by Colin Hyde
Guatemala has to get big points for supporting the motion, “Advancing a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in Ukraine,” when the vote was called at the UN last week. President Arévalo might have felt a little pressured to join the US (what an about turn) and Israel in a nay vote. The US has said it’s about peace, but it isn’t calling out Russia for occupying the land of its neighbor. Last year at the UN, President Arévalo thanked the indigenous Maya for their tremendous support of his roots party, Movimiento Semilla. We all know that just a few decades ago the oligarchy in Guatemala slaughtered, committed genocide against, indigenous Guatemalans.
Belize joined Guatemala, Mexico, the UK, Canada, Jamaica, T & T, Barbados, Guyana and other CARICOM nations in the yes vote. Nicaragua, which for some decades has not been on friendly terms with the US, voted against the resolution. That vote alone won’t thaw the US’s cold heart towards Nicaragua. They would also have to open up their economic system to give American businessmen a free run, and stop their coziness with Big China.
All other countries in Central America abstained, as did Cuba, which must have thought long and hard about their vote. Russia saved the revolution, and the US that sought/seeks to destroy it is now in bed with them. Last week the Cuban lobby in Florida, ever vengeful—no forgive and forget with that crowd—came hard to hurt Cuba’s program to provide medical help in our region at little charge.
Closing out the votes of the parties that most concern us in North and Central America, and the Caribbean, the interim Haitian government voted against.
Staying with the geopolitics thing, our media reported that our government has gone soft on the genocidal Israel. I accept the PM’s comment, that we went “beyond the call of duty standing up for what is right.” The PM said his government hoped that our brother and sister nations in the Caribbean and Central America would follow our lead, but since “nobody did” … we, yes, “have to take a realistic look at what is happening around us.”
Mexico’s extradition for national security
My dad, a man who respected the law, said that one day while he and a friend, a police officer, headed to their respective homes on the Southside in his car after playing tennis at St. Mary’s, he, on finding the streets empty, took a left turn from North Front Street directly to the Swing Bridge, instead of taking the long, legal route, a right turn to Queen Street, to New Road, to Hyde’s Lane, up North Front Street, and then a proper right turn to the Swing Bridge. He said his police officer friend corrected him. The long route is ridiculous. But as his police officer friend reminded him, the law must be respected. (That ridiculous law has since been changed.)
My paternal grampa, I believe boats he captained for Bob Turton might have carried more than legitimate goods when he steered them north, to the US Gulf States. I don’t know when Grampa stopped drinking, but I know that in his youth he liked a drink. My grampa was in his early twenties when the US introduced Prohibition. That must have seemed so ridiculous! But, as my dad’s police officer friend said, the law is the law.
President Petro said that cocaine is no worse than whiskey. I think the difference between the two is that cocaine is a lot more addictive. I’ve known quite a few, indeed a lot of people who liked drinking, but I can name on one hand those who were addicted. Well, I thought cocaine was more addictive. The National Library of Medicine says, “the cumulative probability estimate of transition to dependence was 67.5% for nicotine users, 22.7% for alcohol users, 20.9% for cocaine users, and 8.9% for cannabis users.”
After reading that, I went to the dictionary, the Merriam-Webster, because I got to thinking that I didn’t know what addiction was. The dictionary said addiction is “a compulsive, chronic, physiological or psychological need for a habit-forming substance, behavior, or activity having harmful physical, psychological, or social effects and typically causing well-defined symptoms (such as anxiety, irritability, tremors, or nausea) upon withdrawal or abstinence.” Staying away from a long discourse, I said I can count on one hand the people I know/knew who were in that category. Look, people do stuff for stuff. The people who like Prohibition are saying to people like me, stay in your corner. I love people, but if I can’t find a bottle to hold on to, I prefer to skip the crowd.
Re: this decision by President Sheinbaum to ship 29 prisoners to the US, you bet the lawyers aren’t happy about that. I don’t buy into all the resistance when a country friendly to ours demands we ship someone out and presents strong evidence that that person is violating theirs. You’ve watched movies with felons escaping from police after they cross state lines. Ha, I’m like my grampa. Early one morning he came into my mother’s house, while she was at the ironing board, and he yanked me out of bed and dosed me off with his sash kaad. My mother wasn’t about defending her felon.
The Associated Press (AP) said “the unprecedented show of security cooperation comes as top Mexican officials are in Washington trying to head off the Trump administration’s threat of imposing 25% tariffs on all Mexican imports starting Tuesday.” The AP said that “among them [the prisoners] were members of five of the six Mexican organized crime groups designated earlier this month by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration as ‘foreign terrorist organizations.’”
I don’t like the US’s drug laws. But their law is their law. The AP said drug traffickers aren’t likely to approve of Mexico’s concession. The lawyers must be irate, and the intellectuals must be talking up a storm after Mexico “bent” on this one.
A point and a half for Gus John
In response to a request from the XTV WuB host for a comment on the situation in the DR Congo, historian Gus John said that to a large extent he thought the fault was with the African Union (AU). For years the Congo has been experiencing famine and disease outbreaks because of warring factions fighting over resources and because of tribal enmities. In the East Congo the main villains are the M23, which has its roots in neighboring Rwanda, and the FDLR forces, which is said to have carried out the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. There are many other warring factions in the Congo, but in the east those are the main two. I give Mr. John maximum points for the observation/charge that the AU has slipped up, is slipping up badly.
Rwanda’s president, Paul Kagame has at times denied any involvement with M23, but he has said that Rwanda has security interests in what goes on in the East Congo. Mr. John didn’t speak kindly about Brother Kagame. There’s a truth that when one is in a hog pen one cannot escape getting dirty, and the AU has largely stood aside and watched the difficult situation fester.
In respect to the Congo, there are over 200 tribal groups in that country, but at the bottom of the trouble in East Congo are the Hutu, which happens to be the largest tribe in Rwanda, and Kagame’s tribe, the Tutsi, which is a minority in Rwanda. The Tutsis in East Congo are mainly refugees who fled from Rwanda during the 1994 genocide.
For a brief sketch, Study.com says: The Tutsi people are an ethnic group living in the Central African countries of Rwanda and Burundi. In both countries, the Tutsi people are an ethnic minority group; the Hutu people make up the majority. In earlier centuries, the Hutu people were mostly subsistence farmers while the Tutsi people herded cattle.
Naturally, the Tutsis, though the minority, became ascendant. People who herd cattle will control more land, and land is power. Enter the Europeans in the late 1800s, and whatever the inhabitants of the area had established got turned over. There followed a lot of tragedy as the Europeans manipulated the groups so they could extract the wealth of the region.
We turn to the African Studies Center (ASC) to take us through the worst tragedy in modern history. In 1952 Belgium was in control, and its Ten-Year Development Plan granted “the Tutsi minority political, economic and social domination over the Hutu majority.” Civil unrest followed. Later there was a political union between Rwanda and Burundi, but this didn’t last. In 1962 Rwanda became independent; the president was a Hutu. ASC says “in 1963, the Tutsi invaded Rwanda but were repelled. In retaliation, over 12,000 Tutsis were massacred by the Hutu, while countless Tutsis fled the country.” In 1973 the Hutu president was overthrown “in a bloodless coup led by Major General Juvenal Habyarimana”, another Hutu.
ASC says, “The Civil War began in 1990 when between 5,000 and 10,000 rebel Tutsi invaded Rwanda from neighboring Uganda…When President Juvenal Habyarimana and the President of Burundi were killed on their return to Kigali from Dar es Salaam in 1994, ethnic violence erupted again with a vengeance. Allegedly, their aircraft was shot down from the ground, by persons still unknown.”
According to some quarters that “persons still unknown”, is Paul Kagame. He has said he had nothing to do with it.
Now, we have heard US president Donald Trump say what would happen to Iran if he is martyred. The Associated Press said Trump gave his “advisers instructions to obliterate Iran if it assassinates him.” We understand the message. The warning goes to Iran’s leaders and also to all crazed individuals in that country. The population of Iran is over 96 million.
We’ve seen how the so-called civilized animal on the planet behaves in certain situations. There is always to and fro going on with the so-called civilized animal on the planet, and all that it takes is a single spark to make this irrationality blow up. WWI was sparked by the assassination of a certain Archduke Ferdinand of Austria and Hungary. Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, a US ally, and if he didn’t have the bomb, he wanted it. Tens of thousands of Iraqis were killed, and the antiquities of thousands of years were pulverized by the US and its coalition.
Certain leaders of the military group Hamas, either provoked by a wild party on Israel soil near the border between Gaza and Israel, or who were just feeling savage and crazy, attacked and murdered the partygoers in the militarily far more powerful Israel. They murdered over a thousand people who were in party mode and others, and took over 200 hostages. Israel, with its vaunted intelligence that rescued the hostages at Entebbe, in their effort to find and punish Hamas’ leaders responded by murdering and maiming tens of thousands of innocents, and pulverized their property.
In this sometimes very unfair world in which we live, Kagame is blamed for the Hutu response, which was the worst horror in the last century and maybe of any time. After the plane was brought down, Hutu leaders inflamed their people and together they slaughtered over 800,000 Tutsis and Hutus who did not condone the genocide.
I accept Mr. Gus John pointing a finger at Kagame. But I think it cruelly unfair to damn him. It’s a tough situation there. It’s a hog pen situation. The African Union is a big disappointment.