People Before Profit blog

Spain elections: Disappointment for the left, stalemate may continue

Thu, 30 Jun 2016 14:59:00 +0000

On June 26, Spanish voters went to the polls again to solve the deadlock that had come out of the December 20 2015 elections. In December, no party has gained enough seats in the lower house of the Spanish Parliament, the Cortes, to either form a government alone or as part of a coherent coalition. This time around, the results were a disappointment for the left, and forming a government may be just as difficult as before.

The Spanish election panorama is complicated, and various kinds of suspicions and animosities may have complicated the picture. The right is uniformly opposed to the national aspirations of Catalans, Basques, Galicians, Valencians, Canarians and other minorities, but the left-center is not united in favor of these aspirations. The elections reflect this messiness.

Election redux

In December 2015, the right wing People's Party of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy got the largest number of votes and parliamentary seats, but not nearly enough to even approach a parliamentary majority. So he went shopping for either a right wing coalition with the new Ciudadanos (Citizens') Party, or a right-center coalition with the Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE), Spain's main social democratic group. Both turned Rajoy down, demanding that as a condition for working with the People's Party, Rajoy, who is seen by many as especially corrupt, would have to step down as party leader and prime minister. So Rajoy had to report to the head of state, King Felipe VI, that he had not been able to form a government.

Next, the Socialist Workers' Party gave it a try, but also failed: The left wing PODEMOS Party, which came in third in the polls, wanted its secretary general, Pablo Iglesias, to be named vice Prime Minister, and did not want to jettison its alliance with left wing separatist parties in Catalonia and the Basque country. This was anathema for PSOE, who proposed a three way coalition of PSOE, Podemos and Ciudadanos, based on the limited goal of ousting Rajoy as Prime Minister. But PODEMOS refused, pointing out that Ciudadanos is just as right wing as the People's Party (with or without Rajoy) on important issues, including labor rights and austerity. So Rajoy remained as interim prime minister and June 26 was chosen as the date for a new election.

Podemos then attended to building new electoral alliances with other left wing parties. Most importantly, PODEMOS formed a coalition with the United Left (Izquierda Unida or IU) which itself is a united front structure involving the Spanish Communist Party and smaller left wing groups. The new group, Unidos Podemos ("United We Can") stressed opposition to the neo-liberal program of austerity and privatization that had characterized Rajoy's administration, while all parties denounced the very high level of corruption in the People's Party.

The People's Party and Ciudadanos responded with red baiting and scare tactics. In particular, the Spanish right tried to portray PODEMOS in general and Iglesias in particular as puppets of the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, and also stoked fears of communism going back to the days of the Franco dictatorship. In fact, an NGO associated with Iglesias had done consulting work for the Bolivarian government of Venezuela, and this was made out to be something sinister in a country whose leaders have been heavily involved in trying to destabilize Venezuela.

But in spite of this 21^st century McCarthyism versus 21^st century socialism, polls showed Unidos Podemos as positioned to perhaps overtake the PSOE as the second party in Spain. This would have made possible a left-center coalition of PSOE, Podemos and United Left. It would have created a situation roughly similar to the one in Portugal, where the Socialist Party, led by Prime Minister Antonio Costa, was able to form a government with the outside support of the Communist, Green and United Left parliamentary delegations. Costa's government quickly reversed some of the worst austerity measures that had been imposed by the previous right wing government, greatly angering the leadership of the European Union, but so far it retains strong mass support.

Iglesias also did well in campaign debates, and the scandals of the Rajoy administration did not let up for a minute. Not long before the election, a leaked phone conversation showed that Rajoy's interior minister, Jorge Fernandez Diaz, had conspired with the anti-fraud czar of Catalonia, Daniel de Alfonso, to fabricate smears against Catalan Nationalist parties of left and right. Although this conversation took place in 2014, it fueled a widespread perception of Rajoy and his team as being dirty and unscrupulous. It appeared also that Rajoy himself was involved in this skulduggery.

But when election returns came in, the left had to face disappointment. On a lower turnout than in December, Rajoy's People's Party increased its vote totals by 4.3 percent and its representation in the lower house by 14 seats (from 123 to 137). It also solidified its majority in the upper house, the Senate.

The PSOE gained a few votes (up .7 percent) but lost five seats, going from 90 seats to 85.

Unidos Podemos lost more than a million votes compared to the total votes of its component parties in December (3.4 percent down) but kept its total of 71 seats. Ciudadanos was down .8 percent compared to December, but was the biggest loser in seats, saying goodbye to eight of the 40 seats it had won in December.

Results for smaller and regional parties showed the Catalan left (Esquerra Republicana Catalana or ERC) keeping all 9 of its seats but losing a few popular votes. The Catalan nationalist right, the Democratic Convergence, or CDC, kept its 8 seats, but also lost some popular votes. In the Basque country, the left wing Basque nationalist party, Bildu, kept its two seats, but the more conservative Basque party, the PNV, lost one seat. The Canarian Nationalist Coalition and allies held onto their single seat.

Whence unity?

Why did this disappointing result for the left occur? The lower turnout as compared with December 2015 appears to have worked mostly against the left. This is the view of Alberto Garzon, an important leader of both the United Left and the Communist Party, who pointed out in a letter to his party membership that the decline in voting since December almost exactly coincides with their loss of votes. Also, the red baiting might have had some impact. Some have wondered if the shock caused by the referendum vote on Brexit, British exit from the European Union, might have had some influence, although it should be noted that none of the major parties in Spain were running on a platform which included leaving the European Union. But the whole of the Spanish left has been critical of the European Union's role in imposing neo-liberal austerity and privatization schemes on the poorer member countries, of which Spain is one. A general sense of uncertainty and worry caused by Brexit may have induced some voters to make less daring choices at the polls.

What happens now? It may be that a majority coalition can still not be formed. Rajoy will likely call on PSOE and Ciudadanos for coalition talks, but those two parties both say that a condition would be, at minimum, that Rajoy resign or be tossed overboard by the People's Party. This Rajoy is refusing to do. Thus, the saga continues.

Photo: Spain's acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy looks on as Podemos Party leader Pablo Iglesias walks past during the second of a two-day investiture debate at the Spanish parliament in Madrid, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. | Francisco Seco/AP

Cuba, the unifier, promotes peace in Colombia

Thu, 30 Jun 2016 10:00:00 +0000

The world is wracked by divisions. The United Nations does manifest unity, but otherwise jostling nations fill the landscape, oppressed peoples migrate toward oppression, racial groupings are at each other's throats, religious rivalries are legion, and social classes are divided.

Is there another way? Or, more precisely, do nations or peoples exist that, moving beyond local realities, create unity in the cause of peace?

Pope Francis thinks there's at least one. On his way to Mexico for a five-day visit in February, 2016, he stopped at the Jose Marti Airport in Havana. There, Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church, about to visit Latin American countries, was waiting. The two prelates talked and signed a 30 - point statement on common purposes. This was the first high-level contact between these two great denominations since the "Great Schism of 1054."

The meeting was over, and Pope Francis sought out Cuban President Raul Castro. "I don't want to leave," he said, "without expressing a sense of gratitude to Cuba, to the great Cuban People, and to their President, who is here." And, "If Cuba keeps on being so really available like this, it could become the capital of unity." President Castro assured Pope Francis that, "Cuba will continue supporting peace. And now the matter of Colombia remains."

52 years of civil war

In November 2012, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Colombian government began negotiations to end 52 years of war. The war has caused more than 200,000 Colombians to be killed and six million to be displaced from their land. Dissenting civilians often face violent repression, and 9000 political prisoners have accumulated.

The two sides looked to Cuba; by mid-2012 the government there had arrangements in place to host the talks. Cuba provided facilities, hospitality, transportation, communications, and general support for the negotiating teams. Cuba, with Norway, served as a "guarantor country" for the negotiations.

June 23 this year in Havana was the big day. The mood was both celebratory and serious as Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, FARC leader Timoleón Jiménez, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, the presidents of six other nations, assorted diplomats, and "special envoys" all gathered for the signing of an important document.

Negotiators had been dealing with a pre-determined five-point agenda. Agreements on all five were necessary so that a final accord could be signed. They had already reached agreement on the first four items, and on June 22 they announced they had agreed on point five, "End of Conflict." The signing of that agreement the next day established the certainty of a final accord. Peace was on the way.

"End of Conflict" was about how to monitor and verify the giving up of arms by FARC combatants, how they'd prepare for civilian life, and how attacks against them from paramilitaries would be prevented.

The signing was a watershed moment. Dignitaries on hand speaking to the gathering lavished praise on Cuba for its role in advancing the peace process. President Castro spoke of unity and peace.

"Peace will be victory for all Colombia, but also for all of 'Our America,'" he said. "The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) achieved, in its young history, the great milestone of proclaiming this region to be a Zone of Peace. The end of armed conflict in Colombia will be one more demonstration of the firm commitment of our peoples against the use of and threat of force and in favor of the peaceful resolution of controversies - Before differences, dialogue; before challenges, coordination."

Cuba's history as a unifier

Cuba's record speaks of bringing people together: from participation in Colombia's peace process, to the fostering of alliances and cooperation in Latin America and the Caribbean, to the work overseas of Cuban doctors, to Cuba's teaching of vast numbers of the world's young people.

Veteran Cuba watcher Andres Gomez explained recently that Cubans are confident: "Life in the country plays out 'calmly'... [and Cubans] uniquely, are the owners of their destiny and that's because, against wind and tide, they are the absolute owners of their homeland."

Cubans, he seems to be implying, know more about solidarity and collaboration than about the jostling and isolation so pervasive in the commercialized, industrialized world.

Meanwhile, in a Colombia without armed conflict, the watchword will be unity, says Carlos Lozano, editor of the Communist Party's Voz weekly newspaper. "The future of the left," he told an interviewer, "has to be unity that overcomes narrow-mindedness, sectarianism, power-plays, and parochialism. There won't be ideological unity because not all leftists think alike, but a common program that unifies for the sake of taking power is necessary. It's the challenge forced on us by political reality."

Photo: Cuba's President Raul Castro, center, encourages Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, left, and Commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia or FARC, Timoleon Jimenez to shake hands, in Havana, Cuba, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2015. | Desmond Boylan/AP

Germany: Drones and new tones

Mon, 27 Jun 2016 13:07:00 +0000

BERLIN - Military drones, like drone bees, do no legitimate work. But unlike drone bees, they can sting - terribly and brutally. Allegedly only "terrorists," in at least six countries, are targeted. But those executed so bloodily are neither tried nor judged. By the way, who are "terrorists?" They may be seen as patriots by their neighbors and, far too often, they are village civilians; women and children traumatized by the circling, buzzing menace in the air above them.

The men doing the targeting are far off and safe, mostly in the U.S., and due to the earth's curvature, their commands to circle and fire must be relayed to a location across the Atlantic. The main relay point is Ramstein Air Base, tucked away in an isolated corner of Germany near the French border. Many legal experts maintain that its presence defies German law.

On June 11, 5,000 people came by bus, train, car, a few by bicycle, defying nasty weather to circle the base and demand it's closing. This year the protesters, with their signs, rainbow flags, a few drums and umbrellas, had made serious preparations. They explained to local inhabitants that they were not wild hippies on a joy ride, but seriously concerned about world peace and Germany's role in either saving it - or endangering it. Many listened and agreed; some offered assistance.

A variety of peace groups organized the event that, in a church in nearby Saarland, heard speeches by LINKE (Left) party leader Oskar Lafontaine, an expert on military-civilian conversion from the Greens, even a well-known maverick Christian Democrat. Speakers from the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the French Mouvement de la Paix, CODEPINK, and Ray McGovern, a CIA analyst for 27 years now active in the peace movement also addressed the crowd. With the rain keeping some away, the "human chain" did not entirely encircle the big base, but this three-day protest against drones was perhaps the largest yet, anywhere, and a pledge was made to keep getting bigger and louder.

Some German peace advocates disagree on whether to lambaste U.S. military expansion primarily or to concentrate on "blood and iron" warriors in Germany. Logically, it would seem, the two cannot be separated; the U.S. is certainly the brawniest world power, with almost 800 military bases in over 70 countries and a military budget outweighing most other nations combined, including Russia and China. With rare exceptions Germany has been a loyal, closely aligned junior partner, with President Joachim Gauck (soon to retire) and Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen (perhaps thinking of promotion) both just as eager for military strength as some leading U.S. politicians.

Indeed, U.S. and German troops, plus a bundle from 22 other countries, 31,000 in all, rehearsed together very closely- and very close to Russia - in Poland. The maneuvers involved mass parachute jumps and tank-led river-crossings. They have been followed by another exercise, Saber Strike, now underway in the Baltic countries. Saber Strike is an annual event, though it is much larger this year having activated 10,000 troops from 13 countries.

Despite occasional pious disavowals, Polish president Andrzej Duda declared icily: "The aim of the exercise is clear, we are preparing for an attack." He must have meant this to be taken to mean a defense against an attack by Russia. Since Russia has made no threats or claims of any kind on Poland or the Baltic states, and while the Polish government does little else than vilify Russia (when it is not abridging press rights, clipping judicial autonomy or forbidding abortions), such close military cooperation among NATO members, to be increased at their July summit - in Poland - can cause more than a shudder in today's tense world.

But hold on! There has been a surprising new twist! Is the iron staple binding German and American foreign policy showing signs of rusting?

Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier startled almost everyone by saying, in an interview: "The one thing we shouldn't do now is inflame the situation with loud saber-rattling and warmongering." Did one of his words purposely recall Operation Saber Strike?

"Anyone who thinks a symbolic tank parade on the alliance's eastern border will bring security is wrong," he warned. "We would be well advised not to provide a pretext to renew an old confrontation."

Although in other sentences, printed a few days later, Steinmeier qualified his statement a bit, mentioning fears of Poland and the Baltic countries supposedly aroused by Putin's actions in Crimea and the Ukraine. The vocabulary he used broke previous No-No taboos in NATO and official German circles. Sure enough, some righteous warriors in Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, though linked in a coalition with Steinmeier, a Social Democrat, mounted an attack. Much of the media did the same. The bitterly aggressive anti-Russian wing of the Greens also climbed aboard to slam Steinmeier and his call for "exchange and dialogue" instead of military activity. A common line of attack was: "What? Is he calling us warmongers? How dare he?"

The ever eager NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg, also evoking fears of a threat which was never made, huffily tossed in more tinder: "Let me be clear: there will be more NATO troops in Poland after the Warsaw Summit, to send a clear signal that an attack on Poland will be considered an attack on the whole Alliance."

Why did Steinmeier dare to defy this official line? Has he seen the hopeful light of détente and disarmament? Vice-chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, his fellow Social Democrat, now plans a Moscow visit, certain to discuss European Union sanctions which hurt Russia but harshly shrink the earnings of countless German farmers and the auto makers, who want to sell and invest there. Was this a new pattern?

Maybe. The Social Democrats have watched their poll results drop to about 20 percent , a low point, and are desperately seeking ways to climb out of the slough. Other polls show that, despite the media, over 70 percent of the Germans favor a better approach to Russia. Putting two and two together is not hard even for Social Democrats still enjoying Cabinet armchairs with all the perks, but seeing elections looming in 2017.

Their Christian Democratic coalition partners are already hunting for new buddies. And, still well versed in arithmetic, SPD leaders can see that only with the Greens, now at 14 percent, and the LINKE (Left) party, at 9 percent, can they hope to forge a majority and keep those comfortable armchairs. They have a long tradition of turning the wheel toward portside before elections. Is this part of that old mold?

Regardless of their motives, everyone yearning for peaceful solutions can welcome this unexpected turn. But how should the LINKE party respond to moves that may end up resembling flirtation, despite all previous taboos? Should it consider joining with Social Democrats and Greens in a sort of "united front"- also aimed against the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), now registering about 11 percent in the polls? How wary must it remain, knowing how smoothly both Social Democrats and Greens forget election promises on peaceful foreign policies and economic issues? How many principles would the LINKE have to dilute or abandon to win those treasured cabinet armchairs in a federal government? Attempts on a state basis have never once gone well! The approaching city-state elections in Berlin in September may raise this question even sooner.

Certainly a requirement for a truly wise policy is to get people marching out on the streets, building strength and confidence. For issues close to their hearts they do just that: in five cities tens of thousands joined hands in a human chain to oppose racism and welcome the new refugees. Over 100,000 Berliners rode bicycles in a star-formation to the Brandenburg Gate to demand more and better bike paths. Far more showed up last year against the TTIP trade deal. Similar numbers, and more, are needed against drones and maneuvers like Saber Strike (better Saber-toothed?) and for decent jobs and pensions. In a few hours we shall learn the results of mass pressure in Britain (for better or worse), in a few weeks those of French workers and Spanish voters. More than a few Germans are watching with great interest and enthusiasm - maybe even taking ideas - from the courageous campaigns of Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders.

Photo: Peace activists form a human chain on the street leading towards the U.S. air base during the "Stopp-Ramstein" stop lethal drone strikes campaign in Ramstein, Germany, June 11. Ramstein Air Base is used to relay flight control data. Oliver Dietze | dpa via AP

New, but partial, peace agreement signals war’s end in Colombia

Mon, 27 Jun 2016 12:54:00 +0000

The media and commentators used expressions like "An historic step," "Good bye to war," or "Last day of the war" to explain why the signing June 23 of an agreement on peace in Colombia warranted a celebratory gathering in Havana, Cuba. Negotiators for the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - People's Army (FARC-EP) have been working there for almost four years. They had ploughed through four agenda items and now had reached agreement on one more. But it was the last one needed before a final agreement could be signed and before a war lasting 52 years could be ended.

Negotiators had registered agreement on agrarian reforms, illegal drugs, political participation for the guerrillas, and "victims" - making amends and punishing perpetrators. Now they were finished with the "End of Conflict" part. Observers see a final agreement signed within two months, and in Colombia.

The multi-faceted agreement signed June 23 covers: the hand-over of arms by the insurgents; preparation of guerrillas for entry into civilian life; protection of their security through removing deadly threats posed by paramilitaries; and the Colombian people's endorsement of the final agreement. Elements of this agreement merge with those of a sixth agenda item, which is 'Implementation, verification, and endorsement."

Cuban President Raul Castro that day presided over an emotionally- charged assembly at which Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and FARC leader Timoleón Jiménez signed the agreement. Representatives of two guarantor countries, Cuban diplomat Rodolfo Benítez and Norwegian Foreign Minister Borge Brende did likewise as did the representatives of the "accompanying countries," Chilean President Michelle Bachelet and Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Special guests included Danilo Medina, president both of the Dominican Republic and the CELAC regional alliance, President Salvador Sánchez Cerén of El Salvador, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, and special envoys Bernard Aronson and Eamon Gilmore of the United States and European Union, respectively.

Speaking at the gathering, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon lauded Colombia's peace process as validating the "perseverance of all those ... who work to end violent conflict not through the destruction of the adversary, but through the patient search for compromise." As requested by the negotiating teams, the United Nations Security Council had earlier approved a political mission of international observers to be in Colombia to monitor and verify the process of disarming the FARC - EP.

The agreement on "end of conflict" calls for each FARC guerrilla to be transferred to one of 23 "vereda"- sized "zones" located throughout the country, or to one of eight 10 - acre - size encampment areas. (A "vereda" is Colombia's smallest territorial administrative unit.) This will happen within five days of the signing of a final agreement. The purpose of the zones is "to guarantee the bilateral and definitive ceasefire and end of hostilities and the handing over of arms, and to begin the process of reincorporation [of FARC combatants] into civilian life."

The U.N. mission will be working in these zones, assisted by FARC and Colombian Army personnel and observers from the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC). The teams will destroy "unstable" FARC military equipment and catalogue, process, and store the rest. Arms will end up in containers whose keys stay with U.N. personnel. A 1km-wide security area will surround each zone, with access being controlled by the Mission.

Meanwhile, FARC members will be preparing to enter civilian life; schooling will be provided, if needed. What happens in the zones will take place over 150 days. After that, over the next month, former FARC fighters will be leaving to rejoin civilian life. The zones will disappear and a "bilateral and definitive end to hostilities" will follow.

Joint Communique No. 76, issued by the negotiating teams on June 23, provides voluminous information on the agreement. Of special note are plans for "implementing measures necessary for intensifying actions against organizations and criminal behaviors threatening the construction of peace." The reference is to steps proposed for countering the paramilitary threat. Paramilitaries had previously slaughtered FARC combatants once they were civilians. They've violently assaulted members of Colombia's social movements and political opposition groups.

Provisions of the agreement take effect within five days of the signing of a final agreement, which needs to be endorsed by the Colombian people. The negotiators determined that a plebiscite would suffice for that purpose, although FARC negotiators had called for a constituent assembly. Colombia's Constitutional Court is preparing to rule on the legitimacy of endorsement through a plebiscite.

News reports say the Court's decision will come approximately a month after a final agreement is signed. How the agreement on "end of conflict" will be implemented if the plebiscite fails is unclear.

On learning June 22 that the civil war would soon be ending, demonstrators filled streets in Bogota and other cities. According to Prensa Latina, the Patriotic March coalition of social and political movements is preparing for a national mobilization - a "people's fiesta" - in July to celebrate the coming of peace and to build support for the plebiscite. There will be a national march on July 15.

The prensarural.org (or "rural press) news service, sympathetic to the cause of marginalized rural peoples, wrote in an editorial that "the dreams of hundreds of small farmers who took up arms - [the FARC, that is] - will be a reality now: a new and inclusive Colombia where confrontation will be with ideas and with social struggles through social mobilization and community empowerment."

Carlos Lozano, director of the Communist Party's Voz weekly newspaper, pointed out that, "The state must change its ways and adjust to new democratic conditions of the post-conflict era. It will have to accept the opposition and also questioning of the status quo, as allowed by the Constitution. It must abandon the exercise of power through violence."

Mexico's La Jornada news service warned of "a most dangerous stage ahead" for the peace process. The editorialist was thinking of "provocations [instigated] by the principal beneficiaries of the violence - ex- President Alvaro Uribe and paramilitary groups he is associated with and some recalcitrant sectors of the traditional oligarchy and the top military commanders."

These commentators and others pointed out that war still may not be ending in Colombia, even after the FARC demobilizes; this is because the government's talks with guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (ELN) have stalled.

The subject at hand is a war that took over 200,000 lives, displaced six million rural inhabitants, created 9000 political prisoners, led to serious repression within Colombian society, has 450,000 Colombian soldiers and police under arms now, swallowed up $10 billion in U.S. taxpayer money since 2000, and attracted seven U.S. military bases.

Surely, one supposes, news about that war's coming demise is "fit to print," as per the famous New York Times slogan.

However, the Times in reporting the June 23 event in Havana - attended by the presidents of seven countries - saw fit to print only 51 words the next day. They showed up as the caption accompanying three images appearing on page seven.

Photo: A boy holds a sign that reads in Spanish "children celebrate peace" during celebrations over the agreement. | Fernando Vergara/AP

Finnish Communist Party: Make people the purpose of politics

Fri, 24 Jun 2016 14:02:00 +0000

The Finnish Communist Party (SKP or CPF) held its Congress on June 4-5 in Turku, Finland. A hundred delegates from around the country discussed the challenges facing the Finnish people from militarization, attacks on social programs from the right-wing government, and environmental devastation in the Arctic. They expressed solidarity with the Saami people of the Far North and called for more self-governance for them. Also of importance was the impact on Finnish society of the current refugee influx, which is met with racist attacks from the right.

Party Chair JP (Juha-Pekka) Väisänen in his opening report stated that "For the working class, Finnish society is nowadays developing at the beck and call of big money and big business. The political elite and influential parties in Parliament have either bent to the logic of the market economy or have simply given it a blank cheque." He went on to criticize some on the Finnish left who participate in the government: "Not one of the influential parties in Parliament has clearly distanced itself from policies continuing the transfer of incomes from the poor to the rich. This is because the name of the parliamentary game is to get into government at any price whatsoever."

He talked about the broad cooperation with many forces for change that has brought thousands of demonstrators into the streets of Helsinki and other cities "to protest because the hand of right-wing policy has sneaked into their wallets and the lack of basic social security, health services and education." He noted that "The developmental problems of Finland and the rest of the world will not be tackled by subjugating politics to the markets, by government austerity policies and people able only to choose differently named parties from the same neoliberal policy drive. We need politics where people are not just instruments but are the protagonists and purpose of politics."

Väisänen called attention to working with others: "The CPF is a member of the radical family of the European Left. We also naturally have bilateral relations with communist and workers' parties in the Nordic countries, other parts of Europe and the world."

The Congress discussed the rights of refugees in the face of right-wing attacks and efforts to reduce or limit benefits to those who often come to Finland as a result of neoliberal policies and imperialist wars and conflicts.

There were international guests from 16 countries and parties, including the Communist Party USA, many European and Scandinavian communist parties, and ambassadors from Cuba and Palestine. In bringing greetings to the Congress (full list here), Marc Brodine from the CPUSA told the delegates that "The world faces a series of interlocking crises: economic, social, political, and environmental. The capitalist system is incapable of permanent solutions to any of these, though struggles to provide greater services and protections can make important differences to working people. At the same time, reactionary politicians are attacking all gains won through past struggles. Efforts are intensifying to roll back any and all progress made by unions and through social struggles, in our country and throughout Europe - as well as intensifying attacks on immigrants and refugees." He highlighted the struggle to protect and extend democracy, under attack in the U.S. from right-wing politicians and groups, pointed to the fascist dangers inherent in Donald Trump's campaign for president, and hailed the signs of positive political change exemplified by the Sanders campaign and other people's struggles.

The party congress discussed the political situation, endorsed a plan to update the political program of the party during the upcoming three-year term between party congresses, and elected a new Central Committee. JP (Juha-Pekka) Väisänen was reelected Chair. He is also a member of the Council of Chairpersons and the Executive Board of the Party of the European Left.

The Congress approved resolutions opposing neoliberal policies of the European Union, on the direction toward a socialist Finland, for peace and against imperialist wars, for ecological and social sustainability, solidarity and cooperation with immigrants, support for mass movements, and on improvement of social security and reduction of inequality in health and access to health services.

Following the Congress, the Finnish Party co-sponsored, with the Party of the European Left, a conference in Helsinki called the Arctic Initiative, which addressed the challenges facing Arctic nations and peoples from militarization, development, and climate change, and called for greater autonomy for the indigenous peoples of the Arctic, including the Saami people of Finland's Far North.

Photo: JP (Juha-Pekka) Väisänen, Chair of the Finnish Communist Party.

British far right celebrates Brexit vote, Trump offers congratulations

Fri, 24 Jun 2016 13:31:00 +0000

In Britain, the anti-immigrant supporters of UK Independence Party (UKIP) leader Nigel Farage are popping open the champagne bottles today. In a 52 to 48 percent result, voters decided in favor of "Brexit", or a "British exit," from the European Union. In the hours after the tally became clear, British Prime Minister David Cameron announced his resignation. The British pound took a nosedive. Stock markets around the world entered turmoil. And the government of Scotland, where an overwhelming majority of voters opted to stay in the EU, announced its intention to hold a new referendum on independence from Britain.

It was an earthshaking event that few outside of the UK seemed to anticipate until it actually happened. In his victory speech, Farage told cheering supporters that "the dawn is breaking on an independent United Kingdom." Known for his racist attacks on Britain's immigrant population, Farage triumphantly announced, "We won without a single bullet being fired." He said June 23 will go down in history as the UK's Independence Day.

In Scotland to open a new golf course, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump offered his congratulations to the Leave side, saying, "Basically, they took back their country. That's a great thing." In an official statement issued on Facebook later, Trump echoed Farage's talking points and said that Britons had "declared their independence from the European Union, and have voted to reassert control over their own politics, borders, and economy." In November, he predicted that the American people would follow a similar path and vote to "re-declare their independence."

The Brexit referendum was a campaign which saw an intermingling of racism and legitimate complaints about the EU's lack of democracy on one side, and a mix of arguments that ranged from unmitigated praise for the European Union to grudging acceptance of the need to "Remain, but reform" on the other. The immediate winners of the Brexit vote, however, appear to be the right wing in Britain and across Europe, with Trump tagging along in the hope of boosting his own campaign.

The context for Brexit

The referendum was held in an atmosphere of continued economic stagnation and growing anti-immigrant sentiment. With the decline of the old neo-Nazi British National Party, Farage's UKIP has capitalized on the opening on Britain's far right to present a sleek, modernized version of right-wing nationalism and created a movement that has put the squeeze on the center-right Conservative Party.

In the elections for the European Parliament held in 2014, UKIP captured first place in Britain, beating out both Labour and the Conservatives - the first time one of the two major parties failed to emerge as victor in a national election in more than a century.

In a bid to outflank the growing strength of the Eurosceptic forces and in a concession to anti-immigrant and anti-EU sentiment in his own party, Conservative leader David Cameron pledged to hold a referendum on EU membership if his party was re-elected in 2015. After securing a majority in that contest, Cameron followed through on his promise, secure in the belief that Britons would never actually vote to leave Europe.

It appears that a large number of people were taken in by UKIP's misleading campaign, however, such as its claim that Britain sends £350 million a week to the EU, money which it implied could be used to fund the National Health Service. With such cynical populism, it was no surprise that polls in the lead-up to the referendum were tightening. Almost none, though, predicted a victory for the Leave forces.

Tensions were raised further in the days just before the vote when Labour Party MP Jo Cox was assassinated. Her killer reportedly shouted "Britain first!" when he shot and stabbed her in broad daylight on the street in the city of Birstall on June 16. When he appeared in court, the assassin, Thomas Mair, told the judge that his name was "Death to traitors, freedom for Britain."

In the end, Cameron's gamble failed. His attempt to co-opt the anti-immigrant forces to his right only succeeded in emboldening them further.

The EU itself is part of the problem

Though the far right garners the most benefit immediately from Brexit, this does not mean that much of the criticism that has been made of the European Union in this campaign is untrue.

For the most part, it is undemocratic to the core. The whole constitutional and legal apparatus of the European Union is designed with the interests of financial and corporate capital in mind. Its social welfare compacts are weak and toothless; the center-left dream of a "Social Europe" faded long ago.

Over the last several years, people across the continent have watched as the EU Commission, the European Central Bank, and the IMF - the "Troika" - have enforced austerity and economic hardship on one country after another. Greece has been brought to the point of ruin. Italy saw its democracy subverted. Portugal and Spain continue to face intense hardship even after following the diktats of Brussels and Berlin.

With manufacturing decimated, social services in decline, and wages falling, it was indeed hard for many working class Britons to see what good comes from membership in the European Union. The cosmopolitan glitz and glamor of London's financial district remain out of reach for millions of people throughout the UK.

These legitimate critiques of the EU provoked a number of responses from British labor and the left regarding the referendum. Many socialist and left organizations pushed for a "Lexit," or Left exit, vote. The Morning Star, the newspaper close to the Communist Party of Britain, for instance, told its readers that a vote to leave "will not bring about socialism," but said "it would be a step towards restoring democratic control of our economy, and would remove an obstacle to progress."

The leadership of Britain's biggest trade unions, however, encouraged a Remain vote, saying that the Conservative government would "negotiate away our rights" in the EU extraction process. In an open letter, the heads of ten major unions said that, "After much debate and deliberation we believe that the social and cultural benefits of remaining in the EU far outweigh any advantages of leaving." The gains secured while working in coalition with European trade union partners in the 1980s and 1990s, they said, "continue to underpin and protect working rights for British people."

Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn put forward a more nuanced position of "Remain, but reform," which acknowledged the EU's many shortcomings but argued that quitting the Union would not solve the problems of Britain's workers. Just before the vote, he predicted "a bonfire" of labor rights, saying that voters had to remember it will be the Conservatives who will negotiate the terms of the separation. "They'd dump rights on equal pay, working time, annual leave...and on maternity pay as fast as they could get away with it," he said in a speech in April.

Under current conditions, it is not clear how either a "Lexit" or "Remain, but reform" option would have been given practical reality. But with a win for the Leave forces, it now seems a moot point. There will be no "Left exit" from the EU, nor will there be a progressive reform of its institutions at this time.

For now, the right has emerged as the victor. Xenophobia and racist rhetoric dominate discussions of why the Leave campaign succeeded, and, at least in the short term, it will be hard for the left to paint this as anything but a loss.

Consequences

The full consequences of the Brexit vote are hard to predict at this time. The referendum will now trigger a two-year period of negotiations over the terms of Britain's departure. The immediate economic fallout is obvious, with world markets engulfed in a sea of red. The pound has fallen to a thirty-year low, and investors around the globe are reconsidering their positions in Britain.

The survival of the United Kingdom itself, in its current form, is now in question. Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister of Scotland, has signaled that a new referendum on Scottish independence from the UK will likely be held. 62 percent of voters in Scotland voted to remain in the EU, and Sturgeon said it was "democratically unacceptable" that Scotland should be forced to leave Europe against its will. Leaders of Sinn Fein, meanwhile, have already issued calls for a "united Ireland" referendum to bring Northern Ireland out of the UK and into a union with the Republic of Ireland, which is an EU member state.

There are also signs of demographic divisions in the country, as millennials voted Remain by a wide margin - 64 percent of those aged 25-29 and 61 percent for those aged 30-34. The Leave vote accelerated as age went up, with nearly two-thirds of those over 65 wanting out. Similarly, a rural-urban split was clearly visible. Education level was also closely correlated, with graduates opting to stay with the EU in larger numbers. Stand-in indicators for class, such as being in skilled or unskilled employment, suggest that many constituency areas considered working class voted to leave.

The European project is now also threatened, as the right wing in countries like the Netherlands, Poland, France, and others will be emboldened to push their own campaigns for closing their borders to immigrants and leaving the EU. What will happen to the thousands of European nationals currently working in Britain is unknown; will there be an order to leave or can some kind of labor mobility agreement be worked out?

The UK being one of the world's major economies, the economic instability created by the referendum could be long-lasting, and it threatens to spill into other regions - including the United States.

Leadership of the Conservative Party in Britain will now likely fall into the hands of someone even further to the right than David Cameron; the name of former London mayor Boris Johnson is already being suggested. For Jeremy Corbyn, he may face a non-confidence motion from New Labour MPs who feel he was not strong enough in campaigning for Remain.

Today, the "take Britain back" forces of Nigel Farage have carried the day. Here across the pond in America, Trump will try to capitalize on the victory to boost his own anti-immigrant and nationalist campaign for the presidency. A new situation has unfolded and the terrain ahead on both sides of the Atlantic is anything but clear.

Photo: British politician and leader of the UKIP party Nigel Farage holds up a placard as he launches his party's campaign for Britain to leave the EU on May 20, 2016. | Alastair Grant/AP

U.N. Decolonization Committee lambasts U.S. on Puerto Rico

Fri, 24 Jun 2016 12:06:00 +0000

The United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization met on Monday, June 20 and discussed the situation of the U.S.-controlled island nation of Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico is not officially on the Committee's list of "non self-governing territories" whose colonial status requires a U.N. monitored plan for decolonization, but the dramatic new developments with the Puerto Rican economy, and a deeply flawed plan in the U.S. Congress to "rescue" the island, may change this situation.

The Committee heard testimony from numerous people, Puerto Rican and others, on the situation of the island. The speakers represented the three major positions on the question of Puerto Rico's status. Although the largest number were supporters of complete independence and national sovereignty for Puerto Rico, there were also speakers who favor the continuation of the current "Commonwealth" (Estado Libre Asociado) relationship, or even statehood - that Puerto Rico become the 51^st state of the United States. They had in common that none of them had any use for the current way that the U.S. runs Puerto Rico, or for the PROMESA act which is going through Congress that is supposed to solve the current sharp economic crisis.

One after the other, they denounced the U.S. relationship to Puerto Rico as blatant colonialism. Several recommended that Puerto Rico be listed once more as a "non self-governing territory." If this were to happen, Puerto Rico, with its resident population of 3.6 million people, would be by far the largest territory on this list (the runner-up being Western Sahara, currently struggling for independence from Morocco, with a population of under 600,000).

The current governor of Puerto Rico, Alejandro García Padilla, of the pro-Commonwealth People's Democratic Party, spoke to the Committee and accused the U.S. Supreme Court of having violated the autonomy rights of the Puerto Rican people when it ruled, on June 13, that Puerto Rico has no right to create its own bankruptcy laws, but must obey the dictates of the U.S. Congress in faraway Washington, D.C. This situation is the result of a 1984 law passed by Congress (not by the Puerto Rican Legislative Assembly). García Padilla pointed out that in 1952, the Puerto Ricans were authorized by the U.S. Congress to adopt their own constitution, which was accepted through a referendum. In the past, said the governor, the U.S. had convinced the UN Committee on Decolonization that Puerto Rico was governed by a free mutual agreement between its own government and that of the U.S., so was not a colony. The Supreme Court's decision indicates that this is not really the case.

María de Lourdes Santiago, a senator in the Puerto Rican Legislative Assembly and Vice President of the leftwing Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP), as well as her party's candidate for governor in this year's elections, denounced the financial control board being imposed on Puerto Rico by the U.S. Congress as part of the PROMESA Act. "The tax control board has absolute power over our country," she said. This refers to the Financial Control Board which, under PROMESA, will be composed of seven persons not chosen by the people of Puerto Rico or its elected officials, and which will nevertheless have absolute control over budgetary decisions in Puerto Rico.

A number of other issues were raised by the speakers. The Jones Act, imposed on Puerto Rico by the U.S., prevents the island nation from finding the most inexpensive shipping choices, in a country which imports 85 percent of its own food, and many other things. Others pointed out that Puerto Rico is shortchanged on Medicare and Medicaid payments. Some speakers denounced the entire model of development imposed on Puerto Rico by the U.S.as unsustainable: Everything came to depend on attracting U.S. companies to invest in the island on the basis of tax breaks; when these were allowed to elapse in 2006 many of those companies decamped in search of places where they could make higher profits, putting the Puerto Rican economy into a tailspin from which it has not recovered. This is now leading to high unemployment, increased poverty, and radical cuts to the social safety net. Many Puerto Ricans are emigrating to the U.S. mainland for jobs, education and opportunities.

Though Puerto Rico's constitution has abolished the death penalty, the U.S. government continues to claim its right to impose this penalty in Puerto Rico for federal crimes, and such trials are carried out in English, although 98 percent of Puerto Ricans speak Spanish as their first language.

Many of the speakers demanded freedom for imprisoned Puerto Rican independence activist Oscar Lopez Rivera. His daughter, Clarissa López, New York Coordinator to Free Oscar López, made an eloquent statement about the way the U.S. has used violent methods to keep its control over Puerto Rico.

Several speakers added to their plea for the release of Oscar López a plea for the release of Ana Belen Montes, a woman of Puerto Rican ancestry and a former Central Intelligence Agency analyst, who is currently serving a long prison sentence for proving Cuba with vital information on U.S. actions against that socialist nation.

Representatives of nations serving on the Committee discussed the situation, in every single case denouncing the colonial status of Puerto Rico. Comments were made by representatives of Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Syria, the Community of Caribbean and Latin American States, and the Non-Aligned Movement. Cuba introduced a resolution, approved by the Committee, which calls for the UN Special Committee on Decolonization to take up the Puerto Rico issue once more. The resolution insists that the U.S. "assume its responsibility to expedite a process that would allow the people of Puerto Rico to exercise fully their right to self-determination and independence" and "move forward with a process that allows the Puerto Rican people to take decisions in a sovereign manner, and to address their urgent economic and social needs, including unemployment, marginalization, insolvency and poverty." The Committee's resolution also called for President Obama to release Oscar López Rivera, and expressed "deep concern over actions carried out against Puerto Rican independence activists and encouraged investigations of those actions, in cooperation with the relevant authorities." The resolution also called for the U.S. to undertake a complete cleanup of the island of Vieques and the municipality of Ceiba, two places in Puerto Rico where U.S. military activities have left a legacy of environmental contamination.

Meanwhile, Puerto Rico faces a debt payment of 2 billion dollars on July 1 and will not be able to pay it. This is being used to force the island to accept the fiscal control board which so many speakers at the UN Committee hearings denounced. The board is part of the PROMESA bill, HR 5278, which, although Governor García Padilla supports it, has been denounced by every single major candidate for governor of Puerto Rico. It passed the House on June 9 by a vote of 297 to 127, with 11 not voting, and now is awaiting action by the U.S. Senate. In addition to imposing the fiscal control board, PROMESA allows delayed payment to some hedge funds and other bondholders, but provides no U.S. taxpayer funds to Puerto Rico.

Revolution within the revolution: Vietnam, Cuba move toward LGBTQ equality

Thu, 23 Jun 2016 10:04:00 +0000

Vietnam and Cuba, two countries that often receive a lot of flak in the mainstream corporate press (especially when it comes to conversations around human rights and political liberties) have been inching down the road toward LGBTQ equality lately. Events in Orlando the past week and a half call for an evaluation of where the movement is at, what has been achieved, and the work still to be done, both domestically and internationally.

Like most modern societies, both Vietnam and Cuba have spotty or even downright regressive histories when it comes to LGBTQ issues. But as countries that are claiming to be building socialism and committed to the ending of oppression in all its forms, they provide interesting cases of governments and peoples evolving together in a rapidly-changing world.

Homosexuality in Vietnam: Unnamed and unmentioned

Though modern Vietnam has had few explicit legal restrictions on same-sex sexual activity or regulations mandating unequal status for sexual minorities, neither has it had any legal protections for these persecuted groups. Like many Asian societies, official adherence to conservative values and traditional notions of the family have governed surface-level expressions of gender and sexual identity.

When the HIV/AIDS crisis exploded in the latter decades of the twentieth century, the government was quick to attribute it to poor moral choices. In line with this perspective, the state concentrated its prevention efforts on young drug users but left unmentioned - and untreated - the ways in which the epidemic was ravaging the group of men who have sex with men (whether the latter identified as gay, straight, or anything else). A semi-official state of neglect and willful ignorance prevailed.

Attempts to solemnize unregistered same-sex weddings in the late 1990s also met with mixed reactions from the state. A male couple held a ceremony in Ho Chi Minh City in 1997 to the consternation of local administrators. One city official said, "It should be publicly condemned." When approached by news agencies, however, the police responded that there was no legal framework under which the two could be charged. A similar attempt the following year by a lesbian couple in the province of Vinh Long, however, was the target of official sanction. In that case, the Ministry of Justice intervened and ordered the annulment of the union, saying it was "illegal and runs counter to the morals and traditional customs of the Vietnamese nation." A law was passed three months after their wedding officially banning same-sex unions.

Even as late as 2002, a report published in a government newspaper declared that homosexuality was a "social evil." Issued by the Ministry of Labour, War Invalids, and Social Affairs, it lamented the fact that homosexuals, with their "eccentric behavior," had infiltrated industries such as tourism, restaurants, and bars. Media coverage of the report noted that this "social evil" was on par with such maladies as drug use, prostitution, and the spreading of disease.

A rapid about-face

It was clear that the statement did not, however, represent a consensus view. According to reports, the newspaper of the Communist Youth League responded critically to the government's perspective, stating "some people are born gay, just as some people are born left-handed."

It was only in 2006, when the HIV rate among gay men in Hanoi was estimated to have reached a shockingly high 20 percent, that the National Assembly voted to add homosexuals to its list of groups targeted for HIV education and prevention. This shift in government policy actually helped to spark a more coherent LGBTQ movement in the country. HIV education programs became the places where gay men and transgender persons, in particular, first began to network outside of underground bars or clubs. They became the genesis for Vietnam's current young LGBTQ movement.

Since those days of official neglect and occasional condemnation in the 1990s and early 2000s, the country has seen a quick turnaround on LGBTQ issues. The spark for that change was provided by a confusion in the courts. When Vietnam's judiciary had no idea how to rule in cases involving child custody, property, and inheritance after same-sex couples separated, it turned to the government to provide legal direction.

The Ministry of Health conducted a review of the Law on Marriage and the Family in 2012, but legislators were unable to reach a consensus on solving this legally ambiguous situation. The justice minister at the time, Ha Hung Cuong, however, expressed the view that it was "unacceptable to create social prejudice against the homosexual community."

By late 2014, a compromise formula was reached that saw the law banning same-sex marriages repealed, leaving couples free to hold wedding ceremonies. It did not, however, grant the same legal rights and marital recognition enjoyed by straight couples. Taking effect on New Year's Day 2015, it was certainly a move forward though, especially when compared to the situation of just a few years prior.

Nguyen Anh Tuan, the head of a gay tourist agency in Hanoi, told NBC News, "It's not perfect... It's not completely there but it is a great step in the right direction." He continued, saying, "Vietnam has always adapted and by learning we become stronger individuals, families, and country. I think everyone would agree Vietnam is a quick learner." His industry is certainly one that will be helped if the country is able to craft a more hospitable image internationally.

In late 2015, the National Assembly took another big step when it voted 282-84 to allow persons who have undergone gender reassignment surgery to register their legal identity under the gender of their choice. It is widely seen as a step toward the legalization of gender reassignment procedures in Vietnam. Those seeking the procedure must currently travel to other countries, such as Thailand. One LGBTQ leader, Nguyen Hai Yen, praised the government's move, saying, "Now people accept there is a transgender community, their legitimate rights will be ensured."

The parliament said its actions "meet the demands of a part of society...in accordance with international practice, without countering the nation's traditions." Its statement was a symbol of the ongoing evolution of how LGBTQ issues are understood in Vietnam.

Cuba after the Revolution: No paradise for gays

An even more complicated relationship between the gay community and the socialist government has prevailed in Cuba since the time of the 1959 revolution. Homophobia and heterosexism were already the norm in pre-revolutionary Cuba, as demonstrated by a harsh 1930 Public Ostentation Law which penalized "habitual homosexual acts," "scandalous indecent behavior," and "ostentatious displays of homosexuality in public."

Enforcement of this law was actually stepped up in the initial decades after the overthrow of U.S.-backed dictator, Fulgencio Batista. Throughout the 1960s and 70s, there were waves of official persecution visited upon the gay population in Cuba. As in many other socialist countries, homosexuality was viewed as a degenerative leftover inherited from bourgeois society. "The social pathological character of homosexual deviations" was targeted for elimination by the first National Congress on Education and Culture in 1971. The meeting, attended by Fidel Castro, declared that "all manifestations of homosexual deviations are to be firmly rejected and prevented from spreading." Government workers found themselves unemployed if they were discovered to be homosexual, gay artists faced censorship, and many more were imprisoned for homosexual sex acts.

For a three-year period (1965-68), gay men were arrested and sent to labor in camps that went by the name UMAP, or Military Units to Aid Production. Designed as alternatives to military conscription for those who were conscientious objectors or found unfit for other reasons, the UMAPs became de facto prisons for Cuba's gay population.

The camps were only closed after Fidel himself supposedly went undercover along with members of the Union of Young Communists (UJC) to investigate the treatment experienced by internees. In an interview with Cuban author Ignacio Ramonet in 2006, Castro would say the UMAPs weren't intended to be places of internment or punishment, but "after a visit I discovered the distortion in some places...you can't deny that there were prejudices against homosexuals." Though hardly a full mea culpa, such a grudging admission did represent a change for the Cuban leader, who rarely ceded ground in the face of critique.

Even with the shuttering of the camps, homosexuality remained legally forbidden. A slow thaw began in 1975 though, when the Supreme Court of Cuba ruled workplace discrimination against gays would no longer be allowed. Decriminalization (but not legalization) of same-sex relations followed shortly after in 1979. The Mariel Boatlift of 1980, however, was another dark spot on the treatment of gays. Many homosexuals were among the small number of so-called "deviants" cast off that year. The latter part of the decade was a time of creeping advances in the cultural field, with the gradual appearance of literature and other materials referencing gay subject matter. In 1988, the Public Ostentation Act was finally repealed.

As in Vietnam, it was young communists who led the way in pushing deeper critiques of official policy. In 1992, the UJC passed a resolution condemning discrimination on the basis of sexuality. The following year, public education campaigns against homophobia were conducted for the first time. Fidel announced he did not consider homosexuality to be "a phenomenon of degeneration," and declared his absolute opposition to "any form of repression, contempt, scorn, or discrimination with regard to homosexuals." It was quite a turnaround from his 1965 declaration that no homosexual could ever embody "the conditions and requirements of a true Revolutionary, a true Communist militant."

Today, another Castro leads the way

How far Cuba has advanced in the intervening years is evidenced by the fact that just last month, Mariela Castro, the daughter of current president Raúl Castro and niece of Fidel, led the march in Havana's biggest LGBTQ pride parade to date. The event has become a regular fixture in the capital city's calendar lately. For several years, Mariela has directed Cuba's National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX), where she has spearheaded campaigns for sexual healthcare and the protection of sexual minority rights.

A straight woman, she is hailed by some as the founder of the modern gay rights movement in Cuba. A member of the National Assembly, she has repeatedly proposed legislation to institute equal legal recognition for same-sex couples, with the backing of the Federation of Cuban Women and the Federation of Cuban Jurists.

She told a San Francisco audience four years ago that, "We first proposed marriage, but legal scholars, and some Communist Party members, were up in arms. So as not to lose the fight, we proposed equal recognition of same-sex couples." The campaign to pass the legislation has not yet prevailed, but when passed, it will not only grant relationship rights, but also permanently enshrine discrimination protections for LGBTQ persons.

Gains have been made in other areas, though. 2008 saw the success of a push to include gender reassignment surgery as a covered procedure under Cuba's public healthcare system.

The rhetoric from the top levels of the Communist Party and the state have now also officially embraced the cause of LGBTQ equality. According to Mariela, her father Raúl is on board with the programs and causes espoused by CENESEX.

And in perhaps the ultimate symbolic turn from the past, in 2010 Fidel Castro publicly accepted his share of blame for the Revolution's early persecution of gays. Speaking to a Mexican journalist, he admitted there had been great injustices, and announced, "If someone is responsible, it's me." Two years later, Adela Hernandez, taking a seat in the municipal government of the city of Cabarien in Villa Clara, became Cuba's first transgender person elected to public office.

Revolutions within revolutions

Vietnam and Cuba have each traversed uneven paths on the road toward LGBTQ equality. In different ways, they have gone from societies that either persecuted or neglected their sexual minority populations to ones that are embracing ever-more progressive legislation in their interests.

Further, both countries have become leaders on the LGBTQ front within their regions. In conservative and traditional Southeast Asia, Vietnam is setting the pace and upstaging some of its more economically-developed neighbors. Cuba, meanwhile, is working to shed the oppressive mindsets and laws inherited from its own pre-revolutionary past and which still characterize too many countries in the Caribbean.

Each of these two nations is in the midst of a revolution within the revolution, perhaps moving closer to the realization of their declared socialist aspirations of a society where exploitation and oppression of any kind are relegated to the past.

Photo: Top panel: Participants in a 2014 pride parade ride through the streets of Hanoi, where the annual event takes the form of a bicycle rally (VietPride). Bottom panel: Mariela Castro (center) participates in a pride parade with Cuba's LGBTQ community in Havana in May 2015. | Desmond Boylan/AP

Mexico teachers on the barricades: Protests result in death and injury

Wed, 22 Jun 2016 12:41:00 +0000

All of southern Mexico is on fire with protest demonstrations after the government sent in heavily armed troops, gendarmes and police to suppress demonstrations against a neo-liberal educational "reform" being pushed by right-wing President Enrique Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). At writing there are unconfirmed reports that between 9 and 12 demonstrators have been killed with many more wounded and others arrested.

The clash on June 19 happened when army troops and federal and state police and gendarmes tried to remove a barricade in the town of Nochixtlán, state of Oaxaca, which had been set up by teachers and their allies on the road that connects Oaxaca City, the state capital, with Mexico City. The government's operatives opened fire on the protesters with live ammunition.

At first, this was denied by government representatives, but when video and eyewitness evidence surfaced that clearly showed the opposite. There were also clashes with possible fatalities in the towns of Juchitán, Tierra Blanca and Oaxaca City. Among the fatalities were teachers, students and community residents, but no police or soldiers. One journalist was reportedly killed in Juchitán under circumstances that have not yet been clarified.

The teachers' union that was subjected to repression is Section 22 of the National Coordinator of Educational Workers (CNTE). The CNTE is the most militant subdivision of Mexico's main national teachers union, the National Union of Educational Workers (SNTE). The CNTE has strong support among teachers and educational workers in the Southern Mexican states of Oaxaca, Guerrero, Michoacan and Chiapas.

The educational philosophy espoused by the CNTE leadership and many parents, students and community residents in the area which it serves is that teachers should not just be technicians or bureaucrats of the classroom, nor haughty bearers of a superior outside civilization, but rather members and even leaders of the communities in which they work. In many areas where the CNTE is strong, there is a high concentration of indigenous Mexicans whose first language is often not Spanish, but rather Mixteco, Zapoteco, Trique and other ancient tongues.

Teachers in these areas have developed methods of instruction that use the indigenous languages, and they are expected to be acquainted with local cultural traditions and social conditions. Many of these teachers were, themselves, born and raised in the communities they serve, and in many cases got their teacher training through Mexico's system of Rural Normal Schools, which Mr. Peña Nieto's government is trying to abolish as part of the educational "reform".

The Normal schools have been seen as a threat to Mexico's political and economic elites for a long time; in many cases the teachers they have trained have turned out to be courageous leaders of their impoverished communities.

It is clear that the practice of the CNTE's members as teachers is innovative, creative and sensitive to the needs of the students and their families and communities. Since the CNTE protests against the government's educational reforms began in 2013, pro-government media have tried to smear the teachers as narrow minded people who selfishly protect their own interests and resist accountability. The CNTE has stated all along that it is not against accountability and evaluation, but strongly suspects that "accountability," including a top-down evaluation system imposed from Mexico City, will exclude the voices, not only of the teachers themselves, but also the communities and populations which they serve.

In Oaxaca in particular, the CNTE had worked out its own alternative evaluation system and managed to pressure the state governor, Gabino Cue Monteagudo, from the opposition Citizens' Movement party, to agree to it. But Cue Monteagudo's police also participated in the repression on Sunday and the teachers now say he has betrayed them and should resign.

The educational reform the government is trying to implement was approved as part of the neoliberal "Pact for Mexico" in 2013. It was approved as a constitutional amendment, making it harder to reverse; its purpose was openly stated as taking the educational system out of the hands of unionized teachers and placing it under central government control.

CNTE teachers have been urging a boycott of the evaluation system. In response the government has fired thousands of teachers, in some cases because of their participation in strikes or for refusing to participate in the evaluation.

Also, teachers point out that the new plan for evaluation is being imposed without dedicating new funds to upgrading schools and teacher training.

The suspicion goes further. In addition to the neo-liberal labor and education reforms that have angered and alarmed the teachers, the general direction of Mr. Peña Nieto's policy has been to use the "Pact for Mexico" to dismantle many protections of the public interest in order to cater to foreign and Mexican multinational corporations. His plan to open up Mexico's national oil company, PEMEX, to foreign corporate investment has also set alarm bells. Thus the fear that these corporate interests have been pushing for these "reforms" in their own interests, which is to create a useful but docile work force while preventing labor, environmental and regulatory protections from interfering with their profit making.

President Peña Nieto as an individual is also deeply mistrusted. Even when he was governor of Mexico State before his election as president, he was accused of repressive, abusive policies, especially in the case of San Salvador Atenco , where police suppression of protesters had led to the death of two citizens and the rape of a number of women by officers.

Peña Nieto's election campaign in 2011 featured credible accusations of electoral fraud , including vote buying. Many believe that leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador would have gotten more votes than Peña Nieto had it not been for this kind of manipulation.

In 2014, independent journalist Carmen Arestegui revealed that while Peña Nieto was governor of Mexico state, his wife acquired a mansion worth $7 million, possibly a "gift" from a contractor doing business with his government. Subsequent to these revelations, Ms. Arestegui lost her job at the MSV radio network, creating the impression that someone had applied pressure for her to be fired.

More accusations of repression: On June 30, 2014, 22 supposed criminals were killed by troops at Tlatlaya, also in Mexico state. The army claimed that the deaths were the results of a firefight, but human rights organizations claim that at least 12 of the dead had been captured alive and then simply massacred by the troops.

And then on Sept. 26 of that same year, there occurred the incident which angered millions of Mexicans and sparked protests all over the world. A group of teachers and college students from the Raul Isidro Burgos Normal School in Ayotzinapa had traveled to the small city of Iguala in the state of Guerrero, next door to Oaxaca, to raise money for a trip to Mexico City where they were to attend a commemoration of the Tlatelolco Massacre of 1968.

To get back to their college, they commandeered some buses (a common practice with Mexican student protesters), which were then intercepted by corrupt police. In the police gunfire which ensued, two students and some bystanders were killed, and 43 students were taken away and have not been seen since.

Families of the students, confronting the Peña Nieto about a possible federal role in the attack, have been met with one lie and obfuscation after another. This has led millions of Mexicans to believe that Peña Nieto's government was in some way or another complicit in this violent incident, and that federal troops and police, and not just local police in cahoots with drug gangs, bear part of the responsibility. The parents of the missing Ayotzinapa students have been traveling all over Mexico and beyond with their demand that their sons be returned alive.

Like Oaxaca, Guerrero is a hotbed of protest against Peña Nieto's educational reform plan, and the dead and disappeared students from Ayotzinapa are exactly the kind of people who form the backbone of the CNTE protests. Had the 43 not been "disappeared" they might well have been out protesting with the other teachers, students and parents on Sunday.

Very compromising information about people close to Peña Nieto also emerged from the Panama Papers leaks earlier this year, which tends to suggest that the scandal about the house was related to the movement of huge sums of money to a shell company created by Mossack Fonseca, the Panamanian law firm in the center of the Panama Papers scandal.

However, Peña Nieto does not back down. His government's "reforms" dovetail neatly with the U.S. promoted Transpacific Partnership, in which Mexico is participating, in that they open up all aspects of the Mexican economy to free penetration by foreign transnational corporations and remove obstacles to maximum profit making by Mexican and international corporations-including ones based in the United States.

The CNTE and especially Section 22 have been protesting the educational reform since 2013, but things came to a head this year with the government's push to aggressively implement the teacher evaluation plan. In the run-up to Sunday's bloody clash, police dispersed a long running "planton" (approximately, "sit-in") of unionized teachers in Mexico City, and then arrested a number of CNTE leaders on what appear to be trumped up charges of corruption or misuse of funds (the bank accounts of Section 22 and the personal bank accounts of its leaders having been frozen by the government of Oaxaca, so union leaders say they had to resort to improvised fundraising).

The CNTE and its supporters are demanding the resignation of federal secretary of education Aurelio Nuño, Interior Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong, Oaxaca governor Cue and others (many people have been demanding the resignation of President Peña Nieto also). They have also been demanding the release of all prisoners and the investigation and punishment of person's responsible for Sunday's violence. There have been demonstrations against the Mexican government's violence in scores of towns and cities throughout Mexico and beyond, including New York City.

At writing, the government had agreed to meet with CNTE leaders, but continued to say that the implementation of the educational reform is not negotiable.

Photo: A striking teacher from Michoacán demonstrates in Mexico City in front of a line of police. | David Bacon

France rising up against so-called labor law reform

Wed, 22 Jun 2016 11:18:00 +0000

PARIS - A Communist labor leader here told the Peoples World in a recent interview that French government mandates weakening important labor law protections are a key factor in the waves of protests that have rocked this nation and in ongoing union efforts to organize workers.

"The labor law reform is a new way of organizing workers. It will drastically transform the labor code. It will fundamentally change the relationship between the workers and the boss," Didier Le Reste, retired general secretary of the Railway Workers' Union, told the People's World here during the French Communist Party's (PCF) 37th National Congress.

Le Reste, who spent 18 years as a steelworker before becoming a train controller and eventually a union leader and officer, sat down with the Peoples World as hundreds-of-thousands of French workers waged a wave of strikes protesting a presidential decree mandating an easing of regulations designed to protect workers' rights. The mandates are being described as labor law "reform."

The Railway Workers' Union, which is part of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) - France's largest and oldest trade union federation - sees the reform as nothing more than European Union- enforced austerity.

"This is EU policy imposing the change. They want to open the door to competition in the railway industry," Le Reste said. "This is an effort to de-nationalize France's railways, the neo-liberalization of transport which will lower standards, wages and benefits."

While over 150,000 people work in the French railway industry, Le Reste insisted the strikes aren't just about one specific industry, job classification, trade or union.

He said the CGT and the Railway Workers' Union "defends the interests of all the people."

The labor law reform will "lower service quality for riders, cause the closing of stations and ticket booths. It will also weaken security measures," Le Reste added, which is a very real and immediate concern among French citizens - especially after the horrendous terrorist attacks here last fall.

Le Reste informed the Peoples World of a 2013 rail accident in the Paris suburbs killing seven and leaving several dozens wounded due to a lack "technical checkups and oversight."

He said, the labor law reform would make deadly accidents like this more likely.

"We are concerned about all workers, and their social conditions," Le Reste emphasized.

Ironically, it is the "so-called Socialist Party," the current governing party headed by President François Hollande, that is leading the charge to weaken workers' rights, and impose by decree the anti-worker reform.

Le Reste said, the socialist government "isn't socialist, especially in social-economic matters."

"The government has deceived the people," he added. "It is imposing policies in-favor of big corporations and financial interests."

The socialists are now seeing a backlash against their pro-austerity policies, as the PCF, CGT and other progressive forces gear-up for the 2017 French presidential and general elections. The strike wave, the largest in recent French history, is but one manifestation of this fightback.

Front and center in Le Reste's mind is the struggle to make sure French workers' rights are not lowered to U.S. levels.

"It is currently not possible to fire workers for economic reasons here," Le Reste said. The labor law reform would make layoffs - like in the United States - a common practice, which is partly why the fightback and strike wave has been so severe.

Additionally, the CGT regularly goes beyond the traditional union confines of addressing economic issues (wages, benefits, etc.), bargaining and grievances to "defend the jobless."

"We are the only labor confederation with specific sections organized to activate the jobless. We mobilize the unemployed, help provide services and navigate the process of seeking benefits," Le Reste continued.

While workers in France can't be laid-off for economic reasons, companies can put a freeze on hiring and choose to not replace workers as they retire, defacto understaffing and overworking employees in many industries - arguably, becoming complicit in accidents like the one mentioned above.

The labor law reform, Le Reste added, "is an inversion of the norm. It would strangle the current law. It would strangle the national contract," by granting employers more power to hire and fire outside of industry-wide contracts.

Union contracts are usually industry-wide in France, ensuring specific conditions for all workers, though dues paying union membership is actually quite small - hovering around eight percent of the workforce.

However, as Le Reste indicated, "unions have a different history here. Our conception of unions is different. We defend the interests of the entire working class."

CGT is now planning port strikes for June 23 and 28, as on-going negotiations with the Hollande government are at a standstill.

Photo: CGT trade union leader Philippe Martinez, center, attends a demonstration against proposed changes to France's work week and layoff practices, in Paris, Saturday, April 9, 2016. Protesters across France are marching to voice their anger at labor reforms being championed by the country's Socialist government. | Christophe Ena/AP

Brazilian Left pushing hard for referendum to stop rightward slide

Mon, 20 Jun 2016 15:44:00 +0000

The left in Brazil, including the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB), is pushing hard for a referendum as a tactic to block right-wing, anti-worker policies being imposed by the government of interim President Michel Temer of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB). The referendum would, if approved, authorize new elections for October of this year, instead of in 2018 as scheduled. But holding the referendum depends on first defeating the efforts of the right to remove President Dilma Rousseff from office.

Temer, the former vice president of Brazil, took power on May 12 when the Brazilian Senate voted to suspend the twice-elected president, Dilma Rousseff of the Workers' Party (PT), while she faces an impeachment trial. If Rousseff is convicted by a two-thirds vote of the 81 member Senate for the dubious "crime" of having fudged some accounting measures in 2014 and 2015 in order to cover a budget deficit, Temer will take over as official president until the 2018 national elections. If Rousseff is acquitted by the Senate, or if no decision is achieved within 180 days of the Senate taking up the impeachment charges, she will take power once again. Term limit laws prevent Rousseff from running again in 2018.

But Temer is in worse shape: He can't run for president either because of credible accusations of corruption in the huge Lava Jato (operation Jet Car Wash) scandal, which grow and grow. The latest news on Temer is that a businessman who has been seeking a plea bargain in his own corruption prosecution has accused Temer of arranging an illegal campaign contribution for one of his party's candidates for election from a company doing business with the national oil company, PETROBRAS. The former president of the Chamber of Deputies, Eduardo Cunha of the PMDB, and the moving spirit of the effort to impeach President Rousseff, faces his own multi-dimensional corruption probes and probable prosecution. On Tuesday, June 14, the Ethics Committee of the Chamber of Deputies voted 11 to 9 to suspend Cunha from his chairmanship and ban him from electoral activity for eight years for lying about his secret offshore bank accounts. This vote must now be confirmed by the full Chamber. Cunha has reportedly told interim president Temer that if he eventually "goes down" he will take up to 150 federal legislators with him, including top allies of Temer.

Should Temer, as many have demanded, also be impeached and removed from office, Cunha would have been the person to take over the presidency while the trial of Rousseff continued. This now seems impossible. The next in line to take over the presidency would be the President of the Senate, Renan Calheiros, also from the PMDB, but he is also now implicated in the corruption scandals, having been caught on tape maneuvering to blunt the Lava Jato investigations. So he might also be removed from the line of succession to the presidency. To balance things out a bit, Aécio Neves, from the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB, a right-wing party despite its name), who narrowly lost the presidential vote to Dilma Rousseff in the 2014 elections, is now also implicated in Lava Jato.

Earlier in the week, Tourism Minister Henrique Eduardo Alves was forced to resign because of being implicated in the Lava Jato affair. Previously, the minister of Planning, Romero Jucá, was pushed out when a recorded conversation showed that he and others had cooked up the impeachment of Rousseff in order to block the Lava Jato investigations. Subsequently, Temer's minister in charge of rooting out corruption, Fabiano Silveira, also resigned for the same reason. Now it is reported that another Temer minister, Education Minister Mendonça Filho, may be in the sights of prosecutors for having taken illegal payments also.

These scandals, affecting the selfsame people who have been such eager beavers in the attempt to impeach Rousseff, may be making Rousseff, who has not been accused of corruption, look good by comparison. Whether this will peel off enough senators to block the two-thirds Senate vote needed for her impeachment is yet to be seen.

Undoing the Lula-Dilma achievements

The economic and social policies that Temer and his crew are feverishly promoting may do the trick, as they threaten to undo everything that has been achieved by the Lula and Rousseff governments over the past decade and a half. These policies, initiated by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2003 and furthered by Dilma Rousseff after her elections in 2010 and 2014, are credited with lifting millions of Brazilians out of poverty. They have also made a start, at least, in creating a more just society by fighting centuries-old patterns of racism and patriarchy, and by strengthening the role of labor unions, women's, Afro-Brazilian, indigenous and LGBT organizations in the country. These programs are very popular among people who have benefited from them but deeply resented by old elites.

But neither of the two PT presidents ever could count on a parliamentary majority of their own party and its close left-wing allies. They felt obliged to work with some parties further to the right to get their measures passed. This is how Temer came to be Rousseff's vice president in the first place. These center-right parties, including the PMDB, have now turned against Rousseff and, with even more right-wing parties in Congress, are pushing both the impeachment effort and also efforts to dismantle the measures strengthening the social safety net which Lula and Rousseff had achieved.

Specific actions which Temer and his ministers are promoting, one month after taking power:

*The opening of Brazil's vast offshore oil deposits, called "Pre-Sal," to foreign and domestic private companies.

*An amendment to the progressive 1988 constitution to cap the growth of social welfare spending so that in a given year, it can not grow beyond the rate of inflation. This cap would be in place for 20 years, and would effectively block any new initiative to attack poverty and social inequality.

*Specific cuts to health care, education and housing budgets. Cuts to health and education spending would have to overcome current law which requires that 13.2 percent of the federal budget be dedicated to health care and 18 percent to education, so this would have to be changed.

*Future changes in pension plans, which Temer's team says it will negotiate with unions. Most of Brazil's union leadership is highly suspicious of Temer and his cronies and strongly oppose the impeachment of Rousseff.

*Labor law reform, with the purpose of making Brazil more attractive to investors - in other words, to weaken labor unions and workers' rights. The age at which Brazilian workers would be able to retire on a pension would be extended.

*Moving Brazil away from the "Bolivarian" integration process of Latin America and the Caribbean, and into a closer relationship with the United States and the other wealthy capitalist countries.

"Prosperity through austerity?"

All of these things and potentially more are being pushed in the name of "restoring the confidence of the [international] markets" in Brazil's recessed economy. This sort of "prosperity through austerity" approach has never worked anywhere in the world. Moreover, the confidence of "the markets" is unlikely to be restored by a government whose leaders are falling like ninepins to corruption and bribery scandals.

Public opinion surveys in Brazil show strong opposition to Temer's policies, on top of a very negative perception of Temer himself. A survey published on the website of the United Workers' Center of Brazil (CUT), which represents 7.5 million workers, and carried out by CUT and Vox Populi in early June, showed that 67 percent of Brazilians have a negative opinion of the Temer government, 52 percent think Temer's policies will increase unemployment, and 77 percent oppose the idea of changing the retirement age. All Temer's negatives have been increasing over the month he has been in power.

In response to this, the Brazilian left, including Rousseff's Workers Party, the Communist Party of Brazil and numerous labor, student and other mass organizations, are focusing on a demand for a referendum, which, if it wins, would also authorize that new elections be held this year instead of 2018 as scheduled. On Tuesday, June 14, President Rousseff met with several of these democratic sectors. Carina Vitral, president of the National Students' Union (UNE), reported that the Popular Front of Brazil (FBP), which includes labor and other groups, has been meeting to come to a unified position on the idea of the referendum and new elections, in conditions she characterized as a weakening of democracy because of the coup.

For its part, the National Committee of the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB) is strongly backing the referendum-election plan. In a declaration on Thursday, June 16, the Party accused Temer's government of being at the service of financiers and speculators from inside and outside the country. The government's programs of social welfare and labor "reform" represent, for the party, a bridge to a more savage form of neo-liberalism than existed in the past. The 1988 constitution guaranteed social and economic rights, which the Temer government now seeks to dismantle, according to the communists. If this government remains in power, these aims will be carried out even faster. Restoring democracy in Brazil, in the opinion of the PCdoB, requires first of all that the attempt to remove Rousseff be stopped, and then that the plebiscite be carried out to authorize new elections in 2016.

Photo: Farmers hold signs that read in Portuguese "In Defense of Democracy. Not to the coup" during a protest against the administration of acting President Michel Temer in Brasilia, Brazil, June 16. Farmers say Temer will end social programs and halt agrarian reform that was underway under suspended President Dilma Rousseff. Eraldo Peres | AP

This week in history: Nazis invade Soviet Union 75 years ago

Mon, 20 Jun 2016 13:39:00 +0000

Seventy-five years ago, on June 22, 1941, in Operation Barbarossa, German forces suddenly invaded the Soviet Union, beginning a conflict that left an estimated 27 million Soviet citizens dead by war's end. Ceremonies have traditionally been held on June 22 each year in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, the three republics of the USSR that bore the brunt of the initial invasion.

After the war, when the United Nations was founded, the USSR became one of the five members of the Security Council with a veto power, but Ukraine and Belarus additionally had separate seats and representation as a way of honoring them for their sacrifices.

During the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), the Soviets saw Western democratic nations standing idly by as fascist forces aided by Hitler and Mussolini took control over Spain. The USSR by contrast actively supported the Spanish Republic. The Soviets came to realize that none of the Western powers was acting seriously to confront the fascist threat. In fact, they felt that if anything, the Western nations were hoping that the Nazis and the Communists would fight each other to exhaustion, thus saving themselves the effort.

Standard Soviet historiography tells us that Stalin, the Soviet leader, entered into a non-aggression pact with the Germans (the so-called Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939) so as to buy time during which the Soviets could build up their armed forces and military preparation for the inevitable confrontation to come. In the meantime diplomatic, military and cultural exchanges between Germany and the USSR would purport to be cordial.

The Soviets stayed neutral once Germany attacked and occupied Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. At the same time, the Soviets themselves occupied or annexed territories of their own - half of Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia, and part of Finland, wishing to push their frontier as far westward as possible in case of a Hitler double-cross. They claimed the first years of World War II as principally a struggle over colonies and world markets. The United States, still in an isolationist mood after the First World War, was also officially neutral during the years 1939-41, a period many communist parties labeled the "Phony War" or the "Second Imperialist War."

There is a wide disparity of views about Soviet strategy. Some claim that the USSR was in fact woefully unprepared for the Nazi invasion. Initially, Nazi forces plunged deep into Soviet territory, abetted in many places by nationalists in Ukraine and elsewhere who believed they would be better off under the Germans than the Soviets. In addition, during the "Great Purges" of the 1930s Stalin had decimated the Soviet officer corps, which had to regroup quickly after the invasion.

In spite of their early advances, the Wehrmacht was not equipped for winter warfare. The bitter cold caused severe problems for their guns and equipment. Furthermore, weather conditions grounded the Luftwaffe from conducting any large-scale operations.Newly created Soviet units near Moscow numbered over 500,000 mobilized soldiers, and in early December, they launched a massive counterattack as part of the Battle of Moscow that pushed the Germans back over 320 km (200 miles). By late December 1941, the Germans had lost the battle for Moscow. The invasion had cost the German army over 830,000 casualties in killed, wounded, captured or missing in action.

With the failure to capture Moscow, all German plans for a quick defeat of the Soviet Union had to be revised. In addition to this devastating setback for Germany, the Soviet Union also suffered heavily from the conflict, losing huge tracts of territory, and vast losses in people and material. Despite the rapid relocation of Red Army armaments installations east of the Urals and a dramatic increase of production in 1942, especially of tanks, new aircraft types and artillery, the Wehrmacht was able to mount another large-scale offensive in July 1942. Hitler, having realized that Germany's oil supply was running out, aimed to capture the oil fields of Baku in the Azerbaijani republic in the Caucasus. Once again, the Germans quickly overran great expanses of Soviet territory, but they failed to achieve their ultimate goals in the wake of their decisive defeat at the Battle of Stalingrad (now Volgograd).

By 1943, Soviet armaments production was fully operational and increasingly outproducing the German war economy. The Red Army, through steadily more ambitious and tactically sophisticated offensives, was able to liberate all areas previously occupied by the German invasion by the summer of 1944. The war ended with the total defeat and occupation of Nazi Germany in May 1945. In the post-war border adjustments the USSR incorporated the Baltic States as three new Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Until the day when socialist-minded historians dominate their field in Western capitalist countries, it is doubtful that the enormous contributions and sacrifices of the Soviet people during World War II - or what the Soviets called their "Great Patriotic War" - will ever be adequately acknowledged.

The history of invasion from industrialized Western Europe goes back even further in history to Napoleon. Whatever the type of government in power in Russia, whether Czarist, communist or capitalist, the Russian objective of preserving tranquility on its western border can be readily understood. Present-day concerns about NATO incorporating the former socialist-bloc states of Eastern Europe, and the positioning of military bases and dangerous weapons practically at the Russian border, need to be heard in the light of this terrible, unforgettable history.

A more extensive treatment of Operation Barbarossa on Wikipedia can be found here.

Photo: Heinrich Himmler inspects a prisoner of war camp in Russia, 1941. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and one of the people most directly responsible for the Holocaust. U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38435601

Argentina’s new government accepts U. S. military bases

Thu, 16 Jun 2016 10:34:00 +0000

One might think that with "around 800 U.S. bases in foreign countries," and "U.S. troops or other military personnel in about 160 foreign countries and territories," the United States is either at war or about to be. What with the "war on terrorism" and confrontations with Russia and China, it's true of course. But how are bases in Latin America and Africa to be explained - in Argentina, for example?

The United States has long sought to extend its military influence in Argentina. But during the presidencies of Néstor Kirchner(2003- 2007) and Cristina Fernández (2007 - 2015), there was resistance.

In 2006, "the government of Argentina decided to stop sending soldiers to train at the School of the Americas." In 2011 at the Buenos Aires Airport, Argentinean authorities blocked U.S. nationals from unloading arms from a U. S. Defense Department airplane intended as instructional aids in U.S.-run police training courses.

In 2012, Jorge Capitanich, governor of Argentina's Chaco province, negotiated with U.S. military attaché Edward Passmore and other embassy officials to place a $3 million U.S. Army facility in La Resistencia, on the west bank of the Paraná river in northeastern Argentina. Local protests cropped up and President Fernández rejected the project, designated as "humanitarian in nature."

But for U.S. military planners, there's a new day. Mauricio Macri succeeded Cristina Fernández as Argentina's president in December 2015. His government has moved toward "free trade and an explicit alignment with US economic and foreign policy interests." It eliminated currency exchange regulations and export taxation on most agricultural products and minerals. It fired 32,000 public sector workers and took on additional debt to satisfy older, contested obligations to U.S. creditors - the "vulture funds."

On a state visit to Argentina in March 2016, President Obama praised Macri for efforts "to create more sustainable and inclusive economic growth, and to reconnect Argentina with the global economy and the world community."

Thus in a spirit of refurbished bi-national relations, U.S. and Argentinian military officials held meetings at the Pentagon beginning May 18. Argentina's Vice-Minister for Defense, Ángel Tello, and Rebecca Chavez, ‎the U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Western Hemisphere Affairs, headed the respective discussion teams.

According to Tello, agreements were reached on "collaboration in confronting humanitarian emergencies and natural disasters, peace missions under United Nations auspices, both nations' concerns about terrorist threats, and [Argentinian] troops once more being offered instructional courses supported by the United States." In general, "we have advanced in reforming bilateral relations broken in 2009."

In the future there would be a U.S. role in "re-equipping [Argentina's] armed forces". And, crucially, the Pentagon conferees OK'd preparations for two U.S. bases in Argentina.

One is proposed for the northeastern province of Misiones, specifically for the city of San Ignacio, located on the eastern side of the Paraná River, on the opposite shore and upstream from the aforementioned base proposed for Chaco in 2012. Each is close to the "triple border" area where the boundaries of Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina join.

That region's strategic value derives in part from its supposed role as a home base for terrorism and from the smuggling, drug trafficking, and money-laundering endemic there. The giant Itaipú hydroelectric dam is located near the confluence of the Iguazú and Paraná rivers. And the area overlies the Guarani aquifer, the world's largest reservoir of drinkable fresh water.

The U.S. interest in the area is hardly new. The United States had maneuvered earlier to set up a base in the province, and U.S. and Argentinian troops engaged in military exercises in Misiones in 2002.

Tello told La Nación newspaper also that "the United States has demonstrated its interest in deepening ties of cooperation in Antarctica." He was referring to "the building of a military base in Ushuaia from which ships and airplanes engaged in 'scientific studies' in Antarctica could operate. Pentagon planners had long prioritized that project also.

Ushuaia, population 57,000, already an Argentinian naval base and formerly the site of a notoriously abusive prison, is the world's southernmost city. The prospect of a U.S. base in Ushuaia provoked criticism within Argentina. Opposition congressman Matías Rodríguez, for example, noted a "U.S. interest in relying on a greater presence in the southern Atlantic, a region of great geo-strategic importance."

Elsa Bruzzone of the Center of [retired] Soldiers for Democracy (CEMIDA) elaborated: "The United States uses various excuses such as 'humanitarian aid,' and help with natural disasters in order to install military bases... What they want to do is to fence off all the natural resources we have in Our America." She added that "Antarctica is the greatest reservoir of frozen fresh water on earth, and the greatest deposits of hydrocarbons and highly strategic metals in the region are located on the Antarctica Peninsula. They are indispensable for military and aero-space manufacturing. The U. S. object is to obtain control over all our natural resources."

The type of war U. S. militarists are waging in Argentina is now clear. A political observer a century ago studied "a colonial policy of monopolist possession of the territory of the world, which has been completely divided up." To gain their piece, capitalists then and now have required military force, which a compliant state conveniently supplies. The observer was Lenin, who with his Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, explains what's going on between Argentina and the United States.

Photo: President Obama meets with Argentina's President Mauricio Macri. | AP

“Red Spring” for the left in India’s Kerala state

Tue, 14 Jun 2016 11:30:00 +0000

A tough political fight in the south-western Indian state of Kerala has resulted in the victory of the Left Democratic Front (LDF) in the Assembly elections held in late May - it won 91 seats in the 140 seat chamber to retake power in the state.

The LDF, which comprises the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Communist Party of India, and nine other allied parties, gained over 20 extra seats compared to the 2011 election results. In several constituencies, LDF candidates scored impressive victories, wiping out the opposition from entire parts of Kerala.

Corruption sinks the right in Kerala

What were the issues that culminated in this historic victory? The parties of the LDF led important fights for wages and the living conditions of the working class and the peasantry.

Important public institutions - in charge of delivering quality education, pensions, and food - have been destroyed by the Congress Party-led United Democratic Front. Corruption and cronyism of the Congress administration opened the eyes of the public. It was one thing to break popular institutions, it was wholly another to steal from the public while doing so.

Finally, the left fought hard against the fascistic Hindu right - the paramilitary National Patriotic Organization (RSS) and ruling Indian People's Party (BJP), which had tried every trick in the book to win support in Kerala - but no amount of money or influence by the BJP's headquarters worked.

Admittedly, it won a seat in the Kerala assembly for the first time ever. It tried to consolidate the "Hindu" vote, but in Kerala other identities - class, caste - played a formidable role in blocking the fascistic parties.

The left had a key role in pushing back against the BJP at the doors of Kerala.

After the result was announced and as the left celebrated, the RSS attacked the rallies with brute force. These are the tactics which this close ally of India's ruling party is prepared to resort to.

West Bengal results disappoint

In West Bengal, meanwhile, the results for the left continue to disappoint. The Left Front governed the state between 1977 and 2006, winning six legislative assembly elections in a row. During this time, the Left Front government ushered in democracy to rural West Bengal. Land reforms, registry of agricultural workers, and local self-government all became a reality.

But after 34 years in power, the left lost in the historic election of 2011. The main cause was a botched attempt at industrialization in Singur, near Kolkata. Massive violence against the left dented the confidence of the masses who did not pick up the red flag.

Over the past five years, the left has worked to rebuild confidence, which is not an easy task. Corruption and violence by the ruling Trinamool Congress Party (TMC) had dented its reputation, and it seemed like the left could make gains this election.

A decision to work alongside the Congress Party, which the LDF fought against in Kerala, in order to build up some unity against the TMC, seems to have worked against it.

Despite a fresh energy among its cadres, the difficulty in winning back sections of the population that had transferred their votes to the TMC was too great. In fact, the left won even fewer seats than it did in 2011 and the leader of the Left Front, Surjya Kanta Mishra, lost his own seat, which he had held since 1991.

No-one expected the LDF to win the election outright this year largely because the rebuilding of the party following the violence it faced from the right in the countryside could not be fully achieved. Still the breadth of the loss is a surprise. The Left Front will have to think hard about working alongside the Congress Party and much analysis is needed before a firm judgment can be made.

Mishra said: "The issues which we have been raising for the past five years - which we advanced before and during the elections - of repression of protests, of the threat to democracy, of unemployment, of farmers committing suicide are facts that are relevant irrespective of the mandate of the people and irrespective of the elections."

Right claims victory in defeat

The Congress Party lost in both Assam and Kerala, while the BJP - the ruling party in India today - won in Assam but could not make gains elsewhere. Regional parties and the LDF emerged as the winners.

The right opportunistically claimed victory even when they did not really win the day. Prime Minister Narendra Modi of the BJP, thanked the Indian population, saying, "The polls have made it clear that BJP's ideology is being accepted and appreciated."

Modi's henchman, Amit Shah, said that the election "results are a stamp of approval on Narendra Modi's performance over the two years."

This is the right's forte, claiming victory in defeat and giving the impression it will steamroll into power. Facts don't get in the way. It is the impression that counts. In this respect, it has learnt well from the corporate world, where the brand is more important than the commodity itself.

The left meanwhile has cause to celebrate with the Kerala victory. Much needs to be understood about the nature of the success in Kerala to see if the mood in that state can be generated elsewhere.

The left, far from being defeated as the business media suggests, is feeling the buoyancy of the Red Spring in Kerala.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian Marxist historian and journalist, and professor of International Studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.

This article originally appeared in Britain's Morning Star newspaper.

Photo: Residents of Kerala state celebrate the LDF's election victory. | Communist Party of India (Marxist)

Continued political instability challenges Spain’s left to unite

Fri, 10 Jun 2016 14:59:00 +0000

For the past quarter of a century, there have been few watershed moments in Spanish political history. Like a well-choreographed pas de deux, the center-left Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) and right-wing Popular Party (PP) have taken turns governing the country.

But the 2015 election changed all that. Upstart parties on the right and left crashed the ball, punished the two major parties, and forced another round of voting on June 26 that could be a turning point in a growing campaign to roll back austerity policies that have spread poverty and unemployment throughout the continent.

Last December's vote saw the ruling PP drop 63 seats and lose its majority. But voters chastised the Socialists as well, with the party losing 20 seats. Many of the seats that formerly went to the two major parties shifted to the left-wing Podemos Party and, to a lesser degree, the rightist Ciudadanos Party. In the current parliament, the PP controls 123 seats, the Socialists 90, Podemos 69, and Ciudadanos 40. Regional parties of Basques, Catalans and Canary Island independents hold 28 seats. The parliament has 350 seats and a ruling majority is 176.

The new election was forced when none of the parties could form a working majority. The PP and Ciudadanos are on the same page politically, but together fall short of a majority. The Socialists, Podemos, and the regional parties-most of which are leftist to one extent or another-could have formed a government, but the Socialist Party refuses to have anything to do with Catalan separatists.

While polls indicate that Spaniards are likely to vote pretty much the same way they did in December, a new kid on the block has altered the electoral terrain and raised the pressure on the center-left Socialists to make a choice: follow the lead of Portugal, where the Socialist Party formed a united front with the Left Bloc and the Communist/Green alliance, or imitate the Social Democrats in Germany and join a "grand coalition" and make common cause with the right?

(Some of) the left unites for next election

The "new kid" is "Unidos Podemos" ("United We Can"), a coalition of Podemos and the United Left (UL). No one expects the new alliance to win a majority, but most analysts predict that under Spain's quirky election system the coalition could increase its representation by 25 percent, or somewhere between 15 to 20 seats. That would vault the new formation past the PSOE, making United Podemos (UP) the second largest bloc in the parliament. The PP is still number one and on track to slightly increase the 29 percent they received in the last election.

Spain's election geography is heavily weighted toward rural areas, where the PP and Socialist Party are strong. While it takes 128,000 votes to elect someone in Madrid, it only takes 38,000 in some areas of the countryside. The rules also favor regional depth over broad support. In December, the UL won almost a million votes but only got two representatives. Other parties averaged one seat for every 60,000 votes.

United Podemos has internal tensions, but both parties have put these aside for the moment. For instance, Podemos supports continued membership in NATO, while United Left opposes the military alliance. The UL is also opposed to the current structure of the European Union and calls for a "refounding" of the organization.

What both agree on is ending Spain's punishing austerity regime and confronting the country's staggering unemployment. The national jobless rate is 21 percent, with a catastrophic 45.5 percent for youth 25 and under. The education system is in a state of collapse, and there is a national housing crisis. In the face of those conditions, the UP has decided to shelve disagreements over NATO and the EU and make common cause.

This is almost exactly what the left did in Portugal, where disagreements on NATO and the EU were sidelined in favor of freezing privatizations, rolling back tax increases, increasing the minimum wage, and augmenting funding for education and medical care. There is no question that differences will eventually surface, but the Portuguese left has decided that when the house is burning down, saving the inhabitants takes precedent. Whether the Spanish Socialist Party will take that step is an open question.

Divides over foreign alignments and regional issues

In some ways the divisions of the left in Spain are narrower than they are in the Portuguese alliance: part of the UP-specifically Podemos-backs NATO membership and the EU. But the PSOE's opposition to Catalan independence is a major roadblock to an alliance with the UP. Podemos also believes Catalonia should remain part of Spain, but it supports the right of the Catalans to hold a referendum on the issue.

The Socialist Party's hostility to Catalan independence allies it with the PP and Ciudadanos. The latter was formed to oppose Catalan independence, and the PP has led a mean-spirited campaign against Barcelona. When Catalans banned bull-fighting, Madrid made bull-fighting a "national cultural heritage" to thwart the ban. When Catalans flew their nationalist "Estelada" flag at the Copa Del Rey soccer match finals in Madrid, the government tried to block it. A court stopped the authorities from banning the flag, and Barcelona defeated Madrid in the match.

PP leader and acting Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, is pressing the Socialists to join a grand coalition that, so far, the latter has resisted. But the PSOE is deeply split. Some in the Party would rather bed down with the right than break bread with Podemos United. Others are afraid that, if the Socialist Party enters a grand alliance with the Popular Party, the Socialists will end up suffering the consequences. Center-left parties that join with center-right parties tend to do badly come election time.

The Greek Socialist Party (PASOK) was decimated by the left-wing Syriza Party after the former went into a grand coalition with the right. The Liberal Democratic Party's (LDP) alliance with the Conservative Party in the U.K. turned out to be a disaster. The LDP barely exists today. And the German Social Democrats' (SPD) grand coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union has seen the once-mighty SPD slip below 20 percent in the polls. In Spain, the mantel of "the left" would clearly shift to the UP alliance, something that many in the Socialist Party deeply fear.

Democratizing Europe

There are profound differences among the European left, making unity difficult. The Socialist parties in Portugal and Spain, for instance, support paying off their countries debts to European banks and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The Portuguese Socialist Party's alliance partners, as well as the Spanish United Left, think the debt is unpayable and, in any case, unfair because most of the debt is the result of the 2008 economic crisis brought on by the irresponsible speculation of private banks. Speculators may have lost the money, but the taxpayers are picking up the tab.

There is a potential path out of the current situation, but it will have to overcome powerful interests and a deeply flawed economic system. Those "interests" are the debt holders, ranging from governments to the European Central bank and the IMF.

The flaw is built into the eurozone, which is made up of the 19 countries in the 28-member European Union that use the common currency, the euro. As economist Thomas Piketty puts it, the eurozone has "a single currency with 19 different public debts, 19 interest rates upon which the financial markets are completely free to speculate, 19 corporate tax rates in unbridled competition with one another, without a common social safety net or shared educational standard-this cannot possibly work, and never will."

Piketty argues the eurozone's rigidity on debt and its strategy for solving it-austerity and yet more austerity-has "throttled" a recovery, particularly in Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland. Even where countries' economies are finally growing-Spain and Ireland-their debts are actually higher than when they instituted austerity regimes. And the "growth" is not due to the EU's economic strategy, but rather to cheap oil and the declining value of the euro.

Piketty proposes a conference on debt, similar to the one that saved postwar Germany. Syriza has long called for such a gathering. Such a conference could cut debt burdens, lower interest rates and spread out repayments.

However, the eurozone would also have to be democratized. The current European parliament includes non-eurozone members and is largely powerless. Decisions are largely made by the unelected Troika-the IMF, the European Central Bank, and the European Commission. One thing that could be done immediately would be to institute a common corporate tax rate, which could be used to finance infrastructure improvements and education.

Germany is unlikely to support such an approach, but it only represents 25 percent of the EU's population and GDP, while France, Italy, and Spain combined account for 50 percent. Add in Ireland, Portugal, and Greece, and Germany and its allies are a distinct minority.

Italy is openly advocating debt reductions and loosening of the eurozone's rules. France has already raised the issue of a more democratic and transparent EU political structure along the lines of what Piketty is proposing.

Will Spain show the way?

Can it be done? It won't be easy, but Germany is increasingly isolated, and countries in the southern tier of the eurozone are desperate for relief from the endless rounds of austerity. They are also no longer convinced that such a strategy will lower their debt burdens and stimulate their economies. In fact, most of the debt is unpayable no matter how much austerity is applied.

There are some wild cards in the upcoming election. Both the PP and PSOE have been tarred with the corruption brush, and two former Socialist governors of Andalusia have just been charged with illegal payments to supporters. Turnout will likely be lower than in the December election, but the left's effective grassroots organizations may offset that.

The Spanish elections arrive at a critical time for the European Union, and a Madrid government that resists the increasingly discredited economic strategy of the troika could shift the balance in the direction imagined by Piketty.

That, however, will depend on whether the Socialist Party decides to join with the left or go into a grand coalition with the right.

A failure by the left to unite will open the door for Europe's resurgent far right, whose xenophobia and racism have gained ground all over the continent. The only way to effectively counter the far right is to democratize the European Union and pursue economic policies that will provide jobs and raise living standards. Only the left can deliver such a program.

This article originally appeared on the author's blog, Dispatches from the Edge.

Photo: The leader of Podemos, Pablo Iglesias (L), and the leader the United Left, Alberto Garzón (R), join hands at the announcement of the new electoral alliance, Unidos Podemos (United We Can). | ecorepublicano.es

Communist Party of France plans to build broad left coalition

Thu, 09 Jun 2016 14:13:00 +0000

PARIS, France - "We are living in an unprecedented political moment," Pierre Laurent, national secretary of the Communist Party of France (PCF), told the one thousand delegates and guests at that Party's 37th National Congress.

Laurent focused his remarks on France's 2017 presidential and general elections, and the Party's concomitant goal of building a broad left popular front against the right-wing.

He asked the assembled communists, "How do we approach these elections within a political context"?

Laurent asked the audience to consider first "what's real", meaning the actual balance of political power. "Then," he said, "identify what has the potential to become real. What are the aspirations and potentialities of today's world?"

In recent years the 120,000 member-strong PCF has seen a modest decline of influence at the ballot box. While still one of the largest political parties in France with numerous elected officials - including Laurent, a senator and senator of Paris - the PCF has nonetheless been losing members and votes.

Unlike in the United States, elections and parties in France are publicly funded. Parties receive state funding based on their electoral results, which has meant fewer resources for the PCF in recent years.

A main topic of discussion at the 37th National Congress was how to win back a larger share of the electorate, particularly against the conservative governing Socialist Party - the current dominant force in France's political landscape. The Socialist Party, headed by President François Hollande, has been responsible for a new business-friendly labor law, which has caused a recent wave of strikes.

"We must show millions upon millions that they are a majority force that can take power," Laurent told the delegates and guests.

He urged communists to put aside their differences with other left forces and mass organizations. Instead, he urged, communists must "gradually build that dynamic of a popular left front, to build alliances with those willing to act along with us on a socially transformative process."

Additionally, Laurent told PCF members not to fear disagreements with would-be allies, or to "abandon" workers who have drifted to the right.

The working class, he said, is "not a homogeneous bloc free of contradictions," he said.

Any broad-based left coalition would inevitably bring "forms of unity and different currents ripe with contradictions," he added. We must "work with all of these forces."

Stopping the rightward drift in France is "up to us," he continued. "We need to take the initiative." Laurent was referring to the recent rise in popularity of the National Front (FN) party, headed by anti-immigrant demagogue Marine Le Pen, who has proposed closing France's borders and wants to take the country out of the European Union. The FN was founded in 1972 as a far-right nationalist outfit by Marine's father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who has faced repeated prosecution and fines for Holocaust denial. The party is currently performing well in opinion polls and is widely expected to make it to the final round in next year's presidential election. As in other countries, the far-right in France is running a populist and racially-tinged campaign that plays to economic insecurities and the perceived failures of mainstream parties.

Laurent added that the PCF should be primarily concerned with rebuilding the left and "shifting the battle-lines," rather than with "who our candidate is." He said that focusing on individual candidates misses the point of the political process of building power.

Earlier in the Congress, PCF leaders had proposed an ambitious but time-tested strategy for building the popular left front: organizing to build unity. Leading into the fall, the PCF plans to have 500,000 one-on-one conversations with PCF members and broad-left voters. Leaders are calling it the "people's primary."

Alain Hoyot, a PCF member of parliament, called this "a possible turning point for a new initiative in our party." Hoyot talked about the "link between politics and culture" in a "globalized, financialized world." He said, "alienation goes hand in hand with exploitation. Human beings have become merchandise."

While a majority of the delegates supported Laurent and the Party's overall political direction, there was some debate, with a small minority of delegates arguing against the building of an alliance with broader left forces. Some delegates expressed a fear of watering down the party's unique political identity by partnering too closely with others. In addition, there was criticism of the Party's former alliance with the Socialist Party and the way that that alliance helped create the conditions for Hollande and the SP to pass the new anti-worker labor law. Delegates had small machines that they used to vote yea nay or abstentions on the question of building alliances, which passed with a majority.

PCF delegate Cecile Dumas echoed Laurent and the majority perspective.

She said, "we must make a forceful appeal for unity. We aren't afraid of differences with allies. We are sure of ourselves," as the political reality is such that we can "no longer vote based on what we believe in, rather on what will be the most useful, what will build the most unity."

"We have to bring together all social forces for broad left unity against austerity," she concluded.

Andre Chassaigne, another PCF member of parliament, summed up the thrust of the 37th Congress, when he said, "It is necessary to unite. It is necessary to converge. The interest of the people are at stake."

Photo: Tony Pecinovsky/PW

Peruvian presidential runoff: A squeaker

Wed, 08 Jun 2016 10:43:00 +0000

Official results have not been certified yet, but it appears that Pedro Pablo Kuczynski of the Peruvians for Change party has beaten Keiko Fujimori of the People's Force in the June 5 presidential runoff election in Peru, but by the thinnest of margins. If these results are not reversed as vote totals from Peruvian expatriates come in, Kuczynski will have to figure out how to govern, and the Peruvian left will have to figure out how to operate under his right wing, corporate oriented administration.

In the first round, held on April 10, Kuczynski narrowly edged out Veronika Mendoza of the Broad Front, (Frente Amplio), a left alliance which includes both of Peru's communist parties, the Communist Party of Peru-Red Fatherland and the Peruvian Communist Party. A Fujimori-Mendoza runoff would have provided a sharp ideological contrast, but as it turned out, the Peruvian left had to decide whether to sit out or to push a vote for one of the two right wing candidates.

Kuczynski, a banker with strong ties to international finance capital, and a former functionary of both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, was prime minister of Peru under President Alejandro Toledo (Peru has both a president and a prime minister) from 2005 to 2006 and had served previously as the country's finance minister and, before that, Minister of Mines. He will certainly govern in the interests of international and Peruvian capitalist interests. This will bring him into sharp conflict with labor unions, small farmers, environmentalists, indigenous people and the left.

However, Keiko Fujimori is seen as potentially ultra-right extremist who would govern in a fashion similar to that of her father, former dictator Alberto Fujimori, in power from 1990 to 2000, and currently serving a 25 year jail term for corruption and abuses of power during his administration, including running death squads.

Keiko Fujimori ran on a populist "get tough on crime" platform, and tried, without much success, to separate her image from that of her father, even stating that she would not pardon him if she were elected. However, many Peruvians were not convinced. During Alberto Fujimori's presidency, his wife Susana Higuchi (Keiko's mother) divorced him because of her objections to his authoritarian policies, even accusing him of having his thugs torture her. Thereafter Keiko Fujimori acted as his "first lady" of sorts, for ceremonial occasions. Also, during the current presidential campaigns, there were major scandals involving people in Keiko Fujimori's party, including party chairman Joaquin Ramirez, who is under investigation for money laundering. Fujimori's vice presidential candidate is accused of trying to interfere with the investigation of Ramirez.

The clincher for many on the Peruvian left was that in the first round of voting, Keiko Fujimori's party, the People's Force, won an absolute parliamentary majority. The spectacle of a right-wing extremist holding both the presidency and a legislative majority was seen as a danger sign of a return to dictatorship, so the left--and also Verónika Mendoza--urged their supporters not to boycott the runoff election. Rather, they urged supporters to cast a tactical vote for Kuczynski, in full recognition that they would have to fight against many of the economic policies he is likely to push.

So at writing, with 97.11 percent of the vote tallied, Kuczynski is ahead with 50.14 percent of the vote, to Fujimori's 49.86 percent, a percentage point spread of only .28.

The geographical distribution of the vote is interesting. Generally, Kuczynski seems to have run strongest in areas won by leftist Veronika Mendoza in the first round. These include the ancient Inca capital of Cuzco and other regions of southern Peru with a large proportion of indigenous (Quechua and other) inhabitants.

When Alberto Fujimori used extremely violent methods to suppress the ultra-leftist "Shining Path" (Sendero Luminoso) guerrilla insurgency, indigenous communities suffered disproportionately from the ensuing repression. As for a potential new Kuczynski presidency, it remains to be seen how effective the left coalition will be in pressuring him to enact progressive reforms; they certainly have their work cut out for them.

Photo: Pedro Pablo Kuczynski of the Peruvians for Change party and Keiko Fujimori of the People's Force. Martin Mejia/AP

Growth of far right party cause for alarm in Germany

Tue, 07 Jun 2016 13:21:00 +0000

BERLIN -- I'll begin with a happy report. The Hamburg group of "Fighters and Friends of the Spanish Republic 1936-1939" had its annual get-together in late May, again honoring those bravest of the brave men and women who risked and often lost their lives fighting for democracy in Spain. Only a handful survive, none at all in the USA, Germany or Austria, but a video greeting from Gert Hoffmann in Vienna, who came to these meetings until shortly before his death, was especially moving.

A boat trip around the harbor and a visit to a seaman's club hidden in the amazing labyrinth of piers and channels in the giant port facilities, with a fine worker's choir and militant songs, offered chances for German and foreign participants to exchange ideas on past and present. There was a fascinating mix of accents of people from Wales, Scotland, Ireland, various regions of England and the U.S. and that of the good German translator. A group of Danes, a Dutch fellow, a Frenchman and two Russian women were also there.

Most were children of volunteers in Spain, which made a ceremony at three monuments especially moving. One monstrous structure built by the Nazis in 1936 showed soldiers marching off to battle in World War I with the slogan "Even if we die Germany must live." All attempts to get rid of it were in vain, but now, next to it, a smaller, modern structure honors men the Nazis executed because they refused to join in the killing and deserted. Next to it a large statue recalls the Nazi burning of the books in 1933 and the horrors that followed, up to the burning of Hamburg in 1943. Death prevented its great, defiantly leftist sculptor from Austria, Alfred Hrdlicka, from finishing it. For now a large banner concealed part of the Nazi monument and listed the names and ages of 25 Hamburg volunteers - and where they had died in Spain.

This year marks the 80^th anniversary of the founding of the International Brigades to help the Spanish people fight Franco's fascist putsch. This is all too relevant today, with far-right movements gaining strength or control from Hungary, Austria and Poland to Honduras and Brazil while President Erdogan of Turkey moves ahead, crushing all opposition and attacking the Kurdish people in his own country and in war-torn Syria. Yet he still enjoys at least some mutual understanding with Angela Merkel and her government, who seem willing to make any compromise if it keeps refugees from the dangerous flight to Europe - and them from worse poll percentage losses. As in Spain, countries proudly calling themselves democracies may complain, but in the end choose a Franco, a Pinochet or an Erdogan over true representatives of the people.

Most alarming, I think, since Germany is the strongest, most central country in Europe, is the strength of its far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), now getting 10 to 15 percent in the polls and is certain to win its first delegates to Berlin's parliament in September and the German Bundestag in 2017.

Its lack of any public program except hating Muslims (and less publicly supporting gains for the wealthy at the cost of everyone else) hit a snag last week; in an interview, Vice-Chair Alexander Gauland, referring to dark-skinned Jérome Boateng, one of Germany's most popular soccer-players, said: "People like him as a soccer player. But they don't want a Boateng as neighbor." What a blunder! The team (in a TV ad) and countless fans slammed Gauland who then retreated, mumbling that he had not known that Boateng, born in Berlin, with a German mother and a father from Ghana, was "both a German and a Christian." "And I don't follow soccer much," Gauland stuttered. Countless fans twittered, many asking: "And what if he weren't Christian or not born in Germany?" One of the less caustic comments was: "I know I wouldn't want Gauland as a neighbor!"

Three main themes at the party congress of Die Linke

But was it perhaps no real blunder but a bid for the haters' votes? The AfD danger was one of three main themes at the party congress of Die Linke (Left party).

One, "For democracy and solidarity," a response to the growing danger from the right, aimed at appealing to and hopefully recapturing protest voters whose insecurity and fears for the future often led them to reject every "establishment party," including, for many of them, Die Linke as well. Some party candidates had even used slogans calling for the same policies as before, but carried out better. Such slogans, seeking respectability and acceptance, could hardly attract protest voters - and had indeed failed miserably to do so!

The second theme, therefore, was an offensive of and for working people, with or without regular, precarious or threatened jobs or faced with poverty-level pensions and higher costs for rent and prescriptions. A study released by the government after an inquiry by a Linke delegate showed that more than 15 percent of German children are hit by poverty; one and a half million have parents - or commonly a single parent - on the German equivalent of welfare. As co-chair Bernd Riexinger stressed, the party must urgently strengthen its weak ties with the union movement, most of whose leaders are traditionally tied to the Social Democratic Party, even though it has repeatedly betrayed them with half-measures, compromises and worse, currently as coalition partner of Merkel's right wing Christian Democrats and the even more conservative Christian Social Union in Bavaria.

Thirdly, the party must stress its opposition to the militarization of German foreign policy - now rationalized as a "war against terror" - and explain to voters how German leaders have been almost as guilty as those in London, Paris and above all Washington in engaging in wrong battles while arming the worst offenders. The billions Germany's Defense Department is demanding for ever more modern weapons and more regiments, some of them now maneuvering threateningly not far from St. Petersburg, almost exactly 75 years after German armies attacked and razed untold numbers of homes and factories, leading to the genocidal death of some 27 million Soviet people, mostly civilians, should rather be spent to helping and housing the million new arrivals, caused by new wars, and also those of German background who require affordable housing, education and utilities. Many delegates demanded that the dangerous demonization of Putin and Russia must be sharply opposed.

As usual Die Linke had faced internal disputes in recent months. The co-chair of its Bundestag caucus and leading theoretician, Sahra Wagenknecht, had spoken of limits to Germany's ability to integrate new waves of immigrants. The idea was rejected by most of the party and got her an over-reaction or provocation when a man slipped up and smacked a chocolate pie in her face. She quickly recovered, changed clothes and gave another of her fiery, militant speeches. All agreed on expressing solidarity with striking workers in France, those repressed in Egypt and Turkey and the Kurdish Rojava region in northern Syria, governed and defended equally by women and men. It was decided to join a "Blockupy" protest rally on September 2^nd in Berlin and a demonstration against racism the next day.

A constant dispute - should Die Linke join coalitions with the Social Democrats and Greens in a future federal government - stayed unresolved but largely irrelevant. Even together the three would not achieve a 50 percent majority. But the question remains on the state level, especially in Berlin in September.

Since completing it, Germany has been hit by terrible storms and floods. Somewhat less disturbing, President Gauck has announced he will not run for a second term next February. Then, more disturbing, his heart for military might was probably warmed by the news, this time not heavenly storms, that the largest NATO war games for years are beginning in Poland with 14,000 U.S. troops, 12,000 Polish troops, others from 24 countries and German tanks crossing through Poland for the first time since the attacks 75 years ago, perhaps by their recent ancestors. Gauck, once a pastor, must know the Biblical warning, "They that sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind." Let us hope that the violent rightist hooligan types being recruited in Poland, and deployed in maneuvers, do not cause what the media refer to as a "possible mishap"!

But despite disputes - and the absence of former top Die Linke leader Gregor Gysi, no longer in a leading position and, for the first time not invited to give a main speech - the party stuck together and reelected its two co-chairs Katja Kipping and Bernd Riexinger by a vote which was not overwhelming - 74 percent and 78.5 percent - but sufficient to keep the party together and - it hopes - moving away from a its current 8-9 percent stagnant status and proving itself as the one and only party of peace and - hopefully - change.

Photo: A banner fixed on flats for asylum seekers during a right-wing, anti-Muslim rally in Erfurt, Germany, June 4. | Jens Meyer/AP