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In the 1940s an emerging class of urban professionals and merchants sought to modernize Guatemala and break the dependency on coffee exports

heir goal was not socialism, but modernization and industrialization within a national framework. The working-class movement in Guatemala, including the Communist Party, identified and worked with this movement. Jacobo Arbenz, the candidate of this movement, came to power in 1954.

The overthrow of Arbenz led to a deepening of the agro-export economic model, including further expropriation of Indian land. One of the consequences of this was that "de-ruralization" took place without any sort of parallel urbanization and proletarian process. The dispossessed Indian was never absorbed into a capitalist economy, because manufacturing jobs were not being produced. Instead, the big plantations were becoming more and more mechanized and fewer and fewer jobs became available. The Indian could only find work on a seasonal basis and those who could not find work often found their way into the informal economy as street peddlers or subproletarians.

The root causes of the class conflict are in Guatemala's economic system, which simply provide for nothing except the luxury of the big bourgeoisie and the upward mobility of a slender percentage of the urban middle- class.

The wealthiest 20 percent of the population received 47% of national income in 1970. This grew to 57% in 1984. The wealthiest 10 percent increased its share from 41% in 1980 to 44% in 1987. Meanwhile, the poorest 50% fell from a 24% share in 1970 to 18% in 1984. In the countryside during the 1980s, the top 2% of the rural population received 40% of income, while 83% received only 35%

The largest 2 percent of Guatemala's farms cover 67% of usable land, while 80% of farms account for 10% of the land. In another indicator of the growing inequality, over 50% of peasant income came from land cultivation in 1976. By 1988, this percentage had decreased to 25%.

And yet Guatemala remains the one country in Central America that has not passed any significant land redistribution law.

But this is the peace of the graveyard. Will there be struggle in the future? It is safe to say that the misery that caused the last outburst will sooner or later cause a new upsurge in the future. Whether it will take the same form as the guerrilla warfare of the 1980s can not be guaranteed. The old mole revolution adopts many guises.

"The colonialists’ need to preserve the basic Indian economic and social organization order to facilitate the exploitation of a rural labor force, is one of the factors which explains why the Indian culture, revolving around precapitalist agriculture based on maize and the corresponding level of social organization, survive in the new colonial society; but it also explains why this culture not develop. The culture imposed by the Spanish colonialists (western, greco-latin, judeo-christian) dominated the Maya-Quicbe culture, because it expressed a mode of production superior to that of the Mesoamerican Indians.

The sense of ethnic-cultural identity--the other key to understanding the survival of the Indian culture as we know it today--finds its explanation in the relative independence of the superstructure with regard to the material base which gives rise to it at a given moment."

Sitting at the defense table, Asig sat with his head tilted toward the floor in apparent boredom. Reyes Giron flipped through case documents with one hand, his other arm clasped tight over his gut. A former lieutenant in the Guatemalan army, Reyes Giron is accused of leading what the prosecution has described as a strategic effort to crush peasant resistance.

They said the soldiers knew their husbands had been taken and the women were defenseless. “The soldiers said, ‘No one asks about you anymore. No one cares about you. You belong to us now,” said Petrona Choch Cuc.

Since 2007, the U.S. and U.N. have funded the Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, an international mission dedicated to help Guatemala’s independent prosecutor’s office, the Ministerio Publico, prosecute difficult cases of corruption and organized crime.

Rios Montt and Byron Lima Oliva, who was convicted of murdering one of the authors of a report published by the Catholic Church that laid out a detailed and fact-checked record of wartime atrocities, including mass rape.

"We will also engage community leaders, workers, young innovators and entrepreneurs, and others about ways to provide economic security, address the core factors of migration, and to give people the hope for a better life at home," Sanders added.

The vice president will meet with Guatemalan community leaders, innovators and entrepreneurs as well as greet and thank US embassy staff, per Mazin Alfaqih, special adviser to the vice president for the Northern Triangle.

"The vice president's strategy is built around catalyzing efforts across the United States government, regional governments," Sanders said, "as well as private sectors and philanthropic sectors and international partners."

In next week's bilateral meeting, Harris will discuss with Giammattei "ways to increase economic opportunities in Guatemala, strengthen rule of law and deepen bilateral law enforcement cooperation," Alfaqih told reporters. Already in their virtual bilateral, the two sides agreed to increase the number of border security personnel, among other agreements. The US will also increase the number of its own security forces on the ground to provide training, Alfaqih said.

In the vice president's meeting with Mexico's President, Harris will look to build on the two countries' previous agreements to secure the US-Mexico border and work to bolster economic opportunities in the region while establishing "further areas of collaboration," the officials said.

Sanders wouldn't say whether Covid-19 vaccines would be a topic of discussion in both countries during the visit, just that they would discuss "Covid cooperation."

The vice president has yet to call the leaders of El Salvador and Honduras, as both have underlying issues that have dogged US efforts in the region for years and her staff is finding the best way to engage. Those delayed talks show just one aspect of the challenges in this task.

"We have to give people some sense of hope that if they stay, that help is on the way," Harris told CNN's Dana Bash in April. "It's not going to be solved overnight; it's a complex issue. If this were easy, it would've been handled years ago."

“Normal, predictable weather years are getting rarer,”

n 2018, drought-related crop failures directly affected one in 10 Guatemalans, and caused extreme food shortages for almost 840,000 people

since October 2018, more than 167,000 Guatemalans travelling in family groups have been apprehended at the US border, compared with 23,000 in 2016.

Those who remain, often depend on money sent home by emigres, especially in rural areas, which received more than half the $9.2bn of remittances sent to Guatemala in 2018.

“Without doubt climate and environmental changes impact food security. For those who depend on agriculture the situation is very precarious, they are very vulnerable,”

Guatemala has the sixth-highest malnutrition rate in the world with at least 47% of children suffering chronic malnourishment. Malnutrition rates are even higher among the country’s 24 indigenous communities, rising to over 60% in Camotán.

“The government strategy [to tackle malnutrition] has good elements, but in practice it has been limited to putting out fires, dealing with emergencies, not tackling structural problems or corruption in public administration,” said Paola Cano, a nutritionist and public policy analyst. “Without international aid, even more people would be dying.”

“This isn’t poverty – or even extreme poverty: this is a famine, and people are dying,”

Families face an impossible choice: stay and risk starvation, or gamble everything on the perilous migrant trail. “They risk their lives if they stay – and if they go,

One of the officials said Harris appears eager for a portfolio that will allow her to achieve political victories, especially in foreign policy, an area where she is far less experienced than Biden.

Harris' performance is critical to her future political career, which could well include a run for president. It's also of special concern right now as she prepares to depart for a trip to Guatemala and Mexico next week as part of this project. It will be her first official foray into in-person, in-country talks about the troubles that push Central American migrants toward the US.

Harris and her staff have made it clear that they want to focus narrowly on diplomatic efforts in Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, where they believe they are more likely to achieve tangible results in addressing the root causes of migration, like economic despair, said the officials.

"Everything you're doing in Central America is always towards an eye on the border and what's happening in the United States," said Cris Ramon, an immigration consultant. "With the current dynamics in migration, what's happening at the US-Mexico border has implications in the Northern Triangle and vice versa."

Tens of thousands migrants from Central America arrive at the US-Mexico border monthly. In April, of the 178,622 migrants encountered by US Customs and Border Protection, 79,190, or roughly 44%, were from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, according to the agency's data, the very countries where Harris is supposed to be addressing migration to the US.

The pandemic has taken a dramatic toll on Latin America, where Covid-19 cases and deaths soared and economies once projected to grow have been decimated. The region was also hit with two devastating hurricanes last year.

The decline in economic growth in 2020, according to the Congressional Research Service, is expected to worsen income inequality and poverty in the region. That, combined with pent-up demands and the perception of the Biden administration being more lenient, has fueled people trying to cross the US-Mexico border.

Harris' role -- which mimics that of Biden under President Barack Obama -- is intended to target what's driving people to the US.

But following Biden's announcement, both the President and vice president's staff clarified repeatedly that Harris would be focused solely on diplomatic efforts to stem the current flow of migrants and develop a larger strategic partnership with Central America.

Harris has stressed that her role is to address the "root causes" of migration beginning in the Northern Triangle countries and Mexico, rather than the "symptoms" of it manifesting at the border, which are being addressed by the Homeland Security secretary. Without a diplomatic push in those countries, "we are just in a perpetual system of only dealing with the symptoms," she said in April.

Immigration advocates and regional experts who have participated in roundtables with the vice president describe Harris asking detailed questions on a variety of issues, like agricultural science and water irrigation strategies to tackle food insecurity and infrastructure needs.

Internally, Harris has been intimately involved in the crafting of a regional strategy, communicating regularly with National Security Council officials. Cabinet members, along with other administration officials, are also putting together proposals on the administration's root-causes strategy, which Harris is expected to discuss while in Mexico and Guatemala in June, a senior administration official previously told CNN.

But over the course of several days, the Mexican government dismantled the caravan, which at one point numbered about 4,000 people, using persuasion and force.

ut in the spring of 2018, a migrant caravan that formed near the southern border of Mexico and came to include upward of 1,200 people at its peak — a record at that time — got President Trump’s attention and became a volatile flash point in the immigration debate.

In 2019, Mr. Trump put further pressure on Mexico, as well as Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, to crack down on illegal northbound migration, freezing American aid and threatening tariffs. Pressure on Mexico led to the deployment of thousands of Mexican security forces to help detain undocumented migrants as they traveled north.

The Trump administration also signed deals with the three Central American nations allowing the United States to send asylum seekers to those countries to apply for sanctuary there.

“They have no heart,” one Honduran migrant, Dixón Vázquez, 29, told the Agence France-Presse news service, speaking about the Guatemalan authorities. “We are risking our lives. There is no work in Honduras, especially after the two cyclones and the pandemic. We are going to hold out until they let us continue.”

While poverty, violence and government corruption appear to be the main drivers of the latest caravan, the change in American leadership this week may also be a factor. Migrants’ advocates and scholars have warned that President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory over Mr. Trump could inspire a surge of migrants hopeful that his administration will significantly relax migration policy, making it easier for them to get into the country.

Mr. Biden said he would move quickly to undo the tougher restrictions on asylum enacted by the Trump administration, including a policy that has forced many asylum seekers to wait in Mexico pending the outcome of their cases.

On his first day in office, Mr. Biden plans to ask Congress for a broad overhaul of immigration laws, changes that would include a pathway to citizenship for 11 million immigrants now in the United States illegally, plus aid for damaged Central American economies and plans to help people fleeing violence.

All that has spawned a thriving security industry — the good guys with guns that grace every street corner — though experts say it is often unclear if their presence is making crime better or worse. In many countries, the armed guards have only six weeks of training.

Indeed, even as some Americans propose expanding our gun culture into elementary schools, some Latin American cities are trying to rein in theirs. Bogotá’s new mayor, Gustavo Petro, has forbidden residents to carry weapons on streets, in cars or in any public space since last February, and the murder rate has dropped 50 percent to a 27-year low. He said, “Guns are not a defense, they are a risk.”

United Nations studies in Central America showed that people who used a gun to defend against an armed assault were far more likely to be injured or killed than if they had no weapon.

“If you’re living in a ‘Mad Max’ world, where criminals have free rein and there’s no government to stop them, then I’d want to be armed,” said Dr. Hemenway of Harvard. “But we’re not in that circumstance. We’re a developed, stable country.”

Has been unfavourably compared to US presidential hopeful Donald Trump

The vice president, until now, had not been tasked with a key portfolio issue distinct from Biden. Instead, she acted as a "full partner" to Biden, appearing often physically alongside him on all the administration's efforts, including their self-proclaimed top priority of managing the coronavirus pandemic.

Those close to Harris said foreign policy and national security are key areas she wants to develop in her portfolio, and she's taken steps to beef up her experience since taking office, including by speaking with foreign foreign leaders.

During her own presidential run, Harris said she would expand the use of deferred action immigration programs and utilize executive actions to remove the threat of deportation of millions of undocumented people in the US if elected president.She said earlier Wednesday in an interview with CBS News that the White House was frustrated by the current situation.

Officials said Harris would rely on her experience as attorney general and senator from California, a border state, to inform her diplomatic efforts.

They said she would be supported by officials from the Cabinet, including the State Department and USAID, and was likely speak with the leaders of key countries, though did not have specific phone calls to preview.Officials said Biden brought Harris into the new role because of an inherent level of trust.

Still, a separate official said Harris would approach the matter differently than Biden, who traveled to Guatemala City in 2015 for a trilateral meeting with the leaders of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras in part to develop solutions to issue of migrants from those countries coming en masse to the United States.

Now, as President Biden, he is doubling down on that strategy once again and assigning his own vice president, Kamala Harris, the prickly challenge of carrying out his plan to commit $4 billion in a remarkably similar approach as she travels to the region Sunday.

But the numbers tell a different story. After years of the United States flooding Central America with aid, migration from the region soared in 2019 and is on the upswing once more.

Ms. Harris, who has little foreign policy experience and no history in the region, has already been criticized for not visiting the border.

The political risks are evident, including the obvious pitfalls of investing billions in a region where the president of Honduras has been linked to drug traffickers and accused of embezzling American aid money, the leader of El Salvador has been denounced for trampling democratic norms and the government of Guatemala has been criticized for persecuting officials fighting corruption.

“We’ve looked extensively at different programs that have been approached,” said Nancy McEldowney, a longtime diplomat who serves as Ms. Harris’s national security adviser.

Foreign aid is often a difficult, and at times flawed, tool for achieving American interests abroad, but it’s unclear whether there are any simple alternatives for the Biden administration.

From 2016 to 2020, 80 percent of the American-financed development projects in Central America were entrusted to American contractors, according to data provided by the U.S. Agency for International Development.

“It’s an incredibly not-transparent situation,” said Eric Olson, an expert on foreign aid to Central America at the Seattle International Foundation. “It’s like this is a national secret.”

Even when aid money reached Guatemala in recent years, it often brought little change, according to interviews with dozens who worked with or received assistance from U.S.-financed projects in the country’s western highlands.

For decades, migration to the United States followed a pattern: Aside from some spikes in migration from Central America after civil wars or natural disasters, it was mostly single Mexicans who headed north in search of better jobs and pay.

Aid workers kept coming to deliver lots of seminars on topics in which the farmers were already well versed, they said, such as planting new varieties of coffee beans, and then left.

Officials conducting rescue missions say the level of damage brings to mind Hurricane Mitch, which spurred a mass exodus from Central America to the United States more than two decades ago.

“The devastation is beyond compare,” said Adm. Craig S. Faller, the head of the U.S. Southern Command, which has been delivering aid to survivors of the storm. “When you think about Covid, plus the double punch of these two massive, major hurricanes back to back — there are some estimates of up to a decade just to recover.”

In Guatemala and Honduras, the authorities readily admit they cannot begin to address the misery wrought by the storms.

“Hunger, poverty and destruction do not have years to wait,” said President Alejandro Giammattei of Guatemala, pleading for more foreign aid.

“We are facing an imminent health crisis,” said Sofía Letona, the director of Antigua to the Rescue, an aid group, “Not just because of Eta and Iota, but also because these communities are completely unprotected from a second wave of Covid.”

The boulders blanketing Quejá today are almost as tall as the electricity wires. The only road into the village is encased in mud so thick and wet that its residents leave holes in it the shape of legs.

People started leaving here for the United States only a few years ago, but Ms. Cal Sis is certain more will follow. “They are determined, now that they’ve lost almost everything,” she said.

Mr. Suc is now looking for anywhere else to go. He has no idea how he could make it to the United States, but he’s ready to try.“Yes, we’re thinking about migrating,” he said, eyeing the dwindling bag of corn he has left to feed his family. “Because, to give our children bread? We have nothing.”

But context is also key. Because a pandemic policy remains in place that allows migrants to be swiftly kicked out of the country without going through as many steps, advocates say these statistics can also include repeated crossing attempts by individuals.

Usually the number of migrants crossing goes down in the winter, and creeps upward in the spring. The fact that we're already seeing higher numbers could be a sign that we'll keep seeing the number of migrants at the border grow.

Authorities say 25 people were packed inside a Ford Expedition that had the capacity to safely carry eight. And that the same vehicle was earlier spotting going through a hole in the border fence. Verlyn Cardona, a woman who survived the crash, told CNN en Español she doesn't believe the plan was for so many people to pile into the back of the truck. "People were running in and climbing on top of others," she said. "The door closed. We said, 'There's not enough room. Open the door.' The truck was moving."Her daughter, a 23-year-old law student who she said was fleeing threats in Guatemala, was among those who perished.

When President Biden took office, he issued an executive order halting border wall construction until further review. With numbers of migrants crossing the border climbing, critics of illegal immigration are decrying the administration's decision to pause efforts to build a bigger border wall. Immigrants and many who live in border communities argue walls are ineffective and also often push migrants to cross in more dangerous areas.

Many migrants who recently spoke with CNN near the Mexico-Guatemala border mentioned the storms. They also said there were other factors influencing their decision to make the dangerous journey now, too. Among them: economic struggles during the pandemic and hope that the new administration will be more sympathetic to immigration.

Beijing’s influence in Latin America and the Caribbean is growing, and it is expected to achieve recognition from more countries, as China is the wealthier benefactor.

The United States does not maintain official diplomatic relations with Taiwan as a result of negotiations with Beijing that led to Washington’s recognition of the People’s Republic of China in 1979.

China has warned Mr. Trump against making changes to the One China policy after he takes office on Jan. 20. The warning came in response to a phone call between Ms. Tsai and Mr. Trump after his November election victory, the highest-level exchange between American and Taiwanese leaders since the end of diplomatic relations

“Cruz is influential above and beyond many senators, given his performance in the last election campaign. It makes sense to add Cruz, whatever his relationship is going to be with the Trump administration.”

“The People’s Republic of China needs to understand that in America we make decisions about meeting with visitors for ourselves,” Mr. Cruz said.

We will continue to meet with anyone, including the Taiwanese, as we see fit.”

While American leaders have vowed to defend Taiwan from attack, the United States is not legally bound to do so, despite what Mr. Cruz said. Advertisement Continue reading the main story

Beijing opposed any contact between Taiwan’s leader and “anyone from the U.S. government,” saying it threatens to hurt ties between Beijing and Washington.

“The U.S. is Taiwan’s most important ally and friend, and it occupies a special place in the hearts of the Chinese people,”

neither Mr. Trump nor anyone on his transition team would be meeting with Ms. Tsai.

“In general, it raises Tsai’s national and international stature to be going on trips like this,”

The new hand-wringing stems from a gross misunderstanding of the glacial nature of population change.

Even when the total fertility rate falls below 2.1 children, the “momentum” effects of earlier fertility trends will keep a population growing for many decades. In cases when the absolute size of a national population declines, the drop often turns out to be short-lived, and in aggregate numbers usually is so slight as to be of little significance.

young women especially, but also young men, increasingly see marriage and childbearing as major risks, given high divorce rates and the responsibility to support aging parents, who are enjoying longer lives.

it also can provide substantial benefits that have received less attention.

the work forces of societies with low-to-moderate fertility rates often achieve higher levels of productivity than do higher fertility societies.

fertility decline is associated nearly everywhere with greater rights and opportunities for women.

Substantial fertility declines in southern India, notably in the state of Kerala, have been associated with significant economic and educational gains. It is not hard to figure out why. Children, teenagers and young adults are generally less productive than middle-aged workers with more experience,

The fewer children who need primary and secondary education, the more resources there are that can be invested in higher-quality education per child

by enhancing the employment and career experiences of young adults, lower fertility can also bring about greater social and political stability

lower fertility rates may gradually reduce the incentives that have led a surprisingly large number of governments to encourage the emigration of their own young citizens,

There are, in fact, ways that low fertility can be moderated, or even reversed, over time.

France provides subsidized day care for children, starting at 2 1/2 months. Fees are on a sliding scale based on family income. Other countries have been reconsidering traditional school schedules, such as half-days and early closing times that impose serious work-family conflicts for parents, and housing subsidies for young families.

the Costa Rican government has been feeding them and housing them in shelters.

Costa Rican President Luis Guillermo Solís eased the migrants' worries by reiterating that his country will not send them back to Cuba in a message posted Wednesday on YouTube.

It has certainly been regrettable that that government of Nicaragua, in a move that is still incomprehensible to me, has denied free transit through its territory. This attitude, in my opinion, harms the spirit of integration and fraternity of Central America.

We would like to thank Costa Rica for everything it has done for us, the help for children, the elderly and pregnant women; but we don't want to stay in Costa Rica. We want to go on toward the United States,"

The government of Nicaragua accused Costa Rica of generating "a serious crisis" and of "violating treaties, borders and rights."

its role is simply to protect these migrants as they travel through its territory.

The second, from the Book of Galatians, declares an eternal truth: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

As a result, my wife and I not only felt called to adopt, but we believed that race was no barrier to unity for a family of genuine faith.

From the instant we saw her, we loved her with our whole hearts, but any adoptive family can tell you (indeed, any family at all can tell you) that love does not heal all hurts. There is pain that can last a lifetime.

overing just outside the frame—and sometimes intruding directly into our lives—is a disturbing reality. There are people who hate that our family exists. Actual racists loathe the idea of white parents raising a black child, and ideological arguments about identity raise questions about whether a white family’s love can harm a child of a different race. And, sometimes, people even question whether adoptive parents truly love their children, claiming that parents adopt to “virtue signal” or simply to ostentatiously demonstrate their open-mindedness.

In 2010, the year we adopted, The Washington Post’s Michael Gerson wrote an article that reflected the heartfelt views of countless adoptive families. It was the “noblest thing about America,” he said, that “we care for children of other lands who have been cast aside.” And what of multiracial families? His answer was our answer: “Instead of undermining any culture, international adoption instructs our own. Unlike the thin, quarrelsome multiculturalism of the campus, multiethnic families demonstrate the power of affection over difference.” There was a spirit of optimism, of hope that we could actually live the promise from Galatians, and in living that promise help change the nation we loved.

then came a backlash. Claims of cultural imperialism, wounded national pride, and rare, sad horror stories of exploitation or abuse soured foreign nations against American families. And at home, identity politics and even outright hostility against the Christian adoption movement triggered attacks from some on the left—attacks that were soon to be matched and exceeded by attacks from a racist right.

We quickly discovered that if you’re the white parents of an adopted black child, and you’re in the public eye at all, men and women will viciously criticize you for having the audacity to believe that you can raise your kid. At times, the criticism was direct and personal—most of it directed at my wife

Then, sometime around the summer of 2015, we began to notice a shift. The attacks on our family came less and less from the left, and increasingly from the so-called alt-right—a vicious movement of Trump-supporting white nationalists who loathe multiracial families. They despise international adoption. They call it “race-cucking your family” or “raising the enemy.”

They lifted pictures of my then-7-year-old daughter from social media and Photoshopped her into a gas chamber, with Donald Trump pressing the button to kill her. They put her image in slave fields. They found my wife’s blog and filled the comments section with gruesome pictures of dead or dying African Americans. They made me wish for the days when the left came after us; at least progressive critics didn’t want my daughter to die.

White parents see racism directed at their black kids. Cruel people use social media to accuse parents of raising kids as fashion statements. Others lecture them on their inherent inability to meet the needs of children of color. The hate our family received may have been more prolific because of who we are, but that hate is real, it is part of American life, and it will find its way to all too many families that looks like ours.

In the years since we brought our daughter home, overseas adoption has plummeted—down 72 percent since 2005—and it’s not hard to see one of the reasons. A broken American culture inflicts itself on nations abroad and families at home, and attitudes shift

the idealism of 2010 is gone. Then, we thought our family reflected the future. Now we know that was naive. Now we know that while the promise of Galatians—the promise that we are “all one”—is true in the Kingdom of Heaven, in America it does not yet apply.

The question, it seems to me, is one of proportion.

The average aid for high-income countries like Israel, according to USAID, is $79 million a year. Israel gets 48 times more.

In return for giving Israel $3.8 billion a year … the U.S. is expected to consent to anything and everything Israel wants. When you look at this from a distance, it is really quite amazing.

And, of course, Israel won in the end. Under Trump, Israel has achieved almost every goal it aimed for: the scrapping of the Iran deal, the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, a surge in settlements, and an intensification of the abuse of the Palestinians

Again you might ask: What did the U.S. get in return for all this from Israel? And again the answer is: Nothing.

Actually, worse than nothing. The U.S. suffers internationally from this alliance. Don’t take it from me. Here’s General James Mattis: “I paid a military price every day as the commander at CentCom because the Americans were perceived as biased toward Israel and that moderates all the moderate Arabs who want to be with us.” Or David Petraeus: “The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of American favoritism toward Israel.”

Now observe the public discourse in Washington. Here is Nancy Pelosi last year: “If this capitol crumbled to the ground, the one thing that would remain would be our commitment to aid — I won’t even call it aid — our cooperation with Israel.” Chew on that a minute. If the United States were to collapse, its one objective would be to aid a foreign country

The first bill introduced into the Senate in this Congress was one that made it illegal for any American to boycott goods from the West Bank, without suffering real economic consequences from their own government. It’s a federal bill designed to buttress several state bans on Americans’ right to boycott Israeli goods. Now here’s a clear case of conflict between the free speech rights of Americans and Israel’s continuing occupation of the West Bank. And the Senate voted for Israel’s occupation over the rights of its own citizens by a margin of 77– 23

It seems to me that it is simply a fact that the Israel lobby uses money, passion, and persuasion to warp this country’s foreign policy in favor of another country — out of all proportion to what Israel can do for the U.S.

The reason seems quite simple: Migrants now know that the U.S. border system is overwhelmed. More to the point, they now know that if they bring their children with them, they will not be abruptly sent back, and cannot be detained for longer than 20 days, after which they will be free to go and work anywhere in the country. That incentive is much stronger now than it was a year ago

The one-way street has also corrupted Israel, wrecked its moral standing, and enabled the country to keep ratcheting toward the far right in self-destructive ways.

History matters. But it’s not a rational way for a great power to conduct foreign polic

What has happened in Guatemala to produce such a growing mass of asylum seekers? The truth appears to be some food insecurity after a failed harvest — but mostly the news that the U.S. border is effectively open, and if you bring your kids and show up, you’re home free

The Democrats for their part keep saying that there is no crisis at all, berate the administration for insufficient care or tougher enforcement at ports of entry, and actually attempted to restrict the number of beds assigned for detention in their last negotiation with the president (it didn’t happen). At some point, they’re going to have to grapple with this genuine emergency.

But how do we stop this? Congress has to act to change the law that enables this. Asylum, traditionally understood, was once for those fleeing political or ethnic persecution. It wasn’t a catch-all for any economic migrant, who can be coached to say the right words to the right official. It’s a vast loophole in the immigration system — and if it isn’t fixed legislatively soon, the current massive wave will keep building

If you think that won’t empower more nativist demagogues and help reelect Trump, you’re dreaming.

“among white liberals … 79.2 percent agreed that ‘racial discrimination is the main reason why many black people can’t get ahead these days.’ 18.8 percent agreed that ‘blacks who can’t get ahead in this country are mostly responsible for their own condition. … Among blacks, 59.9 percent identified discrimination as the main deterrent to upward mobility for African-Americans, and 32.0 percent said blacks were responsible for their condition.”

These white super-liberals are also, according to a fascinating survey featured in The Atlantic, the most blinkered. Money quote: “The most politically intolerant Americans, according to the analysis, tend to be whiter, more highly educated, older, more urban, and more partisan themselves

The survey found that the city most intolerant of other people’s views was Boston, specifically around Cambridge

This most tolerant town is in a county that voted for Trump by a 20-point margin. Let’s absorb that fact for a while, shall we?

the results suggest a damning verdict on American higher education. My alma mater Harvard, a university where free speech, ideological differences, and competing arguments should flourish is, in fact, a nest of smug intolerance. Our elite colleges may be the most “diverse” ever. But they have also become machines for closing students’ minds.