Category Archives: Electoral Politics

Electoral Politics: Imperialism and the Mass Line

The following is by Josh Sykes, member of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization.

Recently, the Kasama Project attacked the Freedom Road Socialist Organization based on a statement published on the Fight Back! News website concerning the 2012 presidential elections.

The basic orientation of the attack is to accuse the FRSO of deliberating confusing the issue, in order to “give the green light” to cadres to work for the Obama campaign. The Kasama Project’s view is that the FRSO is sheepishly “still” endorsing Obama, even though the organization remains under direct attack from the FBI following the raids and Grand Jury investigation began in late September, 2010. The basis for this claim is the drawing out of one sentence in the statement on the 2012 elections that says, “In terms of voting in the presidential election, it is better to vote against Romney, especially in swing states.”

The Kasama article claims that this “green light” is actually the purpose and main point of the whole article. Fortunatly, however, Kasama is honest enough to reprint the statement so that it can be read in full. I’m sure any honest reader, upon reading the entire statement (which is much longer than this “hidden” sentence) will get what the real point is.

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Jon Stewart vs. the Left

The following article by William Blum is from CounterPunch.org:

The left in America is desperate; desperate for someone who can inspire them, if not lead them to a better world; or at least make them laugh. TV star Jon Stewart is sometimes funny, especially when he doesn’t try too hard to be funny, which is not often enough. But as a political leader, or simply political educator for the left, forget it. He’s not even what I would call a genuine, committed leftist. What does he have to teach the left? He himself would certainly not want you to entertain the thought that Jon Stewart is in any way a man of the left.

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Belgium elections: Workers Party of Belgium makes big advances

Fight Back News Service has translated and is circulating the following article from the Workers Party of Belgium’s (PTB) press service on the recent election in Belgium. The rightist, reactionary New Flemish Alliance (N-VA), which advocates the breakup of Belgium, scored major gains in this election.

PTB+ leaping in Wallonia and in Brussels, and growing in Flanders

“We are happy about the leap of the PTB+ everywhere in Brussels and in Wallonia” stated Raoul Hedebouw, spokesperson of the PTB+. “The PTB+ is also progressing in Flanders, especially in Antwerps, despite the huge success of the N-VA.”. As example the PTB+ obtained 4.2% of the votes in the county of Liège, 4.1% in Antwerps and 2% in Brussels area.

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CP of the Philippines: People will confront incoming Aquino regime with pressing demands

The following statement by the Communist Party of the Philippines is from the website of the National Democratic Front:

With the reactionary elections coming to a close, it now appears that the Philippine neocolonial state will be headed next by Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III.

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NDFP: No justice is served in Arroyo’s dismantling of private armies

The following is from the website Philippine Revolution Web Central:

Rubi Del Mundo
Spokesperson
National Democratic Front-Southern Mindanao
January 23, 2010

The National Democratic Front of the Philippines-Southern Mindanao hits the Arroyo regime’s much-hyped dismantling of private armies calling this merely a grandstanding yet empty move by Ms. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her minions to stem the tide of the people’s wrath against perpetrators of the gruesome November 23 Ampatuan massacre.

With the people’s seething rage and persistent calls for justice, leaving this case unsolved poses a threat that could lead to Arroyo’s ouster. As the Ampatuan’s Andal Jr. and other members responsible to the massacre remain unprosecuted, Mrs. Arroyo’s plan to perpetuate in power through a daring bid in the reactionary GRP congress is in terrible danger.

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Congress Answers the Health Care Crisis with Another Bailout

The following commentary by Peter Shapiro is from Fight Back! News:

Peter Shapiro speaking at a October 15 rally for health care. (Fight Back! News)

Insurance company profiteering has laid waste to the U.S. health care system and sparked a wave of protest throughout the U.S. But the response of Congress to the crisis suggests that the battle is just beginning.

Through the month of October and the first weeks of November, hundreds of people across the country volunteered for civil disobedience, calling for a single-payer system which guarantees access to health care for everybody and pays for it with tax dollars instead of insurance premiums.

Close to 200 were arrested in sit-ins at insurance company offices in over a dozen cities. The wave of direct action climaxed with mass arrests at the San Francisco office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Protesters demanded that Pelosi allow a floor vote on Rep. Anthony Weiner’s single payer amendment to the House health care reform bill.

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A closer look at bourgeois democracy

Since today is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall (please see my previous post, “Democracy, East Germany and the Berlin Wall” by Stephen Gowans), lets take a closer look at bourgeois democracy, since it is supposedly so fabulous according to the self-congratulatory imperialist media:

That would all be funny if this farce weren’t backed by force:

“Bourgeois democracy, although a great historical advance in comparison with medievalism, always remains, and under capitalism is bound to remain, restricted, truncated, false and hypocritical, a paradise for the rich and a snare and deception for the exploited, for the poor.” – V. I. Lenin, Bourgeois and Proletarian Democracy

The Rise of the New Ultra-Right Populism

This video is from the 9/12/09 “Tea Party” in DC, against basic reforms (particularly health care reform) and for basically everything reactionary and backwards imaginable.

“Fascism will never come to America as fascism. It will come as 100 percent Americanism.” – Huey Long

Check out also Tim Wise’s article, “Sick Heil: Racial Paranoia, White Victimology, and the Hitlerizing of Obama” and this article from Al Jazeera, both of which point out the important role of white supremacy in this utlra-right movement:

Dangerous hatred in the US?
By Rob Reynolds, senior Washington correspondent

Michelle Bachmann, the US Republican Representative for Minnesota, tells a radio interviewer she believes Barack Obama, the US president, plans to set up mandatory “re-education camps” to indoctrinate young Americans.

Glenn Beck, a television personality working at the Fox news network, says on the air that Obama is a “racist” with a “deep-seated hatred for white people”.

Comparing Obama to Adolf Hitler, an Iowa man named Tom Eisenhower speaks up at a town hall meeting held by Republican Senator Charles Grassley, and says “The president of the United States, that’s who you should be concerned about.”

“I’d take a gun to Washington if enough of you would go with me.”

Retired FBI agent Ted Gunderson, a prolific writer and speaker about conspiracy theories involving devilish sex cults and the Illuminati, tells a gathering of right-wing “Patriots” in Florida that the federal government has set up 10,000 internment camps across the country and is storing thousands of guillotines for mass executions. 

Mel Sanger, a self-described “political researcher”, offers visitors to his website a $24.97-report full of “cutting edge evidence” that Obama is the biblical Antichrist.

Tens of thousands of right-wing demonstrators march on the US Capitol waving signs reading “Bury Obamacare with Kennedy” and calling Obama a “bloodsucking Muslim alien”.

Steven Anderson, the pastor of the Faithful Word Baptist Church in Arizona, preached a sermon last month entitled “Why I hate Barack Obama”, in which he declared, “I’m going to pray he dies and goes to hell”. 

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FMLN Takes Power in El Salvador

The following article is from Fight Back! News

El Salvador's new Vice President Salvador Sanchez Ceren, with former CISPES Executive Director Cherrene Horazuk and solidarity activist and Fight Back! reporter, Brad Sigal

El Salvador’s new Vice President Salvador Sanchez Ceren, with former CISPES Executive Director Cherrene Horazuk and solidarity activist and Fight Back! reporter, Brad Sigal

FMLN Takes Power in El Salvador

By Brad Sigal

San Salvador, El Salvador – In an historic day here, June 1, Mauricio Funes and Salvador Sanchez Ceren were sworn in as the new president and vice-president of El Salvador. Funes and Sanchez Ceren are members of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), a leftist political party which was formerly a guerrilla movement that fought against the U.S.-backed right wing dictatorship in El Salvador in the 1980s. Funes and Sanchez Ceren won election on March 15, marking the first time there will be a leftist government in El Salvador’s history.

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Hugo Chavez wins, Venezuelan people chalk up victory

venezuela-constitutionThe following is from Fight Back! news:

Hugo Chavez wins, Venezuelan people chalk up victory

By Staff

Venezuelan socialists netted another electoral victory, Feb. 15, winning a popular referendum on constitutional changes. The changes will remove the two-term limit on elected office.

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