People Before Profit blog

Ukraine moves ahead with plan to abolish Communist Party

Tue, 29 Dec 2015 23:00:00 +0000

On December 16, a court in Ukraine rejected a suit by the Communist Party of Ukraine to block governmental efforts to end the existence of the party and ban its symbols and terminology. An appeals court has rejected the Communist Party's appeal. This creates a deplorable situation in Ukraine, and a horrible precedent for the rest of Europe and beyond.

This is not the first time governments of formerly socialist states have used repressive tactics to suppress not only the communist parties themselves, but the things that they stand for. Similar things have happened in the Baltic countries, in Poland, Hungary and Romania.

In the Czech Republic a couple of years ago there was a serious, but unsuccessful effort to ban the youth league of the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia.

The pretexts used illustrate the depths of cynicism of the ruling classes and governing parties of Eastern Europe. The Communist Party of Ukraine is accused of "separatism" when in fact it had called for regional autonomy in a unitary Ukraine as a peaceful way out of the country's current troubles. The fact that this party has legally elected parliamentary representation and millions of supporters is simply ignored.

After the Second World War, when Soviet troops had driven the genocidal German Nazi forces out of the Eastern European countries they had occupied, and the peoples were demanding just punishment for the Nazis and their local collaborators, fascist and Nazi elements in the region went underground or into exile but did not vanish.

With the collapse of Eastern European socialism and the USSR at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, these ultra-rightist, fascist and frequently anti-Semitic elements came out of hiding, dropped their camouflage and/or returned from exile in the West. In a number of Eastern European countries, they managed to get legislation passed that banned both Nazism and communism, which were falsely equated for propaganda purposes.

The current persecution of communists in Ukraine was preceded by very similar phenomena in nearby countries. The version of history that is promoted by the right describes communism as just as genocidal as Nazism certainly was.

But it is false, propagandistically manipulated history. The Jews, Roma, and other persecuted population sectors in Eastern Europe were exterminated by the German Nazis and their local fascist collaborators. Those who survived often did so because they were rescued by Soviet troops or partisans.

We cannot ignore the role of the major capitalist countries of the West in creating and exacerbating this state of affairs. After the end of the Second World War, with the connivance, in the United States, of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, thousands of German Nazis and Eastern European Nazi collaborators were helped to escape to the United States.

They formed the nuclei of right-wing, pro-fascist agitation in "ethnic," including Ukrainian-American, communities in both the United States and Canada, intimidating and shouting down people of similar national origins who did not agree with their right-wing agenda. In some cases they worked with U.S. intelligence to undermine the governments of their former homelands. Only in the 1970s did this become a public scandal that led to a few investigations and deportations.

With the fall of Eastern European socialism and the Soviet Union, western governments, multinational corporations and some NGOs eagerly abetted the rise to power of intolerant right-wing groups in the former socialist states, including Ukraine. When it appeared, in the fall of 2013, that the government of Ukraine was not going to submit to pressure to join the European Union, outside forces helped to destabilize the country, often acting in tandem with extreme right wing Ukrainian groups such as the Svoboda party and Pravy Sektor, which openly identify with people who collaborated with Nazi Germany.

This led to the ouster of the legally elected government in February, 2014.When the majority of people in Eastern Ukraine took fright at the evident fascist threat and took a stand, they were portrayed in the Western capitalist media as mere Russian puppets. The result has been a bloody civil war.

The Communist Party of Ukraine has stood for sanity, moderation and a peaceful resolution of the conflict in the East. To obfuscate the real role of fascism and the ultra right both historically and today, while clearing away a major obstacle to the expansion of the European Union and NATO, the government of President Poreschenko and Prime Minister Yatsanyuk has decided to drive the Communist Party out of Ukrainian political life.

In the process, they make a mockery of their own and their western allies' supposed commitment to liberal values such as freedom of expression and association, not to mention international law and treaties to which Ukraine is signatory. The "judicial" proceedings that have been mounted against the Communist Party have been farcical, with recalcitrant judges being menaced and their offices invaded by authorities.

All people of goodwill should protest this outrage. One way would be to contact the Embassy of Ukraine in Washington DC, at the following, phone numbers HERE.

And the U.S. State Department and White House should hear from us too.

The call is to stop trying to crush the right of the Ukrainian people to belong to and support the Communist Party of Ukraine if they so choose.

Photo: Banner translates to: The Communist Party of Ukraine. From their Facebook page.

Venezuelan Communist Party leaders analyze election disaster

Mon, 21 Dec 2015 13:01:00 +0000

CARACAS, Venezuela - In the wake of the disastrous National Assembly election of December 6^th in this South American nation of 30 million people, our delegation from the North American-based Alberto Lovera Bolivarian Circle met with leaders of the Venezuelan Communist Party (PCV) for an assessment of the results. Alberto Lovera was a Communist militant murdered by government forces 50 years ago in 1965, a revered name in Venezuelan working-class history, whose name has been adopted by a national movement of community groups.

Speaking with us were Oswaldo Ramos, national secretary of the party's ideological commission, Pedro Eusse, national secretary for the Venezuelan National Workers' Front, and Carlos Lazo, philosophy professor, director of the Instituto Bolívar-Marx, and former United Nations diplomat.

Our chat took place on Dec. 10 at Canta Claro ("sing out clear"), the name given to the utilitarian PCV headquarters in a scruffy, working-class neighborhood of Caracas, the national capital. The name derives from the slogan "Vota Gallo Rojo" (Vote the red rooster), the pictorial symbol of a red fighting cock that became the symbol of the PCV in the 1940s, a time when a certain percentage of the voting population was illiterate and responded to powerful, identifiable icons on the ballot. The loud, unmistakable voice of the rooster was meant to say to Venezuelan voters, "Time to wake up!"

Despite their best attempts at maintaining a degree of anticipatory optimism, the PCV did quietly recognize the potential for an adverse result in this decisive election. Much has been said about the economic war against the population waged by the private sector in order to deflate popular support of the Bolivarian Revolution instituted by former President Hugo Chávez. But an honest, sober analysis not only of the election itself but of the entire Bolivarian process, reveals dangerous fault lines that also contributed to the electoral defeat.

The government, led by Chávez' party, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), now headed by his successor, President Nicolás Maduro, can be criticized for its strategic mistakes in office, unacceptable levels of corruption that still plague this and many other Latin American countries, and mismanagement. Opportunism, sectarianism, elitism and authoritarianism were familiar problems the left tried to point out. The bottom line is that a society where 70-90 percent of production and distribution of basic goods and services still remained in private hands could hardly be said to be on an open road to socialism.

The Bolivarian Revolution is certainly one of the most notable 20^th and 21^st century attempts at national liberation - even extending to continental liberation in its aspirations - but it cannot be consolidated under monopoly capital control, especially in an economy where one product, oil, reigns supreme. As is well known, the price of oil, which previously was able to fund the broad social betterment projects of the Bolivarian government, has fallen drastically, to less than half of its former value. To a degree which still invites rigorous study and exposure, this price drop may well have been manipulated by the U.S. (now essentially energy self-sufficient because of fracking) and by U.S. support of the Saudi economy, which continues inefficiently to glut the world market with oil pumped out at these low global prices.

The PSUV itself operated almost entirely as an electoral bloc comprising numerous political parties, including the PCV. As a coalition of Bolivarian forces, its politics ranged from communist and socialist on the left to ranchers, peasants, civil servants, military, reformists and petty bourgeois in the center and even center-right, which had little real motivation for moving toward socialism. Thus, in a climate of low oil prices and declining consumer satisfaction, a chasm grew between the government and the people which could not be bridged in the last months of the National Assembly campaign.

Class conflict sharpens

Inevitably, then, we now see, with the opposition supermajority soon to take office on January 5^th, a heightening of class confrontation. The executive, for now held by President Maduro, reflects left-wing interests, and Maduro has promised major shakeups among his ministers and a focused campaign of rectification, criticism and self-criticism. The legislative branch reflects the right wing, broad concession to U.S. demands for austerity and the cessation of Bolivarian advances.

Bolivarian advances have been real, and many of them may be long-lasting. Different models of production have evolved, as well as new forms of social organization such as communes in the large housing projects. Workers have gained a new role, and there are new numbers in the organized labor movement, with rights guaranteed by the new Bolivarian law. Popular participation in the construction of the new vision for society has surged: Statistics on eradication of extreme poverty, the literacy campaign, the many new sites of university education for unprivileged sectors, the tremendous leaps forward in health care, and the million-plus new apartments for the previously homeless or poorly housed, are all subjects of unprecedented national pride. The country has achieved a level of economic and political sovereignty never imagined until now, and has served as a model and organizing force for the underdeveloped world.

Under these new circumstances, the PCV does not speak of hopelessness. To the contrary, they feel, once Venezuelans see for themselves that the change they voted for has not produced they results they expected, the cachet of Bolivarianism may well rise again. It is also true that the opposition, now the legislative majority, is itself divided factionally, and may not all agree either on their leadership nor on the measures to be taken.

Questioning whether it's entirely wise to subordinate the trade union movement to the government, the party envisions a National Front of the Working Class to carry the Bolivarian spirit forward. The party has an organizational presence in 23 out of 24 states in the country, and enjoys a respectable reputation, being, in fact, Venezuela's oldest continually operating political party, founded in 1931. More than 114,000 voters in the Dec. 6^th election cast their ballots for the PCV list, and the new National Assembly has two PCV members in the PSUV coalition.

In addition, those principled revolutionaries who became disillusioned by the reformism of the PSUV, may be drawn to the PCV and its fighting cock tradition.

Venezuela is a highly desirable fruit for imperialists to get their hands on - all that oil, and the prospect of destroying the Bolivarian Revolution. They are perfectly capable of bringing the country to civil war if their demands are not soon realized. The dramatic class confrontation could lead in any direction, and the PCV is preparing for all possibilities.

Photo: Courtesy of PCV, author Eric A. Gordon on the right wearing black and green T-shirt.

The presidential elections and foreign policy

Fri, 18 Dec 2015 15:21:00 +0000

As the presidential election campaign in the United States begins to hit its stride, we need to be examining the positions and records of the candidates on both domestic and foreign policy.

Anybody who has been listening to and reading what most of the Republican candidates have been saying has got to be worried about what they would actually do in power, as they have reached a level of militaristic belligerence which goes beyond anything that we have recently seen. Most of them would erase the two most positive foreign policy achievements of the Obama administration, namely the effort to normalize relations between the United States and Cuba, and Iran nuclear deal. They also for the most part promote a more direct and extreme intervention by the United States in the Middle East, and are much more hawkishly pro Israel and anti-Palestine than the current administration. There are exceptions and variations: Ron Paul takes a more non-interventionist stance coming out of a sort of paleoconservative isolationist background, but he is horrible on other issues and at any rate seems to be unelectable at this point. Donald Trump says he is OK with normalizing relations with Cuba but would practically start a war with Mexico, as well as calmly threatening to violate the Geneva Conventions by attacking the families of members of the Islamic State.

All three surviving Democratic Party candidates - former Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Senator Bernie Sanders and former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley-have firmly stated that they will continue the Obama administration's initiative on opening up relations with Cuba as well as supporting the nuclear pact with Iran.

But there are differences in terms of their records. O'Malley, as former governor of Maryland and mayor of Baltimore, has not had much to do with or say about foreign policy.

Bernie Sanders was an active opponent of the Vietnam War, of the Contra Wars in Central America and of the Iraq War. He did support the Kosovo intervention, having been convinced that a massacre of ethnic Albanian civilians was really taking place. He is a supporter of a two-state solution for the Israel-Palestine conflict, and refused to be present when Israeli Prime Minister Netenyahu spoke to the U.S. Congress at the behest of the Republican Party leadership. Also, Sanders has been outstanding in his opposition to the Transpacific Partnership and other neoliberal trade pacts that hit workers and small farmers in poor countries even more than they harm workers and small farmers in the United States.

Hillary Clinton voted for the Iraq War (though she now says it was a mistake) and carried out an interventionist foreign policy when she was President Obama's first secretary of state. When the military, at the instigation of local oligarchs and abetted by U.S. political figures, overthrew progressive President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras, President Obama initially denounced the action but his position was undercut by Clinton who worked to block the united efforts of the Latin American countries to reverse the coup and restore Zelaya to power. The result has been very tragic for the Honduran people. The intervention in Libya also happened on Clinton's watch, and other things. The impression is that as president, Clinton would continue an interventionist course, perhaps more so that the current president. Her recent call for a no-fly zone in Syria, which Obama has rejected, is evidence of this.

So of the three surviving Democrats, Sanders appears to be the one who would have the most constructive and progressive stance on foreign policy overall, though one could hardly call him a consistent "anti-imperialist".

A final point that I think is very important: The policies the new administration follows on domestic policy are not hermetically sealed from those it will follow on foreign policy. I will refer at this point to only one matter, namely the future of organized labor in this country.

During the repressive McCarthy period after the Second World War and during the Cold War, communists and other leftists were driven out of leadership positions in the great majority of labor unions in our country. The vacuum was filled in some cases by corrupt pseudo-leaders, and even more often by anti-communists like George Meany and Lane Kirkland. Cooperative relationships of organized labor with progressive causes in the United States were affected, but any progressive role for unions in foreign policy even more so. It got to the point that U.S. labor sometimes lent itself to projects to undermine left wing labor leadership in other countries around the world, channeling government funds directed toward building up anti-communist labor leadership, especially in Latin America.

It has taken a long time, but U.S. organized labor has been moving away from this role in recent years. Positive developments include the help that SEIU and other provided in the struggle to free the Cuban 5, solidarity of our Steelworkers (USW) with progressive independent unions in Mexico, and the very useful stance that the AFL-CIO has taken toward Central America. As it becomes clearer that workers in other countries have the same enemies and interests as workers in the United States, this tendency is sure to continue to grow.

But the whole lot of Republican candidates, not just Trump but all of them, and the Republican Party leadership at every level, are doing their best not just to weaken but to destroy organized labor. If they succeed in this, they will destroy the best chance we have for giving a mass nature, and a mass base, to our international solidarity and anti-imperialist efforts.

This is one more reason why, despite the limitations of the Democratic candidates, a Republican victory in November of 2016 would be an unmitigated disaster not just for workers in the United States, but for humanity.

Photo: John Locher/AP

Is International Migrants Day destined to be a day of mourning?

Fri, 18 Dec 2015 15:04:00 +0000

Today, December 18, is officially recognized by the United Nations as International Migrants' Day. The date commemorates the 1990 signing of the International Convention for the Protection of All Migrant Workers and Their Families. But you won't hear much about this event in the press and media in the United States, because, like other wealthy developed countries that are the destinations for most labor migrants today, our country never signed or ratified the convention.

And should this day be seen as one of celebration, or of mourning? The panorama of international labor migration in the world today does not inspire much joy.

According to the United Nations, there are about 232 million labor migrants in the world today. In addition there are 60 million refugees and displaced persons , a record for the years since the Second World War. The vast majority have moved from poor countries to rich ones. And it is often difficult to distinguish between refugees and migrants: Circumstances that cause people to uproot themselves, sometimes separating themselves from their families, may combine consideration of economic necessity with threats to personal security caused by war, terrorism and/or political persecution.

In many cases international migrants, whether refugees or economic migrants, find themselves trading off a little bit of economic or physical security against a net loss of rights. Migrants and refugees easy prey for exploiting employers and landlords, because of their vulnerable situation: Without voting rights, without access to basic social services afforded to citizens, often without enforceable labor rights and sometimes without legal immigration papers. And recently we have seen a worldwide explosion of the scapegoating of migrants and refugees by demagogic right wing politicians like Marine LePen in France, Victor Orban in Hungary and Donald Trump in the United States. Every imaginable ill of modern capitalist society is blamed on immigrants and refugees, so as to distract the public's attention from the irrationalities and injustices of the capitalist system. Are there not sufficient jobs? "Immigrants are taking our jobs". Are our schools underfunded and overcrowded? "Immigrants overburdening the educational system". Is there worry about crime and terrorism? "Immigrants are pouring across the border to rape and murder us".

These are all slanders. But slander or not, the xenophobic language is becoming so violent as to provoke attacks on law-abiding migrants.

The reason for international migration is covered up in our corporate controlled media. For example, right now there is another strong uptick in child migrants from Central America coming across the U.S. - Mexico border into Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, similar to the wave of immigration that caused such an un-enlightened uproar last year. The reasons for this are not hard to understand. The situation in the Northern Tier of Central American countries-Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras-of chronic poverty and high crime, has got worse instead of better. In Guatemala and Honduras, massive corruption has created a situation in which health care has collapsed because funds for patient care were siphoned off by dishonest officials. In Guatemala and Honduras, aggressive predatory behavior by transnational corporations, combined with enabling policies of the corrupt right wing governments, supported by the United States, is driving farming communities off their land. And now there is a massive drought, related to an unusually strong "El Niño" phenomenon (which in turn may be related to global warming), which has left at least 900,000 people in Guatemala alone in danger of starvation as crops fail, and has also affected Honduras and El Salvador. People driven off the land often have no choice but to migrate to seek work and feed their families.

Responses in the rich countries which are net recipients of migrants and refugees are disconcerting. In Europe, the refugee crisis created by the war in Syria has led to a huge resurgence of neo-fascist ultra right groups, which engage in hate speech against the newcomers and sometimes incite violence. In our own presidential elections, virtually all the Republican candidates and many Republican officials have taken up anti-immigrant positions, conflating the issues of migration, crime and terrorism. Donald Trump's statements about Mexican undocumented immigrants as criminals and "rapists" are well known. But he is only the most extreme. The Republican Governor of Texas, Gregg Abbott, has responded to reports of more child migrants by beefing up the National Guard's role in patrolling the border to keep them out.

The Obama administration has recently been getting high marks from immigrants' rights advocates because of the president's DACA program which affords temporary relief to people brought to the United States without immigration papers when they were children. But his attempts to expand DACA and add the DAPA program which would extend relief to undocumented parents of U.S. citizen children is tied up in court because of a suit brought by Republican state attorneys general. Meanwhile, the United States has persuaded Mexico to beef up its enforcement of its borders with Guatemala and Belize in order to block Central American migrants who want to get to the United States. In practice, this means that would be migrants become even more dependent on smugglers to get them through and are forced to choose even more dangerous migration routes. This adds to the worldwide toll of thousands of migrants in every part of the world who die in the effort to escape poverty and war.

What too few people are talking about is how to end the situation of violence and penury that forces people to migrate in the first place. This would require sacrifices on the part of the United States and the other wealthy countries: To give up the habit of intervening in other countries to remove regimes we don't like even if this leads to chaos as it did in Iraq, Libya and now Syria, to do something about the drug abuse problem in this country, to stop backing exploitative corporations that work to block needed reforms in the poor countries, to really do something about environmental degradation and global warming that negatively affect poor countries' abilities to feed their people.

But are the American people aware of these things? Probably not, and it is up to us to inform ourselves and our neighbors before we can affect the policies of our government.

If we don't, International Migrant's Day will really be one of mourning for the foreseeable future.

Photo: Next Year Country blog

Today in history: Morocco is the first country to recognize the U.S.

Fri, 18 Dec 2015 10:40:00 +0000

On December 20, 1777, the Kingdom of Morocco became the first country in the world to recognize United States independence, only a year and a half after the U.S. Declaration of Independence was issued. The War of Independence was still in progress, and the result was still far from certain.

In the 1780s, after independence had been secured, Moroccan pirates threatened American shipping in the Mediterranean. Thomas Barclay, the American consul in France, arrived in Morocco in 1786. There he negotiated the Moroccan-American Treaty of Friendship, which was signed later that year in Europe by John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.Under Sultan Mohammed III, Morocco became at once the first Arab state, the first African state, and the first Muslim state to sign a treaty with the United States. Congress ratified the Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the two nations in 1787. Renegotiated in 1836, the treaty is still in force, constituting the longest unbroken treaty relationship in U.S. history.

In 1863, the King of Morocco released an official order stating: "the Confederate States of America are fighting the government with whom we are in friendship and good relations....If any vessel of the so-called Confederate States enters your port, it shall not be received, but you must order it away on pain of seizure; and you will act on this subject in cooperation with the United States...."

The Moroccan city of Tangier on the Strait of Gibraltar is home to the oldest U.S. diplomatic property in the world. Now a museum, the Tangier American Legation Museum is also the only building outside of the U.S. that is now a National Historic Landmark.

Adapted from Wikipedia.

Photo: Sultan Mohammed III | Wikipedia (CC)

FARC and Colombian government near successful conclusion of peace talks

Thu, 17 Dec 2015 13:06:00 +0000

On December 15, peace negotiators for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Colombian government announced they'd reached agreement on the "Victims" agenda item after 18 months of discussion. One FARC negotiator thinks that these talks, ongoing for three years, are "all but certain" to end in peace, and soon.

"Victims" is the fourth agenda item on which agreements have been reached. There are now "agreements" on agrarian rights, illegal drugs, political participation, and victims. However, according to guidelines set prior to the talks, agreements are incomplete until the whole package has been accepted, so it may be more appropriate to call them "partial accords." The remaining agenda item to be dealt with is "Implementation, Verification, and Endorsement," and observers expect the talks will move quickly.

At the conference in Havana, lawyer and former Colombian vice president Humberto de La Calle and FARC Secretariat member Ivan Márquez, heads of the two negotiating teams, discussed terms of the recent agreement. Spokespersons for guarantor countries, Norway and Cuba, presented reports, as did Yineth Bedoya who spoke on behalf of victims' groups. Representatives of the Catholic Church, the United Nations, Colombia's National University, and Chile and Venezuela - the "accompanying countries" - were present. Cuban foreign minister Bruno Rodriquez also attended.

Joint Communique 64, released that day, provided an overview: "The armed conflict, which has multiple causes, has led to suffering and endangerment of the population unequaled in our history." The agreement will serve "transitional" (or "restorative") justice. A "comprehensive system" providing "truth, justice, reparations, and non-repetition" will "make amends to victims and honor their human rights." Unlike other attempted Colombian peace settlements, this one offers no general amnesty.

The "comprehensive system" includes a "commission for elucidation of truth," a unit for finding disappeared persons and, crucially, a "Special Jurisdiction for Peace." This autonomous court will include a "Chamber of Amnesty and Pardon" and a "Tribunal for Peace." The latter will "investigate, clarify, prosecute, and punish serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law."

The joint statement lauded participation by ordinary people: "More than 3,000 victims spoke at four forums in Colombia organized by the United Nations and National University and 60 victims traveled to Havana to testify."

Outside lawyers earlier had joined negotiators to advise them on forming the Special Jurisdiction. The result was an agreement announced on September 23 with talk then of a final agreement on all points no later than March 23, 2016.

Humberto de La Calle rejected any "scheme of persecution and vengeance." There is "no space for impunity," he proclaimed. Both sides would provide reparations for victims with the Special Jurisdiction monitoring FARC contributions.

FARC leaders certified by the Special Jurisdiction as "recognizing the truth and [their] responsibility" would be "deprived of liberty" for five years via "monitoring and supervision." Late comers to recognition will spend five years in prison. Non-recognition entails 15-20 years of incarceration. For de La Calle, crimes like genocide, torture, and executions don't qualify for amnesty. "Political crimes" do.

He indicated "the state will develop a special regimen for judging state agents - its soldiers and the police - which will be simultaneous, balanced, and fair." Any FARC objections to that idea went unreported. .

Iván Márquez communicated "the good news of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace." He did point out that "the origin of the conflict was prior to the FARC's creation. The FARC was responding to "the violence ... of the dominant power." He claimed the "right of rebellion."

Márquez called for "creation of a strong, durable social fabric," adding that peace "requires reconciliation and reconciliation requires normalization of political and social life." He seeks restoration of land to "all the small farmers who suffered plunder of land and inhuman violence."

Amnesty should extend to political prisoners, he declared, particularly those wrongly imprisoned for the crime of rebellion and for "exercising the legitimate right of social protest." The Joint Communique, however, said little about Colombia's 9,000 political prisoners.

Both that statement and de La Calle dismissed two other FARC concerns. First, paramilitaries responsible for murder and mayhem received short shrift. They had massacred Patriotic Union activists beginning in 1986, among them demobilized FARC guerrillas. The FARC has also proposed "special territories for peace," rationalizing that their mostly peasant combatants require familiar areas for settling down. Concentration would be good for "keeping their identity and social organizations" and easing their entry into regular politics.

Retired General Jorge Enrique Mora Rangel had already responded on behalf of the government's peace delegation. The issue for him is "a unified and indivisible Colombia."

Photo: AP

Remembering: The Aztec calendar stone is uncovered

Thu, 17 Dec 2015 10:33:00 +0000

Two hundred and twenty-five years ago, on December 17, 1790, one of the wonders of the Western Hemisphere, the Aztec calendar stone, or solar stone, was uncovered beneath the ground by workmen renovating Mexico City's Zócalo, or central plaza. Intricately carved from basalt (solidified lava), it measures 11 feet, 8 inches in diameter, 3 feet thick, and weighs nearly 25 tons. The artist carved the Aztec calendar stone in 1479 CE, less than 50 years before the Spaniards came to Mexico, and dedicated it to the sun god. It was lost - buried under the central square ofMexico City - for almost 300 years.

The massive carving, which originally held a place of reverence in the Great Temple of the Aztecs, renewed interest in Mexico's ancient cultures, a generation before Mexico won its independence from Spain.

For a while it remained on display in the western tower of the Metropolitan Cathedral, and in 1885 it was moved to the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico, where it remains to this day.

The famous stone, one of the most iconic images of Mexico and often reproduced in facsimile form, is a brilliant combination of artistry and geometry. It reflects the Aztec understanding of time and space as wheels within wheels. The detailed surface of the stone combines the understanding of the gods the indigenous people had created over the centuries as well as their observations of the heavens.

Calendar 1 - The Xiuhpohualli

The first calendar of the Aztec people was called the xiuhpohualli, the counting of years. This was a 365-day year, helpful for planning the agricultural cycle and predicting the weather. There were 18 months, each 20 days long, with four 5-day weeks. Then to bring the year up to 365 days there were 5 "unlucky" days added. Each year was divided into four seasons.

With the addition of a 12-day New Fire ritual every 52 years, the exact length of the years was remarkably close to that of the solar year that modern scientists calculate.

Calendar 2 - The Tonalpohualli

Though both calendars inter-relate in religion and ceremony, it's the tonalpohualli that is considered the sacred calendar. The rituals were all divided up among the gods.

There were 20 signs, and 13 numbers. Like a gear within a gear, each of the 20 signs would be assigned each of the 13 numbers. Thus 13x20=260, the total number of days in the "sacred year." The 13-day period is a kind of Aztec week. Not only was every day ruled by a god, but each weekwas also ruled by a god - the one associated with the first day.

Every 52 years, the two calendars would align. This could bring disaster on the world, so a special ritual took place called the New Fire Festival.

Creation, at least the most recent creation, took place on the date known as 13-reed (sometime around 1011 CE).

Find out today's date, or your birthday according to the Aztec calendar stone on this site!

More on the background and origins of the Aztec calendar.

Read more about how the Aztec calendar wheels work!

Adapted from Aztec-History.com.

Photo: A colored representation of the Aztec calendar stone.

Why did Turkey shoot down that Russian warplane?

Wed, 16 Dec 2015 11:41:00 +0000

Why did Turkey shoot down that Russian warplane?

It was certainly not because the SU-24 posed any threat. The plane is old and slow, and the Russians were careful not to arm it with anti-aircraft missiles. It was not because the Turks are quick on the trigger. Three years ago Turkish President Recap Tanya Erdogen said, "A short-term violation of airspace can never be a pretext for an attack." And there are some doubts about whether the Russian plane ever crossed into Turkey's airspace.

Indeed, the whole Nov. 24 incident looks increasingly suspicious, and one doesn't have to be a paranoid Russian to think the takedown might have been an ambush. As Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney (ret), former U.S. Air Force chief of staff, commented, "This airplane was not making any maneuvers to attack the [Turkish] territory," the Turkish action was "overly aggressive," and the incident "had to be preplanned."

It certainly puzzled the Israeli military, not known for taking a casual approach to military intrusions. Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon told the press Nov. 29 that a Russian warplane had violated the Israeli border over the Golan Heights. "Russian planes do not intend to attack us, which is why we must not automatically react and shoot them down when an error occurs."

So why was the plane downed? Because, for the first time in four years, some major players are tentatively inching toward a settlement of the catastrophic Syrian civil war, and powerful forces are maneuvering to torpedo that process. If the Russians had not kept their cool, several nuclear-armed powers could well have found themselves in a scary face-off, and any thoughts of ending the war would have gone a-glimmering.

There are multiple actors on the Syrian stage and a bewildering number of crosscurrents and competing agendas that, paradoxically, make it both easier and harder to find common ground. Easier, because there is no unified position among the antagonists; harder, because trying to herd heavily armed cats is a tricky business.

The players in the Syria game

A short scorecard on the players:

The Russians and the Iranians are supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and fighting a host of extremist organizations ranging from al-Qaeda to the Islamic State (IS). But each country has a different view of what a post-civil-war Syria might look like. The Russians want a centralized and secular state with a big army. The Iranians don't think much of "secular," and they favor militias, not armies.

Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and most of the other Gulf monarchies are trying to overthrow the Assad regime, and are the major supporters of the groups Russia, Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah are fighting. But while Turkey and Qatar want to replace Assad with the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, Saudi Arabia might just hate the Brotherhood more than it does Assad. And while the monarchies are not overly concerned with the Kurds, Turkey is bombing them, and they are a major reason why Ankara is so deeply enmeshed in Syria.

The U.S., France and Great Britain are also trying to overthrow Assad, but are currently focused on fighting the IS using the Kurds as their major allies - specifically the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Party, an offshoot of the Kurdish Workers Party that the U.S. officially designates as "terrorist." These are the same Kurds that the Turks are bombing and who have a friendly alliance with the Russians. Indeed, Turkey may discover that one of the price tags for shooting down that SU-24 is the sudden appearance of new Russian weapons for the Kurds, some of which will be aimed at the Turks.

Irrational thinking

The Syrian war requires a certain suspension of rational thought.

For instance, the Americans are unhappy with the Russians for bombing the anti-Assad Conquest Army, a force dominated by the Nusra Front, al-Qaeda's franchise in Syria. That would be the same al-Qaeda that brought down the World Trade towers and that the U.S. is currently bombing in Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan.

Suspension of rational thought is not limited to Syria.

A number of Arab countries initially joined the U.S. air war against the Islamic State (IS) and al-Qaeda, because both organizations are pledged to overthrow the Gulf monarchies. But Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar have now dropped out to concentrate their air power on bombing the Houthis in Yemen.

The Houthis, however, are by far the most effective force fighting the IS and al-Qaeda in Yemen. Both extremist organizations have made major gains in the last few weeks because the Houthis are too busy defending themselves to take them on.

Regime change and that plane

In spite of all this political derangement, however, there are several developments that are pushing the sides toward some kind of peaceful settlement that doesn't involve regime change in Syria. That is exactly what the Turks and the Gulf monarchs are worried about, and a major reason why Ankara shot down that Russian plane.

The first of these developments has been building throughout the summer: a growing flood of Syrians fleeing the war. There are already almost 2 million in Turkey, and over a million in Jordan and Lebanon, and as many as 900,000 in Europe. Out of 23 million Syrians, some 11 million have been displaced by the war, and the Europeans are worried that many of those 11 million people will end up camping out on the banks of the Seine and the Ruhr. If the war continues into next year, that is a pretty accurate assessment.

Hence, the Europeans have quietly shelved their demand that Assad resign as a prerequisite for a ceasefire and are leaning on the Americans to follow suit. The issue is hardly resolved, but there seems to be general agreement that Assad will at least be part of a transition government. At this point, the Russians and Iranians are insisting on an election in which Assad would be a candidate because both are wary of anything that looks like "regime change." The role Assad might play will be a sticking point, but probably not an insurmountable one.

Turkey and Saudi Arabia are adamant that Assad must go, but neither of them is in the driver's seat these days. While NATO supported Turkey in the Russian plane incident, according to some of the Turkish press many of its leading officials consider Erdogan a loose cannon. And Saudi Arabia - whose economy has been hard hit by the worldwide fall in oil prices - is preoccupied by its Yemen war that is turning into a very expensive quagmire.

The second development is the Russian intervention, which appears to have changed things on the ground, at least in the north, where Assad's forces were being hard pressed by the Conquest Army. New weapons and airpower have dented a rebel offensive and resulted in some gains in the government's battle for Syria's largest city, Aleppo.

Russian bombing also took a heavy toll on the Turkmen insurgents in the Bayirbucak region, the border area that Turkey has used to infiltrate arms, supplies and insurgents into Syria.

The appearance of the Russians essentially killed Turkey's efforts to create a "no fly zone" on its border with Syria, a proposal that the U.S. has never been enthusiastic about. Washington's major allies, the Kurds, are strongly opposed to a no fly zone because they see it as part of Ankara's efforts to keep the Kurds from forming an autonomous region in Syria.

The Turkey-IS oil connection

The Bayirbucak area and the city of Jarabulus are also the exit point for Turkey's lucrative oil smuggling operation, apparently overseen by one of Erdogan's sons, Bilal. The Russians have embarrassed the Turks by publishing satellite photos showing miles of tanker trucks picking up oil from IS-controlled wells and shipping it through Turkey's southern border with Syria.

"The oil controlled by the Islamic State militants enters Turkish territory on an industrial scale," Russian President Vladimir Putin said Nov. 30. "We have every reason to believe that the decision to down our plane was guided by a desire to insure the security of this oil's delivery routes to ports where they are shipped in tankers."

Erdogan did not get quite the response he wanted from NATO following the shooting down of the SU-24. While the military alliance backed Turkey's defense of its "sovereignty," NATO then called for a peaceful resolution and de-escalation of the whole matter.

It's dangerous

At a time when Europe needs a solution to the refugee crisis, and wants to focus its firepower on the organization the killed 130 people in Paris, NATO cannot be happy that the Turks are dragging them into a confrontation with the Russians, and making the whole situation a lot more dangerous than it was before the Nov. 24 incident.

The Russians have now deployed their more modern SU-34 bombers and armed them with air-to-air missiles. The bombers will now also be escorted by SU-35 fighters. The Russians have also fielded S-300 and S-400 anti-aircraft systems, the latter with a range of 250 miles. The Russians say they are not looking for trouble, but they are loaded for bear should it happen. Would a dustup between Turkish and Russians planes bring NATO - and four nuclear armed nations - into a confrontation? That possibility ought to keep people up at night.

Some time around the New Year, the countries involved in the Syrian civil war will come together in Geneva. A number of those will do their level best to derail the talks, but one hopes there are enough sane - and desperate - parties on hand to map out a political solution.

It won't be easy, and who gets to sit at the table has yet to be decided. The Turks will object to the Kurds, the Russians, Iranians and Kurds will object to the Conquest Army, and the Saudis will object to Assad. In the end it could all come apart. It is not hard to torpedo a peace plan in the Middle East.

But if the problems are great, failure will be catastrophic, and that may be the glue that keeps the parties together long enough to hammer out a ceasefire, an arms embargo, a new constitution, and internationally supervised elections.

This article originally appeared at Conn Hallinan's blog Dispatches from the Edge.

Photo: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan addresses a meeting of local administrators at his palace in Ankara, Turkey, Nov. 26, 2015, as controversy continued over Turkey's shootdown of a Russian plane. (AP/Kayhan Ozer, Presidential Press Service, Pool )

Today in history: How will you celebrate Zamenhof (aka Esperanto) Day?

Tue, 15 Dec 2015 11:06:00 +0000

Zamenhof Day (in Esperanto: Zamenhofa Tago), also called Esperanto Day, is celebrated each year on December 15, the birthday of Esperanto creator Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof. Esperanto is the most successful constructed language in the world.

The history of celebrating Esperanto on Zamenhof's birthday can be traced back to 1878, when at a party for his 19^th birthday he presented to his friends his Lingwe uniwersala, the first version of his international language. By 1887, this language had evolved into what is now recognized as Esperanto.

Today, many Esperanto supporters buy an extra Esperanto book around this time of year. Esperanto gatherings and parties throughout the world celebrate the occasion, which also offers a reason for Esperantists to get together during the holiday season.

Born in 1859 in the town of Białystok in the Russian empire, Zamenhof was a Polish Jewish physician, inventor, and writer. He grew up fascinated by the idea of a world without war and believed that this could happen with the help of a new international auxiliary language. In addition to the Yiddish-speaking Jewish majority, the population of Białystok was made up of Catholic Poles and Belarusians, with smaller groups of Russians, Germans, Lipka Tatars, Lithuanians and others. Zamenhof was saddened and frustrated by the many quarrels among these groups. He supposed that the main reason for the hate and prejudice lay in the misunderstanding caused by the lack of one common language. If such a language existed, Zamenhof postulated, it could play the role of a neutral communication tool between people of different ethnic and linguistic backgrounds. The word "Esperanto" means "hopeful." In fact, the very name Zamenhof means "seed of hope."

By the time Zamenhof completed his formal schooling, he was fluent or well versed in Yiddish, Russian, Polish, and the Belarusian dialect of his home town. From his father he learned German and French. In school he studied the classical languages: Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic. He later learned some English (though in his own words not very well) and had an interest in Lithuanian and Italian.

In 1887, his book International Language: Introduction and Complete Textbook was published in Russianunder the pseudonym "Doktoro Esperanto" (Doctor Hopeful). Zamenhof initially called his language "Lingvo internacia" (international language), but those who learned it began to call it Esperanto after his pseudonym, and this soon became the official name for the language. For Zamenhof this language, far from being merely a communication tool, was a way of promoting the peaceful coexistence of different people and cultures.

After a wave of pogroms against Jews within the Russian empire in the 1880s Zamenhof took part in the early Zionist movement, but left it in 1887. In 1901 he published a statement called "Hillelism," in which he argued that the Zionist project could not solve the problems of the Jewish people.In 1914, he politely declined an invitation to join a new organization of Jewish Esperantists, saying, "I am profoundly convinced that every nationalism offers humanity only the greatest unhappiness.... It is true that the nationalism of oppressed peoples - as a natural self-defensive reaction - is much more excusable than the nationalism of peoples who oppress; but, if the nationalism of the strong is ignoble, the nationalism of the weak is imprudent; both give birth to and support each other...."

Besides his linguistic work, Zamenhof published a religious philosophy he called Homaranismo (loosely translated as humanitarianism). He died in Warsaw in 1917.

Zamenhof and his wife Klara raised three children, Adam, Sofia and Lidia. All three died in the Holocaust.

In 1905 Zamenhof received the French Légion d'honneur for creating Esperanto, as well as other prestigious recognition both during his lifetime and after. Hundreds of city streets, parks, and bridges worldwide have been named after him. The Zamenhof family house and the Białystok Esperanto Centre are important tourist sites in his native city, now in the northeast of modern Poland.

Adapted from Wikipedia.

Photo: Zamenhof at his desk in Warsaw apartment, 1910. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons. "1910-Universo-p322-llzdet" by Unknown - Universo (arkivoj de UEA). Licensed under Public Domain via Commons. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons.

Haiti: Massive electoral fraud ignored

Mon, 14 Dec 2015 15:55:00 +0000

(Morning Star) -- On Dec. 16 the people of Haiti will mark the 25th anniversary of their first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the liberation theology priest they lovingly call Titid.

This is an important date, especially because Haiti is the midst of elections - parliamentary, then presidential, the final round scheduled for December 27.

But the elections, funded by the U.S. to the tune of $30 million, are being stolen and since August tens of thousands of people have repeatedly taken to the streets to protest at an "electoral coup."

For the first time since 2004, when a U.S. coup removed Aristide for the second time, his party Fanmi Lavalas has been allowed on the ballot and its candidate Maryse Narcisse, a woman, has been personally endorsed by him.

The election has been marred by state violence and fraud. Maxine Waters, member of the U.S. congressional black caucus and longstanding supporter of Haiti, wrote to the Secretary of State John Kerry: "Many are calling for the resignation of the current CEP [Provisional Electoral Council] and the annulment of the entire first round."

She was ignored and on October 25 the second round went ahead. Again, intimidation and anomalies were reported including by the Caribbean Community (Caricom) electoral observation mission.

A review demanded by Narcisse confirmed irregularities in 98 per cent of the tally sheets re-examined. The executive director of the National Human Rights Defence Network declared they reflected "massive acts of fraud aimed at changing the results of the elections" to benefit Jovenel Moise, the candidate backed by outgoing president Michel Martelly and his US sponsors.

Any candidate who benefits from fraud can be expelled, but the CEP has refused to disqualify Moise, hence Narcisse is bringing a claim against the CEP before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

Margaret Prescod, journalist and co-ordinator of Women of Colour in the Global Women's Strike, was part of a grassroots fact-finding delegation organised by the Haiti Action Committee. Her show, Sojourner Truth (on KPFK Pacifica radio), has reported on police attacking protesters with tear gas, batons and live bullets.

You would be forgiven for not knowing any of this as the mainstream media has largely kept its distance. When we urged a Channel 4 News correspondent to cover the fraudulent elections, she was dismissive: "I used to live in Haiti. It happens all the time." Haitian lives, it seems, don't matter.

Yet when the devastating earthquake killed over 200,000 in 2004, British people and others around the world helped with generous donations as an unprecedented $13.5 billion was raised - but it never reached survivors.

Many NGOs - the U.S. Red Cross particularly - stand accused of stealing the money. With hundreds of thousands still living in camps without clean water the Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund and the International Financial Corporation have been building luxury hotels in Petion-Ville. To spare the sensibilities of guests paying $250 a night, the slums they tower over got a lick of paint, quaint bright colours of course.

But Haitians have a glorious history they have never forgotten. Their 1804 revolution, vividly told in the classic 1938 book "The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution," by C.L.R. James, defeated Napoleon and abolished slavery, setting an example for the rest of the world. The colonial empires trembled at the sight of slaves who had freed themselves and were helping liberation movements in the Americas.

Haitians have been punished for their success and systematically impoverished ever since. In 1825 France imposed a "debt" for the loss of "its property" - the liberated slaves! [In the U.S., The Abolitionist movement demanded immediate, unreimbursed emancipation.]

When Aristide demanded reparations from France in 2003, the money Haiti had paid France was estimated at $21.7bn. In 1914 the US occupied and took over Haiti's national bank. Both France and US backed the Duvalier dictators - Papa and Baby Doc - who stole millions while their Tonton Macoutes paramilitaries terrorised the island for decades.

Intervention has had other disastrous consequences. Haiti was swamped with US rice, which destroyed its subsistence agriculture and its 1.3 million native pigs were exterminated with the excuse that they might bring swine fever to the US.

But Haitians have never given up. Their 1986-90 mass movement forced Baby Doc Duvalier into exile and voted in Aristide. Within months he was removed by a CIA-backed coup, survived, came back and was re-elected, with 93 per cent of the votes. While in office, he refused to privatise public assets, built schools and hospitals, supported women and farmers, abolished the dreaded army and doubled the minimum wage. No wonder he is loved.

In 2004 the fearless Aristide who had opened the government palace to street kids was removed again, this time by US marines. UN troops moved in, legitimising the coup. Unlike in Rwanda where UN troops did not to intervene to stop genocide, in Haiti they are in overdrive - they killed Aristide supporters, raped boys as well as girls (Sri Lankan and Uruguayan soldiers had to be withdrawn over rape allegations) and infected the population with cholera.

In their struggle against imperialism, today's black Jacobins face, not only the US, Canada and France but even Latin America's progressive governments as Brazil heads the occupying UN forces and Ecuador trains their repressive police. And while some objected to the US "selection" of Martelly, a former Tonton Macoute, as president, they have not refused to work with him.

We were there in 2011 to welcome Aristide and family when they were finally allowed to return. An extraordinary day, full of love, hope and excitement as thousands of people accompanied their Titid home from the airport. His wife Mildred Trouillot told us: "This is a victory they cannot take away."

She was right. Despite every intervention and occupation the revolutionary people of Haiti have not been defeated and today they are calling for transparent elections.

International support actions are planned on December 16, including in front of the US embassy in London.

Selma James and Nina Lopez are joint co-ordinators of the Global Women's Strike. For more information contact: gws@globalwomenstrike.net and www.haitisolidarity.net

Reposted from Morning Star http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-8712-Haiti-Massive-electoral-fraud-ignored

Rossana Cambron of the People's World shares this information: The Haiti Action Committee, a California-based network of activists who have supported Haiti's struggle for democracy since 1991, is sponsoring a petition:

"We the undersigned endorse the call from Haitians for international solidarity with the people of Haiti and call on the US government to:

· Rescind US support for this "electoral coup."

• Support the people's demand for invalidation of the August 9th and October 25th election and for new and transparent elections.
• Stop the US-financed terror campaign against Haiti's poor majority who are fighting for democracy."

To sign the petition: bit.ly/stopcoupinhaiti

For more info: Haiti Action Committee: action.haiti@gmail.com (510) 483-7481 www.haitisolidarity.net
Women of Color in the Global Women's Strike and the Global Women's Strike:
la@allwomencount.net (323) 276-9833 www.globalwomenstrike.net

Photo: Demonstrators march in the street during a protest against the country's electoral council in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Dec. 12. Disputed election results have brought a renewed surge of paralyzing street protests and many accusations of electoral fraud from civil society and opposition groups. | Dieu Nalio Chery/AP

Left wins parliamentary elections in St. Vincent and the Grenadines

Mon, 14 Dec 2015 13:59:00 +0000

The "Bolivarian" left suffered two traumatic electoral defeats in recent weeks: In Argentina, right winger, pro corporate candidate Mauricio Macri won the presidential election in Argentina, and the right wing opposition captured a two thirds majority in the Venezuelan National Assembly.

But all is not gloom and doom for the Bolivarian left. On Dec. 9, the ruling left wing Unity Labor Party (ULP) of Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves won re-election, for the fourth time, over the more conservative opposition. Though the margin was not huge (the ULP won eight parliamentary seats to the opposition New Democratic Party's seven), it is solid and is seen by many as resulting from the high level of prestige of Dr. Gonsalves, who has been prime minister of this tiny Caribbean nation of (population 110,000) since 2001. Polls have shown Gonsalves to be more popular than his party.

The Unity Labor Party is friendly to Cuba and has integrated the country into the Bolivarian "pink tide" tendency in Latin America, including into ALBA, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, which groups the most socialist-oriented states in the Western Hemisphere. The New Democratic Party, on the other hand, stresses foreign investment from the wealthy capitalist countries as its strategy for development.

Gonsalves was one of the most eloquent speakers in the U.N. General Assembly debate this year, on the annual vote to condemn the U.S. blockade of Cuba. He has also been very outspoken on global warming and its impact on island nations like his own, on the rights of the Palestinian people and on the demand for the wealthy nations to pay reparations for the genocide of indigenous people of the Americas, the slave trade and slavery.

Gonsalves has also been outspoken on the situation in the Dominican Republic, where thousands of people of Haitian descent face racist discrimination and potential mass deportation to Haiti.

St. Vincent and the Grenadines is a poor country which depends on banana exports and tourism for most of its foreign earnings, while many necessary items have to be imported. Like other countries similarly situated, its big challenge is to diversify its economy to reduce its dependence on commodity exports. It has benefited from the PETROCARIBE program whereby it has been able to import Venezuelan oil on good terms. The country is also a powerful voice within CARICOM, the Caribbean Community of nations, and has worked to integrate that grouping with the Bolivarian bloc.

Photo: Ralph Gonsalves | AP

French voters beat back ultra-right advance

Mon, 14 Dec 2015 13:09:00 +0000

The runoff elections for regional governments in France on Sunday, December 13, produced a defeat for the ultra right, anti-immigrant, anti Muslim National Front of Marine LePen. The National Front did not win control of a single one of the thirteen regions being contested. But the French left is warning that continued vigilance and mobilization will be needed.

The first round of the elections took place on Dec. 6. The shocking result was a sharp advance of the National Front's candidates in several regions, with the evident danger that the National Front Leader, Ms. LePen and other extremist candidates would actually be elected and thus have access to state resources in major areas of the country. The regional councils are not legislative bodies but they have control over budgets that total billions of dollars for such things as high school education.

The National Front was founded in the 1960s by Marine LePen's father, Jean-Marie LePen, a former anti-communist street brawler who has also been criticized as an anti-Semite, and for having been involved in torturing prisoners when he served in the military during the Algerian independence war. The elder LePen's roots are mixed with the monarchist, right-nationalist and proto-fascist traditions of the French right which kept him marginalized for years.

However, Marine LePen has shrewdly pushed her father out of power in the National Front and stopped the anti-Semitic statements while latching onto a more populist narrative which appeals to sectors of the working class who find themselves harmed by the forces of corporate globalization and the European integration institutions that have imposed austerity economics leading to unemployment and declining living standards.

The National Front is "Euro-sceptic" as well as being anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant and skeptical of global warming. It presents itself as standing for ordinary working French men and women whose living standards and national pride are being undermined by foreigners, Muslims, big business concerns that run the European Union, and environmentalists. By this populist appeal the National Front has managed to compete in sectors of the electorate that are normally the constituency of socialists and communists.

Although French communists and their allies in the "Front Gauche" (Left Front) also campaign against big business and see the European Union's institutions as being rigged against workers and in favor of corporations, they strongly defend the rights of immigrants and Muslims, and oppose NATO and militarism.

At any rate, the surge for the National Front in the first round of the elections on Dec. 6 caused many to take alarm and to redouble their efforts to stop it in the second round. Voter turnout jumped nine percent in the week between the two rounds of the election, from 50 percent to 59 percent. The Socialist Party asked its candidates in key regions to withdraw and throw their support to the right wing (in these regional elections, any candidate who gets 10 percent or more of the vote in the first round can be in the run off, not just the top two vote getters).

In the key Ile de France region, the Socialists, Communists, and Greens formed a united front for the second round.

The strategy of prioritizing the defeat of the National Front bore fruit in the second round. Marine LePen and her party did not win control of a single region. The Socialist Party, Les Republicains and also LePen's National Front all increased their votes, but the Socialists and the Les Republicains much more that the National Front.

Les Republicains triumphed in seven of the regions of metropolitan France while the socialists retained five. In Corsica a Corsican nationalist party won, while in the French colonies in the Caribbean and Indian Ocean left wing parties won in French Guiana and Guadeloupe while Les Republicains won in the island of Reunion. Overall the Socialists and left won 31.71 percent of the vote; Les Republicains and other right wing groups 40.63 percent, and the National Front 27.36 percent.

So the National Front did not win a single regional government. This throws cold water on the idea that Marine LePen could be a presidential contender in the elections of 2017.

That's the good news. The bad news is that the Socialist Party lost most of the regional presidencies that it had held going into this election, in all cases to Les Republicains, which, though not fascist, is a right wing anti-worker party itself. Obviously, the withdrawal of Socialist Party candidates in favor of supporting those of Les Republicains has to be a major factor in this.

But there is also widespread disappointment among French working class people in the performance of the government of President Francois Hollande, of the Socialist Party. In the last presidential election he campaigned against the right wing president Nicolas Sarkozy, on a platform of protecting French workers against the austerity programs being imposed on all European countries.

But once in power his government continued to apply some of the same austerity policies, and shocked many by seeming to pander to some the same chauvinistic tendencies that characterize the national front (and Les Republicains). On top of this came the terroristic murders in France culminating with the attack in Paris that left 130 people dead, and panic over the migrant crisis.

Pierre Laurent, the Secretary General of the French Communist Party, pointed out that the "dramatic and alarming" total vote for the National Front is still too high for comfort, and that the real winner of this election was the right wing Les Republicains. "The new situation is not favorable for the world of labor" he added. It is urgent to "get away from austerity and the dogmas of [neo] liberalism."

Photo: Arc de Triomphe in Paris. | Blake Deppe/PW

Right wing extremism, not immigrants, the big threat in Europe

Mon, 14 Dec 2015 10:30:00 +0000

BERLIN - Like the rising sea level endangering the Maldives, Marshalls and other islands, the immigrant question is changing political geography in Germany. But it is not the refugees who are posing the threat, despite their number; it is instead those forces, never eliminated, whose goals and methods all too vividly recall the rise of fascism here 85 years ago.

An estimated one million immigrants will have arrived in Germany by the end of the year. The government is sending back those from Africa, Eastern Europe and other areas, no matter what the consequences in many cases.

Those from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq are generally accepted; it is ironic that the cause of chaos, desperation and flight in those three countries was military interference by the western powers and their hugely well-armed allies in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia or Ankara, Turkey. Hardly any outside the small left-wing press even mention this basic matter.

Deeply affected by pictures of drowned children, of vans with corpses, constant scenes of grandmothers, the handicapped, mothers and fathers with bewildered toddlers or tiny babies tramping through fields of mud, climbing through barbed wire barriers or being herded from one spot to the other, approximately half the German population said: "These are human beings, they are our brothers and sisters and must be treated as such. Countless people held up "Welcome" signs, contributed what they could and helped care for the refugees often to the point of exhaustion.

It was they who said, "Our country can adjust to the new-comers. There is room for them. We must help those wishing temporary refuge and those hoping to integrate into our society. They must get the chance to learn German and a trade or gain permission to work at those they already know."

But the other half of the population reacted with scowls, sullen remarks and scorn for "do-gooders" - among whom, correctly or not, they included various parties, the whole German government, Angela Merkel or any other scapegoat they could add to the tired immigrants themselves. Their views on Muslims recalled those on Jews in the last century. They repeated, "The boat is full!"

Many switched allegiance to the rising Alternative for Germany party (AfD), whose poll results reached the five percent needed to enter a state legislatures in 2016 and the Bundestag in 2017, then kept climbing to a current level of eight or 10 percent, like that of the Greens and the Linke (Left) party. If the climb continues they could become the third strongest party.

Their main leader, Frauke Petry, 40, originally from Dresden, is a skilled pharmacologist but an even more skilled spellbinder, on a soapbox or on TV talk shows, where she beats opponents, seemingly with the aid of moderators, in what could be called a suspiciously easy fashion. Despite all disavowals, media publicity has helped her greatly.

Some AfD leaders are openly racist, like Björn Höcke, top man in Thuringia, who rants about "too fertile" Africans who must be barred by "not fertile enough" Europeans. Petry is more subtle; some refugees should be welcome, others not.

Understand the coded messages

But nationalists and racists easily understand her coded messages and, despite the usual "socially conscious" demands she shows her colors by opposing same-sex marriage or adoption of children as well as abortions: "Good, "normal" German families should keep front with no less than three children!" She attacks all other "establishment parties."

Separate but allied to the AfD is the PEGIDA movement, marching every Monday in Dresden and other cities. Obvious Nazi types are often part of the crowd and the number of attacks on journalists and opponents of the marches is on the increase. So, alarmingly, is the number of scorched or wrecked buildings for immigrants and violent racist attacks on people of color or "other" clothing.

There is always opposition to such marches. Some involves pious condemnation by officials, with occasional speeches or rallies far away from the hate crowd, whose marches are officially allowed though usually barred from the city centers.

Then there are the largely youthful countermarches, which often attempt to block the path of the racists and keep their actions close to the rail stations where they arrive, thus trying to discourage them from showing up again. The police usually keep the two groups apart so there is not often much violence. The police often favor the disciplined marching right wingers.

But alongside or following the determined but peaceful opponents to the "anti-Islamist," anti-immigrant marchers there is almost always a group of "militants," dressed in black and often masked (despite legal taboos). It is they who throw cobblestones, bottles and firecrackers at the police, smash windows or cars, set tires and dumpsters on fire and wreck bus stop shelters.

They gather in Berlin every year on May Day evening and went on a violent wrecking rampage during a demonstration against the European Central Bank last March in Frankfurt, and now again on Saturday in Leipzig. After the peaceful demonstration against the racists, a mob of several thousand went into action Their projectiles were soon met by the police with water cannon and pepper gas. There were mounted cops and helicopters in a small war which left 69 policemen injured, 50 police vehicles damaged and the arrest of 23 from the mob (a surprisingly small number in my estimate).

Who are these militants? They consist, in my view, of several related groups. Some in these "black blocs" are so-called puerile "anarchists" or "autonomes," so violently anti-capitalist that they want, as one of their leaflets declared, "not to demonstrate but to destroy." Then there are those who just want "action," much like their opposite numbers, the hooligan mobs at football games, out to get cops or anybody else. But third of all - in the lead, I would bet, but rarely caught in the act - there are the agents- provocateurs who provide headlines for the media and a rationale for proper, upstanding citizens to condemn and avoid any and all rallies against war or discrimination.

Meanwhile the Christian Democrats, whose leader Angela Merkel opened her arms to the refugees, stressing that Germany always offers asylum to those in need of it, were almost split by a threatened mutiny against her. But as poll numbers for her and the party kept sinking she backed down to a weak compromise position: "Yes, you're welcome, but no more of you, if you please, and we will pay off Turkey to keep the rest on their side of the troubled waters."

The upward trend for immigrant-haters and xenophobes has pushed her party to the right. There were even whispers that it might consider a coalition with the hitherto ostracized AfD after the coming elections in the important state of Baden-Wurttemberg, currently headed by the first Green minister-president, a wobbly character who has also been two-faced on immigrants.

The Social Democrats, a part of the coalition government on a federal level, have also been moving rightward. Their leader Sigmar Gabriel, vice-chancellor under Merkel, is all too comfortable in this position (again meant figuratively) and has backed the military expedition to Syria and the TTIP trade treaty with the United States which bears striking similarities to the TPP deal between the U.S. and Asian countries.

Caused dissatisfaction in party ranks

This caused dissatisfaction in party ranks, even open opposition especially from younger members - on TTIP, on Syria, on a general cave-in on many issues. The result at the party congress was the lowest result Gabriel has ever gotten for reelection as party leader - just under 75 percent.

Germany, of course, is not an island. Merkel had hopes for an ever stronger, ever broader European Union - with Germany its strongest member and its sentinel for austerity measures (in Germany's favor). Such hopes are eroding.

The member countries split on the number of immigrants they would take in, with Eastern European countries shutting their borders completely. There is a split about accepting Turkish membership.

Britain is moving closer to a referendum which may spell secession from the union, and France, a co-founder, may be ruled by a woman who decidedly wants out. But the growing rejection against the EU in nearly every member country, a trend which might be viewed favorably by those who know the basically reactionary goal and role of this institution, has unfortunately been taken up by vicious parties rapidly gaining strength across the continent - except, we may hope, in Spain, Portugal, Britain - or at least its Labour opposition party and perhaps Russia. And in its German heart, who knows?

The main opposition to military measures in Syria, Mali or elsewhere has been the Left Party. Though active in this and other fields, and bold in the brief Bundestag speeches allotted to it, it has looked sluggishly unable to make a breakthrough, demonstrate a fighting spirit and win more than a static 8-10 percent on the national level.

Possible Left Party actions in 2016, with three state elections in the spring and a Berlin election in the fall, could include louder activity on the streets, at the workshops, the job centers and the universities. All these things can help build the opposition to the ongoing and dangerous growth of the far right.

Photo: Frauke Petry, leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany Party, speaking in the country's Parliament. | Wikimedia (CC)

Latin American left moves to prevent defeats from becoming disasters

Fri, 11 Dec 2015 13:16:00 +0000

The left in two important Latin American countries, Argentina and Venezuela, is in emergency mobilization mode to prevent recent electoral defeats from turning into disasters for workers, farmers, minorities, youth, women and others who have benefited from reforms under left wing "Bolivarian" governments.

On Nov. 22, a runoff presidential election in Argentina was won by a right winger, Mauricio Macri, ending a 12 year period of government by two successive presidents from the left wing of the Justicialist (Peronist) Party, Nestor Kirchner and Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.

Then on December 6, in Venezuela's legislative elections, the right wing opposition managed to gain a massive victory, achieving a two thirds majority in the National Assembly, Venezuela's parliament. Left wing President Nicolas Maduro of the Venezuelan United Socialist Party remains in power, but the right's majority is big enough to severely threaten his government and block progressive initiatives. The legislature can now remove government ministers and the vice president, block spending bills and initiate procedures to remove President Maduro from power.

In both Argentina and Venezuela, the left in power had chalked up many solid achievements that favored the interests of workers, poor farmers, women and others. They had also contributed to the integration of the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean and threatened to end U.S. hegemony in the region.

For this reason, the ruling oligarchies in Argentina and Venezuela as well as multinational corporations and the governments of the United States and its allies had worked to undermine this "Bolivarian process."

Argentina, under the Kirchners, had managed to reconstruct its international credit after a painful default in 2001. Most of the owners of the country's sovereign debt accepted renegotiated terms, but a small group of hedge funds held out and got a judge in New York to back their demands for payment in full for the original amounts. Should Argentina agree to that, it would undo the entire debt restructuring effort, as other creditors would be entitled to demand full payment also. So Cristina Fernandez and her government have fought against these "vulture funds'" demands tooth and nail, with considerable international support, while continuing to build up the social safety net for the working class and poor.

In Venezuela, the governments of first President Hugo Chavez, who died in 2013, and his successor, Nicolas Maduro, had made great advances in labor rights, grassroots democracy, equality and especially the elimination of extreme poverty since Chavez was first elected in 1998. In 2002, the Venezuelan right, fully abetted by the United States, tried to overthrow Chavez by force, and briefly took him prisoner. But Chavez was freed and restored to power by a huge mass mobilization, which allowed him to purge the army high command of reactionary officers and proceed with his left wing program.

Both Argentina and Venezuela, however, got into serious difficulties recently, first because of the worldwide financial crisis which began in the United States in 2008, then by the precipitous decline, to half of its former value, of the worldwide price of oil (Venezuela's main export product), and more recently because of a scaling back of growth of Chinese industry, which was buying a lot of commodities from these and other countries like them. Inflation resulted in both Argentina and Venezuela, becoming worryingly high in the latter. Since Venezuela was using its oil revenue to support expanded social welfare programs (housing, literacy and education, health care) and to import items that it does not produce, scarcity became a major problem. In these circumstances there was a spike in violent crime. Smuggling and black marketeering did real damage in Venezuela: Unscrupulous people would stock up on government subsidized gasoline and other products, and then sell them at an immense profit, frequently across the border in Colombia.

So, although the left retained, and retains a strong social base among the working class and the poor in both countries, its electoral strength was eroded. Mistakes were also made as the two left wing governments felt their way through the uncharted territory of trying to move toward socialism in a world dominated by the power of transnational corporate capital and the hegemony of the United States and other powerful capitalist states.

The latest elections have been a wakeup call for major changes in how the left operates.

In both countries, though the opposition campaigned as moderate conservatives, the first statements that opposition leaders have made have a triumphalist, vengeful tone. In both places, opposition figures are talking about labor flexibilization, meaning the reduction of the rights of workers and their unions. In Venezuela, one opposition leader threatened a purge of the employees of the state controlled broadcast stations that cover activities of the legislature (in response, president Maduro handed over control of the stations to their workers). Also, there were opposition calls for closing the mausoleum where the remains of Hugo Chavez are interred (Maduro is transferring control from the government to a foundation).

In Argentina, Macri will have trouble putting through a radical right program: The left still has a majority in the Senate, and the right does not have a majority in the Chamber of Deputies. Plans Macri has announced, such as knuckling under to the holdout hedge funds and imposing austerity on the working class, will run into strong opposition both in the legislature and on the streets. A sign of what is to come was seen at the ceremony in which Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner stepped down: A throng of well over a million of her supporters clogged the streets of Buenos Aires.

In Venezuela, President Maduro called for the emergency mobilization of the social base and the Venezuelan United Socialist Party (PSUV) and its allies. In anticipation of the inauguration of the new legislature in January, Maduro must move fast to protect all the institutions of the Bolivarian revolution including grassroots democracy.

But for this he also has to reconcile himself with the disaffected grassroots, and really listen to both their grievances and their proposals. That this is recognized on the left is shown by statements of Maduro's allies in the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV). PCV General Secretary Oscar Figuera said on December 10 "There has been a big defect in the process of change, which is the lack of an organic space for critical and self-critical evaluation."

The December 6 vote was 56 percent for the opposition and 41 percent for the Bolivarians with a 74 percent turnout overall, showing that in fact the government had lost the confidence of a considerable sector of its own base.

Yet the new opposition legislature has not offered any real proposals for dealing with the things that working class Venezuelans were complaining about, except revenge, privatization and austerity. So there is a chance the left can turn things around by strengthening its ties with the grassroots, but it will be an uphill struggle.

We in the United States will watch the rectification process with fascination but we must remember that our duty is to increase our efforts to prevent the United States government from interfering further and doing more damage.

Photo: Right-winger Mauricio Macri was elected in Argentina, ending a period of government by two successive presidents from the left wing of the Justicialist (Peronist) Party. | AP

Portugal: the left takes charge

Wed, 09 Dec 2015 15:54:00 +0000

After several weeks of political brinkmanship, Portugal's right-wing president, Anibal Cavaco Silva, finally backed off from his refusal to appoint the leader of a victorious left coalition as prime minister and accept the outcome of the Oct. 4 national elections. Silva's stand down has ushered in an interesting coalition that may have continent-wide ramifications.

Portugal's elections saw three left parties - the Socialist Party, the Left Bloc, and the Communist/Green Alliance - take 62 percent of the vote and end the right-wing Forward Portugal Party's majority in the 230-seat Parliament. Forward Portugal is made up of the Social Democratic Party and the Popular Party.

Even though Forward Portugal lost the election - it emerged the largest party, but garnered only 38 percent of the votes - Silva allowed its leader, former Prime Minister Passos Coelho, to form a government. That maneuver lasted just 11 days. When Coelho introduced a budget loaded with austerity measures and privatization schemes, the left alliance voted it down, forcing the government to resign.

Rather than giving the left alliance a chance to form a government, however, Silva - a former leader of the Social Democrats - insisted that the alliance pledge in writing that it would maintain the country's role in NATO and commit itself to eurozone financial rules. Portugal is a member of the 19-country eurozone, those countries in the 28-member European Union that use the euro as a common currency.

Silva's threat was real. While the president's term only runs until January, the constitution requires a six-month delay between the appointment of a new president and fresh elections. It would have been eight months before the left alliance could take power and roll back some of the more onerous austerity measures that Forward Portugal had installed.

In the face of growing outrage and a threatened general strike, however, Silva finally asked Socialist Party leader Antonio Costa to form a government.

Portugal is the victim of the great 2008 international banking crisis. At the time, Portugal's debt was small and its public spending modest, but speculators drove up the price of borrowing beyond what the country's small economy could manage. Through no fault of its own, Portugal suddenly found itself on the edge of bankruptcy.

In 2011, the "Troika" - the European Central Bank, the European Commission, and the International Monetary Fund - lent Portugal $83 billion, but in exchange instituted an austerity regime that raised taxes, slashed education and medical care, cut wages and pensions, and drove 20 percent of the population below the poverty line. The crisis forced almost half a million young people to emigrate, and Portugal ended up with one of the highest income disparities in Europe.

The left alliance government is unprecedented in Portugal, where the Communists and the Socialists have locked horns since the 1974 Carnation Revolution overthrew the 48-year-old dictatorship. But four years of austerity have apparently convinced everyone on the left that there needs to be some immediate relief.

The Communists and the Left Bloc have agreed to temporarily shelve their demands to exit NATO and the eurozone, and the Socialists have agreed to roll back austerity measures, cut taxes, and raise pensions and wages. Privatization will be on hold.

There are still major differences within the alliance, however, and not just over dumping the euro and getting out of NATO. The Communists and Left Bloc want debt reduction because much of the country's encumbrances are the result of private speculators, not profligate public spending. The Socialists did not mention debt reduction during the election and, at least for now, seem committed to repaying all debts.

A model for Spain and the rest of Europe?

However, the new government is pledged to loosen austerity's grip and to challenge the Troika's tight-fisted formula for economic recovery with one based on economic stimulus. If successful, that could model a new strategy for the rest of Europe, where, in spite of years of austerity, economies are still sluggish or in recession.

Even in countries that show growth, the rate is relative. Spain, for instance, is growing at a respectable 3 percent, but unemployment is over 20 percent - close to 50 percent for young people - and its gross domestic product has still not reached pre-2008 levels. Wages have declined in nine out of 14 quarters. According to Simon Tilford of the Center for European Reform, Spain's recovery is not due to austerity, but rather, to low interest rates, the declining value of the euro, and a worldwide fall in oil prices.

Certainly the new Portuguese government will not be welcomed by Madrid, where the declining popularity of the right-wing Popular Party's threatens its control of the Spanish Parliament. It is not unlikely that the Dec. 20 elections in Spain will produce a very similar outcome to Portugal's: the Popular Party will lose its majority to the center-left Socialist Party and the left Podemos Party. Whether that will result in the kind of coalition that Portugal's left has stitched together is not clear, in part because the centrist Citizen's Party is a bit of a wild card and there are complex politics around Catalan independence.

However, even if the smaller Spanish parties cannot unite a la Portugal, they will put the brakes on the Popular Party's austerity policies and its push to muzzle the media and curtail mass demonstrations.

"Plan A" and "Plan B"

The Portuguese model may end up having an influence on the rest of the European left, where conversations are going on about how to begin moving the continent away from the policies of the Troika. There are at least two major currents now engaging the left, the so-called "Plan A" and "Plan B."

Plan A - supported by the United European Left/Nordic Green Alliance, the group representing the left parties in the European Parliament - calls for democratizing the European Union and the European Central Bank, taxing the rich, raising wages, funding social services, and creating jobs through public investment. Plan A is backed by Spain's Podemos, Greece's Syriza, and Germany's Die Linke (Left Party).

Plan B was launched Sept. 11 by five key figures in the European left - Oskar Lafontaine, a former leader of Die Linke, Italian parliamentary deputy Stefano Fassina, Jean-Luc Melenchon of France's Left Party, and two former Syriza leaders, Zoe Konstantopoulou and Yanis Varoufakis. Plan B is somewhat more nebulous than Plan A, and not everyone who advocates it is on the same page. While it doesn't contradict Plan A, most of its advocates are not sure the EU is really reformable.

According to Liam Flenady of Green Left Weekly, the September call "remains intentionally open to what this Plan B could look like." For one thing, it comes off sounding a little wonky: "Parallel payment systems, parallel currencies, digitization of euro transactions, community based exchange systems ... euro exit and transformation of the euro into a common currency."

Not all of the five left figures are in agreement. Varoufakis, Greece's former finance minister, is for staying with the euro, while the Italian Fassina is not. No one openly attacks Syriza, but most supported Popular Unity, the anti-euro split from Syriza that failed to win any seats in the last Greek election.

A Plan B summit is set for the end of the year.

The disagreements between - and within - the plans reflect the enormous complexity of the task facing Europe's left, including how to present a united front while still searching for solutions that are not obvious. Is trying to democratize the euro zone like teaching a pig to whistle: can't be done and annoys the pig? Can a country withdraw from a common currency zone without the Troika destroying its economy? Do countries within the eurozone have the right to experiment with different economic strategies?

Greece was forced to swallow the Troika's medicine, in part because Syriza assumed that the Troika was essentially rational and actually interested in resolving the crisis. It was not, because the Troika saw Syriza's resistance as the precursor to a continent-wide movement against its austerity policies.

Portugal is charting a somewhat different path than Syriza. Instead of head-on confrontation, the left is trying to maneuver while strengthening its base by improving people's lives. Disagreements will eventually surface - hardly an unhealthy thing - but the Portuguese alliance has decided to kick that can down the road.

On Nov. 20, the Portuguese united left used its majority to approve a law allowing same-sex couples to legally adopt children and permit lesbians to obtain medically assisted fertilization. That little act hardly shakes the foundation of the EU, and one doubts it caused the Troika to tremble. But suddenly Portugal is a little bit kinder place than it was a month ago.

Small things can lead to big things.

This article originally appeared at Conn Hallinan's blog Dispatches from the Edge.

Photo: Portugal's new anti-austerity prime minister Antonio Costa. | Armando Franca/AP

Income inequality nurturing terrorism in the Middle East

Wed, 09 Dec 2015 11:14:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - In an article recently published in the French newspaper Le Monde, economist Thomas Piketty says there is a direct correlation between income inequality in the Middle East and the rise of terrorist groups.

Piketty writes that the policies of the U.S. and other western nations have resulted in a small number of Middle East monarchs controlling some 60 to 70 percent of the region's oil wealth.

Over the long run, the best way to fight terrorism, Piketty says, is with economic development.

Piketty based his Le Monde article on a study he co-authored last year at about the same time his book Capital in the Twenty First Century hit the bestseller lists in the U.S.

Piketty writes that the Middle East has become destabilized because a disproportionate amount of the area's wealth belongs to the rulers of Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Oman. Altogether these countries have just 10 percent of the Middle East's population but control the majority of its wealth.

"Under plausible assumptions," Piketty writes, the top 10 percent of the wealthiest people in the Middle East control some 60 percent of the wealth and the top 1 percent controls 25 percent.

What's more, he contends, starting with the Persian Gulf War, or "Operation Desert Storm" as the first President Bush called it, the U.S. and its allies have conducted wars to give oil fields "back to the emirs."

It gets worse.

According to Piketty, a large percentage of the population within the richest monarchies, including women and refugees, is kept in a state of "semi-slavery."

The Middle East is now the most unequal region on the planet, Piketty contends.

Also, people in the region are reeling from wars caused by the West and are caught up in conflicts over resources that are shrinking because of climate change.

All these conditions, Piketty argues, has made the Middle East fertile ground for the nurturing of terrorism.

Terrorism rooted in inequality, Piketty continues, is best countered through economic development.

He states that Western countries should be less concerned with their own financial interests and their relationships with ruling families.

To truly root out terrorism, Piketty writes, the West should become more concerned with the wellbeing and social development of the people of the Middle East. Western nations should work to ensure that Middle Eastern oil money is used to fund regional development, particularly more and better education.

Photo: According to Picketty a few powerful monarchs and corporations control most of the oil wealth in the Middle East. | AP

Burkina Faso: Coup general faces prosecution in Sankara death

Wed, 09 Dec 2015 09:49:00 +0000

A military tribunal in Burkina Faso, in West Africa, announced charges Dec. 7 against General Gilbert Diendéré, the former commander of the special presidential guard, the Regiment of Presidential Secdurity, who led an abortive coup against the transitional government earlier this year. Earlier charges relate to that coup attempt, but others go back to the assassination in October 1987 of the charismatic left-wing President Thomas Sankara.

Sankara, sometimes called the Che Guevara of Africa, had himself taken power in the aftermath of a coup in 1983. Ironically, that coup was led by Blaise Compaore, an army officer who was behind the 1987 coup which ousted and killed Sankara.

During Sankara's short time in power, Burkina Faso took promising steps to deal with the country's extreme poverty. It was Sankara who changed the country's name to Burkina Faso ("Land of Upright People") from its colonial name of Upper Volta.

Sankara undertook an ambitious program of land reform, nationalization of mineral wealth, and of the development of health care, schools, housing and other services for the Burkinabe (as the people of Burkina Faso are called), which had a tangible impact in such things as sharply reduced infant mortality and increased literacy. There was a sharp increase in women's rights and, even today, 28 years after his death, Sankara's memory is revered across the country.

He was a strong opponent of the "debt trap" which affected, and still affects, so many poor countries, and eschewed foreign aid while demanding debt reductions for his and other poor countries. Sankara, though, also became a figure of hatred for people whose privileges he curtailed. His opponents included local traditional rulers who had been accustomed, under French colonial rule, and subsequently, to receiving tribute in labor and goods from their subjects.

Also antagonized were army officers, who resented Sankara's efforts to empower grassroots organizations among the people. The French government too worried about his efforts to bring the country out from French economic domination, his links to Libya and his stated admiration for socialist Cuba.

Some politicians in neighboring countries, including Ivory Coast and Liberia, worried about the example Sankara might set for their own people when Sankara's government began to put corrupt officials on trial.

The coup against Sankara was carried out by a group of twelve officers of which Compaore and Deindéré, considered Compaore's right hand man. Surviving members of this group are also to be put on trial, though for now Compaore is out of reach, in exile in Ivory Coast.

The reason given for the coup by the plotters was that Sankara had antagonized France and Burkina Faso's neighboring countries. At the time, the Burkinabe public was aware that Sankara and some of his colleagues had, in fact, been killed, but the new government claimed he had died of "natural causes" at age 38. There was a brief effort by Sankara supporters to offer armed resistance to the coup, but it was crushed.

Compaore went on to rule as dictator for 27 years, reversing most of Sankara's progressive policies, until he was overthrown amid massive street protests a year ago. Burkina Faso was ruled by a transitional government headed by Acting President Michel Kafando and Prime Minister Yacouba Isaac Zide from that point, except for a brief period during Diendérés abortive coup in September of this year. The coup was carried out by Compaore supporters, but fell apart due to popular opposition and also opposition by units of the army other than the Compaore loyal special guards unit which had backed it.

Sankara's family, however, especially his widow Miriam, and a strong core of followers have never forgotten Sankara and the four inspirational years of his government. They have continued to agitate and in 2013 got the French parliament, on the initiative of the French Communist Party, to open an inquiry into possible French complicity in Sankara's overthrow. So as soon as Compaore was overthrown, they began agitation for Sankara's body to be exhumed and for the persons responsible for his overthrow and death to be brought to book.

A new investigation was begun in March of 2015. The exhumation and examination of the remains of Sankara and his friends revealed that, as everybody already suspected, the former president had not died of "natural" causes but had been "riddled" with bullets.

Meanwhile, after a short delay caused by the coup, Burkina Faso held presidential elections on Nov.29 of this year. The victory went to former prime minister and President of the National Assembly Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, the candidate of the People's Movement for Progress, who got a 53.9 percent majority. The party also got a plurality of legislative seats.

The party which is considered closest to Sankara's legacy, the Union for Rebirth, trailed far behind. Kaboré had been politically aligned with Compaore until breaking with him in January of 2014, so there were questions as to whether any further progress could be made on the investigation into Sankara's overthrown and death. The announcement this week that Diendéré and possibly others would be put on trial will be reassuring to Sankara supporters.

The specific charges against Diendéré relating to the death of Sankara are assault, murder and concealing a dead body, in addition to the charges stemming from the abortive coup this year. These charges had actually been placed on Nov. 12, before the election, but evidently the government will now proceed with them,

It is likely that more persons will be charged. Whether these will include the exiled former president, Compaore, is not yet known.

Photo: Charges have finally been filed in the killing 28 years ago of Burkina Faso's former president, Thomas Sankara (pictured). | AP

Ultra-right makes worrisome advances in French regional elections

Tue, 08 Dec 2015 17:12:00 +0000

On Sunday, Dec. 6, France held the first round of elections for thirteen of the country's 27 regional councils in France Proper and also in the overseas, French-controlled colonies of Martinique and French Guiana, as well as the island of Corsica in the Mediterranean. The country is in the process of consolidating the number of homeland regions down to 13.

These regional councils are not legislative bodies but administrative ones, which control large budgets and therefore potential political patronage.

The extreme right-wing National Front managed to make big advances at the expense of the Socialist Party of French President Francois Hollande. Les Republicains, which is the new name for the UMP of former right-wing president Nicolas Sarkozy, also increased its regional presence a little bit.

As France has runoff elections, there will be a second round on Sunday, Dec. 13 to determine who will actually serve the six-year terms. In the runoff, any candidate who got at least 10 percent of the vote in the first round is allowed to compete, not just the two highest vote-getters.

In Sunday's first round, with a rather low turnout of 49.51 percent, the National Front managed to get more than six million votes, or 27.73 percent of those counted. Sarkozy's les Republicains got 5,785,0703, or 26.65 percent, and the Socialist Party, Greens, Left Front and Communists, got 5,019,723 or 23.12 percent.

The National Front's vote represented a 16.31 percent jump over its vote in the last elections in 2010. Les Republicains increased their vote slightly by .63 percent, while the Socialist and left's total dropped by 6.02 percent, mostly because of a sharp drop in the vote for the Greens. The Left Front (Front Gauche), encompassing the Communist Party and close allies, got a total of 2.4 percent.

The sharp increase in the National Front's vote was the most remarkable result of these elections, and fits in with recent growth of the ultra-right in other European countries. For example, Poland had a presidential election on May 10 with a runoff on May 24, and a parliamentary election on October 25. In both of these elections there was a strong move to the right. Switzerland had a federal election on October 18, which also showed a marked right-wing trend. The Sweden Democrats, a right-wing, anti-immigrant group, are now the biggest party in that country. In Austria, the far-right Freedom Party is also surging.

In France, as in each of these other countries, the most common interpretation of the right's surge is hostility toward immigrants, refugees and foreigners in general. The French regional election came right after the terrorist attack of November 13 and 14^th of this year, in which 130 people were murdered and hundreds injured.

This event followed hard upon the acrimonious controversy about refugees from Syria and Iraq; and earlier in the year the terrorist attack on the offices of the Charlie Hebdo humor magazine, which killed 20. There have been several smaller scale attacks as well, and in both the Charlie Hebdo attack and the main attack in Paris, it is quite clear that the attacks came from extremist militants, from Al Qaeda in the case of Charlie Hebdo, and from ISIS in the Paris attack.

The extreme right, including the National Front's Marine Le Pen, have responded to these incidents by ramping up their anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric, with the implication that both the centrist Socialist Party and the right wing UMP, now les Republicaines, have betrayed the people of France by not defending them against such attacks. Both Sarkozy's party and Hollande's government have responded to this by maneuvering rather than taking principled stands against bigotry: Sarkozy by trying to steal the clothes of the NF and Hollande's prime minister, Manuel Valls, by cracking down on migratory Roma in France.

Among other things the National Front will work to prevent any settlement of Syrian refugees in the country.

But there is another issue that feeds into the campaigns of the ultra-right. Under the current regime of the European Union, the Euro Currency Area and especially the European Union's Stability and Growth Pact, France, like other European countries, is pressured to carry out austerity policies that have negatively impacted the well being of the working class.

Since these policies are being carried out by a government that is nominally "socialist" (really, social democratic or centrist), many members of the working class feel themselves betrayed by a party for which they voted in the last presidential elections, in 2012. The refrain is familiar to us in the United States, one of right-wing, nationalistic populism which damns, simultaneously, the rich, the government and immigrants. We currently hear this from Donald Trump and his ilk; in France they hear it from Marine LePen, and in other countries from similar misleaders.

The Communist Party in France, and the Left Front (Front Gauche) of which it is a part, also oppose the Stabilization and Growth Pact and the austerity policies, but also denounce the National Front's anti-immigrant and anti Muslim agitation as being close to fascism. But their vote totals have been much smaller than those of the National Front in recent elections.

What is to be done to minimize the advance of the National Front, in the December 13 runoff election and thereafter? The Socialists and the left find themselves in a time warp. In the 2002 presidential elections, the Socialists did so poorly that they found their candidate, Lionel Jospin, in third place after right wing incumbent president Jacques Chirac, who was correctly suspected of corruption, and the National Front's candidate Jean Marie LePen, father of Marine LePen, who was even more openly fascist than his daughter and anti-Semitic to boot. In these circumstances one slogan was for left wing voters to "vote for the crook (Chirac) and not the fascist (LePen)".

In fact, the Socialist Party has now called for its candidates in several regions to withdraw so as to united forces behind les Republicaines and defeat the National Front candidates. In the vitally important Ile-de-France region, which includes Paris and has 12 million inhabitants, the left and center forces-Socialists, Communists and Greens, have decided to unite behind a single slate of candidates.

One of the biggest French labor union federations, the CGT, is pulling out all stops to block the National Front on December 13, as are other people's organizations.

Photo: In the afternoon of December 5, in Place de Clichy in Paris, about 1,500 CGT-Unemployed and allies demonstrated against "unemployment and insecurity" and for "social justice." They were joined by militant housing activists, support groups for undocumented workers and climate activists.

Venezuela elections a low point in history

Tue, 08 Dec 2015 12:10:00 +0000

CARACAS, Venezuela - "I wear my heart on the left," socialists and progressives sometimes like to say. Today leftist hearts are very heavy not only in Venezuela, the land of Hugo Chavez, but in many parts of Latin America which had developed a new "Bolivarian" unity with the socialist experiment coming out of Caracas, and indeed in many parts of the world where a new expression of international anti-imperialist relations had emerged.

It's time to take a very deep breath - or a deep drink or a deep sleep, whatever your inclination - and begin to figure out what happened.

The Dec. 6 elections for Venezuela's National Assembly, which until now had held a majority for the coalition PSUV (United Socialist Party of Venezuela), produced a massive upset of the Hugo Chavez movement, the Chavistas. The new National Assembly that will take office on January 5, 2016, for a four-year term, has a more than two-thirds supermajority (at least 107 seats) for the opposition MUD (Mesa de la Unidad Democratica, or Democratic Unity Roundtable), reducing the PSUV to a mere 55 seats. In addition there are three seats reserved for indigenous people but all of them went to the opposition. It was a crushing defeat whose effects will be felt far into the future.

On Monday in the Plaza Bolivar in central Caracas, a traditional locus of "soapbox" orators and the crowds who listen to them, the square was full of pained, almost crazed outrage and fear over what will become of the Bolivarian Revolution. It was the first national Bolivarian electoral loss in 17 years. A palpable sense of betrayal and sorrow has swept over the supporters of Chavez' successor, President Nicolas Maduro.

In his concession speech, Maduro admitted to the "adverse results," but spoke of the country's democracy and constitution having triumphed, for the reaction on the streets was only one of celebration for the opposition, not the usual violence and disruption that followed from that side after previous losses. Indeed, no one has questioned the impeccably accurate vote managed by the autonomous CNE, the national electoral commission.

In an open letter to Maduro released by Raul Castro, a strong ally and beneficiary of the Bolivarian Revolution, the Cuban President said, "I'm sure that new victories will come for the Bolivarian Revolution under your leadership." But in reality there is little to be optimistic about right now.

Perhaps the result could have been predicted. The mainstream press in the United States had

cited polls over the last year or more showing MUD being favored over PSUV by anywhere from 20 to 30 percent. International well-wishers for the left tried to hold up their spirits by remembering how critical and biased against the Revolution the U.S. and its media have been for years, and how they were carefully manipulating public opinion for such a result. The Venezuelan left had managed to convince itself that the right wing was weak and divided.

But the classic elements for destroying a socialist movement were all there: economic war and psychological war, monetary speculation, hoarding of essential goods, smuggling of Venezuelan products across the Colombian border, consumer dissatisfaction, widespread charges of corruption and incompetence on the Bolivarian government's part, and above all the low, low price of oil on the world market, oil being Venezuela's chief economic asset.

The constant barrage of propaganda against Maduro also had an effect on centrist and even some left-leaning sectors of the electorate who either stayed at home on Sunday or did little to motivate voters to get to the polls. "He's no Hugo Chavez," they moaned, failing to take the larger global picture into account. The election turnout was 74.25 percent, within the anticipated range for a National Assembly election, and the polling hours were extended throughout the country for at least an extra hour or as long as voters were lined up; but perhaps an even higher turnout might have kept more seats for the PSUV.

Elections have consequences

The Venezuelan election has global consequences, not just for Venezuela. Internally, the supermajority will permit the opposition to repeal every "mision" - program - of the Bolivarian government: the vast new housing projects, schools and universities, the health care initiatives that have so vastly improved the nation's health with the aid of Cuban professionals in every corner of the country, the labor laws that have lifted so many of Venezuela's 30 million citizens out of extreme poverty, and the thousands of infrastructural jobs made possible by the country's oil wealth. As Maduro stated the morning after the election, "The revolution is the only force that guarantees social peace in the country."

As t-shirts I saw on election day read, at the polling site where Maduro voted, "Somos la historia que hizo visible El Gigante," loosely, "The Giant [Hugo Chavez] made people like us visible in history."

The opposition that just won the election may proceed to impeach Pres. Maduro or schedule a recall election. They can also forbid him from leaving the country to represent Venezuela or conduct diplomatic business for more than five days. They will also release from prison the fascistic criminals who unleashed the anti-government protests after Maduro's last winning election, in which almost 50 people were killed.

If Chavista forces try, by occupations, marches and demonstrations, to resist the legislative onslaught that leaders of the new National Assembly have promised, they will be met by force and certain violence, thus providing the cover for potential massacres and U.S. or proxy Colombian military intervention. Civil war may ensue.

These are not idle fantasies: Such is the manner in which opposition right-wing forces have acted for decades, and the role of Venezuela's military, which produced Chavez and which had been loyal to him, cannot be reliably predicted.

Regionally, the Bolivarian Revolution that Presidents Chavez and Maduro led, creating broad Latin American economic cooperation in organizations such as ALBA, Mercosur, Petrocaribe and CELAC that opposed North American hegemony in the hemisphere, will certainly be weakened and will likely have to move its headquarters - to the much smaller and weaker Ecuador or Bolivia? - if it survives at all.

And in the larger world, this successful, peaceful, constitutional, democratic revolution that was already beginning to rewrite the international rules of trade and diplomacy has been routed. The election was a blow to the emerging forces of the BRICS nations and other countries that benefited from Venezuelan commercial exchange, humanitarianism and philanthropy.

More troubling, the world may conclude from the almost two-decade-long Bolivarian experiment that a multi-party electoral strategy toward socialism is, in the end, illusory.

There is no way to sugarcoat it: Within the same year that saw the defeat of left-wing governments in both Guyana and Argentina, the Venezuelan left - more than that, the Venezuelan nation as a whole - has suffered a monstrous setback and will need time to reassess and regroup. U.S. and international solidarity is of the essence.

Photo: A pro-government supporter listens to a radio broadcast as she waits for the results of congressional elections at Plaza Bolivar, in downtown Caracas, Venezuela, Dec. 6. Ariana Cubillos | AP

Cubans stranded in Costa Rica, blame falls on U.S. Cuban Adjustment Act

Mon, 07 Dec 2015 17:57:00 +0000

A dispute between Nicaragua and Costa Rica over the fate of Cuban migrants heading to the United States highlights the injustice and unfairness of the U. S. Cuban Adjustment Act (CAA) of 1966. Through that law, any Cuban citizen arriving on U.S. soil gains permanent residence after a one-year stay. The legislation has served U. S. propaganda purposes by creating a flood of immigrants ready to be portrayed as refugees fleeing political repression.

According to the Pew Research Center, 15,341 Cubans arrived in the United States during the first nine months of fiscal 2014 and 27,296 during the comparable period of fiscal 2015, a 78 percent increase. The burgeoning number of people leaving Cuba, primarily for economic reasons, stems from fear that the CAA will soon be repealed. Indeed, with diplomatic relations now re-established, many observers in Cuba and the United States alike are saying that getting rid of the CAA is a prerequisite for truly normal bi-national relations.

In recent years Cubans on the way to the United States have been heading first to Quito, Ecuador and then moving northward to the U. S. border with Mexico. They rely less and less on the once well traveled ocean route across the Florida Straits. Not only are the small boat crossings often deadly, but also the U.S. Coast Guard, on intercepting migrants at sea must, according to a U. S. Cuban agreement of the 1990s, return them to Cuba.

Ecuador is attractive as the only Latin American country allowing Cubans to enter without a visa. The travelers leave Cuba legally, but their border crossings north from Quito are unauthorized. Moving by bus, foot, boat, and air, they pay bribes and tolls and hire guides known as "coyotes." The parade came to a halt on November 10 just inside Costa Rica's southern border after police there arrested 12 coyotes. Until then, from 300 to 350 Cubans had been arriving every day and 3000 of them were now stranded.

Costa Rica's government soon issued the migrants a temporary visa allowing them to proceed on to Nicaragua. On November 15, however, the Nicaraguan government barred their entering the country and since then almost 4000 Cubans have been stuck on the Costa Rican side of the border. Nicaraguan soldiers using tear gas repelled 800 migrants who attempted a mass border crossing.

Responding to the impasse, the foreign ministers of El Salvador, Belize, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, and the Dominican Republic - all members of the System of Central American Integration (SUCS) - held a closed door conference on November 24 in El Salvador. The foreign ministers of México, Colombia, Cuba, and Ecuador attended as guests.

Speaking to reporters afterwards, Salvadoran foreign minister Hugo Martínez noted general agreement "that the countries meeting here were not responsible for setting off that emigration." He condemned U. S. "measures that discriminate against other immigrants." Costa Rican foreign minister Manuel González cited consensus as to "the inappropriateness of the U. S. Cuban Adjustment Law ... which ... converts the United States into a magnet." Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez, also in attendance, concurred.

Nicaraguan Vice Chancellor Dennis Moncada indicated his country would "not lend legitimacy to illegal policies that cause harm, suffering, and economic loss to human beings, entire families, governments, and the peoples of Cuba and the region." He blamed the United States, adding that "our countries lack resources for dealing with this new threat to our national security."

Earlier, Costa Rica had proposed creation of a "humanitarian corridor" for facilitating Cubans' travel across Central America. The SUCS conference rejected the idea, refusing to condone the illegal nature of the migrants' passage through the region. Rather than issue a joint statement, the delegates called upon each affected nation to attend to its own borders and national security.

The Cuban government invited the migrants to return. The stand-off has surely renewed Latin American awareness of the CAA and must be causing embarrassment within U. S. government circles. Such effects may add momentum to efforts finally to end the CAA.

On November 26, Ecuador took action toward alleviating the rush of Cubans leaving Quito for the United States: beginning on December 1, immigration officials will be requiring Cubans to possess a 90 - day tourist visa in order to enter the country. Interim foreign minister Xavier Lasso indicated Cubans will have to provide extra personal information on their visa application. Presumably their "special visa" is aimed at excluding persons planning to embark upon the long trip to the U. S. border. He explained that, "We are doing this to stop violations of human rights and even loss of lives." Lasso asked that the United revise its policy of awarding citizenship to Cubans who've just arrived there.

Two odd quirks of the story deserve attention. Although a Cuban citizen's presence in the United States is almost always legal, the process of entering may not be. The U. S. embassy in Havana, formerly the Interests Section, has held back on issuing entry visas with the result that many would - be migrants must rely on the CAA.

Additionally, the dominant U.S. media rarely mention the CAA, thus discouraging debate on what many see as a misbegotten and now archaic piece of legislation. Apparently the New York Times is continuing in that vein. In a detailed report on the affair in Costa Rica, the Times reporter does not name the law, but instead refers to "questions about American regulations that favor Cubans" and to "special migration rules."

Photo: A Costa Rican man tosses donated clothing to Cuban migrants outside the immigration office in Peñas Blancas, Costa Rica, Nov. 17. Cuban officials blamed the United States for instigating a surge in the number of Cuban migrants attempting to reach the U.S. through Central America amid ongoing efforts to normalize relations. Esteban Felix | AP