Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
An attempted coup is underway in Venezuela, call it what you like. While the Bolivarian Revolution has had its problems, U.S. sanctions have devastated its economy and people. Negotiations led by Mexico, Uruguay, and the Vatican are the only sane way forward.
In light of the People’s Climate Mobilization in New York and worldwide, Sabina Virgo writes on the need to build a movement using the examples of fights for civil rights, feminism and peace, based on the principle that corporate-centered business as usual must end, bringing about a just transition to a sustainable economic model that creates jobs and prosperity for all while protecting our fragile ecological balance.
In a nation that prides itself on democracy and equality, one finds many defenders of elitism and inequality among some conservatives, most libertarians, and especially objectivists. In a capitalist nation, one that often worships economic success above morality, one can find religious defenses of amorality going back pretty far. How did we get here?
Military and judicial violence against the public and in post-coup Honduras leading up to the coming November elections are central components of the neoliberal economic takeover. In order to legitimate and secure the economic violence effected against Honduran citizens by multinational corporations, the judiciary criminalizes opposition to them while the military (along with other state security forces) goes after citizen-“criminals” with an iron fist.
President Evo Morales signed into law in 2017 that stripped protection from the Isiboro Secure National Park and Indigenous Territory, known as TIPNIS for its Spanish initials, opening it to highway construction and other development.
The police insurrection turned failed coup d’état against Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa illustrates the many shades of gray between national sovereignty, ethnic and regional autonomy, multinational corporate development interests, and international political movements.