Afscme Local 444, retired
I see the US House of Representatives just passed a law putting targeted sanctions on Chinese officials for "arbitrary detention, torture, and harassment" of the Uighur Muslims in China. How uncivilized.
I see the US House of Representatives just passed a law putting targeted sanctions on Chinese officials for "arbitrary detention, torture, and harassment" of the Uighur Muslims in China. How uncivilized.
Meanwhile here in the USA, US Immigration and Custom
Enforcement officers (ICE) pepper sprayed economic refugees being held in a
jail in rural Louisiana who were protesting their imprisonment, or what the US
media calls, “prolonged detention”. A
spokesperson for the company that owns these centers reassures us though that only,
“a brief, calculated use of pepper spray
was employed” affecting only 50 refugees, and they,“subsequently became compliant”. Don’t you just love the
terminology representatives of the state security forces use? The protestors
were refusing to go back to their cells, sleeping outside of them and some
folks had written “libertad” on “bedsheets and towels” according to
reports. The imprisoned are seeking asylum and being forced to spend months in
holding cells with no effort to process them.
The jail is operated by a private company that owns several
similar centers and jails throughout Louisiana and the number of imprisoned
economic refugees in the state has grown over the past period and as many as
8000 were held earlier this year.
Do people not realize the hypocrisy of the US Congress, the
most prolific purveyor of state violence on the planet, censoring any
individual or administration for detention or torture? Are we to think that this hypocrisy goes
unnoticed by most people in the world? The US has two million people
incarcerated, more than 50% people of color. We execute children, the mentally
ill and have locked up the children of economic refugees in cages. We supply
the arms and money for the Zionist regime’s theft of Palestinian land and murder
of their children. The US embraces the murderer of Kashogi the Saudi dissident
and US citizen. And what was/is Guantanamo but a torture chamber. Have you ever
wondered how the US got a base in Cuba? And to top it off, we tolerate a rapist
and racist in the White House. The US ruling class is thoroughly degenerate.
I do not raise this comparison out of any love for the
Stalinist regime in Beijing, simply to point out the inconsistencies here.
I refer to the influx of people from our southern border as “economic refugees”, because that’s what
they are. If we familiarize ourselves with the history of US imperialism in the
region; its savage plunder of the resources as well as its indirect and at
times violent direct meddling in the politics there, the correctness of that
definition becomes clear. The US predator in chief and his right wing fascist
supporters are fond of pointing to Latino gangs that originate in the region
like MS 13, Barrio 18 or numerous US based gangs as one of the reasons for his
ant-immigrant stand and the need for his stupid wall. I am not sure at this
point but I think he cannot yet take the title of Deporter in Chief that his predecessor Barack Obama held.
The main point we have to grasp though is that the many Latino gangs in the US and particularly Los Angeles are a direct result of US policy in Central America. Some one million people fled north to escape US armed and financed death squads in Central America in the 1980’s, many of these people were urban or rural poor and many settled in Los Angeles with little opportunity or real assistance at integration. This history has to be understood if we are to talk at all about immigration.
The main point we have to grasp though is that the many Latino gangs in the US and particularly Los Angeles are a direct result of US policy in Central America. Some one million people fled north to escape US armed and financed death squads in Central America in the 1980’s, many of these people were urban or rural poor and many settled in Los Angeles with little opportunity or real assistance at integration. This history has to be understood if we are to talk at all about immigration.
In 1953 the US orchestrated the coup that overthrew the
Guatemalan government that was introducing polices that would have laid the
foundation for a healthier and more stable environment for the majority of the
people there. Instead the new US backed regime slaughtered thousands of indigenous Guatemalans and many came to the US to survive. People don’t flee their homeland because they don’t like where they live generally. The US overthrew the Guatemalan government on behalf of the United Fruit
Company. I
wrote previously about this here. And I suggest reading The Brothers about the Dulles brothers
and their role in the Guatemalan Coup. There
is a review of that book here. The
US also orchestrated the coup that overthrew the democratically elected secular
regime of Mossadegh in Iran the same year. The gift the US gave to Iran for
that venture was the murderous Shah. This history was suppressed but became
more widely known after Stephen Kinzers book, All
the Shah’s Men was published.
Street gangs, Latino or otherwise can’t match the biggest
gang of all when it comes to violence and mayhem and that is the US ruling
class and its organizations. That the
present gang occupying the US Congress can get away with the laws it passes,
including the recent censure of China for human rights violations that would be
perfectly legitimate if the source had any credibility on the world stage, is
because the US working class has no concept of the murderous role it’s
government plays on the world stage or turns a blind eye to it.
That this will change I have no doubt.
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