Socialism is no longer a pejorative in the U.S. in spite of the endless spins of the corporate media

 

Read this article and you’ll drop all questions you may have as to why the Republicans are pushing voter suppression, and why the Democrats are failing to mobilize people to oppose it.

 https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/socialism-isn-t-a-dirty-word-anymore/ar-AALs2QE?rt=0&ocid=Win10NewsApp&item=flights%3Aprg-mobileappview

The launching of Operation Barbarossa 80 years ago to the day

Why did the Nazi’s wait until the end of June to invade the Soviet Union? Obviously Hitler assumed that taking the Soviet Union was going to be a cinch. He underestimated Russian nationalism but also socialism. The upshot was not Brest Litovsk (which finalized Russia’s defeat in WW I) but the taking of Berlin by the Red Army (with casualties that towered those of Normandy). Those who claim that socialism has proven to be a total failure should compare 1917 with 1945. 

 

JULIUS ROSENBERG, A HERO: A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON THE ROSENBERGS ON ANOTHER ANNIVERSARY OF THEIR EXECUTION

June 18 marks another anniversary of the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1953. There is not doubt about the absolute innocence of Ethel, even more so since the release in 2015 of the secret files of David Greenglass’ Grand Jury testimony. J Edgar Hoover was keen on using the threat of the execution of Ethel who had no involvement at all and knew nothing (at least there is no proof that she did) of what was happening in order to pressure Julius into signing a “confession” regardless of whether it was true or false. But the questions and doubts and the center of controversy revolve around what Julius did and did not do. One thing is for sure, if Julius had told everything that really happened (regardless of what that was), he would not have received a fair trial, which would have been impossible in the atmosphere of the height of McCarthyism and the height of the Korean War. I once had a rather heated discussion with someone who passionately condemned Julius Rosenberg and by implication was not in disagreement with his execution who didn’t even know that he allegedly passed information on to the Soviet Union at a time when that country was a major ally of the U.S. Undoubtedly most people at the time of the trial were equally ignorant. Has anyone called for the execution of U.S. spies who passed secret military information on to Israel?

But let us suppose for one moment that Julius Rosenberg was guilty of everything that the U.S. government claimed. And let us look, not at the ethical aspect from the point of view that he acted against the interests of his country. After all, Rosenberg was a Marxist with a perspective of internationalism as opposed to patriotism. And let’s look at the impact Rosenberg’s supposed actions had in succeeding years. What would have happened during the Cold War had the Soviet Union not developed the atomic bomb in 1949? We know on the basis of hard proof that the U.S. considered using or threatening the use of nuclear weapons at least a dozen times in the course of the Cold War. Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense under Kennedy and Johnson documented ten or so such incidents. We know that General Douglas MacArthur advocated a strategy along those lines during the Korean War, and Air Force Chief of Staff Curtis LeMay favored bombing Cuba during the Missile Crisis of 1962. And now Daniel Ellsberg is about to release secrete documents that demonstrate that the Eisenhower administration including top generals were considering resorting to the use of, or threat of using, nuclear weapons against China in the controversy over Quemoy and Matsu in 1958. Ellsberg and others allege that Nixon was seriously considering the same strategy during the Vietnam War which is why he masterminded the break-in of the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist. What would have happened if the Soviet Union did not have a deterrent capacity in the form of their own nuclear arsenal? After all, the United States was and is the only nation on earth that has used nuclear weapons in war. From this perspective, Julius Rosenberg has to be considered a hero, no matter what way you look at it.   

 

Pedro Castillo’s election in Peru has far-reaching implications way beyond Peru’s border

PERU’S PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION RAISES HOPES BEOYND PERU

by Steve Ellner

Canadian Dimension,

June 17, 2021

 

Peru's long-standing polarity between a large extension of coastal region, where the nation’s wealth is concentrated, and the much-neglected interior was on full display in the June 6 presidential election. But the polarity was not just geographical. It wasn't just that the winning candidate Pedro Castillo received the lion's share of his votes from the interior, known as the "Other Peru." Nor that Lima and other coastal cities favored Keiko Fujimori, particularly in middle class districts. The election also pitted two candidates with very dissimilar backgrounds against each other: Fujimori, a former First Lady and three-time presidential candidate with the solid support of the nation’s elite, against Castillo, who is the epitome of an outsider. Castillo, a primary school teacher since the age of 25, has never held an elected office.

Castillo’s platform included a second agrarian reform (the first was passed by a nationalistic government in 1969), the possible nationalization of the nation’s gas reserves (second in quantity in Latin America), creation of a state-owned national airlines, and a constituent assembly to replace the constitution promulgated under Fujimori’s father Alberto Fujimori in the 1990s. In contrast, Keiko Fujimori, like her father, champions neoliberalism.  

Castillo won with a razor thin margin of less than half a percentage point. Following in Trump's footsteps, Fujimori claimed fraud and demanded a recount of approximately two hundred thousand votes, undoubtedly in order to save face and rally her supporters.

A smear campaign against Castillo for being an ally for Cuba, Russia and Venezuela as well as for terrorists found an echo chamber in the nation’s mainstream media. Castillo was accused of having ties with the Shining Path guerrillas, even though he had belonged to the Rondas Campesinas, a rural civilian patrol group which vigorously and effectively combatted the guerrilla group. Lima’s influential daily El Comercio ran an investigative article replete with documents purporting to show that a Shining Path front group had infiltrated Castillo’s union and the party “Peru Libre” that backed him. The aim of the subversives was (in the words of an ex-Minister of the Interior) “to find spaces to proceed with the only thing they know how to do: radical politics.”

Castillo’s status as an outsider is of utmost significance. Like Brazil's Lula and Bolivia's Evo Morales, but unlike other Latin American left-leaning presidents such as Ecuador's Rafael Correa, Argentina's Alberto Fernández and Mexico's Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Castillo emerged as a social movement leader and, most important, as the head of a dissident teachers’ union. Castillo was thrust onto the national stage in 2017 when he led an historic 70-day nation-wide teachers strike, which attempted to halt school privatizations and rescind legislation that submitted public teachers to obligatory performance reviews.

Fujimori’s unfounded claims of fraud, like those of Trump in 2020, serve a hidden purpose. Fujimori’s outcry of foul play undermines Castillo’s legitimacy as president and places him on the defensive. This tactic didn’t work in the case of Trump because Biden had a majority in congress and was as mainstream as you can get. Peru Libre, on the other hand, has merely 37 of the 130 seats in congress. To make matters worse, financial markets were shaken by Castillo’s triumph and Peru’s currency the sol hit a historic low vis-à-vis the dollar.

Castillo also faces threats from retired top military officers some who were aligned with Fujimori’s father. The group includes 1970s dictator Francisco Morales Bermúdez prosecuted and found guilty for forced disappearances in the framework of the infamous Plan Condor. In a not so veiled threat against Castillo's supporters, the retired officers called for strict measures against the “crime committed by the apologists of terrorism” who in the media and social networks refuse to recognize Fujimori’s triumph.

Elites who are resistant to change are also banking on a rift between Castillo and the Peru Libre party. Castillo is not a member of Peru Libre, which calls itself Marxist-Leninist as well as an adherent to the homegrown style of socialism of 1920s Communist ideologue José Carlos Mariátegui. Following the first round of the presidential election held in April, Castillo moderated some positions and distanced himself somewhat from the party. Thus he discarded the possibility of widespread nationalization supported by some Peru Libre leaders, though not the demand that mining multinationals pay the state 70 percent of their profits. He also pledged to respect the autonomy of the Central Bank and ruled out exchange controls.  

AP and The Economist predict that Castillo will have limited options. Foreign Policy argued the same, at least for the short run, stating that the newly elected president “will have to deal with a fractured Congress eager to disrupt the path of any new legislation.” If Castillo ends up buckling under, he will be following in the footsteps of military officer Ollanta Humala who was elected president in 2011 as a staunch anti-neoliberal only to embrace neoliberalism.

Indeed, there is a sorry history of betrayals and turnabouts of this nature in Peru and Latin America. Alberto Fujimori, originally an anti-neoliberal, went the same route after defeating the renowned writer and neoliberal diehard Mario Vargas Llosa in the 1990 presidential elections. (Ironically, Vargas Llosa in the 2011 elections, was to say “to choose between Keiko Fujimori and Humala is to choose between cancer and AIDS.” For the 2021 elections, Vargas Llosa enthusiastically supported Keiko.) 

Yet there is reason to believe that Castillo will not betray the Peruvians of humble origin who elected him. One favorable sign is the mobilization of tens of thousands of his followers summoned by Indigenous and ronda campesina leaders to defend his victory in the face of Fujimori's refusal to recognize defeat.

In another encouraging sign, Veronica Mendoza who was the presidential candidate representing the more traditional left in the first round in April as well as in the previous 2016 presidential election, signed an agreement with Castillo in which they committed themselves to “go beyond the economic model imposed by the [Alberto] Fujimori dictatorship that has only favored the privileged few.”

One problem area in the alliance between the two, however, is Castillo’s conservative positions on social issues including reproductive rights, gay marriage and immigration, which resemble Fujimori’s stands. Mendoza has diametrically opposed positions on gender and LGBT issues, but has expressed faith that Castillo is a “person of dialogue” who has indicated that he will submit the issue of abortion to the will of the people in the form of a constituent assembly.

Another sign that Castillo will remain on the left side of the political spectrum is the Latin American response to Castillo's triumph in the face of Fujimori's demand for a vote recount. In the first ten days after the elections, only progressive “Pink Tide” governments and leaders including Argentine president Alberto Fernández and former presidents José Pepe Mujica of Uruguay and Rafael Correa of Ecuador publicly congratulated Castillo. So did the “Puebla Group” consisting of 32 prominent political figures mostly on the left. One of its members, ex-president Evo Morales, tweeted “on the basis of my personal experience, I suggest to compañero Castillo not to trust the Organization of American States nor [its secretary general] Luis Almagro.”

A broader look at recent developments in Latin America provides an additional cause for optimism. After facing a series of defeats beginning with the presidential election in Argentina in 2015 and then Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment in Brazil, the “Pink Tide” left and moderate left have made an impressive comeback, beginning with the election of López Obrador in Mexico in 2018 and then electoral triumphs in Argentina and Bolivia. To these electoral victories has to be added the ability of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro to hold onto power in spite of crippling sanctions and Washington-supported destabilization against his government. In addition, progressive candidates have a fair chance of emerging triumphant in upcoming elections in Chile, Colombia, Brazil and Honduras.

Castillo’s election is especially noteworthy because the “Group of Lima” with its seat in the nation’s capital was an organization of hemispheric governments intent on bringing about regime change in Venezuela. Peru Libre’s program calls the OAS an “organism of geopolitical control” by the U.S. and praises the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and other similar organizational initiatives for creating “a bloc that facilitates the resolution of our regional conflicts on the basis of autonomy.”

Castillo’s triumph is significant for another reason. Increased polarization in Latin America has largely left Washington with the support only of right-wing and largely repressive governments in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Honduras. In contrast, Peru since the overthrow of Fujimori in 2000 tended to be more centrist than rightist and at the same time aligned with the U.S. The new political correlation throughout the region in which the pro-U.S. governments are mostly right-wing calls for reflection in both Washington and Ottawa. More specifically, both countries need to abandon regime change tactics and hostility toward governments that refuse to tow the prescribed line. If such a change in policy is not forthcoming, a consolidation of Latin American progressive governments in the name of regional unity may leave the U.S. and Canada on the sidelines.  

 

Steve Ellner is a retired professor of the Universidad de Oriente in Venezuela and currently an Associate Managing Editor of Latin American Perspectives. He has published over a dozen books on Latin American politics and history, his latest being his edited Latin American Extractivism: Dependency, Resource Nationalism and Resistance in Broad Perspective (Rowman and Littlefield, 2021). He has published on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. 

https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/pedro-castillos-victory-raises-hopes-beyond-peru?fbclid=IwAR2bjetcvBYlQldG8Mvnh0AiO7ztAY_x4f3NCf4I8xagwv4FmmpdDtJpj5A

 

“Democracy Now” Interviewee Satanizes Putin and Glorifies Biden

No right-wing, war-mongering talk show jingoist could satanize Vladimir Putin more than New Yorker journalist Masha Gessen did on today’s Democracy Now’s hour-long interview. Gessen alleged that a “culture of lack of respect for human life” pervades Russian society including the nation’s leaders who don’t think twice about bumping off adversaries. She attributes “vaccine hesitancy” in Russia to this “culture of lack of respect for human life” unlike in the U.S. where vaccine hesitance” can be traced to conspiracy theory. Basically people don’t get vaccinated in Russia because they don’t care about human life. She says “why should you take the vaccine, when any number of other things could kill you?” In addition to denigrating Russian society per se, she forgets about the fact that a large number of people in the U.S. who are resisting getting vaccinated are African Americans who have good historical reason to be skeptical. She also claims that Biden, unlike Putin (who she claims wants to make a show of Russia’s importance in the world), is acting in good faith: “Biden is concerned … with finding areas of common interest, and he is alone in that. He is alone in actually trying to negotiate in good faith.” Gessen should read todays NY Times which points out that Biden’s motive for negotiating with Russia and changing its line on Russia (Biden now brushes off and actually laughs at his statement that Putin is a “killer”) is in order to pit Russia against China and isolate the latter, which is now considered the main enemy. There is a dire need for objective analysis on U.S.-Russian relations. This interview not only fails to do that, but it reinforced lies, half-truths and deceptive statements about Russia. That does the world a lot of harm in this moment in which agreements among the super-powers are imperative if we are to avoid ever greater disasters. Democracy Now should consider rectifying.

 

KEIKO FUJIMORI - CLAIMS OF ELECTORAL FRAUD IS WHAT THE RIGHT DOES BEST

Keiko Fujimori’s claims of electoral fraud is just the latest example of how the right responds to electoral defeat. It’s hard to believe that electoral fraud was committed in favor of a leftist candidate (Pedro Castillo) when the establishment so heavily backed Fujimori. The mainstream media in Peru beginning with El Comercio heavily attacked Castillo and publicized false allegations that Venezuela’s Maduro and Russia’s Putin were behind his candidacy. Furthermore, all international observers put their stamp of approval on the electoral process.

 

Consider similar incidents in the past, and you see a pattern in which the claims of the right are often backed by powerful actors including the corporate media, the U.S. government, and the OAS:

 

In the 2019 elections in Bolivia, even though Evo Morales won by 10% of the vote, the rightist opposition claimed fraud seconded by the OAS, which, as planned, led into a coup.

 

In the April 2013 presidential elections in Venezuela which Nicolás Maduro won by a margin of 1.2 %, Henrique Capriles refused to accept the results and called on his followers to take to the streets to express their “wrath.” The result was a night of violence including the killing of 11 Chavistas.

 

In the 2006 Mexican presidential elections, the opposite scenario occurred when PAN’s Felipe Calderón was declared victor. In a country that is notorious for electoral fraud (as occurred in 1988), Andrés Manuel López Obrador presented well documented evidence of fraud that robbed him of victory. I remember how CNN covered the story the night that the official results were announced by shunting aside López Obrador and interviewing Jorge Castañeda who insisted that the PRI immediately declare acceptance of the official results. His obvious intention was to legitimize the elections,  marginalize López Obrador and bury his claims.

 

And then there’s the U.S. November 2020 elections.

 

 

THE PERUVIAN ELECTORAL RESULTS PUT THE LIE TO LUIS ALMAGRO’S CLAIM OF FRAUD IN THE 2019 ELECTIONS IN BOLIVIA

The first results in Peru on Sunday favored Keiko Fujimori, but when the rural votes started coming in Pedro Castillo took the lead. That was exactly the pattern in Bolivia in 2019 when Evo Morales had greater support in rural areas whose votes were the last to get counted. Almagro’s bogus allegation of electoral fraud triggered the coup against Morales that brought the rightwing Jeanine Añez to power. The fallacy of Almagro’s claim was obvious at the time, but now the Peruvian example drives the truth home.

 

With Pedro Castillo’s election as president, and the triumph of progressive candidates in the presidential elections of Chile, Colombia and Brazil that are soon to take place, it will be possible to revive UNASUR and CELAC. It will also be possible to bury Almagro’s Organization of American States with its legacy of interventionism that has overthrown numerous democracies and installed repressive regimes throughout the region.

 

Keiko Fujimori: Accomplice to the Forced Sterilization of Peruvian Women

 Tomorrow, Peruvian voters should recall the forced sterilization campaign undertaken by Alberto Fujimori when Keiko Fujimori was the First Lady. The 272,028 victims were mainly poor Indigenous women in rural areas. Shouldn’t the First Lady have been the first to have denounced such abuse against women? 

https://theconversation.com/forcibly-sterilized-during-fujimori-dictatorship-thousands-of-peruvian-women-demand-justice-155086?fbclid=IwAR2HCernHlfa20JlA-WWR9t2JXcFDvN_PP6J0Op2xNtltGIUHnytLJljyyU

How Democratic is our Democracy? How the Supreme Court is Stacked against the Nation's Majority

Over the past 30 years, Democratic candidates have won the popular vole in 7 of the last 8 presidential elections. Yet 6 of the 9 Supreme Court justices are pro-Republican conservatives. Now the Supreme Court is set to decide on cases that affect the whole country in a big way: gender equality, reproductive rights, so-called Obamacare health law, and voting rights. Just consider that Brett Kavanaugh, whose ratification was railroaded through congress in spite of hard evidence involving his immoral past conduct, is reason enough to doubt the court’s legitimacy. One wonders why the Democratic Party leadership has allowed this to happen.