, the United States has done very little since the end of World War II but going around the world and interfering in every single democracy that they can find, literally, including the country in which I’m currently living, which is Brazil, where they overthrew a democratically elected government in 1964 and then proceeded to impose a military regime for 21 years, and also Russia, where they openly boasted about helping to elect Boris Yeltsin because he would privatize everything and that would be good for U.S. industry, or even agitating anti-Putin resistance in parliamentary elections under Hillary Clinton’s reign as secretary of state.

This doesn’t make it right for Russia to do it, but we’ve never kept in perspective the fact that interfering or meddling in other countries’ elections or governance is not some grave, aberrational, never-before-heard drama that the entire world has to stop and lament and put an end to. It’s normal business. We’re currently, right now, in the process of trying to change the government of Venezuela openly, and have done so over and over around the world. And that’s why Noam Chomsky says that all of this moral outrage of Americans at the idea that somebody would interfere in or meddle in our democracy has made the U.S. a laughingstock to the hundreds of millions of people—billions, in fact—who live in countries where the U.S. has done this and far, far worse for decade after decade after decade.

AMY GOODMAN: And, David Cay Johnston, your response?

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, we live in a world in which governments interfere in the elections of other governments. And the U.S. has had dirty hands about this. Heck, I think I wrote a few stories that touched on this in the ’60s, when I was covering local government in the San Francisco Bay Area but also student demonstrations. There’s no question that we have overthrown regimes and put in place terrible dictators. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be outraged—and we should be—at Russian interference in our election.

Now, if Glenn had looked at my Twitter feed, he would know that a lot of people attacked him as being illegitimate and I defended him. We disagree, but I think we have honest disagreements about what matters here. Glenn sees the Russia matters as very black and white. He says there’s no evidence, for example. In fact, I see them as what I believe they are: very gray.

We have lots of evidence of extraordinary conduct. Russia, if you’re listening, love it when the Kremlin offers help. The request to use communications gear, the discrediting of American intelligence agencies while accepting Vladimir Putin at his word, and meeting him with no other staff around and destroying the translator’s notes, or meeting with no American translator, and the disclosure in the Oval Office of sources and methods to the Russian foreign minister and the Russian ambassador, which we learned about only because of the Russians, not the White House—all of that is extraordinary behavior that is unlike any former president. And so, we should be very concerned about that. And we do not know enough to understand how this could happen. Just imagine for a moment if a Barack Obama had done some of the things that Donald Trump has done, what the reaction in Congress would be.

And I also think the proper measure here is not Barack Obama’s foreign policy, but what Hillary Clinton made clear she would have done if she had become president. I don’t think she would have been a particularly great president, but she made it very clear that, short of going to war, she was going to squeeze the Kremlin until they gave up Crimea. Putin understood this perfectly. And so, while he didn’t so much want Donald Trump, he certainly did not want Hillary Clinton, who would have made things economically very painful for him, and she was quite explicit about this.

AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, if you can quickly respond to that? But I want to end on the issue of where does this leave WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, and also Chelsea Manning, who’s been held in solitary confinement since being sent back to prison on March 8th after refusing to answer questions before a grand jury. She had been subpoenaed by the federal prosecutors in Virginia’s Eastern District for questioning over her 2010 release, of WikiLeaks, of hundreds of thousands of State Department and Pentagon documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

GLENN GREENWALD: David is right that there was a big difference between Obama and Clinton when it came to foreign policy. She was very critical of Obama for not being more confrontational with Putin, for refusing to bomb Syria, for refusing to send lethal arms to Ukrainians, for working with Russia on the Iran deal. I side with President Obama. He was absolutely right that Hillary Clinton would have been extremely dangerous, because she wanted to be way more provocative and belligerent toward Russia. And I’m very glad she didn’t get that chance to do that. That would have been very dangerous for the world, although the Trump administration is doing it now.

As for Chelsea Manning and WikiLeaks, the Trump administration has made no secret of the fact that they want to prosecute WikiLeaks for the crime, in their eyes, of disclosing confidential documents—one of the gravest threats we can imagine to press freedom. Chelsea Manning’s torture, being put back into solitary confinement, is trying to squeeze her to say things that aren’t true, to let them prosecute WikiLeaks. And all of the journalists who have spent three years claiming to be so worried about the threats to press freedom are utterly silent about what the Trump administration’s real threat to press freedom is, which is this attempt to prosecute WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, abusing Chelsea Manning to do it, in order to criminalize journalism, which is the publication of top-secret documents that journalists do every day. And I hope that gets way more attention.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there. I thank you both so much, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Glenn Greenwald and David Cay Johnston. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.

Up Next

Mueller Finds No Trump-Russia Coordination, But “Does Not Exonerate” Trump of Obstruction of Justice

More from this Interview

• Part 1: Mueller Finds No Trump-Russia Coordination, But “Does Not Exonerate” Trump of Obstruction of Justice

Headlines for March 25

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• Special Counsel Finds No Collusion btw. Trump & Russia; Dems Call for Release of Report
• Cyclone Idai Death Toll Rises as Officials Warn of Health Risks
• Brexit: 1 Million Take to Streets to Call for 2nd Referendum
• France: Protesters Take to Streets for 19th Week Amid Gov’t Clampdown
• Thailand: No Clear Election Winner as Pro-Military Party Takes Lead
• Gaza: Israeli Forces Kill 3 Palestinian Protesters Over Weekend
• Netanyahu Cuts U.S. Trip Short After Rockets Hit Israeli Home
• Somalia: At Least 15 Killed in Gun Battle at Gov’t Bldg
• Mali: 134 People Killed Amid Mounting Ethnic Tensions
• Afghanistan: 14 Civilians Killed After Week of Attacks
• SDF Announces Last Islamic State Enclave Has Been Defeated
• PA: Ex-Cop Who Shot and Killed Unarmed Teen Antwon Rose Acquitted
• Trump Cancels Unannounced North Korea Sanctions
• 2 Survivors of Parkland Massacre Die by Suicide
• Chelsea Manning Reportedly Being Held in Solitary Confinement
• 500+ Cities, Counties & Tribes Sue Sackler Family over Opioid Crisis

 

DESTAPAN UNA CLOACA DE CORRUPCIÓN, EN LA DELEGACIÓN DE LA CRUZ ROJA MEXICANA, DE SAN LUIS POTOSÍ

El Mundo de San Luis Potosí

EN LA DELEGACIÓN DE LA CRUZ ROJA MEXICANA,

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The Cost of Being a Dissident at Mariachi Plaza

Mariachi Tierra Mexicana Tres Generaciones at their Boyle Heights Musical & Cultural Center By Javier Rodriguez Los Angeles 24 Aug 2015 Oscar Chavez, a dissident and former board member of OMUL…

Source: The Cost of Being a Dissident at Mariachi Plaza

Charlottesville-Latino Leaders’ and Activists’ Solidarity

By Javier Rodriguez  Los Angeles  16 Aug 2017

To all: I find the last comment by Con Safos to be highly simplistic, nationalistic and out of context. The present national battle needs a show of unconditional solidarity and action against an emboldened of the far right, which essentially has reared it’s violent ugly head along with the rise of the electoral ultra-right and of course, the taking of the White House and both legislative houses. The juncture has placed the finger at an open violent racism, brought forth by the unification of this open and in your face sectors, and it has been Trump, his electoral team and his administration which have diligently embolden these MFs.

The Latino movement and its leaders must support the African American leaders and activists along with the progressive white sectors in this fight. Prof. Cornel West put it succinctly on Monday’s Democracy Now, when he stated how Black leaders and activists attending a Church Service at a University Parish, were violently blocked inside and prevented their exiting, by far right White Tiki Torch carrying activists, this on Friday, when the latter held their opening evening event,.Cornel gave recognition to 300 anarchists and how they came to assist them.

Here I will share the 2005 experience in battling the Minutemen at the California border. At first it was primarily a couple of dozen Latinos, mostly youth, that at the Campo Headquarters of the Minutemen, across from Tecate, Baja CA, where the first encounters were held. However as the days and weeks passed, hundreds of organized multiracial anarchists, organics, students, anti-racists, etc., from Northern California, arrived to the rescue and to stay. The battles were had at midnight against the armed paramilitaries. And there were several very risky moments. Also two dead bodies were found in the hills and two other immigrants, man and a woman, were hit by shotgun fire.

I believe that the movement at this juncture needs to be injected with more militancy, conviction, courage and bravery, and without disrespecting Latino activists or leaders of today, this wing of the movement has to be addressed, debated and built. We have similar history going back to the thirties, the civil rights era of late 60s and early 70s, the Minuteman battles and the 2006 giant Mega mobilizations. In the latter, the unprecedented numbers in the streets by the millions of marchers and boycotters from coast to coast, were militant enough to create a history of far right defeats and Latino victories. As well, it should be debated and studied extensively and used as a point of reference.

I find the lack of knowledge of the militant activism of the last 50 years and its connections to present leaders -I being one of them-  by our widespread sectors of university, college professors and deans and Presidents inexplicable. History has placed this generation of educators in an imperative position to call us to their fine institutes of higher learning, to illustrate and pass on the teachings of the Latino militant experiences, respectfully, ZAZ   

Javier Rodriguez, a longtime leader-activist is a media and political consultant who co-founded and directed the March 25 Coalition 2006; Additionally, he developed the political and organizational strategy that led to the 1986 Amnesty Immigration Reform Act ironically signed by Ultra-right Pres. Ronald Reagan.  

 

 

Once Again, a Chavismo Victory in the Polls

 

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This is the 20th Chavista Win out of 21 National Elections.

By Javier Rodriguez    Los Angeles    3 August 2017

As expected, Venezuela’s the successful Constituent Assembly Electoral victory over the U.S. backed ultra-conservative opposition, held on July 30, the U.S. government and a platoon of right wing Latin American countries, including Colombia, Peru and pathetically Mexico, immediately refused to recognize the results, announced victoriously by the Socialist Venezuelan Regime. As expected the lying sociopathic and right wing Trump administration hurriedly and violently moved to impose the infamous imperial economic sanctions.

With exceptions, the private media cartels, also lined up against Venezuela, hypocritically questioning the voting results and labeling them “insane”. However when the right wing held its recent referendum, not a single one,  including La Opinion, Univision, Telemundo, Estrella TV, Milenio, Televisa, NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox News, etc., objectively questioned the right wing vote results. In fact, in hard numbers, the “only thing published and republished thousands of times by the global corporate media, was the 7 million plus votes announced and proclaimed by the referendum organizers”. There were no numbers given on who voted, the amount of voting polls and votes per region, etc. In fact, independent progressive media labeled the U.S. backed election as a glaring fraudulent exercise.

It’s the same pattern of media misconduct exhibited in the last 5 months, who has only cited the “general quantity” of deaths in the streets, and, in no uncertain terms, with zero factual data, they have placed the blame on President Maduro and the Socialist Government.

Additionally, when looking inside their misinformation numbers, you see they conveniently omit the executions and burnings of dark skinned humbled dressed Venezuelans, now estimated at 22 out of a 100 plus deaths. These are mostly citizens caught in or near the daily right wing protests held in middle and upper class neighborhoods and some killed by professional sharp shooters.

Furthermore, while the U.S., the media and the opposition complain of the long lines and lack of groceries and medicines, they pitifully   turn a blind eye as to who is behind the organized burnings and ransacking of bodegas, warehouses, markets, pharmacies and book stores incited and partially led by Colombian paramilitaries and paid drugged lumpens.

In all, this is fascist Nazi Goebbels-ian misinformation at its best. However, orchestrating the five month failed uprising is the CIA and American taxes.

Javier Rodriguez is a co-founder of the March 25 Coalition, a journalist, blogger and a Media and Political Advisor bajolamiradejavierr@gmail.com   blog LaRayueladeJavier.Wordpress.c

Politics and Corruption During Kamala Harris’ Watch

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 By Javier Rodriguez   Los Angeles      18  July 2017

 

FORMER CALIFORNIA ATTORNEY GENERAL KAMALA HARRIS, IS TODAY A POPULAR AND AGGRESSIVE U.S. SENATOR IN D.C. NOT A SURPRISE, FOR A FACTION OF THE AMERICAN RULING ELITES AND MEMBERS OF THE DEMOCRATIC POLITICAL CLAS, SHE HAS ALSO BECOME A PROMINENT AND DEFACTO CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT IN 2020.

HOWEVER, THERE IS A CLEAR VISIBLE CONNECTION, WHICH POINTS TO THE PRINCIPAL NETWORK OF FINANCIAL AND POLITICAL SUPPORTERs WHO HAVE BEEN INVOLVED IN CORRUPTION AND FAVORITE TREATMENT BY THE CALIFORNIA JUSTICE SYSTEM, DURING THE HARRIS’ WATCH.

THE BIG ISSUES HERE, ARE 1,000 VIOLATIONS OF THE CALIFORNIA FORECLOSURE LAWS, APPARENTLY CARRIED OUT IN DIRECT CONSPIRACY BY EXECUTIVES AND EMPLOYEES OF THE ONE WEST BANK, OWNED BY BILLIONAIRE GEORGE POROS AND PARTNER, HEDGE FUND BILLIONAIRE JOHN PAULSON. SOROS CAN BE DESCRIBED AS A STRONG FINANCIAL AND POLITICAL ASSET TO KAMALA’S CAREER.

HYPOTHECALLY, THINK OF THESE CRIMES, AS, SIMILAR TO 1,000 ROBBERIES AND THE SEVERE PERSECUTION AND SENTENCING DEALT TO THE ROBBERS. IN COMPARISON THOUGH, THE RICH ECONOMIC CRIMINALS ARE TREATED WITH SILK GLOVE PUNISHMENT, THEREFORE, THE INSIDE BANK CONSPIRATORS, THAT IS, THE BANK OWNERS AND EXECUTIVES, CUSTOMARILY, THEY GETAWAY WITH A FINE CALLED, A “SETTLEMENT.” ENGINEERED BY THE GOVERNMENT, THE FINE IS A COURT GUIDED AGREEMENT, WHERE THE WHITE COLLAR CRIMINALS USUALLY PAY A THIRD OR LESS OF WHAT THEY STOLED FROM THEIR CUSTOMERS, THE PEOPLE OR THE GOVERNMENT ITSELF. NO PRISON TIME.

A PERFECT EXAMPLE IS THE DRAMA PLAYED OUT TWO YEARS AGO WHEN 2 MILLION WELLS FARGO BANK ACCOUNTS WERE ILLEGALLY MOUNTED UNTO 2 MILLION AMERICANS AND THEIR FAMILIES —ALL WELLS FARGO CUSTOMERS- WITHOUT THEIR KNOWLEDGE. IN OTHER WORDS THEY WERE ROBBED OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS. THAT WAS QUITE AN ILLEGAL TRANSFER OF WEALTH FROM THE 99% TO THE SUPER RICH 1%.

HOWEVER, IN THE CASE OF THE ONE WEST BANK BILLIONAIRES, IT WAS MORE EGREGIOUS. THEY WERE NEVER INDICTED OR TRIED. THE SMOKESCREEN GIVEN BY HARRIS WAS, ‘IT’S A DECISION MY OFFICE MADE.”

TRUST ME, THE PROBLEM HERE IS CAPITALISM AND CAPITALIST DEMOCRACY WHICH IS VICIOUSLY STACKED IN FAVOR OF ITS ELITE MEMBERS. ALSO OF COURSE, THEIR CENTURIES OLD RULE OVER THE POLITICAL SYSTEM, AND THE FACT THEY WILL ALLOW LAWS WRITEN FOR THEM TO END UP IN PRISON. RECALL THIS WAS MADE CRYSTAL CLEAR BY BERNIE SANDERS, A DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST, IN HIS RECENT PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN.

AS A STUDENT OF DIALECTICAL AND HISTORICAL MATERIALISM IN THE 70s, I’VE ALSO KNOWN THIS FOR A LONG TIME.

THE NETWORK OF DONORS NOW MEETING TO SUPPORT THE GLAMOROUS KAMALA HARRIS, ARE FORMER CLINTON SUPPORTERS. MEANTIME, SOROS AND PAULSON SOLD THE BANK FOR 3.4 BILLION AND NEVER PAYED A CENT BACK TO THEIR VICTIMS. QUE CH……….N A SU MADRE, ZAZ

Javier Rodriguez is a journalist, a blogger, a media and political consultant who co-founded the March 25 Coalition

Mass extermination in the border of Texas and Mexico

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bajolamiradejavierr@gmail.com   blog LaRayueladeJavier.Wordpress.com

FRIENDS FAMILY MEDIA

TRUST ME, THIS IS A MUST. REVEALING INVESTIGATIVE PIECES ON THE EXECUTION OF MASSACRES, MASS EXTERMINATION, OVENS IN PRISONS, SPIES, TREASON, AND BATTLES FOR POWER IN THE CITIES OF ALLENDE AND PIEDRAS NEGRAS, STATE OF COAHUILA AND ALLIANCES AND RELATIONSHIPS AMONG  THE ZETAS’ CARTEL AND GULF CARTEL, THE MEXICAN NATIONAL, STATE LOCAL POLICE, PLUS GOVERNORS, AND THE U.S. DRUG ENFORCEMENT AGENCY. THIS, IN ADDITION TO THE CLINTON’S AND OBAMA, NAFTA AS THE CAUSE OF THE TRANSFORMATION OF MEXICO IN SEVERAL WAYS, INCLUDING A COUNTRY AT WAR AGAINST THE ECONOMIC CRIMINALS “THE CARTELS” THE RICH, THE CORPORATE MEDIA CONGLOMERATES, POLITICO ELITES, AND A CORRUPT  AND WEAK GOVERNMENT, ZAZ, POST IT, AND PERHAPS SOMEONE WITH MORE TIME, CAN YOU TRANSLATE IT PLEASE  

Mass extermination in the border of Texas and Mexico

Los Zetas Cartel Used Network of Ovens to Hide Mass Extermination in Mexico’s Coahuila…this bloody cartel was trained in Fort Bragg, NC by orders of William Clinton, and was part of elite military forces of Mexican army, this is an example how NAFTA transformed Mexico in a Cartel Land, in US must be call for an independent bi-national investigation about the Plan Merida implemented by Hillary Clinton and the Fast and Furious Program of ATF of Eric Holder, both with knowledge of President Barack Obama, Mexico is not a Banana Country, is a partner of USA & Canada…in Mexico must be call also for the investigation of the Moreira Bros of the State of Coahuila, Carolina Viggiano, federal representative of the State of Hidalgo, and Ministry of the Interior, Miguel Angel Osorio Chong, like Zeta 1

 

by BRANDON DARBY & ILDEFONSO ORTIZ

PIEDRAS NEGRAS, Coahuila–The Mexican Los Zetas cartel used a network of oven facilities to cover-up the systematic mass extermination of innocent people during the 2011-2013 period when the cartel had complete governmental control over most of the Mexican state of Coahuila. From the then-governor of Coahuila, down to the city jails, Los Zetas had complete control of every aspect of governmental process and of the lives of Mexican citizens–including news media. Their atrocities in Coahuila have remained largely unreported and undocumented by any governmental agencies; local, state, federal, or international.

After Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project launched and began to see success in exposing various factions of the Gulf cartel in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, we grew increasingly aware of the need to help bring a platform to people in Los Zetas territory who had experiences of which we knew they wanted the world to hear. It seemed as if we would never break through the barrier, as we didn’t know and trust any sources in the region whom we could utilize as a starting point to build out from.

Our access to information in the Gulf Cartel territory in most of Tamaulipas grew to an unprecedented level, but Los Zetas controls the western portion of Tamaulipas around Nuevo Laredo and the state of Coahuila and getting our foot in the door seemed impossible. That changed. People from the region began contacting us and we had to take a chance and trust them. We didn’t know at the time if they were corrupted people luring us into Mexico for the cartels to capture us or if they were good people who wanted to risk their lives and help their communities. We had to take the chance. We did it and we lucked out–or we were blessed.

We traveled to the Texas border town of Eagle Pass to meet with our new sources. The Mexican border town of Piedras Negras sits immediately across the Rio Grande. We ended up in the backseat of a car with two strangers from Mexico taking us to “meet some people.” As the car traveled to a remote industrial area, we began to look at each other nervously. We ended up in a dark industrial park and we both thought we had been set up. The driver and his partner pulled us up to a warehouse and asked us to get out. We did so and walked inside, both thinking that we might be in trouble.

Instead of kidnappers, we found a group of Mexican businessmen who were afraid that meeting with us in public would risk their lives or the lives of their families. They grilled meat and warmed up tortillas for us. We smoked cigarettes and enjoyed beers until the men began telling their stories. We heard of good people who simply disappeared. We heard of towns where mass “disappearances” had occurred and no one knew why. We were later able to verify each story and find the answers the men and their communities had sought after for so many years.

Some aspects of the massacre in Coahuila have seen the light of day through some national Mexican news outlets like Proceso, though the case has been largely ignored by Mexican mainstream media as well as mainstream media in the United States and elsewhere. Some outlets like Aljazeera America and San Antonio Express News have reported on the disappearances; however, the link to the Los Zetas having complete control of the Piedras Negras prison and turning the facility into a crematorium had gone largely unreported. Breitbart Texas began to ask questions and received hard answers about the impunity with which Los Zetas operated and the horrors that took place in that prison in late October. In late January, El Diaro de Coahuila also got some answers as to what really happened inside the Piedras Negras prison. According to information provided by Mexican authorities, Los Zetas had full operational control of the prison to the point where they took more than 150 individuals to the prison who were then tortured, murdered and incinerated. Despite the brutality of the case, major U.S. TV and print outlets have largely ignored the kidnapping and murder of hundreds of people from Allende, Coahuila.

During Mexico’s unknown massacre, Los Zetas carried out a systematic extermination by killing and incinerating more than 400 people in Allende and the surrounding towns. While details about what actually happened have barely begun to see the light of day, the massacre traces its roots back to March 2011.

Before that time Los Zetas had managed to use strong arm tactics and bribery to rule with impunity in the state of Coahuila. By March 2011, Los Zetas were moving around 2,000 pounds of cocaine per month through the northern part of Coahuila into Eagle Pass, Texas. After paying for the drugs and covering their trafficking expenses, Los Zetas were making around $6-12 million in monthly profits just in the Piedras Negras and Eagle Pass corridor alone, according to witness testimony in a U.S. trial targeting Los Zetas money laundering (The case referenced later in this article.)

In early 2010, Los Zetas went to war with their former bosses in the Gulf Cartel. The brutal armed conflict skyrocketed the demand for cash by Los Zetas as the criminal organization had to get funds to pay for weapons and gunmen to continue fighting for territories in the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas and the Mexican States of Veracruz and Nuevo Leon.

According to the research conducted by Proceso’s Juan Alberto Cedillo, a Mexican journalist who has spent years investigating the massacre, it was in March 2011 that local kingpin Mario Alfonso Cuellar and his associates, Hector “El Negro” Moreno Villanueva and Jose Luis “La Guichina” Garza Gaytan were blamed by the top hierarchy of Los Zetas over missing money from the cocaine trafficking that the drug cartel never received.

It remains unclear if the drug profits were in fact stolen by the local kingpins or if the loads were lost to authorities during seizures. What is known is that Moreno Villanueva and Garza Gaytan fled to America where they sought the protection of the U.S. government as federal informants and witnesses.

“ Lots of deaths,” Moreno Villanueva testified in U.S. Federal court in a case against Los Zetas. “They even started killing families in Allende and Piedras Negras, and in Muzquiz and in Sabinas. They also wanted to kill me.”

Miguel Angel “El 40” Trevino Morales, one of the top leaders within Los Zetas took the betrayal to heart and ordered a systematic extermination in the area of Allende, the nearby towns called Cinco Manantiales, and also in Piedras Negras.

The order was simple—kill anyone related, associated or that in anyway had contact with Villanueva or Garza Gaytan.

According to information gathered through the Breitbart Texas Cartel Chronicles effort, some of which authorities have not yet made public or acknowledged, Los Zetas began rounding up entire families, friends, distant relatives and innocent individuals who happened to have one of those last names–even if they were not related. According to information gathered by Breitbart Texas in Allende, Los Zetas would torture and execute the victims using a variety of cruel methods. The bodies were then taken to either a ranch near Allende or to the Coahuila state prison in Piedras Negras to make the bodies disappear.

Inside the jail, Los Zetas butchers dismembered the bodies of the men, women, and children who ha

d been kidnapped. The human parts were then placed in 55-gallon drums filled with diesel and then set on fire. After several hours, the majority of the human remains were all gone leaving hundreds of families without answers. The ashes were then dumped in a local creeks that leads to the Rio Grande. While most of the drums remain in evidence lockers at a storage facility used by the Attorney General’s office in Coahuila, some of them have been re-purposed as dumpsters in the city. Recently authorities carried out a massive search along some of the creeks to search for remains of the unknown number of missing persons–none were found. The drum shown below was one of the ones that Los Zetas had been using to incinerate the body parts of their victims inside the Piedras Negras prison. The drum was being moved out of the evidence locker by authorities as part of their ongoing investigation. Agents left it outside of the building in the back 0f a police pickup allowing journalists from the Breitbart Texas Cartel Chronicles network to photograph it and provide an image of the makeshift crematorium where several victims were “disappeared.”

The first public glimpses into the massacre came in September 2012 when more than 130 Los Zetas cartel members were able to walk out of the state prison in Piedras Negras–amassive breakout aimed at bolstering their ranks to continue their fight against the Gulf Cartel. The federal investigation into the escape resulted in the discovery of dozens of burned out  55-gallon drums that had been used to make their victims disappear. We visited the prison.

At a ranch near the town of Allende, instead of drums Los Zetas would use ovens to incinerate the human remains. The ranch was raided by Coahuila authorities in 2013 when the government began to look into the case. At the ranch, authorities found not only the ovens, but also ashes and bone fragments from the victims. We were able to obtain never-before-seen official photos from the case files of the oven and remains at the ranch near Allende. See below:

In addition to the rampant butchering and incinerating of people, Los Zetas acted with complete impunity as they drove heavy machinery into Allende and the surrounding towns in order to demolish the houses of their victims. We visited two of these homes that Los Zetas demolished in Allende and provide video below.

As reported by Breitbart Texas, Los Zetas were able to act with complete impunity in Coahuila thanks to the help of former governor Humberto Moreira, who is currently the target of a criminal investigation in Spain over laundered money. As part of that case, he has been called out as a subordinate of Los Zetas cartel by prosecutors. Moreira spent a week in jail before getting released on bond in connection with the case and has since traveled back to Mexico. The news of the arrest sparked a wave of speculation about which public officials would be named next, as former Governor Moreira has been implicated in the ransacking of public funds from Coahuila and funneling them into the U.S. While the former governor has not been criminally charged, he has been singled out in a series of civil actions where the U.S. Attorney’s office is working to seize certain assets.

Los Zetas had a falling out with former Governor Moreira and ended up killing his son in revenge over the death of a close relative of Trevino Morales. That is around the time when the current governor of Coahuila, Ruben Moreira Valdez, who is also the brother of Humberto Moreira, decided to take on Los Zetas head on. Coahuila’s new stance against Los Zetas called for the creation of a special police unit known as Los GATES. They were created to root out Los Zetas.

The new Governor Moreira ordered the creation of a special task force by the Coahuila Attorney General’s Office (PGJE) in order  to investigate and solve the hundreds of cases dealing with “missing persons” which is the legal classification that the victims in Allende fell under. Under Vice-Attorney General Juan Jose Yanez Arreola, the PGJE began working to document the cases since many of the families never reported that their loved one was missing. Yanez has also been the driving force aimed at investigating and bringing to light the unknown horrors that Los Zetas brought to Coahuila. Over time, Yanez’s investigators with the PGJE began to provide answers to some of the families and began to earn the trust of the community as more and more individuals began to come forward in order to notify authorities that they too had a loved one who was also taken.

 

Legally the cases are called missing persons cases because the bodies of the victim’s have not been recovered; however, investigators continue to try to quantify the number of cases and try to bring answers to the families. The number of cases continues to grow as more people have begun to put their fears aside and added the name of their loved one to the list of missing person cases.

While Los GATES had been able to suppress most of the violence brought up by Los Zetas, towards the end of 2015, the criminal organization reignited its violence by beheading four informants and spreading their remains around the border city of Piedras Negras, as Breitbart Texas reported. The rash of murders has been linked by investigators to a group of former police officers who were abruptly released by a panel of judges in Coahuila–even though they were convicted of having worked for Los Zetas.

The release of the cartel associates made clear that the cartel still retains a grip on Coahuila society. Many who spoke with us felt that Los Zetas could still “get them” even though the cartel no longer retains physical control of territory in Coahuila. Other suggested that the GATES might not always be around and expressed fears that Los Zetas would return to open control of governmental agencies and then kill anyone whom they deemed as having worked against them or as having helped the Coahuila attorney general.

On a visit to Allende, a courageous woman whose daughter was taken and disappeared by Los Zetas spoke to us and agreed to a video interview. Like other residents of Coahuila, she insisted that we refrain from naming the cartel. She was willing to talk about what the cartel did and about the victims, but she was afraid to say their name. The mother, Olga Lidia Saucedo, runs a nonprofit in Allende called Alas de Esperanza or Wings of Hope for the families of the disappeared. The kids heard in the background of the video have parents who were disappeared and Saucedo cares for them. At one point in the video, viewers can see that we almost said “Los Zetas,” but caught it before we completed speaking their name. The mother addressed the hundreds of victims and said that no one really knows how many are missing because people are afraid things will return to how they were from 2011-2013; a time when going to the police was the same thing as going to Los Zetas.

Editors Note:  Olga Saucedo, the woman interviewed for this story did not mention the criminal organization by name during the interviews done for this story. The name of the criminal organization was obtained through independent research done by Breitbart Texas

Even if the GATES stay and keep the ground they’ve taken from Los Zetas, the cartel still operates in the state. They still have their scouts and spies. They still have the ability to send their hit squads after enemies. The only difference is that they don’t have the physical territory they once controlled in Coahuila where they could retreat to and live openly. Now, Los Zetas members have to hide. They are a clandestine criminal group in the state, rather than operating openly as before.

At the entrance of the town, the Coahuila government erected a monument to honor Allende’s victims. The monument not only helps to keep the memory of the  massacre from fading away, but it also helps some of the citizens begin the long and difficult process of healing. Some of the citizens, like Mrs. Saucedo, cling to the hope of one day being reunited with their loved ones. They hope that, in the most unlikely of all scenarios, their loved ones avoided the drums and the ovens.

Editors Note:  Olga Saucedo, the woman interviewed for this story did not mention the criminal organization by name during the interviews done for this story. The name of the criminal organization was obtained through independent research done by Breitbart Texas

Follow Breitbart Texas Managing Director Brandon Darby on Twitter: @brandondarby

Follow Breitbart Texas’ award-winning journalist Ildefonso Ortiz on Twitter:@ildefonsoortiz

https://www.propublica.org/site/author/ginger_thompson

Ginger Thompson

Ginger Thompson is a senior reporter at ProPublica. A Pulitzer Prize winner, she previously spent 15 years at The New York Times, including time as a Washington correspondent and as an investigative reporter whose stories revealed Washington’s secret role in Mexico’s fight against drug traffickers.

Thompson served as the Mexico City Bureau Chief for both The Times and The Baltimore Sun. While at The Times, she covered Mexico’s transformation from a one-party state to a fledgling multi-party democracy and parachuted into breaking news events across the region, including Cuba, Haiti and Venezuela.

For her work in the region, she was a finalist for The Pulitzer’s Gold Medal for Public Service. She won the Maria Moors Cabot Prize, the Selden Ring Award for investigative reporting, an InterAmerican Press Association Award, and an Overseas Press Club Award. Thompson was also part of a team of national reporters at The Times that was awarded a 2000 Pulitzer Prize for the series “How Race is Lived in America.”

Thompson graduated from Purdue University, where she was managing editor of the campus newspaper, The Exponent. She earned a Master of Public Policy from George Washington University, with a focus on human rights law.

 

Who Holds the DEA Accountable When Its Missions Cost Lives?

In 2011, a DEA operation touched off a massacre in a Mexican town, yet the agency never investigated what went wrong.

by Ginger Thompson, ProPublica

June 19, 2017

This story was co-published with The Washington Post.

Leer en Español.

Mark Smith, special to ProPublica

IN EARLY 2011, the Drug Enforcement Administration obtained a rare and highly valuable piece of intelligence about the leaders of the Mexico-based Zetas cartel, one of the most powerful, and impenetrable, drug organizations in the world.

An agent in Dallas had persuaded the cartel’s leading cocaine distributor in East Texas to hand over trackable cellphone identification numbers for the group’s most wanted kingpins, in particular Miguel and Omar Treviño, a murderous pair of brothers whose viciousness had earned them top spots among the DEA’s most-wanted.

It was an intelligence coup, the kind of information that comes along once in a very lucky career. With those numbers, authorities could track the brothers’ movements and ultimately capture them. But the DEA made a decision with fatal consequences. Against the wishes of the lead agent on the case — whose informant specifically warned of the potential for bloodshed — the DEA told a Mexican federal police unit with a long history of leaking to traffickers that it had the information.

 

How the U.S. Triggered a Massacre in Mexico

The inside story of a cartel’s deadly assault on a Mexican town near the Texas border — and the U.S. drug operation that sparked it. Read the story.

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Within days, the Zetas were, in turn, told that the DEA was onto their leaders. The Treviño brothers guessed immediately which of the cells in their organization had betrayed them and began hunting for the snitches. When the suspected traitors couldn’t be found, the traffickers went after anyone connected to them.

Dozens, possibly hundreds, of people were killed and kidnapped in and around Allende, a quiet ranching town in the northern Mexican state of Coahuila, about 40 minutes from the U.S. border. Zetas gunmen grabbed a 15-year-old high school football player, who was hanging out with friends whose parents ran a health club where one of the suspected snitches lifted weights. They took an 81-year-old woman, as well as her 6-month-old great-grandson. One family lost nearly 20 members.

Black clouds spewed from a local ranch where the cartel turned one building into a makeshift crematorium to burn the bodies of those they had killed.

For years, Mexican authorities did next to nothing to investigate the massacre. Meanwhile people in Allende, understandably distrustful of the authorities sworn to protect them, kept their mouths shut.

Tragically, that outcome has become all too familiar in Mexico, where impunity is a national scourge. Homegrown corruption, greed and fear have bred an epidemic of virtually unchallenged violence. What makes this case different is that the DEA lit the fuse that triggered the slaughter, then stood mutely by — as if it had played no role. DEA officials knew almost immediately that innocent lives had been lost as a result of sharing the intelligence with Mexico. The agency’s response then — and in the years since — nothing.

It didn’t demand answers from its Mexican counterparts, or suspend cooperation with the Mexican police until it could determine how the information was leaked. It didn’t conduct an internal investigation into the decision to share the intelligence or reassess its own rules for giving sensitive information to Mexico. It didn’t report the violence to superiors at the Justice Department or to overseers on Capitol Hill.

And, perhaps underscoring the perception that the lives destroyed were in some way acceptable collateral damage in the war on drugs, it didn’t offer to provide any assistance to those victimized by the leak or resources to help identify and arrest the perpetrators.

I’ve spent most of the last year investigating and documenting the attack on Allende, recording detailed, often gut-wrenching, accounts from those who lived through it and those whose actions helped cause it for ProPublica and National Geographic. Dozens of people in Allende agreed to speak to me on the record, many of them talking publicly for the first time and at great personal risk. Even the former Zetas-turned-informants spoke at length about their roles and their devastating consequences. The assistant U.S. attorney on the case described himself as “devastated.” And eventually, the DEA agent who led the investigation discussed, at times emotionally, his part in the tragedy.

But when presented with this array of voices and evidence, DEA officials refused to explain what, if anything, the agency had done to respond to the massacre. Spokesman Russ Baer would only say that the agency placed blame squarely on the Treviño brothers: “They were killing people before that happened, and they killed people after the numbers were passed.” He told me I needed to be clear on one thing: “This is not a story where the DEA has blood on

its hands.”

That’s technically true, and sadly seems by design. Because of the way Mexico’s drug war is fought, the United States plays a leading role — providing training, equipment and intelligence to security forces with reputations for collaborating with traffickers — without sharing responsibility for the fallout.

Mark Smith, special to ProPublica

Some Mexican counternarcotics units or programs — including the one implicated in the Allende massacre — wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the United States. American taxpayers have pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into Mexico’s counternarcotics programs over the years. But other than vague lists of kingpins who have been arrested and the occasional made-for-TV photo op of seized drugs, there is almost no public accounting of what those efforts have accomplished, much less of the ways they’ve failed, or of any toll they’ve taken.

This carefully choreographed arrangement is convenient for Mexico, as well. It allows that country’s government to assert that its police and armed forces do not take orders from the gringos. Meanwhile, the United States can claim credit when it helps Mexico capture a kingpin, but profess innocence when things go wrong.

Sergio Aguayo is a prominent Mexican human rights investigator at the Colegio de Mexico, which last year launched an independent probe into the Allende massacre. He told me: “The United States and its

role remains an enigma. But the one thing that seems clear is that the government has its policies against organized crime, and pursues them without taking into account the impacts on Mexican society.” Aguayo said that may not be the intent, “but the affects are clear and inhumane.”

Certainly, the United States does not intend for massacres to happen. The DEA’s goal upon obtaining intelligence on the Zetas, part of an operation called Too Legit to Quit, was a good one: to bring an end to the cartel’s reign of terror. The agency had trained and vetted the members of the Mexican federal police unit with which it shared information about the intelligence. But the so-called Sensitive Investigative Unit (SIU) operates with a fundamental flaw that neither Mexico nor the United States has had the political will to fix: The unit’s Mexican supervisors are exempt from scrutiny.

“The unit is only as strong as its weakest link,” said a former senior DEA official who spent much of his career in Mexico. “If the supervisor isn’t vetted, then what’s the point of vetting anybody?”

But DEA agents I’ve spoken to said that Mexico would shut down the program before submitting its leaders to U.S. inspection. And the DEA believes having the vetted unit, even with the possibility of corruption, is better than not having it at all. Despite its weaknesses, they say, the unit has aided in

important arrests.

Law enforcement sources close to the Allende case in United States blamed a Mexican supervisor in the vetted unit for the leak that triggered the Zetas’ attack. It wouldn’t be the first time. Over the two decades that I have been writing from and about Mexico, the SIU has been remade numerous times, either as part of a complete overhaul of the federal police, or because the unit had been infiltrated by drug traffickers. Or in some cases, the two went hand-in-hand.

Earlier this year, one of the unit’s supervisors, Ivan Reyes Arzate, turned himself in to authorities in Chicago who had charged him with leaking information to drug traffickers. Two of his predecessors at the unit, according to current and former DEA officials, were assassinated.

Expanded vetting couldn’t hurt. But it’s not foolproof, as the DEA has learned in partnerships with other national police forces. A vetted supervisor in Colombia, one DEA agent told me, was passing information to traffickers. “That information led to several cooperators being executed,” he said, “along with some of their family members.”

What the DEA could easily do, however, is establish firm and formal protocols for exchanging information with Mexico. Current and former DEA officials describe the system as loose and somewhat random, with agents independently making decisions — based on experience and relationships — about who to share information with both inside the DEA and among foreign counterparts.

This looseness is driven, in part, by shifting networks of corruption, some veteran agents said: Certain Mexican security forces might leak to a specific cartel, but reliably pursue another. They learned accordingly what to share with whom.

Another thing the agency could do is create mandatory accounting procedures that track the results of its operations. And finally, it could and should thoroughly investigate leaks, especially those with

disastrous consequences, and report their findings to the Justice Department and Congress.

Yes, that may slow down a process that by its very nature requires speed — drug traffickers change their cellphone numbers every few weeks, precisely to avoid detection. But it could also save lives. There’s still no firm count of how many people were killed and kidnapped in and around Allende. A Mexican colleague and I found some 60 people whose deaths or disappearances have been linked to the Zetas’ siege by relatives, friends, court records, victims’ support groups and news accounts.

The DEA has been criticized for its role in other high-profile foreign drug operations gone awry, most recently in Honduras. If American authorities are going to operate in Mexican communities we should be prepared to treat the people who live in them as we would our own.

 

Ginger Thompson is a senior reporter for ProPublica. A Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Thompson was previously a national and foreign correspondent for the New York Times.

 

 

 

Claudia Rueda and Defense Networks Against Silent ICE Raids Part I

ZAZ COMMUNICATIONS By Javier Rodriguez   Los Angeles      16 June 2017

ICE is silently  raiding, hunting, and SEEKING every possible opening in the courts, school environments, work sites, researching all 800,000 DACA  DREAMers, immigrant activists  and the homes of the nation’s 11.3 undocumented immigrants, as it recently happened -twice in the same home-  in LA’s Boyle Heights community of 100,000 population, of which 95% are Latinos. ICE raided and arrested a mother which immediately sparked intense community pressure led by her activist daughter Claudia Rueda, and, in a matter of days she was set free.

Claudia is an unregistered DREAMer, a CSULA student, a community leader, a passionate unafraid activist and she is not a criminal. The only spot on her record is a civil disobedience detention for defending the undocumented.

With these credentials, the LA ICE Brass politically decided to arrest her and deport her, as they did with Elvira Arellano in 2007. The young activist was then spied upon by ICE agents close to her home, not far from where I live. When she stepped out for an errand, she was grabbed and immediately sent to the San Diego Detention Center.

Again the community went up in arms and organized protests demanding her freedom in Boyle Heights and in San Diego. Creatively, the area’s leaders and activists had a press event in front of Claudia’s home. The protesters and Claudia supporters are part of the people enraged against the gross scapegoating of immigrants and Latinos by the Trump Administration. Leonardo Vilchis of Union de Vecinos, asked a poignant question to the hundreds of thousands watching the news: Are we going to have to stop ICE from taking our people in our own neighborhood?

Could organized Boyle Heights community prevented Claudia’s ICE arrest?

A few days later, another protest ensued to also demand her freedom. This time it was called by UTLA, the 50,000 militant teachers union, Claudia’s family, students and community activists. Shunning the traditional downtown sites, organizers staged it at the symbolic Roosevelt High School with a 6,000 student body 97% Latino.  It is also Claudia’s Alma Mater and mine.  

This school has witnessed a historic set of generations of struggle by students, teachers, staff and parents going back the 1968-70 student walkouts to the 2006-07 Latino Mega marches and boycotts, when again  many schools walked out and marched to the tune of 370,000 students  in California and Southwestern states, and Roosevelt never wavered. 

These socio-political accomplishments are planted historical marks which unfortunately are not part of the present curriculum of the school system. Even though, the Student Walkouts or student strikes of the late sixties were part of the civil rights struggle for equality which accused the school boards of institutional racism and discrimination.

36 years later, it was clearly the issues of immigration reform, separation of families, the anguish and widespread fear of raids and deportations. Students joined their parents in the marches of millions of immigrants and Latinos in the immigrant Spring of 2006.  Roosevelt High along with hundreds of other schools and were key in defeating the infamous xenophobic Sensenbrenner Law which, like today, criminalized immigrants and anyone who in any form assisted the undocumented.

Claudia was set free by the people’s protest and her defense.  By winning her freedom, the community has won a major victory that is spreading like wildfire in the nation. Also, the fact the supportive events were staged and televised from Claudia’s eastside neighborhood, set a precedent and are highly important because the psychology of fear in the barrios is real and deep. I assume that after a rest she will again join the trenches of the fight against ICE, Homeland Security and the embattled ultra-right winger Pres. Donald Trump.

 

BARRIO DEFENSE NETWORK AGAINST ICE

Last January, before Trump was seated as President, I met with leaders of the Hermandad Mexicana TransNacional as a political advisor to discuss what is to be done, to defend immigrants and Latinos against the Trump Administration brutal attacks on all Americans.  After listening carefully to the women leaders of this historic organization, I proposed the making of a Community Defense Network to directly confront and block ICE from the moment their patrol caravans enter the neighborhoods to the point of arrest. To do this the network must be built and composed of residents volunteers from, Hermandad members, the local churches, Unions, small businesses, and the vital piece, “The Social Networks”.

Javier Rodriguez is a co-founder of the March 25 Coalition, a journalist, a blogger and a Media and Political Advisor

Desde abajo y a la izquierda, hay mucho pueblo dispuesto a defender a Venezuela

Javier Rodriguez Media and Political Strategist ZAZ Communications blog Larayueladejavier.wordpress.com

FRIENDS FAMILY MEDIA, TRUSTME, YOU WANT TO READ THIS ARTICLE BY A CONTEMPORARY VENEZUELAN REVOLUTIONARY WHO IS LIVING AND ACTIVELY FIGHTING IN THE PROCESS OF A REVOLUTION THAT APPEARS TO BE IN DANGER OF FALLING TO THE ULTRA RIGHT FORCES, THE SUPPOSED HEROES AND POLITICAL PRISONERS, WHOSE MESSENGERS RECENTLY MET WITH DONALD TRUMP TO ASK FOR HIS HELP. THEIR GOAL IS TO TAKE THE COUNTRY BACK TO WHEN THE AMERICAN GLOBAL CORPORATIONS CONTROLLED ONE OF THE RICHEST OIL RESERVES IN THE PLANET AND THE COMEBACK OF A SUPER RICH LOCAL RULING CLASS,  WHO before MERCILESSLY EXPLOITED THE 99%. YOU ALL KNOW WHO I’M TALKING ABOUT, THE SAME 1% THERE AND HERE, WHO HAVE  SCREWED US FOR HUNDREDS OF YEARS UNDER THE GUISE OF CAPITALIST DEMOCRACY, FLAG WAVING AND SOME PRIVILEGES. ESSENTIALLY THEY WANT DRIVE VENEZUELA TO THE SAME SWAMP THAT HONDURAS, IRAQ, LYBIA AND SYRIA ARE IN. THE PIECE IS IN SPANISH, SO IF YOU’RE NOT BILINGUAL FIND SOMEONE IN YOUR FAMILY OR A FRIEND TO TRANSLATE IT, IT’S ABSOLUTELY WORTH YOUR TIME, ‘CAUSE ESSENTIALLY YOU HAVE ALSO BEEN INUNDATED WITH THE PROGANDA MACHINE THAT REPEATS AND REPEATS THE LIES ZAZ

Carlos Aznárez

^–A⁺A

 Rodolfo Walsh, cuya coherencia y rebeldía ante el poder establecido sigue alumbrando el camino de nuevos y anónimos revolucionarios y revolucionarias, despreciaba a cierto tipo de “intelectuales” que nunca le encuentran la punta al clavo. Ese tipo de gente que predica desde púlpitos que ellos y ellas mismas se construyen para sugerir que nunca llega el momento de lo que indudablemente hay que hacer, o que se devanan la sesera para descubrir los puntos débiles de tal o cual proceso revolucionario que sí se hizo, a pesar de ellos. En otras palabras, son los que prefieren ver el árbol e ignorar el bosque, y casi siempre se equivocan en sus acertijos situacionales, porque muy pocas veces (como en todo hay excepciones) se embarran los pies con los de abajo.

Rodolfo Walsh, cuya coherencia y rebeldía ante el poder establecido sigue alumbrando el camino de nuevos y anónimos revolucionarios y revolucionarias, despreciaba a cierto tipo de “intelectuales” que nunca le encuentran la punta al clavo. Ese tipo de gente que predica desde púlpitos que ellos y ellas mismas se construyen para sugerir que nunca llega el momento de lo que indudablemente hay que hacer, o que se devanan la sesera para descubrir los puntos débiles de tal o cual proceso revolucionario que sí se hizo, a pesar de ellos. En otras palabras, son los que prefieren ver el árbol e ignorar el bosque, y casi siempre se equivocan en sus acertijos situacionales, porque muy pocas veces (como en todo hay excepciones) se embarran los pies con los de abajo.

Algo de eso viene ocurriendo en este último tiempo con cierta “izquierda”, mayoritariamente académica, que en las actuales condiciones de embestida imperialista contra Venezuela prefieren hacerse a un costado de lo que sostiene la mayoría de la franja más humilde del pueblo de Bolívar y Hugo Chávez y lanzar por todo lo alto una nueva carga de munición gruesa contra este proceso. Y lo hacen desde la variante de resucitar, otra vez, la teoría de los dos demonios.

Como no podía ser de otra manera, este tipo de ataques, formulados en declaraciones, artículos o manifiestos cuentan con amplia difusión en medios ostensiblemente de derecha, que se regodean en contar entre las filas de los aporreadores de la Revolución Bolivariana no solo a los cómplices del golpista Capriles Radonski y al instigador de crímenes contra el pueblo, Leopoldo López, sino también a una pléyade de “izquierdistas”, entre los que figuran quienes siempre salen de la escena cuando la situación pinta borrascosa, o los que se suman a la estampida “por las dudas”, temerosos de no quedar “pegados” al eventual naufragio de un barco que en alguna lejana ocasión (cuando corrían buenos tiempos y se practicaba la solidaridad 5 estrellas) ellos mismos ayudaron a navegar y hoy tratan de hundir.

Estos “izquierdistas” propagandizados por Infobae y otros medios derechistas, acusan al gobierno de Nicolás Maduro de estar “deslegitimado y con marcados rasgos autoritarios”. Para dar más fuerza a sus denuncias se recuestan en los recovecos de la democracia burguesa, de la que se dicen cultores y defensores, y desde allí critican que el Ejecutivo venezolano “desconoce a otras ramas del poder”, entre ellas la Asamblea Legislativa, invadida desde diciembre de 2015 por una banda operativa de propagadores de la violencia fascista. Esos mismos que hoy lanzan a la calle a sus cachorros, mezcla de “nenes de mamá” con lúmpenes y paramilitares colombianos, para arrasar con todo lo que huela a chavismo, golpear a mansalva a ciudadanos y ciudadanas que no se suman a sus objetivos desestabilizadores, degollar con cintas de acero a desprevenidos motoristas. En su práctica terrorista han llegado a quemar vivos a jóvenes chavistas o linchar a un ex teniente de la Guardia Militar Bolivariana.

Por muchísimo menos que eso, en cualquiera de los países de donde provienen estos “intelectuales de izquierda”, no la policía sino el propio ejército ya hubiera generado, en su afán represivo, un auténtico cementerio. Sin embargo, el “autoritario” es Maduro que ha ordenado que el freno a tanta criminalidad se haga ateniéndose al Estado de derecho. Y cuando esto no ocurre, a diferencia de otros países, no se duda en detener y juzgar a quienes desde un uniforme han violado los derechos humanos.

¿Se quiere ignorar acaso que la mayoría de los muertos los ha vuelto a poner el chavismo, como ocurriera con el golpe de 2002? ¿Se trata de ocultar, desde la palabrería pseudo-izquierdista, que si en un supuesto negado, estos asesinos que hoy aspiran a volver a la Cuarta República, lograron sus objetivos, no terminarían convirtiendo a Venezuela en algo muy parecido a lo que la OTAN y sus cómplices mercenarios han hecho en Iraq, Libia, Afganistán y Siria?

Mienten descaradamente quienes atacan a una Revolución que en 17 años ha ofrecido a todo su pueblo una avalancha de conquistas sociales, solo comparables con las otorgadas por sus hermanos revolucionarios cubanos. Mienten, cuando hablan de ilegitimidad sabiendo muy bien que es uno de los procesos que más confrontaciones electorales han tenido que atravesar, y en la gran mayoría de ellas ha salido victorioso.

Mienten cuando desde su democratismo de ocasión señalan que el Gobierno venezolano bloqueó y postergó el referéndum revocatorio, sabiendo que fue la oposición la que no cumplió con los plazos para la presentación de esa demanda y que se inventó y falsificó miles de cédulas, incluyendo una buena cantidad de muertos, para forzar lo que desde todo punto de vista era ilegal.

 3

Mienten cuando hablan de “fallido autogolpe del ejecutivo”, cuando en realidad lo que está ocurriendo desde hace años, en forma más acentuada desde que el Comandante Hugo Chávez fuera asesinado, es una verdadera escalada golpista, que incluye todos los elementos de una guerra de cuarta generación: bloqueo económico y destrucción de una paridad racional del dinero venezolano con respecto al dólar, contrabando ilegal y masivo de gasolina y alimentos hacia Colombia con la complicidad del gobierno de Juan Manuel Santos y del paramilitar Uribe Vélez, desabastecimiento constante para afectar con la falta de alimentos y medicamentos a los sectores humildes, mientras en los barrios del Este caraqueño, donde vive la burguesía maiamera, se puede adquirir lo que no se encuentra en Catia, Petare o el barrio 23 de enero. Ni qué decir del rol jugado por el terrorismo mediático en todas estas instancias.

Mienten estos “intelectuales y académicos” cuando hablan de que a ellos les interesa la paz para detener la “violencia institucional y la callejera”, típico de la teoría de los dos demonios. No hay dos violencias, sino que por un lado hay terrorismo puro y duro, y por el otro un intento racional y medido de contrarrestarlo.

Mienten estos “pacifistas” cuando pretenden ignorar los numerosos intentos de convocatoria al diálogo realizadas por el gobierno de Maduro a una oposición, que como ocurre en Siria, lo único que le interesa es la guerra y el derrocamiento de un gobierno legítimo para construir una neocolonia norteamericana en suelo venezolano. Una vez que ello ocurra, lograrían su verdadero objetivo de tanta destrucción y muerte: recuperar para Washington todo el petróleo hoy administrado por PDVSA, así como los yacimientos minerales distribuidos profusamente en suelo venezolano.

Llama poderosamente la atención que estos mismos planteos “izquierdistas” coincidan tanto con los formulados, en clara actitud provocadora, por el secretario de la OEA, Luis Almagro e incluso con los “llamamientos humanitarios” lanzados por el Comando Sur norteamericano. Esto ocurre, porque en los tiempos que corren, donde el imperialismo está en plena ofensiva y nuestros pueblos resisten en los diversos escenarios que les permiten sus propias fuerzas, no es de izquierda levantar las propuestas de la derecha internacional, no es de izquierda oponerse a lo que la mayoría del pueblo trabajador y campesino, los estudiantes, las mujeres, los jóvenes y la gran mayoría de los colectivos sociales anhelan para Venezuela. Y esto es, defender las innumerables conquistas logradas con la Revolución chavista, apoyar al gobierno de Nicolás Maduro, fortificar aún más la unidad pueblo-fuerzas armadas (algo que la oposición quiere romper a fuerza de asesinatos selectivos contra militares) y lograr instalar un escenario definitivo de paz y no injerencia.

Como ocurriera en otros tiempos, en que la Revolución cubana tuvo que tomar medidas drásticas para frenar ataques terroristas orientados por el gobierno de Estados Unidos, hoy también, como ayer, algunos “intelectuales” deciden coquetear con el diablo y atacar lo que el pueblo venezolano está dispuesto a defender hasta con su propia vida. El gran problema es que la calle del medio por la que tratan de transitar estos criticones ya no existe. Se acabaron las medias tintas, y la disyuntiva es elegir, si realmente se es de izquierda: entre la Revolución y el antiimperialismo, profundizando y ridiculizando su accionar para llegar al socialismo, o acoplarse vergonzosamente con los acólitos venezolanos de la destrucción política, económica y militar de nuestros países.

Leyendo la lista de firmantes de algunos de estos manifiestos opositores “de izquierda” duele encontrar a algunos nombres que supieron estar a la altura de las circunstancias en diferentes patriadas anticapitalistas. Solo a ellos, no a otros que nunca entendieron ni a Cuba ni a Venezuela, vale la pena pedirles que recapaciten y no sigan acercando más gasolina al fuego de la destrucción de la gesta bolivariana. No es cuestión de desentenderse del pensamiento crítico, ni mucho menos, hay diversos temas que quienes nos sentimos chavistas también debatimos sobre errores cometidos, pero con la responsabilidad de saber sobre que terreno pantanoso el Imperio ha ido instalando al proceso bolivariano.  En ese sentido, es fundamental tener en cuenta una premisa que viene desde la historia de las luchas populares, se trata de que el enemigo principal quiere apoderarse de Venezuela, como antes lo hizo en Honduras, Paraguay, Brasil. Si Venezuela cae, toda la Patria Grande será afectada duramente y ya será tarde para los arrepentimientos.

Por último, constatar que todavía hay mucho pueblo y no pocos intelectuales y académicos de izquierda con mayúscula que están dispuestos a defender a Venezuela, a su gobierno y a su proceso revolucionario. Caiga quien caiga, le guste a quien le guste y cueste lo que cueste.

Fuente: Resumen Latinoamericano