Honduras – Beyond Highbrow

Alt Left: Conservative Arguments against Deficits

Found on the Net:

In 2011, the Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman characterized conservative discourse on budget deficits in terms of “bond vigilantes” and the “confidence fairy.” Unless governments cut their deficits, the bond vigilantes will put the screws to them by forcing up interest rates. But if they do cut, the confidence fairy will reward them by stimulating private spending more than the cuts depress it.

In other words, like all conservative economics, it’s nonsense. Or superstition. Or magic. Or they know it’s a big fat lie and they won’t admit it. Probably the latter.

Not to mention that there are no true conservatives anywhere on Earth who even believe in anti-deficit theory in the first place. All modern conservatives, given the chance in office, will balloon deficits wildly. In the US, this is due to another scam. Conservatives deliberately blow up deficits to cause an artificial debt crisis. Then the lying dogs start screaming about the deficits that they themselves created (without acknowledging that they created them) and demanding the destruction of most if not all social spending to fight the deficit crisis. The fact that they got away from this scam for decades is outrageous.

The corporate media of course is in on the whole scam and never blew the whistle on them even once. Americans, who are profoundly idiotic in terms of political economics, finally started to catch onto this scam under Trump a full 40 years after it was implemented under silver-tongued Scammer-in-Chief Ronald Reagan. In terms of political economics, Americans are some of the dumbest people on Earth. All over the world, people vote their class interests. Only in the US and a few other places such as Hong Kong and Colombia do they not do so. Americans are the ultimate class cucks.

Venezuealans and Nicaraguans, dumb spics in most Americans’ minds, have a far greater sense of political economics and class consciousness. No way on Earth could you put a scam like this over them. They won’t fall for it. It’s rather pathetic when dumb spics are vastly more intelligent on political economics than Americans are.

I guess Brazilians and Colombians are dumb enough to fall for it. But Peruvians, Paraguayans, Argentines, and increasingly Chileans ain’t falling for this crap anymore. Neither are Hondurans. Or apparently Mexicans. Salvadorans supposedly have great class consciousness but they just voted in a rightwinger named Bukele. Guatemalans are permanently class cucked and confused, possibly terrorized into supporting rightwing economics, though most of them don’t seem to have a clue about politics or economics. Ecuadorians are apparently easily fooled.

Outside the Western Hemisphere, no one falls for this crap except in the UK for whatever weird reasons they have. The Baltics became extremely class cucked as a reaction against Communism and it was deadly for them. Indians seem pretty class cucked. At any rate, if they have any money at all, they go hard rightwing on economics. You can’t put this scam over anywhere in the Arab World. They won’t stand for it. The Arab World is run by populists. Nor could you in Turkey.

For that matter, in most of the former USSR, it’s not possible to class-scam people. 70 years of the USSR guaranteed that class consciousness is pounded into the sense of all workers. This is what rightwing idiots don’t get about the fall of the USSR. They didn’t end up with this neoliberal paradise full of class cucks that they wanted. Instead, they ended up with a permanently militant working class and a permanently socialist or social democratic state. You can change the form (the state) but you can’t change the contents (what’s in people’s minds).

Alt Left: Neuveau Fascism in South America and Europe

Manuel Rodriguez: Back to politics. What is going on in Bolivia is worrying me. We have fascist squads lynching “undesirables” like peasants. We also see that there have been placed barricades with rubbish and tires that block vehicle mobilization, causing people to be fed up and remove the barricades. You know what this all reminds me? The guarimbas of 2014 in Venezuela and Nicaragua. I can see where this is going.

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Separate: There is an tendency that is pretty worrying going on at least in Latin America.

The people are tired of the structural inequalities from the neoliberal policies of the right, causing them to lose in elections whenever they appear as they are, and the people are conscious enough.

The mutation consisted on swapping in the public’s mind the Traditional Right image with Center-Right, which seems like a more popular alternative. The complementary tactic is for thee Center-Right to dress up as the Center-Left, which in reality are already prepared sell-outs whose main purpose is try to divert votes from the Left to help the Right win.

The media did their thing, which was to help Center-Left Boric would win over the Leftist Jadue. The whole purpose of Center-Left Yaku Pérez’ candidacy was to make the Leftist Andrés Arauz lose.

That strategy seems to be being recently changing. They are changing the Center-Right for populist Trump-style fascist Far Right candidates. The most worrying thing is that they are getting a lot of support from the population. Bolsonaro is an classic example. Jose Antonio Kast is a more recent example. It seems that Vamos in Argentina is going to win in the parliament.

I would like to point out that the election in Ecuador was profoundly unfair. First of all, the main opposition party kept getting banned, and its leaders all have warrants out for their arrest on fake charges. This “lawfare” is similar to what was done in Brazil. By the way, the FBI greatly assisted the Brazilian fascists in the lawfare against the Left down there. The US is also engaging in lawfare against Venezuela.

Vamos are Argentine fascists?

Obviously Bolsonaro is a fascist, and Kast is clearly a Pinochet-style Chilean fascist.

Why are people voting fascist? I don’t get it. Although Chile and Argentine both have deep fascist blocs in each country, in my opinion mostly because those are majority-White countries. Brazil is also a majority-White country, which may be why they are going fascist too.

In Latin America nowadays, where you lack a White majority, fascism is hard to install because Latin non-Whites hate fascism. They’ve had quite enough of it. However, they do support it in Colombia. On the other hand, Colombia is also a fairly White country. Fascist roots in Colombia go back to Independence. The country simply has developed a culture of popular fascism for whatever reason. Turkey is very similar. The people get no benefit for voting fascist, but they keep doing it anyway.

There are fascist governments in non-White Haiti, Honduras, and Paraguay, but all of those are dictatorships. The Right seized power with fascist coups – armed in Haiti and Honduras and legislative in Paraguay – and they have ruled by dictatorship ever since.

In the Americas, Whiteness is associated with rightwing authoritarianism and fascism. In Europe this is not the case, but Whites are a huge majority over there. It appears that Whites go fascist when they are in the minority, but Argentina and Chile are majority-White, so I don’t get it.

Really any population descended from the Catholic Spaniards divides into the typical Far Right-Far versus Left Collectivist pattern. This pattern is also seen in Greece, Italy, Portugal, Turkey, and Lebanon, all Mediterranean countries. This is also seen now somewhat in France. Spain, France, and Italy are Catholic, Greece is Orthodox, Turkey is Muslim, and Lebanon is mostly Catholic and Muslim. Mediterranean countries are collectivist, so politics tends to be collectivist. Islam, Catholicism, and Orthodox Christianity are collectivist religions.

Left collectivism is Communism and socialism, while Right collectivism is fascism.

The Catholic East European fascism in Poland and Hungary is different and has a Catholic socially conservative and anti-Communist tint. Liberation theology never took hold in Eastern Europe except in Czechia, where there is a long tradition of “Catholic Communism.”

In Ukraine, the Baltics, and Belarus, the fascism is simply Nazism, pure and simple. Ukraine and Belarus are Orthodox, and the Baltics are Catholic (Lithuania) and Protestant (Latvia and Estonia). The Nazism here stems from World War and the independence movements in these countries making alliances with the Nazi occupiers who promised them independence. The Communists in turn were seen as anti-nationalists who thwarted these nations independence dreams. See below for more on that.

In Orthodox Georgia and Russia, fascism nationalist – ethnic nationalist in Georgia or simply nationalist or “Russian Empire nationalist” in Russia.

Protestant Northern Europe is more individualistic. The Right there is just about dead except in the UK and the Baltics. The Right in the UK is a pale copy of US politics. See below for the anti-Communist roots of the Right in the Baltics.

The Right in the northern individualist parts of Europe is mostly anti-Muslim. It’s conservatism is toned down like all politics in Northern Europe is toned down, so it’s not really fascist, instead a type of Woke Anti-Islam. Otherwise they are very left on social issues. One of their leaders in the Netherlands was a gay man. And they support a more socialist economics, but this is the case for both the Right and Left in most of Europe proper other than the Baltics.

The Economic Right is only popular in the UK, where the political economics mirrors the US, and in Czechia, the Baltics, Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. In all of these places except the UK, it is an anti-Communist reaction where many people are angry about living under Communism in the past, so they have gone to extreme Right economics as an overreaction.

In Estonia and Latvia, support for the economic Right has been disastrous and has almost destroyed both countries. The Economic Right has little power in Russia and Belarus, with only 10-20% support. It is in power in Ukraine but only because Ukraine has outlawed the parties of half the population, the Russian-speakers. In the Baltics and Ukraine, the anger towards Communism is because the Communists stifled independence movements, though it was Communists who set them free. Anti-Communism is also part of Hungarian and Polish fascism. Anti-Communism in both countries often had an odd socialist tinge.

Alt Left: Karl Marx, “The Genesis of Capital”: The Creation of Capitalism and Its Link to Modern Land Reform

This fascinating document is available in booklet form as it is only ~35 pages. It is an excerpt from the larger Capital volume. It’s not an easy read but it’s not impossible either.

Some of the writing is gorgeous. I read one sentence to my very anti-Communist liberal Democrat father and he swooned over the prose. That one sentence was both perfect and beautiful, though it dealt with some terrible.

In many places, this is forceful – see the fencing of the Commons in the 1300’s, done deliberately to force the peasants into the capitalist mode or production. Indeed theorists said that if the peasants could not be shoved into capitalism, there would be no capitalism, for their would be no workers. It was essential to destroy the peasants ability to live off the land for themselves in order to force them into worse circumstances as industrial workers.

We see this very same rhetoric employed today in India – where it is argued that the tribals in Chattisargh and other places must be uprooted from the lands, have their lands stolen from them to give to mining and forest industries, and forced into the capitalist mode in cities in order to properly develop the economy. It is argued that India cannot develop its economy until the Adivasis have been destroyed. Note that as with the ancient peasants, the Adivasis will live much poorer lives in the cities than the were in the rural areas.

In Colombia, we see something very similar. In Colombia, small farmers own a lot of land. They are able to subsist off this land and they do not need to participate in the larger economy. They grow enough food for themselves and some city people. The process of the Colombian revolution and the genocidal response of the Colombian oligarchy to it is all throwing the peasants off of these small plots, stealing their land at gunpoint (the paramilitaries are used for this), and terrorizing or killing them if they refuse to hand over their land.

The land is then confiscated by latifundias or large landowners who by and large control the Colombian economy. They grow coffee, bananas, etc. and raise cattle for export, generating money for the economy in the process.

In fact, this process has been going on all over Latin America for over 200 years as sort of a slow-motion process of ethnic cleansing and land theft. Smalholders are able to live off the land in Colombia, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Colombia, Paraguay, and Brazil, and this is seen as unacceptable as they only grow food for themselves and possibly for city-dwellers but the produce cannot be exported.

These countries wish to develop an export model of agriculture based on the large scale production of food crops for export mostly to the US. In return, their ability to produce their own food is destroyed, in my opinion, rendering their economies completely backwards. The people are then rendered vulnerable to the purchase of imported food from the US, often packaged or canned food that is not very good for you.

As you can see, the country gets screwed and the US wins both ways. By destroying the basis for feeding themselves, the US wins an export market for its processed foods. By replacing these with food crops for export to the US, the US gets to make money by importing and selling these food crops. In return the country gains nothing.

Only a small landholding and import-export elite (maybe 20% of the population) gains and the vast majority of the poorer people lose as they can no longer feed themselves, no longer own land and are self-supporting, have to resort to unhealthy foods that they need much of their income to purchase, and they also are rendered much poorer as low wage proletariat in the slums of the large cities.

And in the process, of course, the country generates a revolutionary movement, often an armed one.

This can be seen in areas of Colombia. In one particular part of Southern Colombia, most of the rural peasantry had been thrown off the land and most of the land was now held by a few large landowners who were raising cattle on the land. The peasants had been terrorized off of their stolen land and formed ghettos in a large city nearby, which increased the poverty rate and the slump percentage of the city by a lot. Here they were poor, unhealthy, poorly fed and clothed, living in slums in shacks with no sewage systems, clean water or electricity.

These slums began to generate a lot of street crime as they tend to do. Outside of the cities on the main roads, there were soldiers and paramilitaries everywhere and one went from one armed roadblock to the other. Curiously enough, a large guerrilla movement had developed among the few remaining peasants and in teeming slums. Armed guerrillas extorted the latifundias for money that they called “war taxes.” The latifundias now paid a lot of money for paramilitaries to patrol their lands.

In the slums, an urban guerrilla movement was developing. Police, soldiers and paramilitary members were attacked with bombs, RPG’s and automatic weapons all the time and took significant casualties. The war had now moved to the city where there was no war before. Bomb and gun attacks hit city police stations on a regular basis. Death squads and army units roamed the land and the unarmed Left in the form or human rights activists, labor union members and organizers, community organizers and activists, environmentalists, campesino organizations, organizations of slum-dwellers and indigineous leaders were murdered and tortured to death on a regular basis.

The idiot US and the West see this as a process of “Communist guerrillas trying to subvert Colombian democracy, shoot their way into power, and set up a murderous Communist dictatorship which will destroy freedom and prosperity in Colombia”. The vast majority of Americans and others in the West actually buy this bullshit. Many on the Left refuse to support the Colombian guerrilla, insisting that they are anachronistic and that they should try to seek power peacefully. However, since the FARC disarmed, former members and members of newly formed political parties have been massacred like flies. So state terror blocks all road to peaceful change, leaving no alternative but the way of the gun.

Obviously the ridiculous analysis of this situation that Westerners believe has no basis in reality. The Western media cheers on the genocidal Colombian state and says that the Colombian democracy is waging a war against irrational and bloodthirsty terrorism, typically linked with drug trafficking to describe them as criminals and destroy their legitimacy.

As long as this process goes on, Colombia’s economy will stay forever backwards.

It is necessary to do a land reform in the rural areas before any country can prosper economically. Indeed this “socialist” project of land reform which the US spent decades in the Cold War slaughtering millions of people to stop was actually implemented by the US in Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan in order to fend off a Communist threat. Oddly enough, it ended up creating the basis for subsequent booming development in those places.

Land reform was and is the basis for the Communist and Leftist revolutions and guerrilla forces in South Vietnam, Thailand, Colombia, Nepal, Peru, Cuba, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Paraguay in the past 55-65 years, with some of the revolutions happening later 40 years ago. In Paraguay this process has just started several years ago when a FARC split has taken up arms agains the state.

Alt Left: Fascism, In Its Many and Varied Forms, Continues to Rampage Across the Planet

Rambo: Your friend there is wrong, Highbrow. Fascism is NOT dead. Just look around the world. Trying my best not to spout clichés, it’s very much alive and well. Maybe that’s what Highbrow has been trying to remind people of.

Yes, and fascism now is taking dramatically different forms than it has in the past. In general, fascism is political process set up by capitalists when they are facing a serious threat from the Left. Any rightwing authoritarian regime or dictatorship against the Left, especially a popular one, can only be seen as fascist.

Therefore, there were many fascist regimes in the world in the last 75 years. States in bold house current fascist regimes. States in normal print indicate past fascist regimes:

In Latin America in Guatemala until 1995, El Salvador until 1992, Honduras, Nicaragua until 1979, Haiti, Colombia, Brazil, Peru under Fujimori in the 1990’s, Ecuador, Bolivia under Hugo Banzer in the 1950’s and briefly last year, Argentina under Videla and Uruguay under the generals in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, Paraguay, and Chile under Pinochet, but also in Spain under Franco until 1975, Portugal under Salazar until 1974, Croatia and Serbia after the Balkans War, Greece under the generals in the late 1960’s, Ukraine, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Pakistan under Zia in the 1980’s, India, Iran under the Shah until 1979, Liberia under Samuel Doe in the 1980’s, Zaire under Mobutu, South Africa under apartheid, Rhodesia under Ian Smith, Morocco under the king, Brunei under the Sultan, the Philippines, Vietnam under Thieu and Diem, Thailand Burma under the generals, Indonesia under Soekarno, South Korea under Singhman Rhee in the 1950’s until 1980, Taiwan in the 1950’s until 1980 and China in the late 1940’s under Chiang Kai Chek, and Fiji.

Incipient fascism is creeping in the US, the UK, Israel, Poland, and Hungary.

There is presently strong fascist opposition in Cuba, Venezuela, Mexico, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Argentina, Peru, Belarus, Lebanon, and Hong Kong.

Pro-fascist democracies exist in the Dominican Republic, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Georgia in particular and frankly, in the entire EU and NATO because the EU and NATO are supporting the fascist opposition in Latin America, the fascist government in Ukraine, and the fascist opposition in Belarus these days.

There are arguments that the Taliban is fascist, but I’m not buying it. I’m also not buying arguments about “Islamo-fascism.” Nor do I think China, North Korea, Belarus, or Russia are fascist.

Alt Left: The Catholic Church in Latin America

Do you think churches, private schools should pay property taxes? In Latin America, the Catholic Church probably doesn’t pay property taxes and usually supports the Far right conservatives that you and me greatly despise. I think the Catholic Church plays a big role in upholding the oligarchy land power in Latin America do you agree?

Um I’m not sure to what extent that is true. There’s also a lot of Liberation Theology being preached all over Latin America. Keep that in mind. The Vatican used to look dimly at it, but it’s very common at the parish and lay worker level. In Latin America you have murals of leftwing guerrillas waging battle led by Jesus Christ holding an automatic weapon. The mural will have leftwing slogans written all over it. There is a strain of Liberation Theology that can be seen as “Jesus Christ with a machine gun leading a guerrilla column into a war against the rich.”

The Sandinistas had a lot of church people on their side. One of their leaders was a former priest.

In Colombia, the priests helped the leftwing guerrillas. The ELN guerrillas were founded by Camilo Torres, a priest preaching Liberation Theology, the original “priest with an automatic weapon.” The ELN still has deep roots in the church. A lot of the churches in FARC territory support the FARC.

An Irish priest from the US led a guerrilla column in Honduras in 1983 until he was killed.

Same in El Salvador. The Salvadoran guerrillas had deep roots in the church. Remember when the death squads assassinated the five top priests in the country in 1989 for being “the brains behind the guerillas?” Remember when Bishop Romero was assassinated in 1980 for preaching Liberation Theology? The FMLN Leftist guerrillas in El Salvador were practicing Catholics.

The Chavistas in Venezuela are Catholics and Chavez was a practicing Catholic.

Towards the end of his life, Fidel Castro said he was a “cultural Catholic.” There is a lot of “Catholic Communist” thinking coming out of Cuba these days and now many Communist Party members are believers who attend mass. There were also many “Communist Catholics” in the Czech Republic.

Aristide of Haiti was a priest.

The Leftist leader of Paraguay was a former priest.

In Peru, a lot of priests at the parish level even supported the Shining Path!

Remember Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker newspaper? In the US, the Church has often been quite liberal.

It all depends on the country.

Yes, the church hierarchy traditionally supported the elites in part of a deal to let the elites take power and lay off the church, but this all changed with the advent of Gustavo Gutierrez “Theology of Liberation” published in 1965 advocating “the preferential option of the poor.”

A lot of the militarizes down there back in the 1980’s used to have this attitude of the Church as being a hotbed of Communist subversion.

Catholicism lends itself to both rightwing and leftwing thinking due to the nature of the Church. Church doctrine can be interpreted either towards the Right or Left depending on which type of thinking you wish to emphasize.

Protestantism tends to have a rightwing bias pretty much baked into it.

Alt Left: The People Choose Democracy over Aristocratic Rule in Latin America

Down in Latin America, once the Left takes over the state, they prove to be so popular with the poor majority that the oligarchic parties of authoritarian Right shrink to ~27% support on average. The Venezuelan and Nicaraguan opposition parties routinely poll ~25-30%.

The Right literally cannot win in places that have tasted socialism like Nicaragua and Venezuela. The only way they win is by cheating, election fraud/rigging, and coups of various kinds – electoral, lockout, economic, legislative, judicial, and military. Or they run as Leftists and then turn hard right the minute they get in like Lenin Moreno in Ecuador.

In other places, people seem to be rejecting aristocratic rule.

A majority in Colombia seems poised to elect a fairly leftwing politician.

A literal Marxist, a Palestinian Chilean, has been leading polls in Chile for some time now.

A Marxist just barely won the Presidency in Peru.

The rightwing coup in Bolivia was overthrown, and the Left won handily again.

Argentina has been electing the leftwing Peronist Fernandez dynasty for some time now. The only way the Right won last time was because rightwing banksters on Wall Street deliberately crashed the economy so the Right got in on the protest vote.

In Paraguay, the last democratic election elected a Leftist, a former priest. He was overthrown in a legislative coup, and it’s been a rightwing dictatorship ever since.

Honduras elected a leftwinger, and a moderate one at that, in its last democratic election. The US immediately sponsored a coup, and it has been a rightwing military dictatorship ever since.

The Left has been winning in various Caribbean islands for some time.

Haiti has been under one form or another of rightwing dictatorship ever since US Special Forces removed President Aristide at gunpoint in a military coup. Aristide’s party, Lavalas, was extremely popular and got 92% of the vote in the last election. The only way the Right has stayed in power since then is by outlawing the Lavalas Party and banning Aristide from returning.

The fascist Bolsonaro is now unpopular, and the moderately leftwing Workers Party is now ahead in the polls. The PT was removed in a judicial coup via lawfare with the help of the US FBI (I knew there was a reason I hated feds). The President and Vice President were literally put in prison on completely fake charges. This is the only Bolsonaro got in. However, Brazil definitely has a significant base for fascism as in Colombia for whatever reason.

Lopez Obrador or AMLO for short won the recent election in Mexico, a country long marred by extreme election fraud. He’s the most leftwing president in some time. However, he has governed from the Center. Nevertheless, the Mexican oligarchy (with deep ties to the Catholic Church) nevertheless has been threatening a coup ever since he took office.

The Right only won in Ecuador last time around because Lenin Moreno banned the leftwing party and exiled its leader, Correa. The government has stated that he will be jailed if he returns. The charges are faked. The Right only won last time around because the election was grossly unfair. There was no actual election fraud in terms of altering the vote, but the campaigning leading up to the election was grotesquely unfair.

Alt Left: Fascist States around the World in the Past Century

I will be leaving World War 2, where many such regimes were created in Europe, out of this discussion because I don’t understand it well.

A discussion of fascism is very important because the Republican Party is already a fascist political party in the sense of a rightwing authoritarian party along Latin American oligarchy lines.

The Type of State the Republicans Are Aiming At

Similar regimes were installed in Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Iran, Turkey (a Mussolinist + Nazi extrerminationist model), Greece, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Zaire, Kenya, Liberia, Indonesia (a classic Mussolinist model), Philippines, South Korea, Brunei, Taiwan, South Vietnam, Thailand, Nepal, Gabon, Angola, and South Africa, not to mention the many such regimes installed in Latin America, where the rightwing authoritarian or dictatorship regime has become a classic model. Many of these had a fake democratic facade over what was basically a dictatorship.

Nazi extreminationism with an ethnic component has been installed in Turkey and possibly Azerbaijan. Those models are governing to this day in the fake Croatian and Serbian states inside Bosnia. The present Croatian and Serbian regimes have overtones of WW2 like fascism, as does Hungary under Orban. Nazi-style exterminationist regimes, albeit with Communists and leftwingers substituted for Jews, have been installed in Iran, Indonesia, the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan in the past.

One could argue that Israel is now a Mussolinist style fascist government, albeit with a facade of democracy in which various fascist parties compete to rule the fascist state.

Rightwing Authoritarian Models in Latin America in the Last Century

It’s not so much the Nazi, National Socialist or classic fascist models of World War 2, although Trump and Berlusconi do resemble Mussolini, and Berlusconi created a classic Mussolinist fascist state in Brazil along the lines of the previous years of Operation Condor in Pinochet’s Chile, Velasco’s Argentina, the generals’ Brazil, Salazar’s Paraguay, the Uruguayan dictatorship, and Banzer’s Bolivia.

Somewhat different but similar “kill the Communists” regimes were created in Ecuador in the 1980’s, Fujimora and Belaunde’s Peru, Venezuela in the late 80’s, Uribe and many others’ Colombia (where it has become the only form of the state and Uribismo is almost a classic fascist Mussolinist model), Somoza’s Nicaragua, Bautista’s Cuba, Trujillo’s Dominican Republican, Rios Montt’s Guatemala, and ARENA, D’Aubisson, and Duarte’s El Salvador, Haiti under the Duvaliers, where it became a model followed to this day, and the present government of the generals in Honduras.

The model has not yet been installed in much of the Caribbean, Belize, Costa Rica, Panama, Mexico, and the Guyanas, but it’s been generalized as the classic model in Latin America in general for over a century now. There are rumblings now to create another rightwing authoritarian regime in Peru and Mexico.

Counterrevolution is ongoing in Nicaragua, Cuba, and Venezuela and has succeeded recently in Ecuador, Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, and Haiti. There were recent rumblings in Argentina, where the large landowners (who were never broken up as there was no land reform) were making threats of a coup if their riches were touched. There were failed attempts recently in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Bolivia. Another attempt is ongoing in Venezuela and Nicaragua.

Alt Left: Malcolm X on Gusanos (Worms) or Anti-Castro Cubans

malcolm x on anti-castro cubans, aka gusanos, when they complained about him meeting with fidel and expressing solidarity with the cuban revolution pic.twitter.com/FWUdTeityG

— ☀️👀 (@zei_squirrel) July 13, 2021

I have to say that in a lot of ways, Malcolm really as a great man. Notice to the gusanos rioting now in Cuba. The people are not with them at all, trust me. Only 10,000 demonstrated all over the island. Most of them were young people, often teenagers, and some were marginal elements, often lumpens, typically criminals or those who refuse to work. There were some bourgeois elements in Havana.

In the town where the demonstrations originated, even there, they were not the majority. Much larger pro-government groups went out to confront he vendepatrias (countrysellers) at every demonstration. In the town where they claimed to take over the Young Communists headquarters, even there, their crowd of 200 was outnumbered by a crowd of 400.

There are very serious problems in Cuba, but 100% of them have to do with the blockade. The things that the contras want will not solve any problems and their heroes in the US and in the Latin American Right are the ones who caused all these problems in the first place. Cuba’s income has collapsed by 80% due to COVID. They have a very hard time importing much of anything due to the embargo and anything they do import has to go through third parties, etc. and the markups end up being considerable.

So Cuba is not able to engage with the world on a free trade basis at all. For instance, the electricity plants have not been maintained since 2014 because the embargo prevents the importation of spare parts. Cuba could not import any ventilators for COVID due to the blockade which covers all medicines and medical supplies and most foods, so they had to build their own.

This tiny country, blockaded by the whole world, was able to build their own ventilators. Cuba’s rate of saving hospitalized COVID patients is very high despite a serious shortage of drugs. The country has made five different COVID vaccines. The first, with an efficacy rate of 93%, has just been released for emergency use. Nevertheless, the epidemic is hitting them very hard and they have had to expand medical facilities because existing ones were not adequate to cover the problem.

But the new facilities and the overwhelming of the hospitals due to COVID overwhelmed the electricity system. The heat added to the strain. Workers came from all over the country and worked all week to get one substation running, but the temporary fixes usually only last for a month.

Food and medicine has collapsed because of the economic collapse and the embargo preventing Cuba from buying these things on the open market. You have to stand in line for hours for basic necessities. Furthermore, an opening of the economy to market conditions has resulted in a lifting of price controls. The result has been that prices have risen 3X. So you can see that moving towards capitalism caused inflation to skyrocket in Cuba.

Furthermore, most goods are now available only at special currency stores, but most people do not have access to that special currency. The regular currency stores are empty. The result has been that huge mafias have developed who buy things wholesale from the special currency stores and then resell them in the regular currency, but they are marked up by up to 3X. However, there are up to 500,000 of these criminals in Cuba now and there doesn’t seem to be much to do about them. The cops don’t even really try to stop them.

The truth is that since most people only have access to regular currency, the existence of these resellers and mafias seems to be inevitable as that is the only way that ordinary people can buy what they want. There are a lot of complaints about these special stores and the state currency manipulations that they are a result of, but the currency decisions seem to be based on sound, if rather capitalist, economics. I don’t know what can be done about the problem of these stores.

I really don’t know what the Cuban government could do to make any of the problems of the country go away. Can someone please tell me what the government should do to go about making even one of these problems they have better?

Most Cubans know capitalism up front, and they explicitly dislike the very idea of it. They don’t even like the US model. And the Latin American models of capitalism don’t like very enticing compared to what Cubans already have. Even the Dominican Republic, Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, and even Uruguay seem pretty awful compared to Cuba.

For one thing, there is almost no crime in Cuba and the drug use and sales rate is very low. There is almost no drug smuggling. There are no street gangs to speak of, nor are there any beggars in the streets.

During the decade when Nicaragua switched to capitalism, the roads were full of potholes and were nearly undriveable, children carried their chairs to school every day because the school had no chairs for the students, the streets were lined with dirty, hungry children and the first word out of their mouths was to ask you for a coin. Now that Ortega and the Sandinistas are back, all of that is gone. Nicaraguans have lived under both the Sandinistas and their capitalist rightwing enemies and they majority do not want the Right to come back into power any time soon. They have seen how the Right acts when they are in power.

If they let them back in, they will do the same thing all over again. The Venezuelans are the same way. The Right has only ever espoused dismantling every since achievement of the Chavistas. However, 70% of the population support the Chavista project and describe themselves as Chavistas. With a population of 70% Chavistas and an opposition that has pledged to dismantle the entire project, is there any wonder that the Chavistas win by ~70% every time? Why wouldn’t they?

And Nicaragua is sending very few immigrants to the US. The Central American immigrants flooding “the misery, crime, violence, and poverty” of the region are all coming from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. They are not coming from Nicaragua. There’s a reason for that. Also, Nicaragua has had very low rates of COVID cases and deaths, while at least Guatemala was utterly devastated by the disease.

It is true that there are contras in Cuba. It’s certainly not illegal to be a contra and they are quite easy to find. Contras represent ~14% of the population because that is how many people voted agains the last Constitution. The contras calling for a US fake humanitarian intervention and invasion are certainly much less than that.

Guaido, the Venezuelan contra, had 4% support last I heard. His project of sanctions and US invasion has 12% support. Sanctions themselves have only 18% support. The general opposition has ~27% support.

The Right has ruled Haiti since 1994 when Lavalas was overthrown by the US and Aristide was forced into exile. Aristide won 92% of the vote the last time he ran. That’s how many Haitians supported and support Lavalas. All of the US-installed regimes ever since have had the support of ~8% of the population.

The opposition in Nicaragua also has ~25%. The last poll had them at 23%. However, the position of the contras who tried to overthrow the government with a violent coup in 2018 has only 15% support. The latest poll shows Ortega winning 77%-23% against the opposition.

It is not true that the opposition is being forbidden from running. Some people who took money from the US to stage a violent attempt to overthrow the government have been arrested. Others have had their political privileges revoked for life. This is exactly what should happen to all of the Venezuelan coup-mongers, and some are already under house arrest or have been banned from politics for 15 years. None of these Nicaraguan coup plotters were candidates for any political party.

The US has been trying to insert these traitors in the political parties since 2018, but no party will take them. These are not politicians. They are not even associated with any political party. In fact, there are 17 different political parties running against the Sandinistas in the upcoming election. It’s perfectly legal to be in the opposition in Nicaragua. You only must follow the laws. As in Venezuela, the Nicaraguan contras are only ~25% of the population and they can never win at the ballot box, so they try to overthrow the government by force again.

The thing is that the contras in Cuba are all reactionaries. They wave American flags and they all want to go to neoliberalism. They are rioting because COVID is peaking in Cuba, but even there, Florida, a very wealthy capitalist state in the US, has had twice as many cases per capita and five times as many deaths per capita. In the Latin American countries that the US-flag waving mercenaries emulate, COVID death rates are 10, 20, and 50X higher than in the US.

Even in the “successful” Latin American countries like Chile, COVID has been disastrous. By the way, Chile is hardly a model for Latin America. The place is a disaster.

It’s not some groovy West European social democracy. There are no groovy West European social democracies in Latin America. The people who are trying to emulate just that are Maduro, Ortega, Correa, Fernandez, Lula, Morales, and the recent winner in Peru, Castillo – the ones who are being called Communist Pink Tide countries. An actual Communist is ahead in the polls in Chile and a moderate Leftist appears poised to win even in Colombia, the last holdout of the populist Right.

All of these people who have already served in power have either all been overthrown by the US or there have been attempts to overthrow them.

The US only tolerates hard Right regimes in Latin America. This has always been the case. Part of the problem is that Latin America never had Social Contracts as Europe did. The oligarchs and the Right have always been reactionary and fascist and are to this day.

In contrast, in Europe, the true reactionaries and fascists are all but defeated, and social democracy rules the day. Latin American style Rightists do not exist in Europe. The only thing close to that economically was in Eastern Europe in the Baltics, and these places failed horrifically with the 2008 Depression. Even Poland and the Czech Republic are not so rightwing as everyone thinks.

The most rightwing government in Europe is in the UK, and they are to the Left of the Democratic Party.

Republican Party-Latin American Right economics is unpopular all over the world.

I will grant that it is popular in a few places. It retains majority support in Colombia, but with the recent riots and the genocidal response of the regime to them, this seems to be ending. In Hong Kong and Singapore, two very wealthy more or less “fake states” – fake because these states cannot be replicated elsewhere – rightwing economics remains popular. However, the working classes in Hong Kong mostly support China and hate the rightwing government, and in Singapore, the main opposition party has Marxist roots.

The way of the world seems to be socialism or at least some kind of socialism, at the very least some variety of social democracy. Neoliberalism is disliked or even hated on most of the planet. Bottom line is nobody likes it and nobody wants it. In places where it gets polled as in Latin America, it has the support of 8-27% of the population, with an average of 26% support for the project in general which declines to 8-18% when it comes to the coup-mongering Right that calls for sanctions, violent coups and US interventions. This is the political demographic of the oligarchs and their supporters.

It’s minority now and appears to be minority for quite some time into the future. Economic conservatism and conservatism in general believe in rule by the aristocracy or oligarchy. Liberalism by contrast means rule by democracy or rule by the people. As the aristocrats, oligarchs and their supporters are always a minority – 25-30% seems to be a good ballpark figure, they generally hate democracy and tend to rely on antidemocratic means of getting in and staying in power.

Alt Left: Argument: There Is No Peaceful Road to Socialism

Transformer: I saw this on Facebook with a discussion about Communism and this is a statement from a Libertarian:

The Marxist delusion of no government always leads to absolute tyranny. The anarcho-communists sweep away tolerably governments and pave the way for the Stalins, Maos, Pol Pots, Castros, Mugabes, Chavezes, etc. It’s not that they justify Stalinism, but that they justify measures that always result in Stalinism, and they still don’t have a clue as to why that keeps happening.

I disagree with his statement that the governments before these revolutions were tolerable.

The CIA supported Pol Pot.

Yes, the US supported Pol Pot the whole time they were in and for many years afterwards as guerrillas.

You are certainly free as a liberal to Leftist to oppose Marxism. A lot of people on the Left, especially liberals, are against Marxist dictatorships. There’s a good argument against them. They’re not exactly democratic.

Chavez was not a dictator at all. Venezuela under Chavez was one of the most democratic countries on Earth. Mugabe wasn’t really a dictator. The opposition always ran in every election, and Mugabe always got the most votes not counting fraud. Same thing in Russia. Putin always gets the most votes whether he steals a few or not. Same thing in Belarus. The opposition runs every time and Lukashenko always gets 75-80% of the actual counted votes. There was no fraud in the last election.

There’s never been any serious electoral fraud in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Haiti, Iran, Syria, or Peru or most places the US has alleged that massive electoral fraud allowed the Left to win. I can’t recall the last time the Left anywhere on Earth had to steal an election to win. It’s usually the Right who does that.

Anarcoms have never completed a successful revolution. The no government thing is supposed to be way off in the future and it’s never happened anywhere. The “Stalinism” is just the dictatorship of the proletariat. It’s part of Marxist theory. It’s not an aberration or anything. Look at Honduras, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Zimbabwe, Guatemala, El Salvador, Haiti, Bolivia, Guyana, Peru, Mexico, Italy, Ecuador, Brazil, Chile, Dominican Republic, East Timor, Iran, etc.

There’s no peaceful way to put the Left in power. Anytime a Left government comes in, there’s this nonstop war to overthrow it, usually culminating in a rightwing fascist coup. They always ruin the economy, first and foremost. This is why orthodox Marxists regard the peaceful road to socialism as either a sick joke or a great idea that is not possible in the real world. Lenin called advocates of the peaceful road to socialism “parliamentary cretins.”

Alt Left: Rural Land Reforms: An Overview

What’s odd is that imperialism went along with land reforms in a lot of other places such as Europe and the Middle East. All of the Middle East has done a land reform.

That was one thing the wave of Arab nationalist leaders who came to power in 1950-1970 did right away, including the Baath in Iraq and Syria, Yemen, Nasser in Egypt, the FLN in Algeria, Tunisia, and Qaddafi in Libya.

I believe there was some type of land reform done in Palestine too. If you read Ghassan Kanafani, the Palestinian Leftist, in the 1930’s, he talked about how terribly exploited the Arab fellahin or peasants were in Palestine.

If you went to Yemen in the 1960’s, there was a portrait of Nasser in every house.

I’m not sure if a land reform was ever done in Morocco. It’s been ruled by a fairly rightwing king for a long time.

A land reform was probably done in Lebanon, but I don’t have details. Likewise with Jordan.

Nothing grows in the Gulf anyway, so there’s no need for a reform.

I’m not sure about Sudan or Mauritania, but I doubt much grows in Mauritania except date palms.

In all of these places, land reform was a very easy sell for whatever reason, probably because neoliberal capitalism seems to be antithetical to Islam itself. The feudal lords of the former Ottoman Empire had tried to justify feudalism on the basis that in the Koran it says something like, “Some are rich and some are poor, and this is a natural thing” but that never went over too well.

The idea that in an Islamic country, the rich Muslims were viciously exploit the poor Muslims is nearly haram on its face. You just can’t do that. All Muslims are part of the ummah. All the Muslim men are your brothers and all the Muslim women are your sisters. Also individualism never made it to any part of the Muslim World other than the Hindu variety in Pakistan and Bangladesh, but that’s not really the same radical individualism that we have in the West. It’s just an ancient caste based system.

The first thing the Communists did in Eastern Europe was to do a land reform. You will never hear it here in the West, but until 1960, the Communist regimes in the East were very popular with industrial workers and also with the peasants.

In most of the world, peasants and rural dwellers are leftwingers. This is even the case in Western Europe in France.

The US is odd in that it’s farmers are so reactionary. That goes against the usual trend.

Yes, farmers are said to be conservatives, but that usually just means social conservatism. In most of the world, peasants are literally Alt Left: left on economics and right on social and cultural issues.

A land reform was definitely done in Iran.

Obviously one was done in the USSR, and the large landowners have not yet consolidated themselves in the former USSR, mostly because everybody hates them. Large landowners have taken over some of the state farms in Russia, but for whatever reason, they are not very productive. In fact, many of the state farms are still in existence. I am not sure what sort of arrangement they have now.

50% of the food in the Russia comes from small farms, typically grown on dachas. Dachas were vacation homes that were given to all Soviet workers. They were also given a bit of land, enough to grow some crops on. After 1991, all workers were allowed to keep their dachas and small plots. This was a great idea because most of the produce in Russia is coming right off of these farms.

After World War 2, the US supported land reforms in some places as a way of heading off a Communist threat. This is one great thing about the Communists. So many great steps of social progress were only done out of fear or terror that if these were not done, the Communists would take over. Now that that threat is gone, one wonders what motivation the oligarchs have to give up anything.

In particular, land reforms were done in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. They went over very easily. And in fact, the subsequent economic growth occurred right on the back of these reforms. There is a good argument that you can never develop a proper economy without first doing a land reform.

First of all, you need to get rid of the problem of rural poverty.

Second of all, you need to feed your own people. Large landowners in these countries typically grow food for export or simply fallow the land and keep it as an income base or a source of wealth.

When crops are grown for export, there is a problem in that the nation does not grow enough food to feed its people. This is a problem in Cuba and Venezuela right now, and it should not be. These are very fertile countries and there is no need to import food, but they have gotten hooked on some sort of “crack” of importing their food for whatever reason, possibly because most of their farmland was being used to grow crops for export.

When a nation can feed itself, this means it can feed its urban workers. This is extremely important and it is part of the reason that Stalin went at such breakneck speed in his collectivization. He had to feed his urban workers so he could industrialize because even back then, he was looking into the future and seeing that he was going to have to fight Hitler.

I’m not quite sure why, but no country seems to be able to properly industrialize and develop as long as the problem of rural poverty exists.

And once you are feeding your own people, you have solved a lot of other problems. Money that would be wasted importing inferior food from the West, especially the US, can now be spent on actual development of a national economy. The elimination of rural poverty gets rid of a constant revolutionary bur in the side of the state.

The US has always opposed land reform in Latin America because large US corporations are usually involved in growing foods for export down there. See Dole Pineapple in Guatemala. We want all of their agricultural land to go for export crops so US corporations can grow those crops or make money importing them. And we do not want them to grow their own food. That way there won’t be so much land for export crops which we need to make money off of.

Also, we want them to spend all of their food money importing lousy processed food from the US. So we make money on food both ways – importing food from crops grown for export to the US and in exporting processed food to the Latin America. This processed food is not very good for you and it is implicated in a lot of health problems in these places.

This is why the US opposes most efforts at land reform in the Americas.

An exception was made in El Salvador. After 200,000 people died, the US and the Salvadoran oligarchs were forced to the negotiating table and a land reform was one of the first things they pushed. I recall a piece written soon afterwards where the reporter went out to the rural areas and interviewed recipients of the land reform. They basically said, “Well, at least we can eat now. It wasn’t like that before.”

In semi-feudal countries, there is debt bondage whereby large landowners rent out their land to sharecroppers or peasants who never seem to get out of debt. This is a very primitive form of development.

The Philippines is notable that there has never been a land reform. And of course they have a vicious Communist insurgency.

Nor has there been one in Colombia, Guatemala, Haiti, Paraguay, Honduras, or Argentina. The first five countries are horribly screwed up. Colombia and Paraguay have active armed leftwing guerrillas, and Guatemala did for many years. Haiti is a disaster. Honduras has a vicious rightwing dictatorship that has murdered over 1,000 people.

Argentina is mostly urbanized, but the landed rural elite still runs the country. Any talk at all of land reform or even taxation of large estates as was done recently under Christine Fernandez, and the ruling class starts making ominous threats of a coup. I assume something similar is going on in Uruguay. Those countries are urbanized though, so large landownership is not such a problem.

I’m not sure if there has ever been a land reform in Brazil, but there is no dearth of large landowners.

The fact that Colombia, Guatemala, and Haiti are so backwards is largely because there has never been a land reform.

The land reform was incomplete in Venezuela.

It is interesting that every country that fails to do a land reform seems to end up with a Communist or Leftist insurgency at some point or another. It’s almost without fail. This goes to show you that most Communist insurgencies in the Third World are over the most basic things dating all the way back to French Revolution: land and bread (food).

As far as land reforms go, they were done in Mexico, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Venezuela, and Peru.

I’m not sure about Uruguay, Ecuador, Bolivia, Panama, Jamaica, Belize, the Guyanas, Chile, and most of the Caribbean.

And I’m not sure if one ever got done in the Dominican Republic after Bosch.

In El Salvador, 200,000 had to die in order for a land reform to take place. Roberto D’Aubission, the godfather of the Salvadoran death squads and the most favored visitor at the US Embassy, once said that “We will have to kill 200,000 people in order to prevent socialism in El Salvador.” What he meant by socialism was land reform.

It is notable that no land reform was ever done in India, nor in Pakistan or even Bangladesh. I had a friend whose parents were large feudal landowners in Pakistan who rented out land to farmers who ended up in debt peonage. In 1986, 14 million people a year were dying of starvation related diseases in the capitalist world. Most of that was in South Asia in Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and India. Most of these deaths were attributed to the problem of the private ownership of land.

There is a problem with the private ownership of land. In the US, we think this is sacrosanct, but on a worldwide basis, it doesn’t work very well. What do you need all that land for? What do you need more than, say, an acre and a house? Nothing, unless you are a farmer.

In China, all land is owned by the state. All homeowners lease the land, often on 100 year leases. I’m not sure how it works in the countryside.

In Mexico, much of the land is owned by the state also, a product of the land reform that occurred after the Revolution. One of the major demands of the Revolution was land reform. Pre-revolution, most peasants usually lived like serfs. The state land in Mexico is called ejidos.

If you ever can’t make it in the city, if you become unemployed or homeless, you can always go out to the countryside and take up residence in an ejido, which are something like communal lands that are formed by the group that makes up the ejido. You join this group, work the land, and get a share of the crop. At least you have enough food to eat. So in Mexico the ejidos are a stopgap measure.

In China too, if you can’t make it in the city, you can always go back to the rural areas, take up residence, and work the land. At least you will have enough to food to eat. It is illegal to be homeless in China. If you are homeless, the police pick you up and put you in shelters, which are something like college dorms. They also encourage you to go back to the countryside if you have relatives back there. In recent years, many people have moved from the countryside to the cities to make more money. Those that don’t make it can always move back to the farm.

There was debate a while back about privatizing state land, but it ran aground on the idea that the state ownership of land was necessary as a stopgap measure in the event of urban poverty. In addition, state ownership of land has prevented the development of a national oligarchy or plutocracy.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been adamant that the development of a national oligarchy or plutocracy must be prevented at all costs. Once they develop, they are sort of like an infection in that they soon spread and take over society. The CCP has billionaire party members who are members of the People’s Assembly.

Guess what these “Communists” are advocating for? Reduction or elimination of taxes on the rich, massive reductions in social spending, state repression of labor, and the privatization of land along with most of the rest of the economy. I think this goes to show you that billionaires are the same everywhere. Whether in a Communist or capitalist country, a rightwing or leftwing country, billionaires always have precisely the same class interests that barely vary at all. It’s usually something like this:

Reduction or elimination of taxes on the rich, massive reductions in social spending, state repression of labor, and the privatization of land along with most of the rest of the economy.

This goes to show that class interests of various classes are nearly a law in a mathematical sense and not even a theory of social science. This was what Marx was getting at when he spoke of the laws of economics. They are so predictable that we can almost class them with the laws, theorems, and corollaries of mathematics instead of the typical “true for now” theories of most of the sciences.

I have a feeling that a Hell of a lot more things are laws, too, especially in terms of basic human behavior. So many of these things seem almost unchangeable. Of course they would never apply to everyone, but it’s pretty obvious that they are general tendencies.

Alt Left: Capitalism Will Always Tend Towards Fascism: Does that Mean It Is Fatally Flawed?

DiscoCat: The Far Left has an explicit goal of ending capitalism. The Far Right does not. This is why when forced to choose between the Far Right and the Far Left, liberals, capitalists, industrialists, and plutocrats will always choose the Far Right.

It is precisely for this reason that the wealthy industrialists and plutocrats in Germany supported Hitler’s chancellorship campaign in 1931. They didn’t give a flying fuck about his nationalism, bigotry, warmongering, and antisemitism. Most of the plutocrats probably thought Hitler’s ravings were just harmless antics to galvanize his base. Whatever it takes to rile up the mindless cattle and garner their support. All they cared about is that he would let them keep their ownership of the factories and protect their interests from socialists and communists.

The plutocrats will always support fascism as a bulwark against socialism if they feel the latter’s gaining popularity among the masses. They usually don’t like fascism but they’re driven to support it by pure self-interest and pragmatism.

Thank you very much for this comment! And by the way, welcome to the site if you are new here!

I have felt this way a long time myself. I think it goes deeper than this though. Many of the leftwingers that got overthrown by fascists were just liberals who did some tinkering around the edges. Arbenz in Guatemala and many others such as Juan Bosch in the Dominican Republic were overthrown for trying to do a land reform. The leader of Honduras and Aristide in Haiti were overthrown by fascists for literally raising the minimum wage! That’s all they did. And Bill Clinton helped overthrow Aristide and Hitlery Clinton herself literally overthrew the leader of Honduras and installed a fascist coup that very quickly murdered 1,000 social activists.

This has happened many times. The new Peruvian leader has promised to do only very mild reforms and he’s already being called a Communist. The mild reformer of the PT, Lula, was overthrown in a judicial coup that was assisted by the FBI! I told you Feds are crap. Feds are the worst pigs of them all.

So I disagree where the poster says all of these people go fascist for fear that the Left will end capitalism. It appears that any threat to their profits at all is enough to cause the capitalists to put in a fascist regime. So I think the comment should be amended from fear of the overthrow of capitalism to the fear of any loss of profits and income at all.

A while back, I told my mother that down in Latin America, it is routine for the Right to murder trade unionists and union leaders. She shook her head and said, “That’s because down there, if you’re in a union, they think that means you’re a Communist.” I would point out that that was all done with the help of the US, especially the CIA.

The US has been murdering union members in Latin America for 60 years now, and probably even longer if you consider the Banana Revolt in the Uraba of Colombia in 1921. And every one of our Latin American interventions from 1910-1950 was done on the basis more or less of “kill the trade unionists,” among other things. The Sandinistas of Nicaragua are named after Augusto Sandino, the leader of Nicaraguan guerrillas who fought the US Marines in Nicaragua for many years.

That’s exactly correct. I’d like to add that not one thing has changed. Social activists including union members and leaders, are murdered every day in Colombia for years now.

Alt Left: The US Imperialist Regime Change Playbook: Engage in Violent and Seditious Activities Towards the Targeted Government, Provoke Repression, and then Impose Sanctions, Fund Contras, or Sponsor a Fascist Coup to “Restore Order and Democracy”

In Venezuela and Nicaragua, the US staged violent riots with armed insurgents that attempted to overthrow the government, and then slammed sanctions on the governments when they cracked down on the seditious traitors. Obviously when you crack down on seditious traitors, it’s hard to be real democratic about it, as you start to throw lots of traitors in jail, shut down their treasonous organizations and political parties, forbid the seditious political parties and politicians from running for office again, and often have to start censoring the media because of the frankly murderous lies that the opposition yellow press prints, which actually results in getting a lot of people killed.

During these seditious coup attempts, the reporting is completely dishonest in the US and about as fake as you can get. Outrageous acts of murder committed by the putschists are breathlessly reported by the treasonous local and overseas US press and having been committed by the government, working people into a fever pitch. Opposition fascist liars flood social media, riling everyone up.

But do you see how they provoke repression? This is the imperialist playbook. Provoke repression with illegal and seditious activities, and then scream dictatorship when the law enforcement arms of the state try to restore some order. Wave after wave of sanctions were slammed on the Nicaraguan government by Democrats and Republicans both. When it comes to support for imperialism and alliance with the forces of violent revolutionary fascism and reaction around the world along with rightwing and fascist dictatorships in power, support for fascist states and forces is a bipartisan affair.

The US supports the fascist opposition in Mexico, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru, Belarus, and Ukraine. The US supports the fascist states of Turkey, Israel, India, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Brazil, Honduras, and Haiti and opposes the anti-fascist forces fighting against them. Face it, America loves rightwing dictatorships and fascist governments and opposition forces.

Alt Left: The Left Won in Mexico

AMLO’s leftwing party won a majority of the legislature just the other day. He hasn’t been a very Lefty president. He ran as one but I don’t think he has been governing as one. But just to show you that Mexico is a part of Latin America, the rich and middle class raised a huge uproar over this man’s victory. And so has the US and especially the US media.

And an overtly fascist and putschist reactionary elite of the Mexican ultra-rich, associated with the most conservative strands of the Catholic Church and social conservatism, appeared on the scene calling for a fascist coup to overthrow the “dictator” AMLO. US papers have been full of articles about how AMLO is a “dictator” and has authoritarian tendencies. Apparently it’s complete nonsense. Even the more honest members of the opposition say there’s obviously nothing undemocratic about him. He’s as democratic as any Mexican President and perhaps more so.

Also, there’s been wild cartel-related mass violence and homicide raging across Mexico for 20 years now. These break into all out warfare between gangs and the police and army, who are often on the take and working for the gangs. The gangs also kill journalists or local politicians who get in their way. The same insanity has continued under AMLO, possibly even at a lower level, and while it was barely mentioned before, not AMLO is letting the cartels spin out of control and is allowing violence and homicide to rage across the land. For this reason he needs to be ousted.

But they get people all riled up about this more or less lies. Anyway, crime is rarely a state’s fault and once crime goes completely out of control, there’s not a whole lot you can do about it short of imposing an extreme totalitarian and authoritarian dictatorship. In El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, and Brazil the mass crime and high homicide rates have nothing to do with the governments. They occur under both left and rightwing governments.

Leftwing governments leave and rightwingers come in and the crime stays the same. The opposite happens and crime stays the same. But heavy crime is only weaponized against leftwing governments. Crime in Venezuela is just as bad as in rightwing El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, but only in Venezuela has it been the fault of the governments. All of those governments have tried everything they could, but when crime goes completely out of control, there’s not much the state can do short of outright dictatorship.

I was shocked but then not so much. Of course the Mexican Right is fascist. It’s just that they haven’t had a real Left government in since Cardenas in 1936. The ghosts of the Revolution are dead and the party of the Revolution, the PRI, turned corrupt and rather un-revolutionary, though the basic changes of the revolution were allowed to remain unchanged.

When the PRI couldn’t win an election, they simply stole them. The Leftist PRD, running Cardenas descendant, won the election in 1986, but the PRI declared the election flawed and said it had to be counted over. The government retreated for two weeks and said nothing. When it was over, a PRD victory had suddenly turned into a PRI win. In other words, they stole it. The “liberal” New York Times cheered it on and said there had been massive fraud in favor of Cardenas while it cheered for the “democracy” of the PRI stealing an election.

Alt Left: The Playbook of US Imperialism: Everything They Say Is the Opposite of What Really Happened

This analysis is based on the theory that US imperialism and Western imperialism for that matter is basically fascist. Not that our societies are fascist themselves because we have managed to insulate ourselves from this. But European jerkoffs spend most of their time running around the globe trying to deny the Third World even the barest social democracy that has made Europe so livable.

Modern Western Liberalism: Liberalism at Home, Fascism Abroad

How else you can you explain how Europe attacked social democracy in Latin America in Mexico, Haiti, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Brazil, Bolivia, El Salvador, Honduras, Peru, and Colombia? Social democracy at home, fascism abroad. This is the project of the Europeans nowadays, and NATO spearheads this project. In the US it is similar, social liberalism at home, fascism abroad, at least for the Democratic Party. Canada has something between social liberalism and social democracy, and their politics is for this project at home and fascism abroad.

When reporting about hot button issues abroad in the West, keep in mind that everything you read about countries the West is hostile to is really the opposite of what really is or what really happened.

Everything Is the Opposite of What It Really Is

With fascists and fascist supporters like the US, everything is the opposite of what it really is.

Elections That Never Make Sense

Rightwing governments that use fraud to steal elections are restoring democracy.

Leftwing governments that win elections always win due to fraud because of course they cannot win any other way. As soon as they get in power, no matter how much freedom they allow, they are always authoritarian dictatorships. The elections that government has, even if they are models of fair elections, are always marred by massive fraud.

Rightwing governments that overturn these legitimate elections and steal them for the Right are always uncovering the massive fraud. The resulting election theft is called by the New York Times and US government “restoring democracy.”

When the Venezuelan fascist coup overthrew the democratic government of Hugo Chavez in 2002, the US government and the New York Times lauded the “restoration of democracy and end of dictatorship” that the fascist coup (the fascist coup was a restoration of democracy) against a democratic government (the democratic government was a dictatorship) represented.

The US/NATO Fascist Playbook: Mysterious Snipers Shooting at Both Sides

Fascist gangs usually supported by the US and/or NATO, a fascist military organization in Europe, open fire on both security forces and and either left or rightwing rioters. Fascist forces often fire on their own people and blame it on the government as a pretext for a coup to overthrow the government. This is what happened in the US-supported fascist Maidan Coup in Ukraine. When the fascist gangs open fire, the US turns it into leftwing security forces opening fire on leftwing mobs and security forces.

See the 2002 coup in Venezuela, where fascist gangs operating from overpasses shot and killed 32 people, all Chavista protestors or Chavista Venezuelan security forces, then feverishly blamed the government forces for shooting at their own supporters and comrades in arms. The US media tripped over itself reporting how the Left had opened fire on itself, massacring 32 of their own people. It took some time to straighten it all out.

Sanctions

The local fascists and the US also destroy the economy with economic war or sanctions, and then the US and the fascists scream that the Left government has destroyed the economy with its “socialist policies.” Of course it was really the economic war and the sanctions, but no matter. Even notice how all US articles on the Iranian and Venezuelan economies blame the government for the economic and social crisis that was deliberately caused by US sanctions?

Syria

In Syria, gangs of Al Qaeda-linked Islamists (Salafist Islamist like Al Qaeda and ISIS linked forces resemble fascists in many ways) raided villages full of government supporters and murdered everyone inside. Then these same forces screamed that the Syrian government had raided an opposition village and killed all the opposition people inside. The US and Western media then flooded the news with reports that the war criminal Assad has committed another massacre.

There have been 10-20 huge massacres of whole villages in the Syrian Civil War. The US, the West and the Islamists all claim that they were all done by Assad. If you go to Wikipedia and look up all of these massacres, it will tell you that they were all done by Assad.

I researched every one of those massacres in depth.

They were all done by the Free Syrian Army, who are Al Qaeda linked Islamists who burned down churches in every city and town they conquered. The villages massacred were inhabited by Sunni government supporters, Alawites, and Christians. All three groups were feverish supporters of the government. The US continues to state that all of these cases were massacres of opposition supporters by Assad’s forces.

That’s like I set your house on fire and then stand outside screaming about what an arsonist you are as you try to put out the fire. I call the fire department and they arrest you for arson while you’re hosing the building and thanking me, still holding kerosene and matches, for being such a good citizen as they walk by back to their trucks.

The Ties Between Fascism and US Imperialism Are Deep

This is basically how the US and all other forces linked to Western imperialism run their foreign policy. And every government in Europe that is a member of NATO, I’m talking to you. NATO is basically a fascist army. As you can see, the ties between fascism and imperialism are deep. In modern imperialism, the West goes around the world installing fascist and rightwing dictatorships and supporting fascist forces that are trying to overthrow leftwing governments. Not all of the governments it supports are fascists, but all are rightwing, at least in Latin America.

Alt Left: Right and Left in Islamic and Catholic Societies

If you’re not careful, the media will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and cheering the people doing the oppressing.

–Malcolm X

This is precisely the function of the media in a capitalist society. The Chinese media is not like this because, duh, China is not a capitalist country! Nor is the Iranian media because Iran is not a capitalist country. In fact, Iran is almost something like “Islamic Communism.” I’m not wild about Ayatollah Khomeini, but he did have a strong social justice streak.

The Revolution was populist, pro-independence, and anti-imperialist. Iran is almost based on a Muslim version of Liberation Theology or “the preferential option of the poor.” The social safety net is huge in Iran. Also, much of the economy is run by the state. It’s actually run by religious charities, often with ties to the military and the IRGC. I believe these religious charities do not operate at a profit. Small businesses are not bothered at all, as in all Muslim countries. I was reading Ayatollah Khameini’s tweets for a while on Twitter, and I could have been reading Che Guevara. Basically the same message.

Islam is just not friendly to neoliberal economics or radical individualism. It is a very collectivist religion in a very collectivist society.

Neoliberalism hasn’t caught on much of anywhere in the Muslim world other than Indonesia and the Southern Philippines, and they had to murder 1 million Communists in cold blood to get there in Indonesia and the Moros have always rejected Catholic rule in both a political and economic sense. it is notable that the Maoist NPA are also huge in Mindanao, home of the Moros.

Pakistan, too, has inherited the selfish economics and even feudalism in land tenure straight from Indian Hinduism. They even have caste, which would be considered an aberration in any decent Muslim society.

All of the Arab countries are basically socialist at least in name, and that was never a hard sell there. It’s true that 100 years ago, the Arab lands were mostly feudal in nature, with big landowners and peasants in debt bondage. They rich had co-opted the religious authorities like they always do, and the mullahs preached that Islamic feudalism was right and proper because the Prophet had said, “It is normal that some are rich and some are poor.” But it was always a hard sell, and it had a very weak foundation.

After independence, socialism was instituted in most if not all Arab countries at least in name. In particular, huge land reforms were done in Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, and Palestine. I assume something like that was done in Algeria too. It was a very easy sell, and everyone went along with it without a hitch. The mullahs quickly changed from support for feudalism to support for socialism.

Hamas rules Gaza and I was shocked at how huge the social safety net is. The many religious charities run the safety net, which is distributed under the rubric of Islam. This is done instead of the state doling it out.

Mohammad himself didn’t have much to say about economics, but he wasn’t a neoliberal capitalist or a feudalist.

In Christian societies, the rich have utter contempt and hatred for the poor, who they regard as little more than human garbage. If you want to see this philosophy in action, look at the classism in Latin America. As all Muslims are part of the umma, and hence, as all are brothers and sisters, it is simply unconscionable that wealthy Muslims would be able to openly hate poor Muslims. You simply cannot treat your fellow Muslims like that. It’s not officially haram but it might as well be.

European Style Fascism in the Middle East

It is instructive that the only place in the Arab world where neoliberal economics and in particular Libertarianism took hold was in Lebanon, and even there, it was only among Catholic Maronites. Most Arab Christians look east to Antioch (and before that, Constantinople) to the Eastern Orthodox church, which is really just the eastern wing of Catholicism.

The Maronites, though, deride Antioch and instead look to Rome. They see themselves as European people instead of Arabs. Many deny that they are Arabs and instead refer to themselves as “Phoenicians.” It is interesting that the only real classical fascism in the Arab World took hold in the Lebanese Maronites, where the Gameyels imported it from Europe in the 1930’s.

The Jews of Israel also developed a very European form of fascism starting with Jabotinsky and his book The Iron Wall in 1921. This man was an open fascist. He is considered to be the spiritual father of the Likud Party. During the 1940’s, the armed Jewish rebels split into leftwingers who were almost Communists and rightwingers who were more or less fascists.

The Kahanists today look a lot like a European fascist party. And in fact, the entire Israeli rightwing around Likud, etc. looks pretty fascist in a European sense. So Israeli Jews are really Jewish fascists or fascist Jews. It has never been an easy ride for liberal and secular US Jews to support the Orthodox religious fanatics and rightwingers if not out and out fascists in the Likud, etc. in Israel. This was always completely unstable, and after that latest war, it’s finally starting to fall apart. But the seeds of destruction were already there.

But note that the Jews of Israel very much look to the West and see themselves as Europeans (which many are for all intents and purposes). They align themselves with the Judeo-Christian European society that many of them came from.

Half of Israeli Jews are Mizrachi Jews from the Arab World, and they have always had a Judeo-Islamic culture. However, when they moved to Israel, this was dismantled by perhaps not entirely. They rejected it due to the association of Arabs and Islam with the enemy, which is correct.

Economics and Catholicism

This radical classism and near-feudalism in Latin America was supported by the Catholic Church, which was always a very rightwing institution because they were always in bed with the rich. There were always Left splits in Catholicism like Dorothy Day and The Catholic Worker. The Catholic clergy in the US has tended to be quite leftwing.

There is a long history of “Catholic Communism” in the Philippines, Czechoslovakia, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, the Basque Country, France, Italy, Haiti, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador, Chile, Cuba, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Argentina, and Uruguay. The IRA was a leftwing Catholic armed group. A lot of priests were caught hiding IRA cadre. So was the ETA in the Basque Country of Spain.

Catholic Leftism never caught on in Poland and Lithuania due to hatred of Russia and the USSR. Nevertheless, both are more or less socialist countries.

Even today there is an active “Catholic Communist” movement in Cuba that is very lively. In Honduras and Colombia, Catholic priests actually led guerrilla bands. Liberation Theoloy is something like “Jesus Christ with an AK-47.” The Leftist who recently took power in Paraguay was a former Catholic priest.

The ELN was founded by a priest, Camilo Torres, and many Catholic clergy even supported the Shining Path! Edith Lagos, a 20 year old woman, was the leader of a very early Shining Path column in Peru. She was killed in 1980 and the entire town of Ayacucho, 30,0000 people, came out for her funeral which was held at midnight. The lines of mourners stretched through the whole city. All of the priests in town blessed her body, and she was given a proper Catholic funeral.

I believe that the PT or Workers Party of Brazil has a large Liberation Theology component. The Catholic clergy had an excellent relationship with the FARC in Colombia. Of course, the Catholic clergy played a big role in Venezeula, and Hugo Chavez himself was a practicing Catholic. The FMLN Salvadoran rebels were explicitly Catholic, as were the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. One of the Sandinists’ top leaders, Tomas Borge, was a Catholic priest. Jean-Paul Aristide in Haiti was a Catholic priest. Catholic believers are now allowed to join the Communist Party in Cuba, and near the end of his life, Fidel Castro said he was a “cultural Catholic.”

After Vatican 2 and Liberation Theology began to spread out via the seminal documents written by Gustavo Gutierrez in Brazil, “A Theology of Liberation,” otherwise known as “exercising the preferential option for the poor,” it began to spread in Latin America. It started with local priests and especially Catholic lay workers in impoverished areas and then slowly spread. Even today, Catholic layworkers and especially seminaries are very leftwing, while the Vatican itself is not. A lot of seminaries are hotbeds of homosexuality, and the gay priests and lay workers are quite open about it. It is estimated that 15% of Catholic priests are gay.

Alt Left: Lousy People Make Lousy Countries

If you want to know just how shitty a group of people are, just give them their own country and see what they do when they get a hold of it. Israel is the nation of the Jews. It’s one of the worst countries on Earth. What does that tell you? Turkey is the nation of the Turks, the Gulf Arab countries are the countries of the Gulf Arabs, and India is the country of the Indians. Three of the worst countries on Earth by far, in the running with (((that shitty little country))).

Israel sucks because it’s full of Jews, and this is how Jews act if you give them a country.

Turkey sucks because it’s full of Turks, and this is how Turks act if you give them a country.

Gulf Arab countries suck because they’re full of Gulf Arabs, and this is how Gulf Arabs act if you give them countries.

India sucks because it’s full of Indians, and this is how Indians act if you give them a country.

Why does Mexico blow? Because it’s full of Mexicans, that’s why.

What other reason could there be? Every nation is created by the people who make it up. If the people suck, you get a crappy country. If the people are decent, you tend to get a pretty good country. The only times this might not be true is when the majority oppose the state, but that’s not the case in any of the above nations except Bahrain, where the majority Shia oppose the awful government.

Colombia sucks because it’s full of Colombians.

Guatemala sucks because it’s full of Guatemalans.

El Salvador blows because it’s full of Salvadorans.

Honduras sucks because it’s full of Hondurans (although to be fair, most of the people oppose the state).

Haiti sucks because it’s full of Haitians. Now, I happen to like Haitians in a political sense because 92% of them are Lavalas, and they almost all hate their horrible government, but it’s still true that Haiti is full of some pretty low-quality people.

Brazil blows because it’s full of Brazilians, a half good and half bad people. Looks like the majority tips bad though because they just voted in a picture-perfect model of Mussolini.

And don’t give me this, “Oh, the people are wonderful! It’s just their terrible government!”

But people aren’t set in stone. Germans and Japanese used to be the worst people on Earth, and now they’re some of the best. But I’m not quite so hopeful about some others. Haitians, for instance, may be problematic for a long time. But electing a Lavalas leader would sure be a step forward.

Alt Left: How the US Staged Fascist Coups in Many Countries the World Over in the Last 70 Years

After World War, the Cold War was started and the murderous Dulles Brothers Installed the Policy known as Containment. This was implemented between 1946-48. As part of this policy, the US overthrew nationalist, social democratic, and even liberal democratically elected governments all over the world as part of the “War on Communism.” We replaced them with rightwing dictatorships. Although it is arguable, in general all rightwing authoritarian regimes or dictatorships are probably fascist. Rightwing dictatorship = fascism.

These regimes were found most of Central America in Guatemala after 1954, in El Salvador and Honduras since forever, and in Nicaragua under the Somozas.

They were found in all of South America at one time or another. We can see them in the generals after 1964 in Brazil, the democratic facade duopoly regimes in Venezuela in Colombia (especially after 1947 and again in 1964, Ecuador, Peru until the generals’ revolt in 1968, Bolivia under Banzer after 1953, Paraguay under Strausser, Argentina and Uruguay under the generals in the late 80’s and early 90’s, and Pinochet in Chile.

They were also seen in the Caribbean in Cuba under Bautista, the Dominican Republic under Trujillo, and Haiti under the Duvaliers.

In Southeast Asia, they were found in Thieu in South Vietnam, Sihanouk in Cambodia, the monarchy in Laos, the military regimes in Thailand, Suharto in Indonesia, the Sultan in Brunei, Marcos in the Philippines, and Taiwan under Chiang Kai Chek.

In Northeast Asia, a regime of this type was found in South Korea from 1947-on.

They were found South Asia with Pakistan under Generals like Zia, in Central Asia in the Shah of Iran, and in a sense, the Arab World with Saddam (Saddam was installed by the CIA), King Hassan in Morocco, the Gulf monarchies, and Jordan. Earlier, they were found in the monarchies in Libya and Egypt that were overthrown by Arab nationalists. Also, Israel played this sort of role with a democratic facade.

We also found them in the Near East in the military regimes in Turkey (especially Turgut Ozul) and for a while in Greece under the colonels in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.

NATO formed the backbone of a “rightwing dictatorship” in the background of Western Europe (especially Italy), where Operation Gladio NATO intelligence essentially ran most of those countries as a Deep State behind the scenes. These regimes were found in Spain under Franco and in Portugal under Salazar along with its colonies.

These regimes were not so much in evidence in Africa except in South Africa and Rhodesia and most prominently, Mobutu in Zaire and Samuel Doe in Liberia.

The fascist forms of these rightwing dictatorships varied, most being nonracist fascism but a few being racist fascists (Turkey), and others being Mussolinists (Suharto in Indonesia with his “pangesila”)

Alt Left: How the Cold War Against Communism Ended up Being a War against Nationalism, Social Democracy, and even Liberalism

All of these liberal Democrats signing on to this media war on Venezuela need to recognize that the corporate media is using the Venezuelan example as part of a “war on socialism” to discredit the very word socialism and everything associated with it.

Remember when Trump said before Congress that the US will never be a socialist country? Here, socialism refers to social democracy in either in name/action, which exists in 95% of the countries in the world in the form of ruling parties, strong opposition parties and governmental structure/programs/ideology either in writing or action.

Remember how the entire Congress, including the vast majority of Democratic Congressmen, gave that fascist a standing ovation when he said that? And liberal Democrats dare to claim that they are on the left! They’re not on the left of anything, except maybe the left wing of Republican Party.

The corporate media and the US money/government elite (The Deep State, basically) despises anything that even smacks of socialism, especially social democracy which they truly hate because it is most likely to be implemented. This started during the Cold War but it was already going on in the Depression, when US fascists nearly staged a military coup against FDR, who they said was a Communist.

But during the Cold War the demonization of anything smacking of socialism, no matter how mild, really got under way with two bloodthirsty killers, the Dulles Brothers, who initiated the policy of Containment and created the CIA out of the wartime US intelligence agency, effectively turning the US into a militarized, national security state.

In other words, they initiated what boils down to the US Deep State or the foreign policy establishment of the United States. Note that the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned about is absolutely part of this Deep State too, as it and the national security state are each part of each other.

It was during this era when the US overthrew countries all the time for the tiniest movements towards social democracy and a lot of times simply for implementing social liberalism, the ideology of the US Democratic Party!

For instance, Aristide in Haiti was overthrown for the simple reason that he raised the minimum wage.

The US Democratic Party gave complete support to both of these coups, without a single dissenting member. My “liberal Democrat” father, actually a “Cold War liberal,” a truly awful group of people, gave his complete support to the fascist coup that overthrew Aristide. Why? Because Time Magazine told him it needed to be done. My father foolishly believed that Time Magazine was a liberal or at least Centrist project though it’s never been either.

So the Democratic Party supports raising the minimum wage, sure, but overseas, if you do it, the Democratic Party will call you a Communist and overthrow you in a fascist coup! Disgusting or what?

Nationalist, Social Democratic, and even Liberal Governments Overthrown by the CIA in the Last 70 years

Arbenz in Guatemala was overthrown in 1954 simply for implementing a mild social democracy. About 3% of his administration was made up of Communists, and this was the stated reason for overthrowing him. United Fruit also played a huge role because he nationalized their banana plantations.

Juan Bosch came to power in the Dominican Republic in 1965 and started to implement a mild social democracy. The US media demonized him as a Communist, and soon LBJ staged a fascist coup to overthrow him.

The Mossadegh government in Iran was elected in 1953 for electing a nationalist who nationalized British Petroleum’s oil and set about to implement a mild social democracy with nationalist overtones. He was overthrown by the US and UK and a fascist monarch called Reza Shah was installed and held power for the next 26 years.

A leftwing government was elected in Guyana around 1970, and the Western media went into hysterics. In reality, he was just a social democrat. The “liberal” UK soon overthrew him in a fascist coup.

The US waged economic war against Manley’s government in Jamaica in the late 80’s and early 90’s. He was never anything but a social democrat.

The Left took power in Brazil in 1964 after they won an election. In truth they were just social democrats. They were quickly overthrown in a fascist coup by generals in the military a year later.

A social democratic government that contained a few Communists was elected in 1960 in Iraq. The CIA overthrew that government in a bloody coup and installed Saddam Hussein with specific instructions to get rid of and crack down on the Communists.

Patrice Lumumba in the Congo came to power in 1964. I believe he was never anything more than a social democrat. Nevertheless, the Western media went insane, calling him a Communist. A year later he was overthrown with the help of US intelligence. It is a proven fact that Donald Rumsfeld, then working for the Defense Intelligence Agency, helped set up his arrest and subsequent execution by being tied to a tree and shot.

Alt Left: Rightwing Authoritarianism Via Coup in Latin America: Some Recent Attempts and Successes

The following Latin American countries have recently had attempted or successful fascist coups and most are at the moment by rightwing authoritarian states or dictatorships.

Brazil: legal or judicial coup (lawfare) to remove a Leftist president on false legal grounds. Immediately started killing Leftists in the streets as soon as they got in. These are actual, real deal, Mussolini-style fascists in the European tradition. Most Latin American fascists are quite different from that.

Paraguay: Parliamentary coup to remove a Leftist president on a completely false basis by the rightwing Legislature.

Bolivia: Armed coup with rioting to remove a Leftist president over fake election fraud – the military and police were heavily involved.

Ecuador: Coup by devious lying – the conservative ran as a Leftist allied with the Leftist president who could not run anymore. As soon as he got in, the first he did was turn to the Right, say he had never been a Leftist, and attack the Left, harassing, arresting, and issuing arrest warrants for most of the Left he claimed to be a part of. False criminal charges were filed against the former President, so he can’t come back.

Colombia: The Left is kept out of power permanently by a death squad rightwing dictatorship with a democratic facade that stays in power simply by committing mass murder against the unarmed Left. Why do you think the Left in Colombia took up arms? All legal avenues for change were blocked and the army (with US Special Forces help) was running around the country looking for Leftists so they could murder them. The Left said we can either sit here in our villages and wait for the army to come out and kill us or we can pick up a gun so at least we have a hand when they come to kill us so we can shoot back.

Nicaragua: Armed coup of Venezuela/Bolivia type (mass rioting) attempted. Smashed by the Sandinistas.

Venezuela: Ongoing coup attempt for 22 years now ever since Chavez and the Bolivarians took power. So far all attempts of coups of all sorts – including economic, lawfare, parliamentary, rioting, assassination, military revolt, currency manipulation – have failed.

Haiti: Permanent fascist regime installed by the US. The very popular Lavalas Party, which won 92% of the vote in the last election, was overthrown by the CIA and a CIA-recruited army from the Dominican Republic. The President was arrested by US Special Forces in the middle of the night and ordered to leave the country. He is still banned from coming back even though everyone loves him. The Lavalas Party is permanently banned and the new police have murdered thousands of Leftists in order to keep the Left down and stay in power. The UN “peacekeepers” actually helped the death squads arrest and kill the Left. It was sickening!

Honduras: Democratically elected Leftist president overthrown by a military coup greenlighted by Hitlery Clinton and led by the rightwing army. After they seized power, 1,000 unarmed Leftists were murdered by quickly formed death squads.

Mexico: A Leftist President won the election, and already the light-skinned wealthy elite is making a lot of noises about taking him via a coup, and in fact a vague coup attempt seems to be forming. Many of the upper middle class and middle class Mexicans support this effort.

Now I will look at the US and show how the Republican Party, a fascist party since 2002 at least, is modeling its fascism or rightwing authoritarianism on the model implemented by the Latin American elites.

US: The fascist US Republican Party seems to be modeling its fascism or rightwing authoritarian politics on the reactionary and fascist Latin American elite. I urge everyone to watch Latin American politics very closely because whatever you see down there, you’re going to see here sooner or later.

That means the appearance of death squads. That sounds insane, but that is always a feature of these states the Republicans are modeling themselves on. And did you notice that the US capitalists and conservatives quickly went fascist in the face of a serious threat from the Left (Sanders, the Squad, Occupy Wall Street, BLM/antifa riots this summer)? Remember what I said in the previous post – when the capitalists face a serious threat to their money and power from the Left, they most always go fascist in a last ditch attempt to keep their money and stuff.

Alt Left: Repost: Whites Act a Lot Different When They Are in the Majority as Opposed to the Minority

This is actually a somewhat rewritten repost of an old post that people are still commenting on.

Whites can actually act pretty good when they are a majority. Blacks are actually treated quite well here in the US by the majority Whites in my opinion. We US Whites probably treat Blacks better than anybody else. Obviously that wasn’t always the case, and that’s unfortunate, but no one is convicted for life of anything, and redemption is always possible. In fact, were there no redemption, we humans would still be acting like complete animals.

But when Whites get in the minority as in Latin America, South Africa, and Rhodesia, they didn’t act very good. And that’s to say the least.

And in Latin America, there is pretty much no such thing as race. It’s a deracialized continent. Nevertheless, look at how White those vicious Latin American fascist elites are.

Nevertheless, I would like to point out that those elites get a lot of dark-skinned people to do their dirty work for them. The death squads in Central America were populated with lower middle class mestizos. The fascist street mobs in Nicaragua and Venezuela are quite dark-skinned. They look very mestizo. However, the ones in Venezuela were said to be criminals who were hired by the rich to riot in the streets.

And there are progressive Whites all over Latin America. Very leftwing light-skinned people are or were in top positions of government in Paraguay, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Venezuela, Brazil, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Cuba, Jamaica, and Uruguay. The leftwing governments in Nicaragua, Venezuela, Argentina, and Cuba are full of Whites.

The leadership of the FMLN, URNG, FARC, ELN and Shining Path guerrillas is or was often White. The same was true with the leadership of the guerrillas in Argentina, Uruguay, and Honduras in years past. Many of the rank and file in the FARC and ELN are White.

Typically the guerrillas in Latin America have or had a White leadership and a mestizo (and in some cases mulatto or zambo as in Colombia) rank and file. Sort of like the fascist Latin American White elites, right? The leadership is all White, but the rank and file street fighters are mestizos.

The Whites lead, the mestizos follow. This is Latin America.

Alt Left: America’s Salad Days, or When America Ran the World, 1945-60

The UN has been an American province for a long time. Let’s take after World War 2 for example. Sure, there was a UN. But from 1945-1960, the UN and the US were pretty much synonymous. Hence the pussilanimous and disgustingly murderous behavior of the US proxy called the “UN” in the Korean War. After World War 2, we had not only defeated all of our adversaries but most of our allies lay in ruins too. We weren’t running the world before the war – Germany and Pax Brittanica were vying for that honor – but we sure were after the war.

Some people think we allowed our allies to get destroyed on purpose so we could, in our usual slimy way, end up sidelining our allies and running the world, the World Dictatorship Ruled by the US being the main US project since 1945. I don’t know why Americans think it is groovy for the US to be this swaggering, belligerent, out of control outlaw organized crime gang that rules the world.

Do Americans really think that’s cool or something? Because that’s exactly what we are. We aren’t even a country. We’re an Outlaw Empire ruled by an Organized Geopolitical Crime Gang that happens to be the top gang in the world right now?

Anyway from 1945-60, the world was our oyster. Of course, we fucked it up like we fucked up everything. Even the Marshall Plan and the rebuilding of Japan reportedly had sleazy Mafia-like subplots going on. After that, we finally started getting some good hard pushback from China and the USSR (Thank God and it was about time!), first in Cuba, next with the Missile Crisis and the Gary Powers affair, and especially in Vietnam.

The cycle of anti-imperialist revolutions followed in Algeria, the Philippines, Indonesia, Tanzania, Ghana, Kenya, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, India, Guatemala, Peru, Chile, Palestine, Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Dominican Republic, South Africa, Ireland, and Guyana. Argentina, El Salvador, Honduras, Mozambique, Angola, Rhodesia the Basques followed suit. Arab nationalist revolutions took Libya, Egypt, Algeria, Syria, Yemen, and Iraq by storm.

The Shah fell in Iran in what was actually very much an anti-imperialist revolution. A revolution rocked Afghanistan.

But 1945-1960 were the America’s salad days.

Alt Left: The Myth of White Racial Loyalty in the Americas (Or Probably Anywhere for That Matter)

Commenter: Like I said, those are exceptions. White men still largely go after White women even if given the choice between White and other races. The White guys who go after Asian girls, for example, are basically the ones that either can’t get a White woman, or they want a traditional and more loyal partner, as White women are a bunch of egotistical, feminist, unfaithful whores these days.

In all of the New World, there was massive interbreeding between the Whites who invaded and conquered the continent and the Indians still there. Interbreeding was massive all over the continent with the exception of Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay. White men were quite willing to breed with Indian women and vice versa. No problem at all.

An early visitor to Brazil found a White man with 13 Indian brides. Such sights were not uncommon. In fact, Whites had bred so deeply into Brazil’s population that a project called Blanqamiento or Whitening was initiated to bring a lot of Whites over to make Brazil White. It didn’t work very well. Your average Brazilian is 54% White, but the rest is mixed with Black and Indian. Pure Whites are ~20%. There were vast numbers of Black slaves in Brazil. They are almost gone now as only 6% of Brazilians are Black. The rest all bred in, mostly to White men.

Guyana is hugely mixed. Your average person is a mulatto, half-White and half Black.

Suriname is very similar.

All of the Caribbean is mostly Black due to the slave trade. However, there is White admixture.

The White invaders of Jamaica are nearly gone and Jamaican Blacks are 9% White.

Similar things have occurred elsewhere.

In the Dominican Republic, 20% are Whites, but the Whites have some Black admixture. The rest are mulattos, Black-White mixes.

The Bahamas is 12% White and the original Whites are almost gone.

On some islands there is nothing left of the Whites, but some people called redbones, a Black word for a light-skinned Black.

There are almost no Whites on Haiti, however there are a tiny few, mostly Arabs, and they form part of the elite. Of course the Whites were massacred. However, a mulatto elite with substantial White admixture has traditionally ruled the place.

Cuba had many Whites and still does. However, there are also many Blacks and a vast number of mulattos. The Cuban genome is 37% Black. This was a society that went straight from slavery to Jim Crow, and look at how Whitened the Blacks become anyway.

There are reports of vanishing Blacks all over the continent. There were quite a few Blacks in Mexico at Liberation, especially on the East Coast. 200 years later, there are almost none. The Black population disappeared. What happened was that they bred into the White and mestizo population such that most Mexicans have 3-5% Black in them now.

There were many Blacks in Argentina in the late 1800’s. They seem to have vanished. What happened was they were bred out, and now the average Argentine has 3% Black in them. And the average Argentine White is 18% Indian, so they are actually mestizos.

Chile is similar. Pure Whites are not common. The upper class is Whites who are 20% Indian. The middle and lower classes are mestizos who are 40% Indian.

Peru has a tiny White population and a huge mestizo population.

Upon Liberation, Mexico was 40% White. 200 years later, it is 11% White. There has been almost no net non-White immigration. The Whites just gradually bred into the Indians and the mestizos, mostly the latter. Even today Whites try to preserve their White ancestry, but White Mexican men keep marrying mestizos, especially light-skinned mestizos. White women have been much more loyal to their race than men in the US and Latin America.

El Salvador was 100% Indian. Now it is 2% Indian and almost all the rest are mestizos.

Guatemala is 2% White with a huge mestizo population.

Ecuador is 2% White with a huge mestizo population.

In Venezuela and Colombia, Whites are only 20-25%. All the rest are mixed, mostly White, Indian, and Black.

Nicaragua is ~5% White. Most of the rest are mestizos.

Honduras has few Whites and almost everyone is a mestizo.

Panama is heavily mixed with White, Black and Indian.

In the US, almost all Blacks were pure when imported. Now your average Black American is 25% White. Pure Blacks are nearly nonexistent. A team went out to study a group of rural Black loggers in Alabama because they were only 5% White, and this is so unusual. If you can trace your White ancestry back to Colonial America, you may well have Indian in you. If you go back to 1600’s America as I do, the chance is even greater. The American White genome is even 3% Black overall. Not sure of how much Indian we have in us.

Alt Left: Where Rightwing Economics Pushes Too Far (Always), There Inevitably Arises A Left Revolutionary Backlash

Of course in a number of places like Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, Honduras, Ecuador the revolution was overthrown by mostly illegal means, but the Left is still very powerful in all of these places and no one likes the new rulers. Everywhere in Latin America where the Right is in power, the people are wretched if not up in literal arms. Nobody wants rightwing governments down there anymore. As we have seen in recent years pace Milton Friedman, rightwing regimes in Latin America can only be imposed by force anymore. The people have been lied to too many times and no one believes the rightwingers anymore.

The places that didn’t have one like Colombia, Peru, and Chile either have an armed Left or mass riots.

They almost had one in the UK. They had one in Greece, but the Left sold out.

They had one recently in Indonesia, and there may be one in the process in the Philippines.

Thailand had an aborted revolution via the Red Shirts, but it was thwarted.

They had a revolution in Nepal, but it was thwarted by the state putting in fake Communists.

The rest of the world is already more or less socialist so there’s no need for a revolution!

The Arab World, Central Asia, Africa, and most of Europe are already socialist, so there’s nothing to change.

The “rightwing populist” leaders coming to power in Russia, Poland, and Hungary are all socialists! Over there even the Right are socialist.

Neoliberal rightwing economics is dead all over the world, though its corpse is stirring violently.

Rightwing economics is only in power in the Baltics, parts of Latin America (Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, and Peru), the Caribbean (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), and the Philippines. It is unpopular in Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, Chile, and Honduras. Peru is more stable, but there are constant labor riots led by unions, and there remains an armed Left in the mountains. It is unpopular in Haiti and I don’t understand DR politics. Where the Left remains in power as in Venezuela and Nicaragua, it has 70-80% support.

Hong Kong and Singapore are the Libertarian showcases, but neither is sustainable because they cannot be replicated worldwide, as all of their wealth is dependent on massive exploitation of the poorer countries and even surrounding areas. Housing is completely unaffordable for workers in both places as in all Libertarian countries. And Hong Kong is undergoing a revolution from the Left, as it is going Communist.

India is going neoliberal but they are doing via religion, so the foolish Hindus have had the blinders put over their eyes and are supporting it like the superstitious pinheads they are. Meanwhile India remains a socialist country as stated in its own Constitution, and where that lie has become too obvious, there is a Maoist revolution in the hinterlands to set things right.

Singapore is not as Libertarian as it seems. The state owns all land and almost all of the housing is public housing. National health care exists but it is a very poor model. A pro-Chinese Communist Party leftwing opposition party with Marxist roots is very popular. So as we can see, even the showcases are undergoing revolutionary reactions. There’s really no way around this. As rightwing reaction grows extreme, and equal and opposite leftwing reaction forms in opposition to it. For every reaction there is an equal and opposite reaction. It’s social science, but it may as well be physics, n’est pas?

Can the whole world become Singapore and Hong Kong? Well, of course not. Singapore and Hong Kong are only rich because so much of the rest of the world is poor. The Third World makes $1/hour so the Singaporeans and Hong Kongers can drive BMW’s. Is this really so hard to figure out.

We can’t all be rich, you know? It would be like Lake Wobegon, where everyone is above average. It’s like saying the whole world could become the British Empire. It’s not even possible. Or it would be like having footraces where everyone comes in tied and there are no winners or losers. How likely is that to happen? 0% likely. It’s not even statistically possible, so it fails even as a mathematical proof. Physics envy? Not so fast, now. The social sciences are not as soft as people think. Laws and theorems can exist outside of a math classroom.

Alt Left: The Alt Left Position on Religion with an Emphasis on Christianity

One wonders why I put Alt Left in front of this post. I originally did not want to, as many of my posts have nothing to do with Alt Left ideology. In particular, I do not think the Alt Left should be religious or get involved in scriptural or doctrinal arguments. We are too secular at our core for that. What we are is believer-friendly!

However, as I thought about it, there’s a way to sneak this in. More on that below.

First of all, the Alt Left is probably the only section of the Left that is not objectively hostile to not just religion in general but Christianity in particular. The American Left has always been extremely hostile to Christianity, silent (to their discredit) about Judaism, one of the primitive forms of ethno-religious barbarism known to man, and lately, openly celebratory about Islam, probably the most backwards and reactionary religion on Earth. The US Left has been anti-White for a long time. The religion of the US Whites is Christianity, hence US Christianity is tainted by the sins of the fathers. Not to mention that American Christianity has never been anything close to a theology of liberation; instead it has been a backwards theology of reaction more akin to Judaism than Chrisitianity than Judaism from Day One. But that’s not why the Left hates it. The Left, frankly, hates America. America in its only proper sense means White America. Anything else is fraudulent in a historical if not sociopolitical sense. As America = Whites, the Left hates Whites. As Christianity is the religion of the of the American Whites, the Left hates Christianity, in particularly Protestantism. The Left is probably going to become more pro-Catholic as as a result of their valorization and reification of the recent Hispanic immigrants to the US.

If you are on the Left and religious, come join the Alt Left! I’d love to have a religious Alt Left faction. We have a particular fondness for Christianity because the Alt Left was founded in the US. But we don’t privelege Protestantism above Catholicism and Eastern Orthodox, especially as Protestantism in the Western Hemisphere has never been anything but reactionary.

Even more importantly, the Alt Left is the only faction on the Left that openly supports Whites, first of all, the Whites of the US but second of all, our White ancestors in the Old World. If you’re on the Left and you either love Whites or love being White, come join us in the Alt Left! We are the only Left faction that does not hate Whites!

The Alt Left supports (Eastern Orthodox) Replacement Theology because that is part of the essential doctrine of the Palestinian Christians, whom we support to hilt. We also support the Russian Eastern Orthodox doctrine of the Russian ethnic Leftist rebels in the Donbass, whatever that might be called.

The Alt Left also (Catholic) Liberation Theology, which can be boiled down to “Jesus as a leftwing revolutionary guerrilla with an AK-47.”

See especially the “Catholic Marxists” Camilo Torres, the rebel-priest and original “priest with an AK-47) founder of the ELN in Colombia, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua (particularly the rebel poet-priest Ernesto Calderon), the FMLN in El Salvador (particularly Archbishop Romero), an Irish priest who led Honduras largest guerrilla group in the 1980’s whose name eludes me, Jean-Paul Aristide of Haiti, and believe it or not, the Maoist NPA in the Philippines, which has a lot of support among local Catholic priests in the villages.

Liberation Theology is pure “Jesusism” or Catholicism. It emphasizes “the preferential option for the poor,” in other words, it is completely in accord with Jesus’ socioeconomic message.

In addition to that we should support Eastern Orthodox Replacement Theology as the proper liberation theology for the people of Palestine to take back their country from the violent usurpation of the Jews.

As you can see, the two main religious strains we support are Liberation Theology, a Catholic doctrine, and Replacement Theology, an Eastern Orthodox doctrine.

Alt Left: Communism Is a Universal Movement Not Tied to Any Ethnicity

Communism appeals to all sorts of people on a basic level. Look at what Communism promises. It’s pretty clear that that’s something that a lot of humans would want, not any particular ethnicity or culture.

Polar Bear: NS Germany surely had a German spirit. Was Communism based on Russian farm culture or anything native? I often think it contrasts with warring Celtic tribes on the British Isles and Ireland. Maybe some of it is Slavic in nature.

I’m not sure. You know it took off in Mozambique, Grenada, Angola, Cuba, Afghanistan, China, Vietnam, Laos, Chile, Congo, Cambodia, Mongolia, and Yemen too, right?

And they almost won in Peru, El Salvador, Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Greece, Turkey, and Colombia.

The CP was huge in Iraq – the base of Moqtada Sadr’s movement is actually the old Iraqi CP! Most of Sadr’s followers and soldiers were former members of the Iraqi CP. It had huge memberships in Sadr City. Eurocoms were huge in France and Italy. The CP is in the ANC government in South Africa.

In addition, Communism was very popular in Kazakhstan (Turkics), Tajikistan (Iranics), Uzbekistan (Turkics), Turkmenistan (Turkics), Kyrgyzstan (Turkics), Karelia, Mari-El and Udmurtia (Finno-Urigics), the Caucasus, Azerbaijan (Turkics), Armenia, among Siberian Turkics, Buryats (Mongolics), Tungusics, the Nivkhi (Japanese types), and the Chukchi (Inuit types).

I’m afraid there’s a little more to it than Slavicism. I do not believe it was ever very popular in Poland, the Baltics, Finland or Georgia though. Stalin once said that forcing Communism on the Poles was like putting a saddle on a cow.

Anyway, Marx was German and Engels was British. Rosa Luxembourg was German. Antonio Gramschi was Italian. Carlos Luis Mariategui and Edith Lagos were Peruvian. Manuel Marulanda Gabriel Garcia Marquez were Colombians. Gabriel Mistral was Chilean. Farbundo Marti and Roque Dalton were Salvadorans.

Augustino Sandino was Nicaraguan. Pablo Picasso was a Spaniard. Ho Chi Minh was Vietnamese. Mao Zedong was Chinese. Patrice Lumumba was Congolese. Samora Machel was Mozambican. Those are all very famous Communists who were non-Slavic.

We and our pals overthrew non-Commie Leftist nationalists in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, Panama, Mexico, Colombia, Paraguay, Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil, Guyana, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Portugal, Iraq, Iran, and Libya. We and our pals tried unsuccessfully to overthrow them in a number of other places.

Communism has universal appeal. It is nothing less than the dream of a better world. That is why in a way I was sad when the Eastern bloc collapsed because what collapsed with it was that most beautiful dream.

The Latin American Left believed in the dream of a better world. And in Latin America, that is a dangerous thing.

– Alejandra, an Argentine ex-girlfriend

Alt Left: “The Explosion in Lebanon Has Been Delayed: Until When?”, by Elijah J. Magnier

Very nice article that lays bare a lot of the bullshit surrounding the Lebanon protests. Of course they are being manipulated by the US and Saudi Arabia to turn them into anti-Hezbollah demonstrations with the aim of overthrowing the Hezbollah government.

Yes, you heard me right. The Lebanese government right now is controlled by Hezbollah and its allies. This has been the case since 2018 when they won the elections. Hezbollah has 55% and the anti-Hezbollah group consisting of Sunnis, Druze and half of the Christians has 35%. 10% are neutral.

So we have yet another case here of a minority trying to overthrow a majority as was recently done in Bolivia, Honduras, Brazil, Ecuador, Haiti, Paraguay, and Ukraine, and as the US is attempting to do in Venezuela and Nicaragua, with regime change operations in Dominica and probably Mexico coming soon. The Dominica operation is already well underway.

There has long been an attempted regime change operation in effect in Syria and there is an ongoing one in Yemen, Iraq, and Iran. There also appears to be a regime change operation in effect in Hong Kong. Of course, Cuba, North Korea, Zimbabwe, and Eritrea are victims of long term regime change operations. So is Venezuela for that matter – the operation against Venezuela has been ongoing for 17 years now. I don’t support those rightwing protestors at all.

Everywhere around the world, anti-US regimes are being overthrown with regime change operations, often coups of one variety or the next. The US simply does not believe in democracy at all. It only likes democracy if its favored groups win. If the groups it does not like are in power, the US will always try to overthrow them even if they have majority support. And we’ve been doing for over a century now.

The Explosion in Lebanon Has Been Delayed: Until When?

By Elijah J. Magnier

Global Research, November 30, 2019

Elijah J. Magnier 27 November 2019

Europe is concerned about the Lebanese political crisis and its potential spillover consequences in case of a civil confrontation. Even if the European states do not have differing strategic objectives in Lebanon from the US, a civil war will affect Europe directly, as refugees will be flocking from the neighbouring continent.

Reaching an agreement over a new government to prevent further unrest is proving difficult. Sources in Beirut believe it may take several months to form a new government as was the case in forming the last government. Some wonder if it might not be better to wait for the results of the US elections before forming a new government.

Or perhaps a new government will only emerge after a major security event, like the assassination of the late Prime Minister Rafic Hariri which triggered a political tsunami in the country. All indications on the ground point to the prospect of a civilian confrontation arising from the absence of a robust central government that can take in hand the security of the country. Can Lebanon avoid a civil confrontation?

The closure of the main roads and the “deliberate” incompetence and inaction of the security forces – due to US requests to tolerate the closure of main axes linking Lebanon with the capital – is no longer surprising behaviour.

The main roads now closed have been carefully selected: closed are the roads linking the south of Lebanon to Beirut and linking Baalbek and the road to Damascus with the capital Beirut. These areas are mainly inhabited and used by Shia. The roads are being blocked mainly in certain sectarian areas controlled by Sunni supporters of the caretaker Sunni Prime Minister Saad Hariri and his Druse ally Walid Joumblat.

The closure of other roads in the Christian-dominated Dbayeh by the pro-US Christian leader Samir Geagea, leader of the “Lebanese Forces”, and in Tripoli seem to be diversions of attention from the main goal: challenging Hezbollah.

Sources in Beirut believe the objective is to exasperate the Shia who represent the society that protects Hezbollah. The goal is to force the organisation into the streets. Hezbollah is aware of this and is trying to avoid responding to provocations. The closure of these roads is an invitation to Hezbollah to take the situation in hand and direct its weapons against other Lebanese citizens, as indeed happened on the 5^th of May 2008.

In 2008, Druse minister Marwan Hamadé – directed by Walid Joumblat – and pro-US Prime Minister Fouad Siniora asked Hezbollah to cut its fibre optic private communication system linking all corners of the country.

Israel never ceased to monitor the Hezbollah cable that, due to its high-security system and regular control, had managed to neutralise all Israeli tapping devices attached to it by Israeli Special forces during their infiltration to Lebanon for this exact purpose.

An effort was made by the Lebanese government in May 2008 to cut the cable to break through Hezbollah’s high-security system, the key to its command and control in time of peace and especially in time of war. This insistent attempt – despite repeated warnings – provoked two days later a demonstration of force by Hezbollah occupying the entire capital in a few hours with no serious victims.

Lebanese pro-US armed mercenaries who gathered and hid in Beirut to trigger a civil war on this day, anticipating Hezbollah’s possible reaction, were neutralised in no time despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent on their supposed readiness for war against Hezbollah in the streets of Beirut.

Today the goal is to see Hezbollah controlling the streets and arming anti-government Syrians and Lebanese. The goal is to take the Lebanon issue to the United Nations. The aim is not to see Hezbollah defeated by the initial clashes: the firepower, training, and military organisation of Hezbollah cannot be defeated by enthusiastic mercenaries and locals.

Their aim is to deprive Hezbollah of its legitimacy and pay a heavy price for its “unforgivable” victories in Syria and Iraq and its support to the Palestinians and the Yemenis.

Lebanon’s financial problems are not the primary issue.

In Congressional testimony, the former US Under Secretary of State and Ambassador to Lebanon, Jeffery Feltman, told the US Congress that “Lebanon’s entire external debt (around $35 billion) is in line with the estimates of what Saudi Arabia is bleeding every year in pursuing a war in Yemen ($25-$40 billion).”

Regional and international financial support to Lebanon will be injected with one purpose: to trigger a civil war in the hope of defeating Hezbollah in the long term. This might also save Israel from a severe political crisis by provoking a war against Lebanon rather than an internal conflict among Israelis, as seems possible after two failed attempts to form a government.

Most Lebanese are aware of the sensitive and critical situation in the country. Most fear a civil war, particularly in view of the behaviour of the Lebanese Army and other security forces who are now standing idle and yet refusing to keep all roads open. These actions by the security forces are greatly contributing to the possibility of an internal conflict.

Sincere protestors with only a domestic agenda have managed to achieve miracles by crossing all sectarian boundaries and carrying one flag: an end to corruption and associated poverty and the return of stolen capital to Lebanon.

Protestors are asking the judiciary system to assume its responsibility and for the country to head towards a secular ruling system. But sectarian elements and foreign intervention are managing to divert attention from the real national demands that have been overwhelming the Lebanese since decades.

The foreign intervention is not relying on the justified demands of protestors in its confrontation with Hezbollah. It is relying on sectarian Lebanese who want to contribute to the fall of Hezbollah from the inside.

This is not surprising because Lebanon is a platform where the US, EU, and Saudis are strongly present and active against the Axis of Resistance led by Iran. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander Hussein Salame warned in his most recent speech that these countries risk “crossing the line.”

Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran has not initiated a military or preventive war on its neighbours but has limited its action to defending itself and in building its “Axis of Resistance”. Recently, Iran proposed – to no avail – a HOPE (Hormuz Peace Endeavor) to its neighbours, seeking a commitment to the security of the Middle East separately from any US intervention.

Iran defeated the mainstream international community when it helped prevent the fall of the government in Damascus after years of war. It has effectively supported Hezbollah and the Palestinians against Israel, favoured ally of the US; Iran stood next to Iraq and prevented a hostile government reaching power; Iran has also supported the defence of Yemen against Saudi Arabia’s useless and destructive war.

Iran’s enemies are numerous and have not given up. They tried but failed to achieve their objectives in 2006 in Lebanon, in 2011 in Syria, in 2014 in Iraq, and in 2015 in Yemen. Today a new approach is being implemented to defeat Iran’s allies: the weaponization of domestic unrest motivated by legitimate anti-corruption demands for reform at the cost of “incinerating” entire countries, i.e. Lebanon and Iraq.

Protestors have failed to offer a feasible plan themselves, and caretaker Prime Minister Hariri is trying to punch above his parliamentary weight by seeking to remove political opponents who control more than half of the parliament. Lebanon has reached a crossroads where an exchange of fire is no longer excluded. The conflict has already claimed lives. Thanks to manipulation, Lebanon seems to be headed towards self-destruction.

All images in this article are from the author

The original source of this article is Elijah J. Magnier

Alt Left: The US: All Guerrillas We Don’t Like Lack Agency and Are Simply Pawns and Puppets of an Enemy State

In guerrilla wars nowadays, all guerrilla groups who the US says are enemies are labeled by the US as being pawns of some dastardly foreign power. The revolutionaries themselves are deprived of all agency and reduced to mere puppets who carry out orders from some large state sponsor. The puppets probably don’t even want to do these attacks! They’re probably being being forced to by their diabolical patrons!

In the Latin American revolutions of recent years, all of the revolutionaries were deprived of agency and reduced to mere puppets, first of Satanic Cuba and ultimately from the Devil itself, the USSR. Of course these revolutions were not started by internal politics, vast differences between the rich and poor, grotesquely unfair systems, murderous death squad states who torture and murder any dissidents on the Left!

Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Colombia were all wonderful countries. There weren’t any starving masses living in tin shacks with no water, sewage systems, jobs, or access to medical care, education, transportation or even money to buy food or anything like that!

You see, all the countries got let off the hook, and the US got to say that it wasn’t the horrific conditions inside the far rightwing country that were producing the obvious armed Left guerillas that such states often logically produce. The guerrillas were just idiots, useful ones to be sure, or even puppets on a string. Everything’s fine in these countries, and not one single progressive change needed to be made.

Instead this was just Castro’s Cuba – boo, hiss – exporting revolution to these poor innocent Latin American countries who are trying their best to serve their people! Oh, poor countries! These sad, pathetic, ignorant guerrillas are being made into pawns and puppets of malign Commies against their will! Oh, poor guerillas!

And ultimately of course the revolutions were all coming from the USSR. The motive was always nothing more than Soviet expansionism. The Soviets were trying to export Communism all over the world to every country, rich and poor, leftwing and right, those who served their people and those who left them to die without a nickel! Bad Soviets! They were so mean!

In other words, all leftwing revolutions had nothing to do with the objective conditions inside the country. They were all caused by the deplorable Soviets exporting their depraved Communism the world over.

By saying that the Houthis are just Iranian puppets, useful idiots, and fools without any gripe who are mercenaries on the payroll of the Iranians, we are saying that conditions are just fine in Yemen, and the Houthis took arms for no reason.

According to the US and various Sunni Arab states in the region, the Houthis are revolutionary pro-Iranian crazies who are trying to take over the country as part of a sneaky Iranian project to take over all of the Arab countries, oppress and lord it over them, steal their resources and leave them penniless, and worst of all, force all of them all to convert to Shiism.

See how this “puppets of X regime” nonsense plays out? It’s usually nothing but a flat-out lie. Most civil wars happen for a reason. What sort of reason? An internal reason based on the objective conditions in that country, conditions that the guerrillas think are wrong or unfair – that’s what reason. Of course guns don’t grow on trees, and most guerrillas need to have state sponsors in order to acquire their weaponry. They have to buy them somewhere.

The Menace of Trump's Alter Ego Bolsonaro in Brazil

Tulio: Robert, do you have any thoughts on Bolsanaro? Looks like Brazil is about to take a hard right turn toward fascism. Steven Bannon is down there advising him. The thought of that fucker makes me physically ill.

He’s a monster, of course. I had no idea that half of Brazil’s population were reactionary Rightist maniacs. He’s worse than Trump. I have met two Brazilian Rightists and they were out and out monsters. Both absolutely hated democracy. One was a Brazilian Jew and the other is the former commenter Santoculto.
They’re murderous, as bad as the Bolivian, Venezuelan, Salvadoran, and Nicaraguan Right. They’re not as murderous as the Haitian, Guatemalan, Honduran, and Colombian Right, but they definitely kill people. A Black woman who organized in the Brazilian favelas was recently murdered by the Right government that is in power now.
This Bolsonaro had as part of his project putting on trial and executing all of the former armed rebels from the 1960’s. He has the support of the reactionary military in that. Thing is though, the last president was a former urban guerrilla from the 1960’s and her government was full of former guerrillas, so he’s openly advocating the trial and execution of most of the former government.

Conservatives Are Murderous and Hate Democracy All over the World and at All Times

The Murderous, Democracy-Hating Latin American Right

The murderousness of the Chilean, Peruvian, Ecuadorian, and Argentine Right is in the past, but you never know when they will spring up again.

There was talk on the Argentine Right of calling for a coup when the last president talked about regulating the agricultural sector. They run that country like a mafia and no one dares to touch them. The Argentine Right worked with Wall Street to bankrupt the country and ruin the economy so they could win an election.
The Paraguayan Right overthrew the government with a judicial coup.
The Ecuadorian Right attempted an armed police coup several years ago.
The Peruvian Right staged a coup 25 years ago.
The Chilean Right only allowed a weak democracy 18 years ago.
The Honduran Right staged a military coup to get rid of a democratically elected president. Since then, death squads have murdered 1,000 people.
Aristide was overthrown by US sponsored coup 23 years ago, and they haven’t had any democracy since because Aristide’s party is banned from running. The last time they ran, they won 92% of the vote. After the coup, death squads rampaged through the population, murdering 3,000 members of Aristide’s party.
The rightwing Brazilian legislature overthrew the Left government based on a complete lie and they jailed the former president on a completely fake charge based on a bribe that he didn’t even accept! I mean they simply overthrew a democratically elected government with a parliamentary coup. They do this stuff all the time down there with either judicial, parliamentary or military coups.

The Latin American Right hates democracy.
If you wonder why the Left goes authoritarian down there, well, this is what happens if you try to do it democratically. They try to do it democratically, they wage coups and economic wars against you, start terrorist riots destroying you cities, murder the members of your government and political parties, start contra wars, or if they are in power, run death squads and slaughter the members of your parties.
I mean if they block all efforts at peaceful change, why not just put in a Left dictatorship? By the way, this is why Lenin said peaceful efforts towards socialism were doomed to fail because power never surrenders without a fight. He called such efforts parliamentary cretinism. I don’t agree with that, but I see the point.
The main point is that everywhere on Earth, the Right hates democracy and they are determined never to allow any Left governments to take power. Things are a bit different in Europe, North Africa, the Arab World, and Central Asia, but once you start getting over to South Asia, once again, they won’t give it up without a fight.

The Murderous, Democracy-Hating Right in Southeast and East Asia

Thailand overthrew a Left government with a judicial coup and the middle class rioters called yellow shirts destroying the country.
Indonesia staged a fake coup so they could murder 1 million Communist Party members.
The Philippines runs death squads that slaughter the Left.
The Taiwanese state consolidated its power after 1949 when they fled to they island by murdering hundreds of thousands of Leftists.
South Korea also killed hundreds of thousands of Leftists from 1945-1950 before the Korean War even started.
Between 1954-1960, Communists tried to take power peacefully in South Vietnam, but the government murdered 80,000 of them. They kept asking the North Vietnamese for permission to take up arms but it was never granted. Finally, in 1960, Ho gave them permission to take up arms.

Crime in Venezuela

How do you think Venezuela will handle crime? its extremely rampant, like 3.5 worse than Russia.

It’s like that all over the whole region and no one can fix it there either. Venezuela has had a very high crime rate forever, long before Chavez came in. This is another problem that long predates him. Frankly, most of it is in the poor barrios, so most people are not effected. They tried a thousand things under Chavez to lower crime, but nothing worked. The Opposition won’t be able to get a handle on it either and all of the Opposition’s shenanigans have only made crime a lot worse.
How come no one talks about the crime rates in Colombia, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, and El Salvador? And in the Caribbean for that matter? They are all up there with Venezuela’s and no one can fix it in those places either. Once your crime rate gets really high, it is not such an easy thing to get a handle on.

Category: Honduras