More on Venezuelan Economy

TJF writes:

If it’s not economic warfare, then what the Hell is causing the shortages? http://www.tradingeconomics.com/venezuela/inflation-cpi When a country’s inflation rate exceeds certain levels, especially in Venezuela’s case where they have to import food and a substantial number of goods, economic systems start breaking down. The country went from 5

1.The mass shortages are causing a lot of the inflation obviously. Supply and demand. 2. But most of the inflation is being caused by the unequal exchange rate. 1 government dollar = 40 black market dollars. 3. Lots of people are making plenty of money in Venezuela. The business sector is not going out of business or anything like that. When they sell products on the black market and smuggle them to Colombia, they make huge profits. Also a lot of them are playing the currency markets where they get a government dollar for 1$ that is worth at least $40 on the black market. The wildly inflated dollars on the black market are causing a lot of the inflation right there. The inflation is coming right out of that black market in dollars. The stores in the rich areas are stocked to the rafters. They have no shortages of anything. All of the shortages are in the poorer or working class areas. The rich are not suffering at all. They can buy anything they want. There is still a huge amount of capital flight going on. ~$50 billion dollars goes out of the country every year due to capital flight.

Various Schemes That the Opposition Has Tried to Get Rid of the Chavistas

Bottom line is the Opposition has tried everything in the book to get rid of the Chavistas, so why wouldn’t they try economic war? They already tried economic war twice before, once with a lockout strike and another time with the oil company strike/sabotage, both of which brought the economy to its knees. The Opposition has shown no qualms about using ruining the economy if it means getting rid of the Chavistas. Further, serious shortages have appeared before every election for over 20 years now. ~1-2 months before every election, serious shortages of all sorts of things occur and many products become unavailable. So the Opposition has already shown that the4y are willing to create artificial shortages to try to get rid of the Chavistas. If they’ve created artificial shortages 18 times before, why wouldn’t they be doing it now? Capital flight: Capital flight has been a problem from Day One of the Chavistas, and the currency controls were originally put in to stop the capital flight. You have to get a handle on capital flight, or your economy will collapse. So currency controls were put in limiting how many dollars you could take out of the country. This was a good idea, and it had to be done anyway. The business sector never cooperated with the Chavistas. Military coup and oil company strike: The capital flight started from Day One, then a military coup, then the oil company strike, then a business lockout of workers strike where most of the businesses in the country simply closed up shop and locked out the workers. Lockout strike: It is called a lockout strike because the workers show up every day wanting to work but they are locked out of the building. And there is no reason to shutter the enterprise because it is going fine. The businesses are not going out of business. They are just going on strike. The lockout strike lasted a year and caused huge damage to the economy. Constant rioting for over a decade: After that, they tried all sorts of things including continuous rioting in the upper class and middle class areas that has been going on for almost 10-15 years now. For a long time, the Chavista police just stood off the side and let them riot because they knew that if they tried to arrest the rioters, the US would start screaming human rights violations of the brutal police thugs, and they would put sanctions on the country.

About that Economic War In Venezuela Again

AC in NC writes:

While I would not deny that the private sector might be doing something to add pressure on the system, I don’t think that is the root cause. The government price controls, starting with currency valuation and gasoline subsidy, are the reason for the inflation. I know there will be an objection that rice is different from gasoline or that the private sector is not allowed to sell gasoline. But just as an example, how could the private sector import gasoline and make a modest profit selling it for US$0.60 per gallon (recently raised from US$0.06)? The cost of imports is not going to be related to the official exchange rate. It’s going to be related to the black (free) market exchange rate. What does the private sector have to exchange with the world to pay for those imports?

My understanding is that you can make a modest profit on price controlled goods. Also only some  things are price controlled. Anyway the private sector has refused to import or make any price controlled stuff anyway, so why are they complaining that they are being forced to sell at a loss? They’re aren’t selling any of that stuff and they never have, so how could they be selling at a loss? It is also my understanding that the government dollars are perfectly sufficient to buy whatever you want. In other words, the government gives you $500,000 to import stuff, you can go out anywhere in the world and get $500K worth of goods for that. I don’t see what the gas subsidy has to do with anything. Gas is sold at a very, very cheap price in Venezuela. How is this dirt cheap gas fueling inflation? Inflation is caused by high prices, not extremely low prices. The government recently devalued the currency somewhat but not nearly as much as it needs to be devalued. Nobody wants to devalue their currency as it can cause all sorts of problems and it is a sort of a sign of defeat and waving the white flag of surrender. So I would agree that Maduro has completely blown it by not letting the currency float. Devaluing the currency is a very tough decision decision to make and it would probably be very unpopular with the people. Maduro just did not have the guts to make a potentially very unpopular decision. The private sector is drowning in money. They are making money hand over foot. The stores are stocked to the rafters in the rich areas. There are no shortages of anything, not even one thing. You still think is a natural state of shortage. The private sector gets government dollars to import products. Those dollars are very cheap and can be used to import whatever they want and they are very much sufficient to import whatever. The state gives the private sector the dollars to import stuff. Or maybe they sell it to them? Not sure how that works. They import the stuff, but when they do, they divert a lot of it to the black market where they can sell it for a lot more, or they smuggle it out of the country to Colombia where they can get a lot more money for it. So there is your shortage right there. The private sector does not want to sell at normal prices on the normal market because they can make so much more money on the black market or smuggling. Also increasingly the government would give them money to import stuff, and they would not even use the money to import things at all. In other words, they would not do what they said they were going to do with the money. Instead, they would take the cheap money and play games with it on the black market currency market while lying and saying they were using it to import stuff. So after a while, the government got very leery about giving out cheap dollars to import stuff with. Then the private sector started screaming that the government wasn’t giving them any money to import stuff with and that was the reason for the shortages. If the shortages are not caused by an economic war, why are the shelves full in the wealthy areas? Nobody has any problems making money there. If there is no economic war, how come before every single election since Chavez came into power, serious shortages of many different products would suddenly appear about 1-2 months before the election. Why did these mass shortages appear if there is no economic war? If there is no economic war, then why after the Opposition won the latest Legislative elections, did many products formerly in serious shortage suddenly appear on shelves in large quantities all over Venezuela? If there is no economic war, then why does the government seize huge warehouses full of hoarded goods all the time? They seize these warehouses constantly. Recently they seized a warehouse full of 21 million syringes that had been hoarded. You say there is no economic war?

If It's Not Economic War, What Then Is Causing the Shortages in Venezuela?

RL: “The shortages of these goods is occurring because the private sector is refusing to make/import them or make/import enough of them.” Tulio: I’d need further proof of that. The free market should handle such issues. If one manufacturing of widgets is withholding production that’s an opportunity for another to open up and take his market share.

Well, why isn’t the Venezuelan free market operating as it should then? Does the commenter have any theories on what is causing all of these shortages? If it’s not economic warfare, then what the Hell is causing the shortages? You can’t just shoot down theories you don’t like. You have to shoot them down and then offer another theory instead. What does the commenter think is causing all of these shortages in a capitalist-run economy? Got any theories? Hint: The business class is trying to take down the Chavistas by creating an economic crisis and using that crisis to take out the Chavistas. Has the commenter studied what happened when the US got together with the Chilean business class to wage an economic war and make the Chilean economy scream in order to create an economic crisis that they could use as an excuse to stage a coup against Allende? If you study what happened during the economic war that was waged on Allende, you will see that what is happening in Venezuela is almost exactly the same thing that was done in Chile. Further, members of the Bolivian business community are quoted on the record as being furious that Evo Morales came into power and vowed to take him out with any means they had. Reporters asked them how they would take down the Morales government, and the business leaders stated that they would wage economic war, stop or slow down all production, create massive shortages and an economic crisis, and then use that to take down the Morales government. So with the evidence from Chile 1970-1973 and the recent comments by Latin American capitalists in Bolivia, we see that economic warfare to get rid of leftwing governments is very much part of the playbook for the Latin American ruling classes and business sectors. There are price controls on a lot of the goods. You can make a modest profit on the price controlled goods, and the government keeps raising the price controls all the time under pressure from business. But ever since those price controls went in, the entire business sector has refused to produce or import any price controlled products. Only some basic products are price controlled. Most things you find in the stores are not price controlled. They would produce something similar to the price controlled product but not quite the same. Rice was price controlled, but the capitalists started importing some special rice products that were not controlled where they could make a huge profit. Chicken was price controlled, but the capitalists just started producing some other sort of chicken (rotisserie chicken?) that was not controlled that got a much larger profit. This caused terrible problems for a while, but finally the state said, “Ok, you capitalists do not want to produce these price controlled products, then we the state will import them.” So for quite a few years, the state used oil money to import all of the products that were price controlled. This worked very well for a long time, and the shelves were full. The capitalists produced or imported more expensive high profit goods, and the state imported price controlled staples. However, this all came crashing down with the oil price crash. The state is now broke and can no longer import all of the price controlled staple goods. And the business sector has refused to produce or import price controlled staples ever since the controls went in. So there’s a big reason for the shortages right there. If the capitalists import products, they can make much more money smuggling the goods to Colombia or selling them on the black market as opposed to selling them on the shelves of Venezuelan stores, so that’s what they do with a lot of imported goods. And any goods they produce may also be smuggled to Colombia or sold on the black market because you can make a much higher profit that way instead of selling them to legitimate outlets. Also the capitalists need dollars to import products. So they get dollars from the state to import things. So the businesses are always going to the state asking for these cheap dollars saying they want them to import things that are in shortage. So the government gives them the dollars to import things, but instead of using them to import the products in shortage, they play money games with the cheap dollars on the currency markets in the black market. Also a lot of capitalists have simply stopped making much of anything and instead are playing games with money by speculating in the currency market in the black market, where huge profits may be obtained by selling cheap state dollars at the black market price.

The Lowdown on the Venezuelan Oil Industry, Pre-Chavez and Post-Chavez

William writes:

I had the impression that the Chavistas had nationalized the Oil industry; I.E. it was essentially a form of revenue for the government, run by the government, etc. Profits went towards social programs, etc. But that does not equate to “full socialism”…

Venezuela nationalized their oil industry long ago, in 1976. However, it was a patronage aspect of the state, and the workers and management of the state oil company grabbed most all of the oil money, leaving little else for anyone else or certainly for state projects. The state oil company went on strike and shut down production all over the country in an earlier attempt to ruin the economy a few years into Chavez rule. This latest “make the economy scream” project was not the first – there were a few others before which all failed. Chavez broke the strike by firing all of the striking management and any workers who supported the strike. A lot of the regular workers were kept on. He replaced fired workers with Chavistas, who were all quite qualified. Chavez then turned the state oil company, formerly a vehicle for nothing but patronage and corruption of an upper middle class light skinned elite, into a state oil company the purpose of which was to provide a vehicle for mass wealth redistribution down to the poorer classes via massive government spending projects. So there’s your Venezuelan socialism: using the state oil company to mass distribute money down to the people in the form of government spending and social spending projects. But this is pretty much what Saudi Arabia, Iran, Libya under Ghaddafi, Russia under Putin, Norway and oil producing countries have done though, so it is bizarre that we flipped out when Chavez did the same thing. The Chavistas engaged in a lot talk about building socialism, but honestly as a socialist, they never got around to it. Incidentally, the US-supported strikers caused major damage to the oil industry during this strike via mass sabotage. There was so much equipment destruction that it took years to get the oil industry back online. So another one of their ways to get rid of Chavez was to try to destroy the state oil company through mass sabotage of its equipment. Incidentally, the US government was massively in on the strike and the sabotage. You can see that the opposition has tried every tactic they can think of, legal and illegal, to take down Chavez. The only difference now is that they seem to have finally succeeded in making the economy scream. The oil industry management had gotten hugely wealthy off of what amounted to theft from the state oil industry, and after Chavez fired all of them, these formerly well do to people all lost their very lucrative jobs with nothing to replace them with. So this was one very pissed off group of people who are frankly furious that their huge unearned privileges in Venezuelan society had been revoked. Former state oil company employees are one of the major players in the Venezuelan Opposition.

What Caused the Oil Price Crash?

William writes:

I suppose embargoes on the oil (now owned by the government, now a big source of revenue) is what caused this to a large degree?

There are no embargoes on Venezuelan oil. I know this sounds insane, but the US has not embargoed Venezuelan oil, and in fact we buy a tremendous amount of oil from what Washington calls the enemy state of Venezuela. The oil price collapsed, and this in part caused this horrible problem in Venezuela for a variety of reasons. Venezuela is not alone. All oil producing states are suffering from the oil price crash, and furthermore all of Latin America is in a bad recession. Incidentally the oil price crash itself was engineered by John Kerry and Joe Biden along with the Saudi royalty as a project to radically ramp up Saudi oil production in order to crash the world oil price as a way to destroy:

  • Russia – Paybacks for Russia out of US fury over the Ukraine situation.
  • Iran – Mostly a Saudi concern. The Saudis have always considered Iran to be their worst enemy, but the feeling is not mutual. I think the Iranians would just like to get along with Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states.
  • Venezuela – Regime change Venezuela is a long term US project.

I am not sure what we offered the Saudis in return, I think maybe helping them with the Syrian regime change project. Also I think we might have given them a lot of weaponry. The Saudis had their own reasons for doing this. They not only have huge oil reserves, but at the time, they were sitting on a huge pile of cash reserves in their Treasury. They figured they could ride out the price crash via dipping into cash reserves, which incidentally will be totally depleted in a couple of years. However, the Saudis had a devious project in mind. Even though the plan was hatched with the Americans, bear in mind that capitalist countries generally have no allies, as the remainder of the paragraph will demonstrate. A major Saudi project was to crash the price of oil and hence ruin the US oil shale or fracking industry, which the Saudis see as serious competition. Fracked oil costs a lot to produce, and the Saudis have some of the lowest production costs in the world. By crashing the oil price, the Saudis could effectively bankrupt the US fracking industry, which is exactly what it happening right  now. The Saudis are morons though for doing that, as their own economy is getting screwed hard by the oil price crash.

Venezuela and the "Failure of Socialism" Canard

First of all, what people refer when they talk about “failed socialism” is really failed Communism. There is no socialism in Venezuela. Venezuela is a capitalist country. The means of production other than oil are in the hands of the private sector. The private sector capitalists run the whole domestic economy. Shortages are basically not even possible in a free market absent an embargo, limited production or other artificial means. If there is a bad toilet paper shortage, Bob Lindsay’s Toilet Paper factory opens up. It’s real simple. All shortages are immediately covered by other competing businesses. Everything that is in shortage in Venezuela is either manufactured or imported and then sold by the private sector. The government does not make or sell even one of those products in shortage. All of those shortages are because the capitalists manufactured an economic crisis to get rid of the Chavistas. They did this exact same thing in Chile. This is right out of the Allende playbook. The shortages of these goods is occurring because the private sector is refusing to make/import them or make/import enough of them. Also there is incredible hoarding of manufactured goods going on. Every week they seize another huge warehouse full of hoarded products. A warehouse containing 21 million needle syringes was seized the other day. This while the US press is screaming about medial shortages and shouting that a military coup is the only way to fix this and other problems. 3 The government gives the capitalists dollars to import those goods in shortage, and they take the dollars, refuse to use them for their state purpose – to import goods in shortage – and instead turn around and use these dollars to play the currency market in the Venezuelan black market. Black market dollars are worth far more than government dollars, so capitalists get cheap government dollars and sell them for very high prices on the black market. The truth is that the private sector is hardly making anything anymore. They are using most all of their money in speculation in the money markets on the black market, or they are smuggling stuff out of the country to Colombia where it gets a higher price. Bottom line: the private sector is refusing to import or manufacture a lot of products, resulting in horrific shortages. Someone want to tell me how this is the fault of “failed socialism?”

Was Chavez Poisoned by the US?

Here.

Bernie Sanders revealed his phony populism by shamelessly bashing the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez – murdered by Obama, either poisoned or infected with incurable cancer causing substances.

Four surgeries in 18 months couldn’t save him. At the time, then acting (now current) President Nicholas Maduro said he “was poisoned by dark forces in order to hit at the Venezuelan people and Latin America.”

Bottom line is they never proved it. It’s just an unproven theory. It is rather interesting that several of the New Left Latin American leaders all came down with cancer around the same time, but that in and of itself doesn’t prove anything. Plus there’s no good, hard evidence that you can give someone cancer via poisoning or infection. Perhaps you can, but it’s not proven yet.

Down with Bernie Sanders

Here.

Sanders calls Hugo Chavez a “dead Communist dictator.” That might shock you, but it shouldn’t. As great as Bernie is on US domestic policy, he is horrific on foreign policy, as are all US politicians. Suffice to say that Bernie gives full throated supported to US imperialism. That’s all you need to know. I looked at his despicable record on foreign policy. Just awful.

Of course, Hitlery Clinton is probably even worse. Sanders was responding to one of Killary’s emails to supporters linking Sanders with Chavez as if that is a terrible thing! Hilliary is just the worst. She is typical of what passes for a “liberal Democrat” these days, and is one of the main reasons I say liberal Democrats suck. Liberal Democrats are just awful. They’re barely even better than Republicans.

False Flags Operations – How They Work

I actually hate to believe in conspiracy theories because I think most of them are nonsense. But sometimes, they are just true. This is particularly true in geopolitics, politics and war when conspiracies are hatched continuously and dishonestly is the order of the day. During wartime, one thing you see a fair amount of is something called false flag operations. They do not happen nearly as often as conspiracy nuts say they do, but false flag operations definitely occur some of the time during warfare. This is considered to be an exceptionally dirty way of fighting, and only the dirtiest nations of all utilize the malign false flag operation. In a false flag operation, the perpetrator either kills their own people or kills innocent people. The attack is structured in such a way as to blame the opposition for killing the perpetrator’s supporters or innocent people. In this way, the enemy is framed and convicted of committing a grave crime during wartime. There is quite a history of such things. The Gulf of Tonkin incident has now been shown to be a complete frame-up. In fact, the recordings that were used to frame the North Vietnamese were recorded by the US one day before the incident even happened. This incident was then used as a casus belli for the US to enter the war with the justification that “North Vietnam attacked us!” Hitler used false flags regularly. The invasion of Poland was preceded by a false flag operation in which Nazis dressed up like Polish forces attacked their own troops and then blamed Poland for the attack. This was used as justification for Germany to invade Poland. The burning of the Reichstag was another false flag. An amateur, bumbling Communist was framed with setting the Reichstag on fire when in fact the Nazis set fire to their own building in order to have justification to institute martial law. Israel has done a number of false flag operations. After the 1948 War, most of the Iraqi Jews stayed in Iraq and refused to go to Israel. There were hundreds of thousands of Jews in Iraq. Israeli agents went to Iraq and did things like throw grenades into meetings of Iraqi Jews. A number of Iraqi Jews were killed and wounded in this way. Israel then blamed the Arab Iraqi government and began an international campaign agitating for the Iraqi Jews to leave Iraq and come to the US. Almost all of the Iraqi Jews fled Iraq and headed to Israel. Later, in 1954, Israeli agents ran around Cairo bombing movie theaters and American institutions and blamed the attacks on the Egyptian government. The attempt here was to show that the Egyptian government was depraved and to drive a wedge between the US and Egypt. Later in the 1973 War, the Israelis deliberately attacked a US vessel called the USS Liberty that was offshore of Israel. The Israelis claimed it was a terrible accident but actually it was deliberate. The reason was because the ship was spying on the war between the Egyptians and Israel and US sig intel had picked up signals that Israel was getting ready to murder 6,000 Egyptian POW’s in the Sinai Desert. Israel did indeed kill all those POW’s, and they did not have a good excuse for it. The Jewish-controlled US have never properly investigated the incident and the US government has basically said it is cool for Israel to kill Americans or US troops any time they feel like it. We covered up for them. After the bombing of a US army dance in Berlin that casualties among US forces, Israel placed a receiver on the coastline of Libya with recordings that were used as evidence that Libya set the bomb. Libya may indeed have set off that bomb, and on the other hand, maybe they did not. Know one knows. But the recordings were fake. The downing of the Lockerbie flight over Scotland resulted in two competing theories. One said that Libya did it as revenge for trying to kill Qaddafi. The other said that Iran did it via their ally Syria. There was as much evidence for one as for the other, in fact, promoters of the Iran-Syria theory say there was never any evidence of Libyan involvement. Nevertheless, Libya was tried and convicted of a crime they may not have committed, a vast monetary settlement was extorted from Libya and the crime was used as an excuse to overthrow the Qaddafi government with Al Qaeda type Islamists who then murdered Qaddafi after they captured him. During the Years of Lead in Italy, the Italian state, possibly with CIA assistance, used fascist agents to set off numerous bombs in crowded public places which killed a number of Italian civilians. The state then blamed these attacks on the Italian Left in an attempt to destroy them. In 1980, a deranged Turkish gunman named Agta tried to assassinate the Pope in Bulgaria. For a very long time, the Deep State and their controlled media tried to frame the KGB of the USSR for this crime. In fact, they were utterly innocent of this crime and all of the US evidence was simply fabricated. Right before the first Iraq War, part of the propaganda for the war was the false flag lie that Iraq was killing Kuwaiti babies by unplugging their incubators. This was proven to be a lie, but it helped set off a war. Later, before the 2003 War, the US did it again by concocting with deep Israeli assistance an elaborate lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction when a cursory look at the evidence showed that he did not. This fake evidence was used to launch a huge war. A British special forces unit was caught with a bomb-rigged car that they were apparently driving somewhere to set off. Although they were let go, it was never adequately explained what they were doing with a bomb car, where they were going to blow it up, who were they trying to kill and for what purpose. There are interesting accusations that the blowing up of the Al Askari Mosque in Iraq in 2006 was the work of Iraqi security forces in league with US special forces. The purpose was supposedly to set off civil war to take the heat off US casualties during a hot political season by redirecting the war from Iraqis kill Americans to Iraqis killing Iraqis. It is an interesting theory, but I regard it as unproven. Turkish intelligence was recently caught planning a huge terrorist attack at the Turkish-Syrian border that killed Turks and Syrians, mostly civilians, as a plot to frame Syria in order to use that as a casus belli for Turkish entry into the war. There were many accusations of false flag attacks during the Algerian Civil War. The government seemed to be allowing terrorists to invade the villages of their own supporters and massacre them in horrible ways. Military bases were often close by, many calls for help were made to them, but the soldiers never moved from their barracks. They sat back and watched while the terrorists massacred their own people. During the US-planned Venezuelan coup of 2002, the coup forces opened fire on both Chavez supporters and their own people in an attempt to blame Chavez’ police for a depraved crime. They were caught, but the false flag was wildly played up in the corrupt US media. False flag attacks are very dirty and most governments who do these attacks are fascist or fascist like states or imperialist states with deep fascist sympathies. False flag attacks are pretty much a part of the fascist playbook. For example, Nazi Germany and Israel were both fascist states, the Venezuelan opposition is a fascist movement, the Italian state in the 1970’s was ruled by rightwing governments, and the Algerian and Kuwait states were deeply authoritarian governments. The justification for false flags is the greater good. If we blow an airplane full of innocent people out of the air and it helps us to get the world against Russia and evaporate support for our rebel enemies, then the false flag was the lesser of two evils. False flag attacks operate on an ends justifies the means basis. There have been many accusations that the 911 attacks were false flag attacks by the US, Israelis or both. Despite quite a bit of evidence being offered, I have not seen any convincing evidence that any group other than Al Qaeda was involved. However, I do believe that there were deep Saudi links to this attack both at the private and state levels. Many assassinations and “accidents” are in a sense false flags. A helicopter crashes with the head of state of Panama, Trujillo, on board. It was just an accident! No it wasn’t. The CIA rigged his copter to crash. The CIA has been involved in a number of killings made to look like accidents. Plane and car crashes are especially popular. The US Deep State often kills people and makes it look like a suicide. The Mossad engages in these “fake suicides” also. In a case associated with the Kennedy Assassination, three prominent witnesses all “committed suicide” by carbon monoxide poisoning in their vehicles at around the same time. The best conclusion is that the National Security Establishment (The Deep State) killed these men. We will probably never know the truth about the Kennedy Assassination, but he was probably killed by the Deep State with a major role for the CIA because he angered the National Security Establishment. The lone gunman theory appears to be a ruse and if anything, Oswald was used as a convincing fall guy. Oswald may indeed have killed Kennedy, but that does not prove that he acted alone. Oswald could have killed Kennedy as part of a Deep State plot. Karen Silkwood was murdered by US law enforcement by putting plutonium in her food. This was then made to look like an accident because she worked with such material, it was assumed she brought it home with her. This was to stop her from blowing the whistle on the nuclear power industry to make her serve as a warning to others who may think of doing something similar. A number of cases of “single car accidents” where the vehicle veers off the road into a ditch killing the driver are actually Deep State or law enforcement homicides. These vehicles are probably run off the road. The best false flags use a controlled media and a corrupted state and intelligence service in order to create a huge propaganda event to further geopolitical goals, often during armed conflicts. Right around the time of the Kennedy Assassination, the CIA waged a massive campaign centered around “conspiracy theory.” They planted the idea in Americans’ minds that conspiracies and false flags never occur, that murders are never made to look like accidents or suicides and that anyone who suggests such a thing is an unhinged lunatic. The controlled media was 10 However, it was very successful. Most Americans refuse to believe that any deadly state conspiracies of any kind ever occur anywhere at any time, and that everyone who suggests this is a mental case, a crank or a kook. A ranting, raving, unstable nutball who should be either laughed at or ignored. Once the American people were convinced that deadly state conspiracies never occur, they and their fascist allies were then free to conduct all of the conspiracy theories that they wanted to with no consequences whatsoever! You see how that works? The problem with false flag theories is that for every 50 false flag cases the conspiracy crowd claims to uncover, perhaps one of them is a real false flag and the rest are either demonstrably not false flags or are lacking in probative evidence and hence cannot be proven one way or the other. Now that we know what false flags are, it will be much easier to imagine that the Ukrainian government may have committed a false flag attack when it deliberately shot down Malaysian Air Lines Flight 17 recently in Ukraine. I believe that the odds are that this is the best explanation for the attack. And following the theory laid out above, the framers of the Russians and Novorussians are accusing those who blew the whistle on the false flag of “conspiracy theory”, opening them to ridicule and dismissal. A completely captive and controlled media has gone along with all of the US and Ukie lies being used to frame innocent Russia and Novorussia with scarcely a single voice in dissent to be heard. The Modern Era is a field day for the conspirator. Modern Man likes to fashion himself as scientific, logical, and sane. He is someone who will not believe wild theories easily. This is useful, but the vast majority of folks playing the Scientific Logical Sane Secular Role are dupes because they refuse to believe that deadly conspiracies ever occur. Hence conspirators can operate with free reign and few hindrances in hatching and carrying out their conspiracies. They also know they will never get caught and their conspiracies will never be proven because they are committing acts which have been proven to never exist. In such an environment, all things are possible.

"New Cold War," Same Old Imperialism

This guy is a Trotskyite, but I often agree with his analysis of capitalism and US imperialism, which is 10 First of all, he is correct that the US was an imperialist country long before the Cold War and even before there was a Soviet Union. The Monroe Doctrine, still in effect today, was an imperialist policy. The US was actually a formal imperialist power around the turn on the century, and in a way, it still is now as the US retains colonies and refuses to free them as the UN has demanded. Everything else he says is also right on.

The New “Cold War” Is The Same Old U.S. Imperialist War

by Steven Argue

Cartoon depicting the brutal and murderous U.S. colonization of the Philippines long before there was a Soviet Union. As many in the U.S. today declare that Russian opposition to U.S. aggression in Ukraine and Syria are indicators of a new “cold war”, it is important to remember what the so-called “Cold War” was in the first place during the time of the USSR. Before the so-called “war on terror” there was the Persian Gulf War, and before there even was a Soviet Union there was “the war to end all wars”, “the white man’s burden”, and “manifest destiny”. All of these were / are to justify one of the most bloodthirsty imperialist systems that has ever existed on the face of the Earth, that of U.S. imperialism. The fact that the U.S. used the existence of the Soviet Union to justify their blood thirsty imperialist wars, coups, and dictatorships in places like Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Indonesia, etc. simply had nothing to do with any reality of an actual war between the USSR of the time and the USA. The so-called “cold war” was nothing but a hot U.S. imperialist war against the people of the world, a war that continues under different names. Today, as usual, the USA is on a drive to overthrow every independent nation in the world. This has continued under Obama with his overthrow of elected governments of Ukraine and Honduras, putting a death squad government in power in Honduras and a murderous fascist junta in power in Kiev that includes open neo-Nazis who hate Ukraine’s national minorities, including Russians. Likewise, Obama waged a bombing and proxy war in Libya that overthrew that country’s government, a government that committed the crime of spending some its oil money on providing everyone with free housing, education, and health care. This gave the Libyan people a far higher life expectancy than other oil rich countries in Africa ruled by U.S. backed dictators. Likewise, the United States is currently trying to overthrow the elected capitalist government of Venezuela for similar “crimes” of disrupting total capitalist profit by spending oil money on the people. In Libya, the imperialists brought to power genocidal religious fanatics who committed ethnic cleansing against Black Africans, commits rampant torture and murder, and is allowing the imperialist oil companies to rob Libya of its natural resources unhindered by pesky spending on human needs. Likewise in Syria, the United States is giving weapons to genocidal religious fanatics that have slaughtered religious and ethnic minorities. Russia is in the cross-hairs of U.S. imperialism today, in part for strongly opposing U.S. imperialist intervention in Syria and Ukraine. Russia itself today is a weak capitalist country, but for the U.S. imperialists, it is not weak enough. An important adviser to the Obama administration is Brzezinski whose plans for Russia include economic isolation, regime change, and then breaking Russia into three pieces. Russia itself is not an imperialist power in any Marxist sense. Russia has more foreign direct investment coming into the country than going out. Likewise, Ukraine has had very little foreign direct investment from Russia and very large amounts coming in from the EU. U.S. and EU imperialist strategy in the region has been to force a government on Ukraine that carries out IMF austerity and isolates Russia. They got this with the February coup along with a government that is likely to be friendly to imperialist exploitation of gas reserves through environmentally devastating fracking in western Ukraine. Russia, on the other hand, is merely trying to maintain trading partners as the United States tries to isolate it and is not trying to dictate what sort of economies and austerity countries around them maintain. While United States imperialist policy is one of forcing austerity and privatization on countries, Russia has been equally capable of trading with countries that maintain planned socialist economies, to the benefit of the working class, like the planned socialist economy of Belarus. Meanwhile, such countries, like Belarus and Cuba, are under U.S.economic blockade because their planned socialist economies and independent governments prevent large amounts of foreign imperialist exploitation. To the extent that Russia is now providing a small counterweight to blood thirsty and rapacious U.S. imperialism, the imperialists are building up NATO forces, pouring on lies similar to Bush’s lies of weapons of mass destruction, and speaking as if the so-called “cold war””is back. Yet, then and now, the so-called “cold war” has never been anything but a hot U.S. imperialist war against the people of the world. – Steven Argue of the Revolutionary Tendency

Refuting a Lie: The Pinochet Friedmanite Neoliberal Economic Miracle

As you can see, there was no economic miracle under Pinochet. For all of that time, Chile was quite a bit below even the rest of the continent.
As you can see, there was no economic miracle under Pinochet. For all of that time, Chile was quite a bit below even the rest of the continent. The Pinochet years are in grey.
As you can see, there was no economic miracle under Pinochet. What there was was a typical radical neoliberal massive transfer of wealth from the working classes (the bottom 2/3 of society) to the upper classes (the upper 1/3 of society. The end result was one of the most disgustingly racist and classist societies on the face of the Earth. Also note that the Chilean economy takes off after Pinochet left and many of his neoliberal reforms were dismantled. Chile surpasses the Latin American average in 1995, around the time that Chile starting electing Socialists again. Great economic growth occurred under the Socialists. Note also that the Chilean economy had started to decline already under Allende. This was due to a capital strikes and radical measures that the United Snakes undertook to destroy Allende’s economy. As Henry (Satan) Kissinger (The Consummate American) said at the time: We are going to make the Chilean economy scream. Similar capital strikes have been occurring in Venezuela for a long time now. There were endless fake strikes (capital strikes) and stupid demos by “housewives” really just women from the upper classes. They marched out into their tony neighborhoods and beat pots and pans together for months on end. The lamestream corporate media in the US gave this endless drooling coverage. The same nonsense has recently occurred in Venezuela when more “housewives” (read rich bitches) poured out onto the streets to beat their pots and pans together once again to protest the radical democracy of Hugo Chavez and his replacement. The CIA (Evil Central) planted endless fake stories in the Chilean media about Soviet submarines off the coast and Soviet militias in training camps all over Chile being poised for a radical Bolshevik takeover. It was all lies of course (just about anything the CIA says about anything is probably a lie) but it worked pretty well on a lot of gullible Chileans.

Myth: No One Ever Immigrated to a Communist Country

MP writes:

You are right at least on one point: no communist country ever experienced immigration problems. Not because they did not want immigration, but because nobody, on his own mind, would have wanted to immigrate to a communist country. Beside this, if the US keep on letting Mexicans colonizing its territory, the US will become a second Mexico, since a country is worth what the majority of its residents are worth. An other option for the US would be to become a communist country, which would prevent anyone for immigrating to the the US.

Not true. After the division of Germany, many German Leftists in the West migrated to the new East Germany. This was VERY common. Also, I have heard that Cuba has many recent immigrants from Jamaica and Haiti, and they like it very much and say it is better than their own country. Although Venezuela is not a Communist country, it has recently had a large number of poor and working class Colombians moving to it. They say they like it there a lot better than in Colombia. China is currently run by the Communist country, and it gets quite a few immigrants. Currently quite a few Americans are thinking of moving to Cuba if and when they retire. A number of American Leftists have already moved to Cuba and live there currently. Philip Agee is a prominent one. An old friend of mine from 1980 was from the Azerbaijani SSR in the Soviet Union. He told me that Azeri Soviets and Iranians used to go back and forth across each other’s borders all the time. Most Communist countries were paranoid and they didn’t want a lot of immigration. They thought there might be spies mixed in.

Four Left Latin American Governments Quit OAS Defense Treaty

Four leftwing Latin American nations quit the OAS defense treaty, asking for changes in the document. The OAS has always been the whore of the US, a sickening and reactionary organization. They threw Cuba out for no good reason long ago. These heroic Latin American nations are doing what should have been done long ago. The OAS is just shit, a Cold War creation of the Yankee dogs. Get rid of it already. Yankee go home! The nations are Nicaragua, led by the Sandinista hero Daniel Ortega, Venezuela, led by Hugo Chavez, Ecuador, led by Rafael Correa and Bolivia, led by Evo Morales. I am reminded of the words of the former Sandinista national anthem:

America, enemy of mankind!

Everything Republicans Say Is a Lie

That’s really all you need to know about the Republican Party. It’s generally true around the world too. Everything that rightwing and conservative politicians say is a lie, except when they are stating the obvious that everyone agrees with. I would also say that it’s true of most major conservative and Republican pundits. Almost everything they say is a lie. A politically motivated lie too.

The interesting thing about rightwing race realists is that although most of them are conservatives or Republicans, it’s not true that everything they say is a lie. In fact, a lot of what conservative race realists say is the truth. They’re ugly, cruel, vicious and racist, yes, but are they liars? Not necessarily. Is Jared Taylor a liar? Not really, not like your typical rightwing Republican pol anyway. I wonder if the fact that they are often telling the truth is why they are shut out of public discourse.

We could do a regular series about Republican lies here, but it would get old real quick.

One of the worst ways the conservatives lie all over the world is about economics. The conservative philosophy is that of the moneyed elite or the rich. That’s rightwing economics in a nutshell. Great for moneyed folks, bad for everyone else.

Yet they have to somehow sell an economic project that helps the top 2

Conservatism is a minority philosophy. It’s the philosophy of an elite. It says that economics should benefit them and only them and that democracy must be limited to allow the moneyed elite to rule without the dirty unwashed getting in the way too much. There’s no way you can be honest about an elitist political project and somehow sell it to the bottom 8

This is one reason why conservatism sucks. It’s dishonest, always was and always will be. Under capitalism, it grabs the media and culture, and saturates society with conservative lies. After a while, the population is so brainwashed and confused that they don’t know what is what.

I honestly don’t think that liberals and the Left lie all that much. Communists lie, but they don’t lie too much inside Communist circles. I am on some Communist mailing lists and visit Communist websites regularly. There’s not much lying going on. Very little or none actually. They are quite up front about the problems of Communism and the strengths and weaknesses of capitalism.

We on the Left are trying to benefit the vast majority of people with our project. There’s no need to lie to do that. Just figure out what’s going to be the greatest good for the greatest number, and lay it out and push it. We don’t have to brainwash the moneyed elites or the Right, and they don’t listen to us anyway.

As we are not an elite project, we don’t need to lie to the masses to sell our product. One of the worst anti-Communist lies about, one that is still endlessly peddled, is that Communism was an elitist project. It was anything but. The fact that it had so many problems was not because the elite were ripping off the masses but instead due to problems inherent in the nature of the very project itself.

Another aspect of this lie that anything progressive cannot possibly benefit anyone. For instance, the capitalist media in the US says that Hugo Chavez’ project has not benefited the poor at all. In fact, it has harmed them. But if it won’t benefit the poor, why push it? Why not just be a rightwinger like everyone else and push an elite project?

Of course Chavez’ project has benefited poor Venezuelans to a dramatic degree. That was what it was supposed to do. That’s what the Left does everywhere on Earth; benefit the poor, low income and middle classes against the moneyed elite. True, the moneyed elite tend to lose out under the Left – but that’s the nature of our project.

The poor and low income have benefited so much from Chavez’ project and the projects in Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina and Brazil that all of these people keep getting re-elected and their projects stamped with the seal of endorsement.

If the Right admitted that Left projects have been great for poor, low income and even the middle classes at the expense of the moneyed classes, a lot of people would say, “Good for the Left! Screw the rich!” The Right can’t admit that, so it has to lie.

A corollary of this is that the best way to help poor, low income and middle class people is via the project of the rich, the economics of the rich, which has been proven to only benefit the top 2

But this was just another lie. Neoliberal economics is the same economics of the moneyed classes that it has always been. It doesn’t benefit the less well-off now anymore than it did yesterday. Nothing changed in Berlin in 1989, at the University of Chicago economics study circles in the late 1970’s or the election of Reagan in 1980. The only thing that changed was the words used to make the arguments, not the lies themselves.

If a Republican’s mouth is open, he’s lying. He has a lot of reasons to lie. He’s pushing a project that only benefits business and the moneyed classes and hurts everyone else. He can’t tell the truth about it because it’s so ugly. So he has to lie. And he does, floridly and continuously.

Propaganda About Cuba’s Medical Missions

Here.

According to the article, ordinary Cubans are suffering as the regime sends doctors abroad on medical missions, apparently mostly to make money for the state. I think it was a good idea to send the doctors abroad, as it’s making good money for the regime and helping a lot of people in the 3rd World.

I know that Cuba gets a good deal out of the doctors who they send to Venezuela, but I am not sure if they charge or not to send doctors to other countries besides Venezuela. I don’t think that the regime should send doctors to 3rd World countries for free, other than in a crisis situation.

Charity begins at home. The nation is short of cash in a lot of ways, and it shows. Downtown Havana needs renovation, and a lot of the buildings may simply need to be torn down. Quite a few are in danger of collapsing. The sewage system in Havana needs repairs. There is a chronic housing shortage. The nation is often short of electricity in a place where an air conditioner could really come in handy. The hospitals and clinics tend to be short of supplies. Given all of that, why not make money off the doctors? Why give them away for free?

The article says that ordinary Cubans are suffering, but there is nothing to that. Cuba has one of the best doctor-patient ratios on Earth. Before the medical missions, if anything, the island was overdoctored and doctors didn’t have enough to do. That’s not a good use of all of that skill and education.

Chavez’s Right Turn: State Realism versus International Solidarity,” by James Petras

This is an excellent article by James Petras.

He shows how Hugo Chavez has turned so far to the right that he is now in some ways one of the most rightwing Presidents in Latin America. For instance, only Chavez has supported the US and Colombia in backing the Honduran coup regime. And he is becoming one of Colombia’s sole allies in the region.

Why has he done this? A few reasons. For one, he’s surrounded and threatened. Colombia keeps threatening the invade Venezuela to go after Colombian rebels that hide there, and the US under “liberal” Barack Obama has just stationed 7 new military bases in Colombia for the sole purpose of attacking the Colombian guerrillas and threatening Venezuela. Colombia built up forces on the border, repeatedly crossed the Venezuelan border, and moved Colombian death squads into Venezuela to attack the people.

The Colombian guerrillas are on the defensive and can no longer provide the buffer that they formerly provided along the border to a Colombian invasion of Venezuela.

The Obama-backed coup against Honduras, which has resulted in a wave of murders against the Honduran Left, changed things. Chavez now realized that the Obama regime was willing to use military force to get what it wanted in Latin America.

At home, the opposition has made its strongest showing in a decade, winning about 5

In other words, he’s boxed in with nowhere to turn. Under these circumstances, Chavez has decided that the Colombian guerrillas, who they used to support, are a liability. He has been cooperating with Colombia in handing over guerrillas who are in Venezuela. He signed a non-aggression agreement with Colombia in return for an agreement to help catch any Colombian guerrillas in Venezuela. However, he has gotten little in return for this other than that Colombia has stopped invading and threatening his territory.Colombia still maintains a deep alliance with Chavez enemy, the US. Colombian forces are still massed along Venezuela’s borders.

Chavez hope to keep Colombia from joining in the US in any joint US-Colombian military escapades inside Venezuela. He also hopes to keep Colombia from joining in any US propaganda-destabilization efforts in Venezuela.

However, the threats have escalated, and the US appears emboldened. Chavez’ moves to the Right have not earned him the tiniest bit of praise or space from the US – they hate him more than ever. US imperialism slapped an embargo on the Venezuelan oil company due to Venezuela trading with Iran. I am not sure what this embargo entails? Incredibly, the Venezuelan opposition supported this foreign embargo on Venezuela! What a bunch of traitors.

Following his new alliance with Colombia, Chavez became the only nation other than Colombia in Latin America which has recognized the coup regime in Honduras. He did this under pressure from Colombia.

Petras points out how Allende’s Chile, Mexico in the 1980’s, Cuba and Brazil have all harbored Latin American guerrillas (in Brazil’s case, an Italian guerrilla). They refused to extradite them. But Chavez is boxed in in a way that these regimes may not have been.

Petras shows how other Left regimes also cooperated with the Right at various times. Stalin cooperated with Hitler for a while in order to buy some time to move his industry east of the Urals and build up his military-industrial complex. He even sent some German Communists who were hiding in the USSR to Germany, where they were certainly tortured and killed. But Stalin was boxed in, and he needed to buy some time, so he made a deal with the devil.

In the early 1970’s, Mao entered into a new alliance with the US under Richard Nixon’s detente. Afterward, Mao supported Pinochet and the rightist rebels in Angola. They denounced any Left regime that head the slightest ties with the USSR and supported their enemies, no matter how rightwing they were. All for the benefits of a sunshine policy with the US.

In the event of a new confrontation with the US, can Chavez expect his new Colombian ally to be neutral? Dubious. Colombia will probably ally with its imperial master in the US. And can he expect any support for the radical Left in Latin America now that he has betrayed them? This also is dubious. He may well end up with no friends at all.

Chavez’s Right Turn: State Realism versus International Solidarity

Introduction

The radical “Bolivarian Socialist” government of Hugo Chavez has arrested a number of Colombian guerrilla leaders and a radical journalist with Swedish citizenship and handed them over to the right-wing regime of President Juan Manuel Santos, earning the Colombian government’s praise and gratitude.

The close on-going collaboration between a leftist President with a regime with a notorious history of human rights violations, torture and disappearance of political prisoners has led to widespread protests among civil liberty advocates, leftists and populists throughout Latin America and Europe, while pleasing the Euro-American imperial establishment.

On April 26, 2011, Venezuelan immigration officials, relying exclusively on information from the Colombian secret police (DAS), arrested a naturalized Swedish citizen and journalist (Joaquin Perez Becerra) of Colombian descent, who had just arrived in the country. Based on Colombian secret police allegations that the Swedish citizen was a ‘FARC leader’, Perez was extradited to Colombia within 48 hours.

Despite the fact that it was in violation of international diplomatic protocols and the Venezuelan constitution, this action had the personal backing of President Chavez. A month later, the Venezuelan armed forces joined their Colombian counterparts and captured a leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Guillermo Torres (with the nom de Guerra Julian Conrado) who is awaiting extradition to Colombia in a Venezuelan prison without access to an attorney.

On March 17, Venezuelan Military Intelligence (DIM) detained two alleged guerrillas from the National Liberation Army (ELN), Carlos Tirado and Carlos Perez, and turned them over to the Colombian secret police. The new public face of Chavez as a partner of the repressive Colombian regime is not so new after all.

On December 13, 2004, Rodrigo Granda, an international spokesperson for the FARC and a naturalized Venezuelan citizen, whose family resided in Caracas, was snatched by plain-clothes Venezuelan intelligence agents in downtown Caracas where he had been participating in an international conference and secretly taken to Colombia with the ‘approval’ of the Venezuelan Ambassador in Bogota.

Following several weeks of international protest, including from many conference participants, President Chavez issued a statement describing the ‘kidnapping’ as a violation of Venezuelan sovereignty and threatened to break relations with Colombia.

In more recent times, Venezuela has stepped up the extradition of revolutionary political opponents of Colombia’s narco-regime: In the first five months of 2009, Venezuela extradited 15 alleged members of the ELN and in November 2010, a FARC militant and two suspected members of the ELN were handed over to the Colombian police. In January 2011 Nilson Teran Ferreira, a suspected ELN leader, was delivered to the Colombian military.

The collaboration between Latin America’s most notorious authoritarian rightwing regime and the supposedly most radical ‘socialist’ government raises important issues about the meaning of political identities and how they relate to domestic and international politics and more specifically what principles and interests guide state policies.

Revolutionary Solidarity and State Interests

The recent ‘turn’ in Venezuela politics, from expressing sympathy and even support for revolutionary struggles and movements in Latin America to its present collaboration with pro-imperial rightwing regimes, has numerous historical precedents. It may help to examine the contexts and circumstances of these collaborations: The Bolshevik revolutionary government in Russia initially gave whole hearted support to revolutionary uprisings in Germany, Hungary, Finland and elsewhere.

With the defeats of these revolts and the consolidation of the capitalist regimes, Russian state and economic interests took prime of place among the Bolshevik leaders. Trade and investment agreements, peace treaties and diplomatic recognition between Communist Russia and the Western capitalist states defined the new politics of “co-existence”. With the rise of fascism, the Soviet Union under Stalin further subordinated communist policy in order to secure state-to-state alliances, first with the Western Allies and, failing that, with Nazi Germany.

The Hitler-Stalin pact was conceived by the Soviets as a way to prevent a German invasion and to secure its borders from a sworn rightwing enemy. As part of Stalin’s expression of good faith, he handed over to Hitler a number of leading exiled German communist leaders, who had sought asylum in Russia. Not surprisingly they were tortured and executed. This practice stopped only after Hitler invaded Russia and Stalin encouraged the now decimated ranks of German communists to re-join the ‘anti-Nazi’ underground resistance.

In the early 1970’s, as Mao’s China reconciled with Nixon’s United States and broke with the Soviet Union, Chinese foreign policy shifted toward supporting US-backed counter-revolutionaries, including Holden Roberts in Angola and Pinochet in Chile.

China denounced any leftist government and movement, which, however faintly, had ties with the USSR, and embraced their enemies, no matter how subservient they were to Euro-American imperial interests.

In Stalin’s USSR and Mao’s China, short-term ‘state interests’ trumped revolutionary solidarity. What were these ‘state interests’?

In the case of the USSR, Stalin gambled that a ‘peace pact’ with Hitler’s Germany would protect them from an imperialist Nazi invasion and partially end the encirclement of Russia.

Stalin no longer trusted in the strength of international working class solidarity to prevent war, especially in light of a series of revolutionary defeats and the generalized retreat of the Left over the previous decades (Germany, Span, Hungary and Finland) .The advance of fascism and the extreme right, unremitting Western hostility toward the USSR and the Western European policy of appeasing Hitler, convinced Stalin to seek his own peace pact with Germany.

In order to demonstrate their ‘sincerity’ toward its new ‘peace partner’, the USSR downplayed their criticism of the Nazis, urging Communist parties around the world to focus on attacking the West rather than Hitler’s Germany, and gave into Hitler’s demand to extradite German Communist “terrorists” who had found asylum in the Soviet Union.

Stalin’s pursuit of short term ‘state interests’ via pacts with the “far right” ended in a strategic catastrophe: Nazi Germany was free to first conquer Western Europe and then turned its guns on Russia, invading an unprepared USSR and occupying half the country. In the meantime the international anti-fascist solidarity movements had been weakened and temporarily disoriented by the zigzags of Stalin’s policies.

In the mid-1970’s, the Peoples Republic of China’s ‘reconciliation’ with the US, led to a turn in international policy: ‘US imperialism’ became an ally against the greater evil ‘Soviet social imperialism’.

As a result China, under Chairman Mao Tse Tung, urged its international supporters to denounce progressive regimes receiving Soviet aid (Cuba, Vietnam, Angola, etc.) and it withdrew its support for revolutionary armed resistance against pro-US client states in Southeast Asia. China’s ‘pact’ with Washington was to secure immediate ‘state interests’: Diplomatic recognition and the end of the trade embargo.

Mao’s short-term commercial and diplomatic gains were secured by sacrificing the more fundamental strategic goals of furthering socialist values at home and revolution abroad. As a result, China lost its credibility among Third World revolutionaries and anti-imperialists, in exchange for gaining the good graces of the White House and greater access to the capitalist world market.

Short-term “pragmatism’ led to long-term transformation: The Peoples Republic of China became a dynamic emerging capitalist power, with some of the greatest social inequalities in Asia and perhaps the world.

Venezuela: State Interests versus International Solidarity

The rise of radical politics in Venezuela, which is the cause and consequence of the election of President Chavez (1999), coincided with the rise of revolutionary social movements throughout Latin America from the late 1990’s to the middle of the first decade of the 21st century (1995-2005).

Neo-liberal regimes were toppled in Ecuador, Bolivia and Argentina; mass social movements challenging neo-liberal orthodoxy took hold everywhere; the Colombian guerrilla movements were advancing toward the major cities; and center-left politicians were elected to power in Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Ecuador and Uruguay. The US economic crises undermined the credibility of Washington’s ‘free trade’ agenda.

The increasing Asian demand for raw materials stimulated an economy boom in Latin America, which funded social programs and nationalizations. In the case of Venezuela, a failed US-backed military coup and ‘bosses’ boycott’ in 2002-2003, forced the Chavez government to rely on the masses and turn to the Left. Chavez proceeded to “re-nationalize” petroleum and related industries and articulate a “Bolivarian Socialist” ideology.

Chavez’ radicalization found a favorable climate in Latin America and the bountiful revenues from the rising price of oil financed his social programs. Chavez maintained a plural position of embracing governing center-left governments, backing radical social movements and supporting the Colombian guerrillas’ proposals for a negotiated settlement. Chavez called for the recognition of Colombia’s guerrillas as legitimate ‘belligerents” not “terrorists’.

Venezuela’s foreign policy was geared toward isolating its main threat emanating from Washington by promoting exclusively Latin American/Caribbean organizations, strengthening regional trade and investment links and securing regional allies in opposition to US intervention, military pacts, bases and US-backed military coups. In response to US financing of Venezuelan opposition groups (electoral and extra parliamentary), Chavez has provided moral and political support to anti-imperialist groups throughout Latin America.

After Israel and American Zionists began attacking Venezuela, Chavez extended his support to the Palestinians and broadened ties with Iran and other Arab anti-imperialist movements and regimes. Above all, Chavez strengthened his political and economic ties with Cuba, consulting with the Cuban leadership, to form a radical axis of opposition to imperialism. Washington’s effort to strangle the Cuban revolution by an economic embargo was effectively undermined by Chavez’ large-scale, long-term economic agreements with Havana.

Up until the later part of this decade, Venezuela’s foreign policy – its ‘state interests’ – coincided with the interests of the left regimes and social movements throughout Latin America. Chavez clashed diplomatically with Washington’s client states in the hemisphere, especially Colombia, headed by narco-death squad President Alvaro Uribe (2002-2010). However recent years have witnessed several external and internal changes and a gradual shift toward the center.

The revolutionary upsurge in Latin America began to ebb: The mass upheavals led to the rise of center-left regimes, which, in turn, demobilized the radical movements and adopted strategies relying on agro-mineral export strategies, all the while pursuing autonomous foreign policies independent of US-control. The Colombian guerrilla movements were in retreat and on the defensive – their capacity to buffer Venezuela from a hostile Colombian client regime waned.

Chavez adapted to these ‘new realities’, becoming an uncritical supporter of the ‘social liberal’ regimes of Lula in Brazil, Morales in Bolivia, Correa in Ecuador, Vazquez in Uruguay and Bachelet in Chile. Chavez increasingly chose immediate diplomatic support from the existing regimes over any long-term support, which might have resulted from a revival of the mass movements.

Trade ties with Brazil and Argentina and diplomatic support from its fellow Latin American states against an increasingly aggressive US became central to Venezuela’s foreign policy: The basis of Venezuelan policy was no longer the internal politics of the center-left and centrist regimes but their degree of support for an independent foreign policy. Repeated US interventions failed to generate a successful coup or to secure any electoral victories, against Chavez.

As a result Washington increasingly turned to using external threats against Chavez via its Colombian client state, the recipient of $5 billion in military aid. Colombia’s military build-up, its border crossings and infiltration of death squads into Venezuela, forced Chavez into a large-scale purchase of Russian arms and toward the formation of a regional alliance (ALBA). The US-backed military coup in Honduras precipitated a major rethink in Venezuela’s policy.

The coup had ousted a democratically elected centrist liberal, President Zelaya in Honduras, a member of ALBA and set up a repressive regime subservient to the White House. However, the coup had the effect of isolating the US throughout Latin America -not a single government supported the new regime in Tegucigalpa. Even the neo-liberal regimes of Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Panama voted to expel Honduras from the Organization of American States.

On the one hand, Venezuela viewed this ‘unity’ of the right and center-left as an opportunity toward mending fences with the conservative regimes; and on the other, it understood that the Obama Administration was ready to use the ‘military option’ to regain its dominance. The fear of a US military intervention was greatly heightened by the Obama-Uribe agreement establishing seven US strategic military bases near its border with Venezuela.

Chavez wavered in his response to this immediate threat: At one point he almost broke trade and diplomatic relations with Colombia, only to immediately reconcile with Uribe, although the latter had demonstrated no desire to sign on to a pact of co-existence.

Meanwhile, the 2010 Congressional elections In Venezuela led to a major increase in electoral support for the US-backed right (approximately 5

Chavez faced several options: The first was to return to the earlier policy of international solidarity with radical movements; the second was to continue working with the center-left regimes while maintaining strong criticism and firm opposition to the US backed neo-liberal regimes; and the third option was to turn toward the Right, more specifically to seek rapprochement with the newly elected President of Colombia, Santos and sign a broad political, military and economic agreement where Venezuela agreed to collaborate in eliminating Colombia’s leftist adversaries in exchange for promises of ‘non-aggression’ (Colombia limiting its cross-border narco and military incursions).

Venezuela and Chavez decided that the FARC was a liability and that support from the radical Colombian mass social movements was not as important as closer diplomatic relations with President Santos. Chavez has calculated that complying with Santos political demands would provide greater security to the Venezuelan state than relying on the support of the international solidarity movements and his own radical domestic allies among the trade unions and intellectuals.

In line with this Right turn, the Chavez regime fulfilled Santos’ requests – arresting FARC/ELN guerrillas, as well as a prominent leftist journalist, and extraditing them to a state which has had the worst human rights record in the Americas for over two decades, in terms of torture and extra-judicial assassinations. This Right turn acquires an even more ominous character when one considers that Colombia holds over 7600 political prisoners, over 7000 of whom are trade unionists, peasants, Indians, students, in other words non-combatants.

In acquiescing to Santos requests, Venezuela did not even follow the established protocols of most democratic governments: It did not demand any guaranties against torture and respect for due process. Moreover, when critics have pointed out that these summary extraditions violated Venezuela’s own constitutional procedures, Chavez launched a vicious campaign slandering his critics as agents of imperialism engaged in a plot to destabilize his regime.

Chavez’s new-found ally on the Right, President Santos has not reciprocated: Colombia still maintains close military ties with Venezuela’s prime enemy in Washington. Indeed, Santos vigorously sticks to the White House agenda: He successfully pressured Chavez to recognize the illegitimate regime of Lobos in Honduras- the product of a US-backed coup in exchange for the return of ousted ex-President Zelaya.

Chavez did what no other center-left Latin American President has dared to do: He promised to support the reinstatement of the illegitimate Honduran regime into the OAS. On the basis of the Chavez-Santos agreement, Latin American opposition to Lobos collapsed and Washington’s strategic goal was realized: a puppet regime was legitimized. Chavez agreement with Santos to recognize the murderous Lobos regime betrayed the heroic struggle of the Honduran mass movement.

Not one of the Honduran officials responsible for over a hundred murders and disappearances of peasant leaders, journalists, human rights and pro-democracy activists are subject to any judicial investigation. Chavez has given his blessings to impunity and the continuation of an entire repressive apparatus, backed by the Honduran oligarchy and the US Pentagon.

In other words, to demonstrate his willingness to uphold his ‘friendship and peace pact’ with Santos, Chavez was willing to sacrifice the struggle of one of the most promising and courageous pro-democracy movements in the Americas.

And What Does Chavez Seek in His Accommodation with the Right?

Security? Chavez has received only verbal ‘promises’, and some expressions of gratitude from Santos.

But the enormous pro-US military command and US mission remain in place. In other words, there will be no dismantling of the Colombian paramilitary-military forces massed along the Venezuelan border and the US military base agreements, which threaten Venezuelan national security, will not change. According to Venezuelan diplomats, Chavez’ tactic is to ‘win over’ Santos from US tutelage.

By befriending Santos, Chavez hopes that Bogota will not join in any joint military operation with the US or cooperate in future propaganda-destabilization campaigns. In the brief time since the Santos-Chavez pact was made, an emboldened Washington announced an embargo on the Venezuelan state oil company with the support of the Venezuelan congressional opposition. Santos, for his part, has not complied with the embargo, but then not a single country in the world has followed Washington’s lead.

Clearly, President Santos is not likely to endanger the annual $10 billion dollar trade between Colombia and Venezuela in order to humor the US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s diplomatic caprices. In contrast to Chavez policy of handing over leftist and guerrilla exiles to a rightist authoritarian regime, President Allende of Chile (1970-73) joined a delegation that welcomed armed fighters fleeing persecution in Bolivia and Argentina and offered them asylum.

For many years, especially in the 1980’s, Mexico, under center-right regimes, openly recognized the rights of asylum for guerrilla and leftist refugees from Central America – El Salvador and Guatemala. Revolutionary Cuba, for decades, offered asylum and medical treatment to leftist and guerrilla refugees from Latin American dictatorships and rejected demands for their extradition.

Even as late as 2006, when the Cuban government was pursuing friendly relations with Colombia and when its then Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque expressed his deep reservations regarding the FARC in conversations with the author, Cuba refused to extradite guerrillas to their home countries where they would be tortured and abused.

One day before he left office in 2011, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva denied Italy’s request to extradite Cesare Battisti, a former Italian guerrilla. As one Brazilian judge said -and Chavez should have listened: “At stake here is national sovereignty. It is as simple as that”. No one would criticize Chavez efforts to lessen border tensions by developing better diplomatic relations with Colombia and to expand trade and investment flows between the two countries.

What is unacceptable is to describe the murderous Colombian regime as a “friend” of the Venezuela people and a partner in peace and democracy, while thousands of pro-democracy political prisoners rot in TB-infested Colombian prisons for years on trumped-up charges.

Under Santos, civilian activists continue to be murdered almost every day. The most recent killing was yesterday (June 9,2011): Ana Fabricia Cordoba, a leader of community-based displaced peasants, was murdered by the Colombian armed forces.

Chavez’ embrace of the Santos narco-presidency goes beyond the requirements for maintaining proper diplomatic and trade relations. His collaboration with the Colombian intelligence, military and secret police agencies in hunting down and deporting Leftists (without due process!) smacks of complicity in dictatorial repression and serves to alienate the most consequential supporters of the Bolivarian transformation in Venezuela.

Chavez’ role in legitimizing of the Honduran coup-regime, without any consideration for the popular movements’ demands for justice, is a clear capitulation to the Santos – Obama agenda. This line of action places Venezuela’s ‘state’ interests over the rights of the popular mass movements in Honduras.

Chavez’ collaboration with Santos on policing leftists and undermining popular struggles in Honduras raises serious questions about Venezuela’s claims of revolutionary solidarity. It certainly sows deep distrust about Chavez future relations with popular movements who might be engaged in struggle with one of Chavez’s center-right diplomatic and economic partners.

What is particularly troubling is that most democratic and even center-left regimes do not sacrifice the mass social movements on the altar of “security” when they normalize relations with an adversary.

Certainly the Right, especially the US, protects its former clients, allies, exiled right-wing oligarch and even admitted terrorists from extradition requests issued by Venezuela, Cuba and Argentina. Mass murders and bombers of civilian airplanes manage to live comfortably in Florida.

Why Venezuela submits to the Right-wing demands of the Colombians, while complaining about the US protecting terrorists guilty of crimes in Venezuela, can only be explained by Chavez ideological shift to the Right, making Venezuela more vulnerable to pressure for greater concessions in the future.

Chavez is no longer interested in the support from the radical left: his definition of state policy revolves around securing the ‘stability’ of Bolivarian socialism in one country, even if it means sacrificing Colombian militants to a police state and pro-democracy movements in Honduras to an illegitimate US-imposed regime. History provides mixed lessons.

Stalin’s deals with Hitler were a strategic disaster for the Soviet people: once the Fascists got what they wanted they turned around and invaded Russia. Chavez has so far not received any ‘reciprocal’ confidence-building concession from Santos military machine. Even in terms of narrowly defined ‘state interests’, he has sacrificed loyal allies for empty promises. The US imperial state is Santos’ primary ally and military provider.

China sacrificed international solidarity for a pact with the US, a policy that led to unregulated capitalist exploitation and deep social injustices.

When and if the next confrontation between the US and Venezuela occurs, will Chavez, at least, be able to count on the “neutrality” of Colombia? If past and present relations are any indication, Colombia will side with its client-master, mega-benefactor and ideological mentor.

When a new rupture occurs, can Chavez count on the support of the militants, who have been jailed, the mass popular movements he pushed aside and the international movements and intellectuals he has slandered? As the US moves toward new confrontations with Venezuela and intensifies its economic sanctions, domestic and international solidarity will be vital for Venezuela’s defense. Who will stand up for the Bolivarian revolution, the Santos and Lobos of this “realist world”? Or the solidarity movements in the streets of Caracas and the Americas?

How the Latin American Right Thinks

From this interesting comment on my piece about the FARC in Colombia:

RL: Labor unionists, community leaders, peasant leaders and peasants, Indian leaders and Indians, women’s organizations, gay rights organizations, environmental groups, anti-free trade agreement groups, human rights groups, journalists, students, professors, anti-mining and anti-oil groups…[are all accused of being “FARC supporters” or “members of the FARC” and are liable to be arrested, beaten, tortured, jailed or murdered at any time.] Parasites, dead-wood, leeches, crooks, thugs, villains, leftist shit-heels. Fuck them too.

This is how these people think. To them, if you are a member of a labor union, a women’s organization, a gay rights organization, an environmental group, an anti-free trade agreement groups, a human rights groups, an anti-mining or anti-oil group, a community leader, a peasant leader or a peasant, an Indian leader or an Indian, or a leftwing  journalist, student or professor, you are a parasites, dead-wood, a leech, a crook, a thug, a villain or a leftist shit-heel. And presumably, you deserve to be killed at any time.

So the war is not really against the FARC at all. The war is against the entire Left of society. The rightwing of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Haiti, Brazil and Ecuador has a similar attitude: kill the Left. It was formerly the attitude of the Bolivian, Peruvian, Uruguayan, Dominican, Paraguayan, Chilean and Argentine rightwings too. But they have been out of power for a while and haven’t been killing many people lately.

Furthermore, this is not only the attitude of both political parties – the Democrats and the Republicans, but it also the attitude of the US military. This is a very important note: both US political parties, even the supposedly liberal Democratic Party, are 10

The US military runs a school called the School of the Americas in Georgia where they train Latin American military officers. As part of their coursework, the US military teaches these officers that the legal Left are “Communists” who are trying to overthrow the government. They are a military target and need to be dealt with via force. These officers then go back to their countries and often turn into major human rights violators.

The US has been behind or supportive of every single rightwing military coup that ever happened in Latin America. The Obama Administration supported the Honduran military coup and the mass terror that followed. Obama also tried to overthrow the Ecuadorian regime of Correa. I thought Obama supports democracy?

The Bush Adminstration hatched and carried out a coup against President Aritide of Haiti and supported the terror afterwards that followed that left 3,000 Haitians murdered. Bush also backed and helped plan the coup against Hugo Chavez. I thought Bush supported democracy?

See what liars these Americans are? If you are an American, why do you believe the American liars when they go on and on about democracy? Why fall for their lies?

I Thought the FARC Was “Near Defeat”?

Repost from the old site. A bit dated, but good nonetheless.Here on Robert Lindsay, we do support the FARC and the ELN unequivocally.

This is one hardass rebel army. The US corporate media says they still have 7,000 men under arms, down from 17,000, and in my opinion, their militia numbers in the 100,000’s. I strongly disagree with the 7,000 number, and I think the actual number of FARC troops is probably at least 18,000. They have a presence all over the nation and in several surrounding countries too.

It’s true that they have been dealing with the most intensive military offensive against any rebel group in the history of Latin America, and in recent days, suffered the loss of some top commanders. But they will weather these changes. As soon as a top commander dies or is killed or captured, there is someone else waiting to take his place.

James Brittain notes that the FARC has recently waged some of its most impressive attacks in a long time.

A reporter noted in 2004 that there is an unstated fear that the guerrillas could overrun Colombia’s major cities at any time. As a way of dealing with this, the venal and murderous Colombian ruling class periodically issues proclamations touting the weakness of the FARC, how they are near defeat, how they are suffering from massive defections, etc.

During Plan Colombia and Plan Patriota from 2000-2006, the Colombian regime repeatedly said that the FARC was near defeat. Analysis indicates that instead, attacks have grown over time. During 2008, the US media got into the act, crowing that the FARC was “near defeat”. But this year, the FARC attacked Colombia’s most important oil infrastructure facility and wiped out entire Colombian military battalions.

Between the 29th of April and the 6th of May, 2008, the FARC carried out repeated attacks on Colombia’s largest oil pipeline and halted the export of up to 3 million barrels of oil. At the same time, the FARC attacked various transportation routes crucial to the flow of military supplies and the movement of oil in Colombia’s north.

An essential bridge was destroyed in Cesar Province, preventing the movement of troops and paramilitaries. In Norte de Santander, the FARC attacked forces guarding the Caño-Limón Pipeline.

These last attacks were just hours after the US Ambassador visited the region and crowed about the near-defeat of the FARC. On May 3, 2008, Colombia deployed a battalion to the region to resume the flow of oil. The battalion was quickly destroyed by the FARC, which kept attacking the pipeline for another 2 days.

On May 27, 2008, the FARC attacked Colombia’s largest coal mine, derailing 40 wagons out of a 110 wagon train carrying 110 tons of coal. Further attacks hampered Colombia’s ability to engage in foreign trade by shutting down many export routes.

The North was thought to be relatively free of the FARC in recent years, as their center of operation was said to be in the South, but these attacks proved that wrong. In 2007, when the FARC was “near defeated”, somehow the number of internal refugees grew by 3

The FARC has auxiliaries in all neighboring countries, the FARE in Ecuador, the FARV in Venezuela (demobilized but ready to fight if need be), the FARB in the Dog’s Head of Brazil, and the FARP in Peru.

The FARP has expanded all the way down to central Peru lately, where they have had great success forming base communities with peasants who hate the state but are disgusted by Sendero’s brutality. Many former Senderistas in Peru, up to 1,000, have signed on with the FARP. FARP has linked up with the devastated remains of the MRTA in San Martin Province and sent the MRTA leftovers back to Colombia for armed training.

They have also linked up with what is left of Sendero, a considerably less radicalized organization. A column of Senderistas from the Huallaga Valley was also seen marching off to Colombia. In Peru, the FARC troops are uniformed, healthy, well-armed and supplied, with modern communications equipment and brimming with confidence.

They come into the villages and offer basic necessities and health care to peasants who are pleased to see them and find them impressive compared to the ragtag guerrillas they are used to. Just because Sendero has been badly hammered does not mean that the people of Peru are not in a revolutionary mood.

The FARC also operates R & R bases in Panama and operates all across northern Brazil to southern Guyana, where they tax gold mining operations. This is one way the FARC has reacted to the largest offensive ever launched against any Latin American guerrilla group – they have expanded to all of the surrounding countries.

8

When members of the FARC put down their arms to run for office in the 1980’s and formed the Patriotic Union, they were massacred like flies. Years later, 5,000 UP activists lay dead, and the party was disbanded. This is how the Colombian regime responds to challenges from the Left, even unarmed. With bullets. Until that changes, war will go on.

Colombia is currently one of the US’ top allies in the world, and the US’ top ally in Latin America. It’s unfortunate that US’ best friend in the region is such a murderous and fascist state, but it speaks volumes about the nature of the US state itself.

Why Ron Paul is Not Ok

fpy says:

What do people here think of Ron Paul? He’s the only Republican who seems to NOT be an evil, plutocratic, warmongering fuck.

Libertarian. No to Libertarians! Libertarianism will ensure that the plutocrats have complete, total and absolute power. Libertarianism is more or less what holds in the 3rd World. It’s just ultra-capitalism with a minimal to nonexistent state to protect the people from the capitalists. Thing is, real Libertarianism has not only never existed, but it never will exist, and it never can exist. Capitalists need a state like a baby needs its mother. Without a state, the capitalists are nowhere. In particular, they need a very strong army and police to safeguard their wealth. And nowadays, US capitalism anyway is utterly tied in with imperialism to the extent that it can’t exist without it. Have you noticed that most advanced capitalist states are also imperialists? People keep telling me how modern capitalist states can avoid imperialism, but it’s just not possible. A large modern capitalist state must be imperialist. It’s mandatory. If you can’t understand that, then you don’t understand the nature of capitalism at all. Start with Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest State of Capitalism. Lenin is right! There is a group out there on the Internet who are associated with the pure Objectivists of the Ayn Rand school. I forget their name right now. I went over to their website, and it was the usual Libertarian crap. Plus, almost all the writers were Jews. Libertarianism is stacked floor to ceiling with Jews. To my shock, there was article after article supporting US imperialism, especially in defense of Israel and also towards socialist states. They identified Hugo Chavez and Cuba as enemy states and more or less advocated going to war against them. They get it. Modern US capitalism must be imperialist. There is no other way. Imperialism is part of the project. The Project for a New American Century crowd are US imperialists on steroids. They’re also a bunch of Jews too, but forget that for now. Read their papers carefully. The US has no allies, according to them. None, except Israel. All other countries are identified as enemy states (capitalist competitors). Europe is identified as an enemy region and steps are advocated to screw over Europe. Russia is a strong enemy state and is identified as such. Numerous projects are advocated to fuck over Russia. In particular, China is labeled as the worst enemy of the US. Due to capitalist and geopolitical competition, the PNAC crowd figures that the US will have to go to war with China at some point in the next 20 years. Under capitalism, you cannot have any allies. None, zero. An advanced capitalist state is competing with all other capitalist states. There is only so much money on Earth. As one state gets richer, it has to come from someone else. Probably you. Capitalist economic competition frequently results in open warfare, typically over markets. This is what geopolitics, Realpolitik, the Great Game, etc. are all about. And it’s one of the strongest arguments ever against capitalism. Capitalism virtually necessitates war, and war has deep ties to capitalism. Most Americans like capitalism, but few understand that war and imperialism are its essential handmaidens.

In the Shining Path of Ann Dunham

Repost from the old site. It’s a lie that Sendero Luminoso never had much support. Simon Strong’s 1992 book gives the lie to that quite well. In the 18 months following Fujimori’s seizure of power, an unbelievable 1.5 million Peruvians were arrested on charges of being members of or collaborating with the Shining Path. Surveys done at the height of their power indicated that they had the passive support of about 5 In the American Revolution, few Americans know that only 1/3 of Americans support George Washington’s bands, another 1/3 were basically traitors supporting the English crown and another 1/3 were pragmatic fence-sitters waiting to see which side was going to win before they decided who to support. Most people don’t realize that in most civil wars you have a huge percentage of fence-sitters who are mostly just trying to stay alive. Sendero had support even in the churches and in the military. They completely blew it in a lot of ways though, and though they still operate, they are a shadow of what they formerly were. In my post, Sendero Fades and FARC Rises in Peru, I elaborate how Sendero has faded in Peru only to be replaced by the FARC of Colombia, who have been moving far down into Peru for some time now, and have been doing well with peasants fed up with Sendero’s mad violence. The remains of the MRTA (yes, they still exist also) are up in the far north of Peru in This article from La Rouche Publications (no, I do not endorse them) while a bit over the top, has an excellent roundup and analysis of the Sendero phenomenon. Particularly interesting is the huge support they had in the Peruvian diaspora in Europe, the US and Mexico, with a mind-numbing array of organizations. In the US, the support was run by the Maoists in the RCP, a large US Maoist group. RCP’s homepage is here, and they actually run some decent articles, though I don’t support Communism in the US or anywhere else in the First World at the moment – I support some variety of socialism instead, and that can even mean social democracy. El Diario International is the international paper of Sendero, or at least what remains of it. What is amazing is that this Belgium-based paper still prints a lot of issues, at least on the Net. It’s chock full of brand-new raving articles all the time. I don’t read Spanish very well, but maybe someone who does could check it out and come back and report to us in the comments. El Diario del Hoy was Sendero’s paper in Peru, but it’s long been shut down. I think it reappears clandestinely from time to time. I have read tons of Sendero propaganda and position statements. These people are completely off the deep end. All existing Communist states are “revisionist” (not real Communists but instead reformist traitors to the movement), and that includes North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos and of course China. They despise both Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia. Chavez is pegged as some sort of “corporatist fascist”. Sendero does support other armed Maoists like the revolutionaries in the Philippines, Nepal and India (but their most recent editorial condemns the Nepalese Maoists for “capitulation”). The Nepalese revolutionaries have done very well, the NPA in the Philippines is a vast organization, and the Indian Maoists are expanding like mad in the east. I don’t have a problem with any of these three movements. Their position statements, and regular publications of their Red Sun Magazine (both here) are some of the rantingest, ravingest Commie stuff out there (Red Sun (Sol Rojo) 29 in Spanish, Red Sun 29 English supplement). As Peruvian society is evil and the system is a pile of garbage, Peruvian reality drove Senderistas insane. The crazier and more wicked the society, the crazier and more wicked the guerrilla reaction. The La Rouche link (forget the nonsense about how Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch support Sendero, and forget anything about the UK – LaRouchies have always been insane on the subject of the Crown) makes clear the link between Sendero and radical anthropologists and academics, in particular psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, historians, teachers and agronomists. The role of anthropologists , both Peruvian and even foreign, as essentially the brainchildren of Sendero is especially glaring. Just for the record, this blog supports the ELN and FARC in Colombia, and supported the MRTA in Peru, but cannot support the project of Sendero. The link with anthropologists is especially interesting in that Obama’s mother was an anthro, and she has been decried as an America-hater, and this America-hatred of hers can be seen supposedly in both Obama and his wife. Though I do not care about whether or not Obama and his wife hate America, I think these latest America-hating charges may well be fatal for his campaign, especially with White ethnic working class types (Reagan Democrats), independents and Republicans who were voting for Obama for some bizarre reason. This Asia Times piece by Spengler is worth reading along those lines. Though I am not a big fan of Spengler, he is definitely worth reading. He tells it like it is all right. I’m for whichever Dem, the Black or the woman, can beat the Republican clown. At this point it’s starting to look like the lady. Women all over the country are fired up and hopping mad about the sexist BS directed at Hillary all through this whole campaign. A bunch of yahoo alpha male dogs showed up at one of Hilary’s appearances in New Hampshire and yelped, “Iron my shirts!” Jeez. Good for American women for standing up to this sexist crap. Everyone should stand up for their rights, and I applaud my sisters. This blog will never attack Hilary on sexist grounds.

The Real Reason for the Shining Path

Repost from the old site. Rightwing anti-Communists (and for that matter, Centrist and liberal US anti-Communists also) have some very peculiar attitudes about Communism, shaped by the Cold War. Communism, it appears, is some strange, evil and insane system, a crazy, idiotic and totally failed economic and social system that brought nothing but misery, hunger, starvation and poverty to the world, while bringing nothing good. The alternative was capitalism, which would at some point conquer hunger, poverty, starvation and all that. Capitalism is always supposed to conquer these things at some point in the future. Capitalist polemicists usually say, “Just give it some time…” With the neoliberalism that has been pushed since 1980 and has brought nothing but misery and impoverishment to billions and caused many millions of deaths, we have always been told that it would start working pretty soon now…maybe next year…victory is right around the corner. The truth is that after 25 years of neoliberalism, the verdict is in and a long report has documented it quite well. Nearly everywhere it has been tried, neoliberalism has benefited the top 2 Even in the US, from 1980-1992, the top 2 Neoliberalism, nearly everywhere, resulted in lowered economic growth rates, massive debt, plunging wages and living standards for the majority, reductions in access to health and eduction, and reductions in many health and education metrics like infant mortality, life expectancy and the percentage of children in school at various ages. This is because neo-liberalism mandated massive cuts in all social services, especially education and health care. The outcome was foretold. The truth about neoliberalism is that it has always been a scam in which the West, especially Western banks, corporations and investors, ripped off the rest of the World blind and the people were always left holding the bag. Nevertheless, the ripoff artists keep trying to sell their neoliberal snake oil around the world, but more and more nations are no longer buying. Most of the countries of Latin America have tired of the “checks in the mail” neoliberal snipe hunt, and collectively, they are trying, in their own often-limited ways, to dislodge themselves from the grip of the neoliberal plague. Even mainstream economists admit that Latin America (macroeconomically) did not benefit from the neoliberal fad. Recently, Argentina paid off its foreign debt and said no more. In Venezuela, Chavez is trying to forge a completely new path that is, instead of the Communism his detractors libel him with, in truth nothing more than a reformation of capitalism. President Lula in Brazil has been hampered by the death grip of both investor capital and the markets; he has not been able to do much at all. Uruguay has elected a strident Leftist, but it is not known what he can do given his restraints. Chile, after the utter failure of Pinochet’s radical free market economics (something the free market crazies have never owned up to), has elected a socialist and a woman as President, Bachelet. It is not known what she can do in terms of progress, but Chile still has an education and health sector that is in pretty good shape and sports good metrics to show for it. In Ecuador, Rafael Correa is President, and he has formed an alliance with Chavez. It remains to be seen what he can do in terms of progress, as his options, as usual, are limited. In Bolivia, Evo Morales, an Indian, has won a very close election in a country where a small White elite has always run roughshod over the majority Indian population. His options are also limited, but Morales’ rhetoric has at least been almost as radical as Chavez’. A major problem in Bolivia is the mestizos in the East of the country (Santa Cruz Province) who despise the Indians the West as inferior while they sit on top of Bolivia’s rich natural gas deposits. They are making noises about succession, but they will never try it. In Mexico, AMLO (Lopez-Obrador), a Leftist, actually won the election, but due to the usual fraud, the PAN (a rightwing Catholic party that rose out of the religious hot war in Mexico in the 1920’s that left 70,000 dead) now holds the presidency. Felipe Calderon is the PAN President and he won’t do a damned thing to solve the problems that have caused an incredible 1 As an example of such problems, the family of one man, Carlos Slim, the head of the private Mexican phone monopoly, controls 5 There has been some resistance to this semi-feudal order. A very radical movement has tried to overthrow the corrupt and brutal dictatorial government of Oaxaca state. The Zapatistas* are still alive, and recently a Leftist group, the EPL*, has started to blow stuff up again, after disappearing for three years. In Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega was re-elected, but he appears to have softened his rhetoric to the point where he cannot do much. Still, he has formed an alliance with Chavez. Nicaragua, now the second poorest country in Latin America, lies in corrupt ruins. Support for the considerably neutered Sandinistas is higher than reported in the ruling class media – although Ortega had 3 Under the Sandinistas, Nicaragua went from one of the worst to one of the best in Central America for literacy and health care figures. In 1990, Violeta Chamorro, adored by the whole US political spectrum, including the Cruise Missile liberals of the US Democratic Party, won the election. Right away, she ended free education, requiring students to spend $35 a year on uniforms, a fee that immediately threw large numbers of kids out of school. Most have yet to return. She also got rid of free health care, so most of the population is without health care again. The health and education figures for the nation have shown the expected collapse. It is interesting that Democratic Party liberals are apparently overjoyed about this situation, showing the bankruptcy of their ideology. Most of the rest of the continent is collapsed in the usual ruins. 1 million people die every year from hunger in Latin America, and this has been going on for decades. How come this stuff never makes it to the “Worst Killers in Recent History” contests? The anti-Communist line about Communism divorces it from its concrete realities in the sort of totally rotten social and economic systems that have spawned peasant revolutions for centuries before Karl Marx was even born. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990’s and the fall of the Warsaw Pact, rightwingers rejoiced. It was the “end of history”, said Francis Fukuyama. The era of peasant revolts was over. Never again would humanity have to worry about any Marxist, Leftist, worker, peasant, or even populist revolution. Capitalism was here to say, in all of its forms, from most enlightened to most hideous, and no one could do a damn thing about it! Well, that is nonsense. Anti-Communists say that revolutions happen for no reason at all, other than the insane desire of Communist madmen to seize power and impose their failed system on an unwilling population. They say that revolutions do not arise from horrible social and economic systems – they arise from sick Marxist pathology. Get rid of Marxism, they say, and capitalism can run wild on humanity again. Perhaps we can even re-instate feudalism and slavery while we are at it. After all, they were both great for business. Amidst the deafening racket of nonsense, a series of economic figures looms up at us like a ghost from the recent Peruvian past. In back of those figures, 15 years later in 1980, like an Inca God rising up from the grave to slay the Spanish invaders 450 years after they waded ashore, is the frightening shadow of the Peruvian Shining Path*, another “totally insane” Marxist group that arose “for no reason whatsoever other than sheer evil”. Yet the figures below show us why a revolution, even one as insane as Sendero Luminoso, was inevitable: From the Peruvian National Planning Institute in Bejar, Peru, in 1965, we learn that the 24,000 families of the White ruling class in Lima had an income of $62,000/yr*. The entire rest of the country had an average family income of $157. The Indians of the Sierra, who even now have a life expectancy of only 45 years, had an average family income of only $10 a year. *All figures in 1965 US dollars. Most people agree that things have only gotten worse in Peru since then. Look at those figures above and tell that that is not kindling and kerosene for bloody revolution. The match was called Sendero, and someone was going to toss a match sooner or later. There were centuries in Peru before 1965, four of them, and they build on our tale. From 1526 (when the Spaniards came to Peru) to 1630, the Indian population declined from 13 million to 600,000 – a loss of 9 For the next three centuries, the Indians were tied to the land like serfs, bonded in debt peonage in a feudal estate society. This continued until well into the 1970’s. The jungle Indians were enslaved and killed for sport starting in the 1800’s and continuing until 50 years or so ago. It is 1980. The bump and lurch of the dialectic, from Hegel to Marx to This is an example, from the city of Cherboksary, Russia, of the most failed economic system ever known to mankind – Communism. The fountains you see are inferior and worthless – totally failed fountains, if you will. The buildings in the background as are complete failures as buildings, since they are dull and boring. Those buildings are called “socialist housing” and everyone in the West agrees that this type of housing does not work. What works much better are the capitalist slums in the pictures to follow. The river is quite clean and this is another example of complete failure. Much better are the black rivers of capitalist slums, stinking with garbage, animal corpses and raw sewage. Why? Because diseases and smells are exciting! Who wants to be bored, anyway? Even the bright greenery in the foreground in a total failure – it’s much better to have live amidst the mounds of garbage you see below. Capitalist slums, with their thrill a minute and constant search for food, are the only way to go. A slum in Brazil. This is the successful system that works. Much better than that failed, dull socialist housing above, no? When are you moving in, reader? Men pick through a garbage dump, probably in Nairobi. Slums in Nairobi make up Slums of Nairobi. This is the only viable system on Earth, capitalism. All of the alternatives, especially Communism, are failed and don’t work. As you can see, this system works great. Communist housing fails because it is dull, boring and lifeless. It is much better to live in lively, exciting surroundings like this Nairobi slum, where I assure you there is never a dull movement. How dare those evil Commies try to move these people into “failed” Soviet-style high-rises! An excellent example of capitalist education from Africa. Capitalism hates education, everywhere and at all times, because the capitalists can’t make any money off of it, and the capitalists all send their kids to fancy private schools, hence they resent paying for a system they do not even use. So capitalism, under neoliberalism, has predictably devastated education systems around the Third World. Who needs to get educated anyway? The problem of the 3rd World is too many kids! Besides, Black people are so dumb that all attempts to educate them are a waste of time, or so The Bell Curve told me. Slums of Brazil. The problem is these Brazilians have too damn many kids! Yet the evidence shows that Brazil’s birthrate is actually below replacement level. Never matter, in that case, the poor should quit having babies altogether! Somehow, Westerners always find a way to blame the victim. Of course, Brazil having the worst rich-poor gap on Earth could not have anything to do with this situation, now would it? By 2020, 4 The charming slums of Brazil. Rio de Janeiro is home to 12 million people – 4 million of them in 800 different favelas, or slums. All of these slums are run by gangs of drug dealers, who engage in continuous battles with each other and the police, that is, when they are not engaging in armed robberies, kidnappings and homicides. Recent articles in the Western press have hailed the dramatic improvements in these slums. As you can see here, they are so much better than they used to be! Residents of a slum in Nairobi trudge through the garbage on their way home. Nairobi has an out of control crime rate, but of course that has nothing to do with the fact that these folks live in slums. It is because the criminals are evil and commit crimes for no reason at all. Furthermore, they are Black, and Black people are genetically natural born criminals. They’re just a race of Bad Seeds, and nothing can be done about them at all. The wonderful slums of Mumbai again! This is the high tech economy that is taking the world by storm, the envy of the planet. Check out that high tech dishwasher this girl is using – I bet it was designed by those IT professionals down in Bangalore! Go, India go! The truth about India is, of course, more tragic than Tom Friedman (see below) can figure out. By 1985, capitalism was killing between between 2.92 and 4 million every year in India, and 1.76 million were being killed in Bangladesh. That is 5.25 million people being killed by capitalism every year in just those two countries alone. But wait a minute! Capitalism doesn’t kill anyone. Stalin and Mao were the worst killers of the 20th century, dontcha know? Since Communism doesn’t work, we have to go with the only alternative, the system that works, capitalism. This photo shows you just how great it works in Mumbai, India. Noam Chomsky reports that, comparing China and India, which had similar developmental figures in 1949, there have been 100 million excess deaths in Indian from 1947-1979. This clearly shows the superiority of Chinese Communism, at least when it comes to saving lives. Note that China’s superior figures even include all of those killed by Maoism, which may number over 20 million people. But Maoism saved far more, and China set a world record with the fastest doubling of life expectancy by any country, going from 32 in 1949 to 65 in 1976, surpassing Joseph Stalin’s record set in 1956. Now in China, gone heavily over to capitalism, millions are dying from lack of health care alone. Getting back to India, recent figures show that there are 4 million excess deaths in India every single year. Gideon Polya calculates that excess infant mortality alone, compared to a model of Sri Lanka, kills 2.7 million Indians per year. Slums of Mumbai. 6 million people – 6 Working backwards and forwards from Chomsky’s figures above of 4 million deaths per year in India from capitalism, which he got from Indian economist Amratya Sen, we can guess that capitalism may have killed 170 million Indians since 1949 as compared to the Chinese model. But wait, aren’t Communists the worst killers of them all? Don’t like the way I do figures? Try these instead then. Capitalism kills 14 million people every single year just by starvation, mostly in South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Afghanistan).

*This blog does not support the project of Sendero Luminoso, as they kill people who are completely innocent. It does support the Zapatistas and the EPL in Mexico.

Sendero Fades and FARC Rises in Peru

Repost from the old site. Web Archive is your friend. What wonderful dead Internet things it has managed to preserve for us, little snapshots long expired, such as Argentine Jewish journalist Uki Goni’s interview with Nicholas Shakespeare, author of the novel The Dancer Upstairs, based on the Shining Path* insurgency. The novel was later made into a Chuschi, Ayacucho, on May 17, 1980, almost exactly 200 years after the last Inca rebel, Tupac Amaru, on May 17, 1781, was drawn and quartered by Spaniards, the four pieces then buried at far corners of Peru. The Chuschi ballots burning was an inauspicious affair. At 2 AM, five masked youths and one adult entered the office of the registrar, tied him up, burned the ballots and registry and retreated into the night. The attack had been led by a schoolteacher. The incident was scarcely even noted in the press. But the single spark to light the prairie fire had been lit. The correlation with the execution of Tupac Amaru was not accidental, yet this little-noted fact has hardly been noticed by anyone who studied the insurgency. But it has profound implications for understanding the movement. Best’s son was the Edith Lagos, a fighter killed in 1982, drew over 30,000 (in a city of 70,000 people) – mostly Indians – to her funeral in Ayacucho, the capital of the province where it all began. The huge crowd had defied a ban on her funeral. Furthermore, Lagos (rare photos of the strikingly beautiful Lagos here and here) had recently graduated from a Catholic high school run by nuns in Ayacucho. She had been a model student at the high school. Earlier, her parents had sent her to Lima to study to be an attorney. She often skipped school to watch movies from India, because, she said, she liked to cry. When she was not doing that, she was meeting with trade union workers in the city and talking revolution. She was rapidly recruited into the Shining Path and her rousing speeches electrified Indians throughout the Southern Sierra. At age 17, she was already a guerrilla commander. Lagos was captured several times by government forces. There is a photo of her in government custody in 1981, face swollen by beatings, 18 year old eyes already hard with determination. By now, Sendero held the northern third of Ayacucho. On May 2, 1982, in one of Sendero’s most impressive actions, 500 Senderistas raided and took over the university city of Huamanga, a city of 80,000 people. They blew up the local jail and raped, tortured and finally bayoneted to death by government forces. She was all of 19 years old. This was pretty typical behavior by government forces. In contrast, Sendero often tended to wounded government soldiers’ wounds, took them prisoner, and asked them to defect from the security forces or join Sendero. Her father was asked to come to Andahualyas to identify the body. He came, picked up the body and took it back to Ayacucho. All along the way, the procession was repeatedly stopped as throngs of peasants poured into the road to mourn their dead heroine. Her funeral and mass were held in the main Catholic (Lagos was a Catholic, as were most of rank and file Senderistas and even some of the leadership – Abimael Guzman himself is said to be Catholic) cathedral in Ayacucho, where her coffin was draped with a hammer and sickle flag inside church, an odd sight. There is a rare videotape of the funeral. The chapel is packed with peasants, storeowners, government workers, all dressed in Indian garb. As her coffin is borne out of the church, a rousing, clapping chant rises from the crowd as it presses forward and drapes a hammer and sickle flag over her coffin: “Commandante Edith presente! The people will never forget your spilled blood!” The crowd circled the square three times, each time swelling the crowd as more and more people poured out of their homes to join the march. Marching into the cemetery was a solid wall of humanity. The Shining Path banner rode on the outstretched arms of the crowd. There are those who swear that Maria Elena Moyano, “Mother Courage”, in 1991, is without merit. Further, Moyano was killed, albeit brutally, for organizing counterinsurgency patrols and turning in supporters and members of Sendero to the police. As such, she was no longer a civilian. The very name of the group was the Peruvian Communist Party en el Sendero Luminoso de (in the shining path of) this fascinating web page. One cannot really understand Sendero without knowing about Mariategui. So from the start, Sendero raised feminism and the liberation of the Indians as two of their banners. Simon Strong’s Shining Path (1992) is the finest book ever written on the movement. He spent a lot of time in Peru and concluded that at the time, the movement had a huge amount of support, even among the military, the Catholic church, teachers, students, workers, peasants, the urban poor and exiles. They also had massive support among the Ashaninka Indians in the Amazon, and also with some other tribes. The notions that Sendero held 1000’s of Indians “prisoner“, or that they massacred scores of unarmed jungle Indians, are total nonsense. At the time Strong wrote his book, the movement was at the peak of their popularity. Later that year, Guzman was captured, and it has been all downhill ever since. But the general assessment of anti-Sendero authors, that Sendero either had no understanding of, or was hostile to, infuriating Peruvians with her Maoist “Serve the People” purse (the rightwing blogosphere has had an idiotic field day with this, but I seriously doubt that Diaz supports or supported Sendero, so the whole affair is just the usual rightwing character assassination), the Peruvians they refer to are elite, the only ones the media ever talks to. No one else in Peru matters or has a voice. At the moment, Sendero is fairly unpopular, even among those who formerly supported them. These same people also despise the government, the system, and the White elite who exploit them. But Sendero was so vicious and crazy, killing so many people, including the masses and other Leftists, that they left a bad taste in the mouths of many. These people have not given up on revolution by any means. After all, the Peruvian system is worthless, insane and evil, and it should be destroyed. It is only reasonable that such an insane and evil system should produce an insane and evil insurgency – Sendero. Now, Guzman and his fellow leaders sue for peace in prison, while a few holdouts under Comrade Artemio wage armed struggle, mostly in Ayacucho, the Huallaga Valley, the Satipo River area and Huanuco. A few years back, they were recruiting in the squalid slums of Lima once again. These days, a more intelligent group of guerrillas is in Peru – the FARC* of Colombia. A massive, wealthy movement with deep roots in the Colombian poor, especially the rural poor, FARC has been spreading out lately down into the Ucayali River area in the jungle. They are primarily in the area of Yurimangas and north. They have been spotted as far south as the Apurimac River near Ayacucho (where Sendero is still active) and even in Lima. They are very well-supplied, upbeat, loaded with cell phones and radios, very well-disciplined and are making deep inroads in Peru. They give medical care, food, cooking utensils and field tools to the people and don’t bother a soul. They are quite popular with the masses they are interacting with, who see them as better than Sendero. Many former supporters and members of Sendero have lined up with the FARC in Peru. Earlier this year, a column of Senderistas went back to Colombia, probably for training. FARC has been urging Sendero to join with FARC and modify their line. Another column of the remaining leadership of the MRTA* (Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement) from around Tarapoto and Moyobamba in San Martin Province (their longtime headquarters – photo here) also left for Colombia around the same time – FARC is trying to join together remnants of both Sendero and MRTA with FARC in Peru – a very interesting and possibly fruitful plan. For a great webpage on Tarapoto, complete with awesome pics, by an American woman who spent some time there, see here. The notion that the MRTA was finished after the hostage raid in 1998 is not true – as the century turned, they continued to build the movement in every province of Peru. One of the problems with the MRTA is that they never had much money. Even around Taratopo, where they had a lot of support, they were a sorry sight, often sickly, pale, thin, and broke, wearing ragged clothes. Compared to that impotent picture, and Sendero’s madness and brutality, many of Peru’s peasants think that the FARC are just dandy. Even in Colombia, the FARC has been much more sane and less brutal towards the masses than Sendero was. As such, you can now go into areas of Colombia where everyone for miles around is in the FARC in one way or another, every villager in every town, every ragged farmer in every field with a gun hidden in his clothes, every woman in apron cooking in her kitchen. And it has been this way for decades in Colombia in these areas. This is the reality of FARC’s roots in rural Colombia. The interview with Shakespeare, who is hostile to revolution, nevertheless makes clear that Peru is one nasty place. It is the most racist country he has ever been to, Shakespeare opines. Sure it is. If someone from a lower class (or caste, really) asks a white elite for the time of day in Lima, the rich man will not even speak to the lower-class person. In fact, he won’t speak to him virtually no matter what he wants. The Indians have been killed, enslaved, raped, abused, ignored and basically slaughtered with hunger, disease and out and out murder since Pizarro stepped ashore in 1521. Shakespeare went to Ayacucho, where a white man had been murdered by Indians a week before. Everywhere he goes, the Indians whisper pistaco – the name for a mysterious white giant that murders Indians for their fat which he uses to run Western industry. Pistaco does not exist, but the Indians think he does. Shakespeare said that Sendero started a myth that Tupac Amaru’s body, quartered and buried over 200 years before, was slowly growing underground and would regenerate as he rose with Sendero’s victory. The materialist Sendero would never make up such a story. The story could only come from the Indians themselves, and I am sure they believed it. And in many ways, Peru today is the same as at any time in the decades and centuries after Pizarro waded ashore 500 years ago. Until that changes, Peru will always be in a revolutionary situation. Peru created Sendero; it could not have grown in any sane or decent society. If Best was evil, so was the land that made him. The crimes of the Sendero Frankenstein rest in large part with its creator, the horror called Peruvian society itself. Sendero carried out 96 actions last year, about 2 a week; clearly, it is still alive, though nowadays they are fighting to get their leaders and cadres released and negotiate and end to the war – reasonable demands that no Peruvian state will cotton to. A few years back, they were recruiting again in Lima’s horrid shantytowns (photo here). Meanwhile, FARC expands with great success across Peru. They combine this success with a group in Venezuela, FARV – Revolutionary Armed Forces of Venezuela – (which has 2,000-3,000 members but has not engaged in many actions yet) and another group in Ecuador called FARE – Revolutionary Armed Forces of Ecuador – mostly in the border area with Putamayo and just building a movement now. FARB – Revolutionary Armed Forces of Brazil – exists in the Dog’s Head region of Brazil where Peru, Brazil and Colombia all come together, building a movement once again. FARC also uses the border areas in Panama as an R and R area. The local Cuna Indians of the Darien are quite cooperative, but the Panamanian state has murdered some of them for allowing FARC to stay with them, though FARC has never done a thing in Panama. Recently, FARC has been spotted all the way over in far northern Guyana, where they are trying to tax the gold mining operations. This sighting implies that FARC also has a presence all across far northern Brazil. US media reports place FARC operatives recently in Bolivia, where they were giving political advice to groups associated with the new president Enrique Morales before his election. Despite recent offensives by the Colombian state, FARC is alive and well and expanding across much of Latin America. This as the radical version of Sendero peters out. Revolution is a bloody thing. If states don’t want 12 year old kids carrying AK-47’s professing revolution while roaming their slums*, they need only create a semblance of a decent society. There is no end of history, and you can only push a man so far before he rises up to strike you back. *A Salvadoran man I met in a San Mateo, California restaurant in 2001 told me he saw a 12 yr old boy in the San Salvador slums carrying an automatic weapon and chanting revolutionary slogans in 1969. He went home and told his family, and his parents resolved to sent him out of the country, saying that revolution was surely on its way. Their omniscience was keen. 11 years later, it exploded in full force via the FMLN*. *This blog strongly supported the FMLN in El Salvador to the point of contributing money to their weapons fund. We also strongly support the FARC in Colombia, all of its regional split-offs and the MRTA in Peru. We do not support the project of Sendero Luminoso as they kill people who are completely innocent. All support for groups is with certain reservations.

Chavez Bans New US Diplomat from Setting Foot in the Country

Excellent news! Go Hugo go! He had every right to do this. This ambassador said in confirmation hearings that the citizens of Venezuela hate Chavez and in particular that morale in the Armed Forces is very poor. The last comment is alarming given the many coups and armed insurrections that the US has sponsored down through the years. In fact, the US sponsored an armed coup in 2002 and an employer’s lockout strike the next year. Saying that the armed forces has low morale is code talk that means a coup could possibly be carried out with the support of the armed forces. It’s very alarming talk considering the the US has already instigated one coup against Venezuela. The ambassador was threatening a coup against Chavez. The US said that there will be consequences for the relationship, but it’s dubious what those would be. We need Venezuelan oil and I believe that we buy most Chavez’ oil. We can’t quit buying it and he can’t quit selling it to us, so we are locked into a sort of fatal embrace. It’s noteworthy that this imperialist dog ambassador was chosen by Barack Obanksta. Haha! He told America, the Dracula of the planet, to buzz off. Go, go, go Hugo go!

The Socialist International

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxRfsBwou5g&feature=related] The Internationale is one of my favorite songs of all time. This is the Billy Bragg version. The Internationale is the international anthem of:

  1. The international Communist movement in all its varieties
  2. The international Left anarchist movement (not the right-anarchist movement)
  3. The international socialist movement
  4. The international social-democratic movement

Unfortunately, the song is associated with Commies, so it’s widely hated, particularly in the US. However, it’s a fact that it’s also the anthem of socialists and social democrats all over the world. The video lists the parties in the Socialist International. Some of those parties have badly sold out – the Labor Party in the UK is a catastrophe. The Australian Labor Party has sold out in the worst way, and the New Zealand Labor Party is the same. Accion Democratica is a horrible anti-Chavez party in Venezuela. I don’t think they ever belonged in the SI. The MSZP in Hungary is not a socialist party. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) in Germany has serious problems, and many would say they don’t belong in the SI. As you can see (obviously) the US Democratic Party is not a member of the Socialist International. I’m honestly sick and tired of hearing how Barack Obama is a socialist. 5 He’s a neoliberal capitalist politician slightly to the left of the reactionary sociopaths in the Republican Party. To be fair and honest, I think he is on the center-right of US politics. You see the US Right is so insane that they think center-right pols like Obama are socialists! The fist clenching a rose is the symbol of the Socialist International. People think that greeting people with “comrade” is an exclusively Communist type greeting. Hence, it is widely disparaged in the US. However, it is perfectly acceptable for socialists to call each other “comrade” also. “Comrade” is not an exclusively Commie term.

You Could Always Support the Maoists

Patrick asks: The “communists” in America attack real socialist countries like Cuba and attack countries striving to make real socialist reforms like Venezuela. American “communists” attack the real reds while simultaneously they make excuses for the Democratic Party appeasing their capitalist masters. American “communists” have just become another ideological appendage of the capitalist worldview. QUESTION: What can a American who is a real red support if even the “communist” party in America is infiltrated by capitalist rhetoric.

First of all, I would like to say that these two sentences have a lot of truth to them: American “communists” attack the real reds while simultaneously they make excuses for the Democratic Party appeasing their capitalist masters. American “communists” have just become another ideological appendage of the capitalist worldview. Indeed, indeed. I suppose one could always go Maoist. There’s the Revolutionary Communist Party, but they don’t say much of anything about Obama. Most of the party is Black, and they mostly talk about police brutality, prisoner’s rights and whatnot. At this point, it’s nothing more than a gigantic cult revolving around their leader, Bob Avakian. He has essentially formed a personality cult around himself. There has been a big debate about this in Maoist circles lately, with a lot of good work coming out of India. Bottom line is that Commie personality cults have got to go. They criticize worship of sky-Gods, yet demand that we worship a mere mortal man. Screw that. The Kasama Project are some Maoists who are doing a lot of interesting thinking. They are mostly exiles from the RCP and Avakian’s idiot cult. An article from yesterday blasts Obama. I’m not about to join a US Maoist party. Way too radical for my tastes. I’m more of a Castroite, sorry.

"Latin America’s Twenty First Century Capitalism and the US Empire," by Dr. James Petras

An excellent analysis of the current scene in Latin America by Marxist James Petras. We often wonder what exactly is going on here or there in the world. For the answer in Latin America, Petras answers a number of important questions. What’s amazing is I can’t find one single area in which he’s wrong in his analysis below. Hence, this analysis is immaculate. If any of you can find anywhere below where he is wrong, let us know. A good tutorial on the Latin American politico-economic scene. Warning: Runs 45 pages.

Political Power and the World Market

The twin nemesis of Latin America’s quest for more equitable and dynamic development, US imperial and local oligarchic power have been subject to profound changes over the past decade. New capitalist classes both at home and abroad have redefined Latin America’s relation to world markets, seized opportunities to stimulate growth and forged cross class coalitions linking overseas investors, agro-mineral exporters, national industrialists with a broad array of trade unions, and in some countries peasant and Indian social movements. Parallel to these changes in Latin America, a new militarist and financial political configuration engaged in prolonged wars, colonial occupations and widespread speculation has weakened the structural economic links – dominance – between US imperial economic interests and Latin America’s dynamic socio-economic classes. In the present conjuncture, these basic changes in the respective class structures – in the US and Latin America – define the contours, constraints and ‘reach’ of the imperial classes as well as the potential autonomy of action of Latin America’s leading socio-economic classes. Notions which freeze Latin America in a time warp such as “500 years of exploitation” or which conflate earlier decades of US political-economic dominance with the present, have failed to take account of recent class dynamics, including popular insurrections, mass electoral mobilizations and failed imperial-centered economic models which have redefined the power equation between the US and Latin America. Equally important, fundamental changes in market relations and market competition has lessened US influence in the world market and opened major growth opportunities for new and established sectors of Latin America’s capitalist class, especially its dynamic export sectors. Understanding imperialism, especially the US variant, requires focusing on class relations, within and between countries and regions, the changing balance of power as well as the impact of fundamental changes in world market relations. Equally important the private economic institutions of imperialism (banks, multi-national corporations, investors) are contingent on the composition and policies of the imperial state. Insofar as the state defines its priorities in military and ideological terms and acts accordingly, by channeling resources in prolonged wars, the imperial policymakers weakens their capacity to sustain, finance and promote overseas private economic interests. As we shall analyze and discuss in the following sections, the US has suffered a relative loss of political and economic power over key Latin American regimes and markets as its military commitments have widened and deepened over time. The result is a Latin American political configuration which has changed dramatically over the past two decades.

Latin American Political-Economic Configurations and US Imperialism

The upsurge of social movements, the subsequent ascent of center-left political regimes,the dynamic economic growth of Asian economies and the consequent sharp increase in prices of commodities in the world market has changed the configuration of political power in Latin America and between the latter and the US between 2000-2010. While the US exercised almost absolute hegemony during the period 1980-1999, the rise of a militarist caste promoting prolonged imperial wars in the Middle East and South Asia and the rise of relatively independent national-popular and social-liberal regimes in Latin America has produced a broad spectrum of governments with greater autonomy of action. Depending on the criteria we use, Latin American countries have moved beyond the orbit of US hegemony. For example, if we examine trade and investment, all the major countries, independent of ideology, have to a greater or lesser degree diversified their markets, trading and investment partners. If we examine political alignments, we find that all the major countries have joined UNASUR, a regional political organization that excludes the US. If we examine policy divergences from the US on major regional issues, such as the US embargo on Cuba, its efforts to isolate Venezuela, its proposed military bases in Colombia, Washington remains in splendid isolation, to the point that the new Colombian President Santos, chooses to “postpone” implementation in favor of maximizing billion dollar trade and diplomatic ties with Venezuela. If we focus on ideological divergence between the US and Latin America, particularly on global issues of free trade, military coups and intervention, we find a variety of positions. For example, Brazil opposes US sanctions against Iran and supports the latter’s program of uranium enrichment for peaceful uses. If we focus on joint US-Latin American military exercises and support for the Haitian occupation, most Latin countries – with the exception of Venezuela – participate. If we examine the issue of bilateral trade and regional trade agreements, the US proposals on the latter were voted down, while several countries pursue (so far with little success) the former. On a rather fluid measure of ‘affinity for neo-liberal’ ideology, in which a mixture of elements of statism, deregulated markets and social welfare co-exist in varying degrees, we can draw up a tentative 4 fold division between “left”, “center left”, “center right” and “right”. On the “left” we can include Venezuela and Bolivia which have expanded the public sector, economic regulations and social spending.   On the “center-left” we can include Argentina, Brazil and Ecuador which have increased social spending, public investment and increased employment, wages and reduced poverty, while vastly increasing private national and foreign investment in agro-mineral export sectors. On the center-right we can include Uruguay, Chile and Paraguay, which embrace free market doctrines, with mild poverty programs and an open door to foreign investment. On the right we find Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Mexico, Peru, Honduras, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, all of whom line up with Washington on most ideological issues, even as they may be diversifying trade ties with Asia and Venezuela. Internal shifts in class power within Latin America and the US have spurred divergences. Latin America has witnessed greater policy influence by a more ‘globalist elite’ less tied to the US, and an emerging ‘nationalist bourgeoisie’, and greater pressure from reformist working class and public employees trade union. In contrast within the US industrial capital has lost influence to the financial sector and exerts little influence in shaping economic policy toward Latin America, beyond rearguard ‘protectionist’ measures and state subsidies. The US ruling political elite, highly militarized and Zionized, shows little capacity to engage in launching any major new initiatives toward recapturing markets in Latin America, preferring massive military expenditures on wars and paying tribute to their Israeli mentors. As a result of major socio-political shifts within the US and Latin America and the singular importance of dynamic changes in the world market, there are four axis of power operating in the Western Hemisphere. The emerging economic power of Brazil and the growth of intra-regional trade within and between Latin American economies. The dynamic expansion of Asian trade, investment and markets leading to a long term, large scale shift toward greater economic diversification. The substantial financial flows from the US to Latin America in the form of “hot money” with destabilizing effects, as well as continued substantial investment, trade and military ties. The European Union, Russia and the Middle East as real and potential influences in particular settings, depending on the countries and time frame. Of these 4 ‘vectors of power’, the most significant in recent times in reshaping Latin America’s relation to the US and more importantly in opening up prospects for 21st century capitalist growth, is the boom in commodity prices and demand – the dynamic of the world market. On the ‘negative side’, the prolonged US-EU economic crises has limited trade and investment growth and encouraged greater Latin American integration and expansion of regional markets. A serious threat to Latin America’s growth, autonomy and stability is found in the US currency devaluation and subsequent overvaluing of Latin currencies (especially Brazil) imposing constraints on industrial exports and prejudicing the manufacturing sector. Equally important US and EU manipulation of interest rates – downward – has driven speculative capital toward higher interest rates in Latin America, creating destabilizing “bubbles” which can derail the economies.

US Empire Strikes Back: Protectionism, Devaluation and Unilateralism

By the middle of 2010 it was clear that the US economy was losing the competitive battle for markets around the world and was unable to reduce its trade and fiscal deficit within the existing global free trade regime. The Obama regime, led by Federal Reserve head Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Geithner unilaterally launched a thinly disguised trade war, effectively devaluing the dollar and lowering interest rates on bonds in order to increase exports and in effect ‘overvalue’ the currency of their competitors. In other words the Obama regime resorted to a virile “bugger your neighbor policies”, which outraged world economic leaders, provoking Brazilian economic leaders to speak of a “currency war”. Contrary to Washington’s rhetoric of “greater co-operation”, the Obama regime was resorting to protectionist policies designed to alienate the leading economic powers in the region. No longer in a position to impose non-reciprocal trade agreements to US advantage, Washington is engaged in currency manipulation in order to increase market shares at the expense of the highly competitive emerging economies of Latin America and Asia, as well as Germany. Equally prejudicial to Latin America, the Federal Reserve’s lowering of interest rates leads to heavy borrowing in the US in order to speculate in high interest countries like Brazil. The consequences are disastrous, as a flood of “hot money”, speculative funds flow into Latin America, especially Brazil, overvaluing the currency and provoking a speculative bubble in bonds and real estate, while encouraging excess liquidity and public and private consumer debt. Equally damaging the overvalued currencies price industrial and manufacturing out of world market competition, threatening to “de-industrialize” the economies and further their dependency on agro-mineral exports. US resort to unilateral protectionism tells us that the decline in US economic power has reached a point where it struggles to compete with Latin America rather than to reassert its former dominant position. Protectionism is a defense mechanism of an empire in decline. While Washington can pretend otherwise, the weapons it chooses to arrest its loss of competitiveness in the short run, sets in motion a process of growing Latin America integration and increased trade with Asian economies, which will deepen Latin America’s economic independence from US control.

Latin America’s Center-Left and the US: Economic Ties Trump Geopolitical Strategies

The consolidation of Latin America’s center-left regimes has had major consequences for US policy, namely a reconciliation between arch-adversary Venezuela and Washington’s foremost ally, Colombia. The power of the market, in this case over $4 billion in Colombian exports to Venezuela, has trumped the dubious advantage (if any) of being Washington’s military launching pad in Latin America. The election of Lula’s chosen candidate Dilma Rousseff as President of Brazil, the likely re-election of Chavez in Venezuela and Cristina Fernandez in Argentina, means that Washington has little leverage to reverse the dynamic diversification and greater autonomy of Latin America’s leading economies. Moreover, as the political rapprochement between Venezuela and Colombia, including the mutual extradition of Colombian guerrillas and drug traffickers demonstrates, closer economic relations are accompanied by warmer political relations, including a tacit pact in which Colombia abjures from supporting the rightwing opposition in Venezuela, while the latter does likewise toward the Left opposition to Santos. The larger meaning of this obscuring of ideological boundaries is that Latin America’s economic integration advances at the expense of US prompted ideological divisions. The net result will be the further exclusion and diminution of the US as the dominant actor in the Southern Hemisphere. At the same time it should be remembered that we are writing about greater capitalist integration, which means the continued marginalization of class based trade unions and social movements from strategic economic policy making positions. In other words, the decline of US hegemony is not matched by an increase in working class or popular power. As both decline, the big winner is the rising business class, mostly, but not exclusively the agro-mineral, financial and manufacturing elites linked to the Latin American and Asian markets. The prime destabilization danger now includes US currency wars, the growing potentially volatile extractive exports and the high levels of dependence on China’s (and Asian) appetite for raw materials. Imperial Wars, Free Trade and the Lumpen Legacy of 1990’s One of the paradoxes leading to the current eclipse of US hegemony in Latin America is found in the very military and economic successes in the 1990’s. A broad swathe of North and Central American and the Andean countries has witnessed the rise of what we call “lumpen political-economic power” which has devastated the formal economy and legitimate political authority. The concept of “lumpen” is derived from ‘lupus’ or Latin for ‘wolf’ a metaphor for a ‘predatory’ actor, or in our context, the rise of a political and economic class which preys upon the public and private resources and institutions of an economy and society. The lumpen power elites are based on the creation of a dual system of legitimate and illegitimate political authority backed by the instruments of coercion and violence. The emergence and formation of a powerful lumpen class of predatory capitalists and their accompanying military entourage is what we refer to in writing of the “process of lumpenization”. Today “lumpenization” no longer merely entails the overt violent organizers of illicit production, processing and distribution of drugs but an entire array of ‘offspring’ economic activity (kidnapping, immigrant smugglers, etc.) as well as large scale long term interaction with ‘legitimate’ economic institutions and sectors, including banking, real estate, agriculture, retail shopping centers, tourist complexes, to name a few. Money laundering of illicit funds is an important growth sector, especially providing important flows of capital to and from major US and Latin American financial institutions. Today over three-quarters of Mexico’s territory and governance is contested by over 30,000 organized armed lumpen led by centralized political-economic formations. Central America is a major transit point, production center and terrain for bloody lumpen struggles for power and revenue collection. Colombia is the major center for ‘raw material production’of drugs, marketing,and import and export center under the leadership of powerful lumpen capitalists with long standing ties to the governing political, military and economic elite. The lumpen economy has supply chains further south in Peru, Bolivia and Paraguay and distribution networks through Venezuela and Brazil as well as multi-billion dollar money laundering and financial links in the Caribbean, the US, Uruguay and Argentina. Several important issues to keep in mind in discussing the lumpen political economy.These include: (1)the growth in size, scope and significance over the past 20 years (2) the increasing economic importance as the ‘legitimate’ economy goes into crises (both cause and consequence) (3) the increasing public cynicism as previously thought of “legitimate” economic and political actors (capitalists) engage in multi-billion dollar financial swindles and are “bailed” out by political leaders. The ‘boom’ in lumpen political-economic growth can be dated to the end of the 1980’s and early 1990’s, coinciding with several major historical events in the region. These include: the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement; the US-oligarchy defeat of the revolutionary movements in Central America and the demobilization but not disarmament of the paramilitary and armed militia; the total militarization and paramilitarization of Colombia especially with the advent of Plan Colombia (2001) and the end of peace negotiations; the deregulation of the US financial system in the mid 1990’s and the growth of a financial bubble economy. What is striking about all the countries and regions experiencing ‘deep lumpenization’, is the profound disarticulation of their economies and smashing of their social fabric due to free trade agreements with the US (Mexico and Central America) and the large scale US military intervention during their civil wars (El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Colombia). The US politico-military intervention left millions without work and worse, destroyed the possibility of reformist or revolutionary political alliances coming to power and carrying out meaningful structural changes. The restoration of US backed neo-liberal-militarist collaborator regimes left the young unemployed peasants and workers with three choices: (1)submit to degradation and poverty (2) emigrate to North America or Europe (3) join one or another of the narco-trafficking organizations, as a risky but lucrative route out of poverty. The timing of the rise and dynamic growth of lumpen power coincides with the imposition of US free trade and political victories in the aforementioned regions. From the early 1990’s forward lumpen power spreads across the region fueled by NAFTA decimating the Mexican small producers and the US imposed Central American “peace accords” which effectively destroyed the chances of socio-economic change and dismantled but did not disarm the militias and paramilitary gunmen.

Case Studies of Lumpen Dual Power: Mexico

Mexico, unlike the other major economies of Latin America did not experience any popular upheavals or center-left electoral outcomes during the late 1990’s or early 2000. Unlike Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia and Ecuador, in which new center-left regimes came to power imposing regulatory controls on financial speculation, Mexico witnessed electoral fraud and signed off on NAFTA, deepening its ties to Wall Street. As a result it experienced a series of financial shocks, undermining its capacity to launch a more diversified trading and investment model. Unlike Argentina which launched state directed employment generating investment policies, Mexico, under US tutelage, relied on emigration and overseas remittances to compensate for the loss of millions of jobs in agriculture , small and medium manufacturing activity and retail sales. While popular uprisings and mobilization in Latin America led to the rise of center-left regimes capable of securing greater independence in economic policy from the US and the IMF, the Mexican elite literally stole elections in 1988 and 2006, blocking the possibility of an alternative model. It successfully repressed alternative peasant movements in Chiapas, Oaxaca and Guerrero unlike the successes in Bolivia and Ecuador. While the center-left regimes captured the economic surplus from the agro-mineral sectors and increased public and private investment in production and social spending, Mexico witnessed massive illegal and legal outflows of investments into speculative ventures in the US: an outflow of over $55 billion between 2006-2010. Regional migration within Latin America fueled by high growth, led to rising income; overseas immigration depleted Mexico of skilled and unskilled labor; in some cases ‘return migration’ from the US of deported gang members, with arms and drug networks fueled the growth of lumpen power . With the severe recession, US immigration policy led to the closing of the border, the massive deportation of Mexican immigrants and the decline of the major source of foreign earnings: remittances. Pervasive and deep corruption throughout the cupula of the Mexican political and economic system, combined with the decline of the legitimate economy, the absence of channels for popular redress and Washington’s insistence that militarization and not social investments was the solution to rising crime, led to the huge influx of young recruits to the growing network of lumpen-capitalist directed narco enterprises. With almost all US and Mexican financial institutions and arms vendors as willing partners and an unlimited pool of young recruits with a ‘lean and hungry look’, Mexico evolved into a fiercely contested terrain between a half dozen rival lumpen organizations,and the Mexican military, with nearly 30,000 deaths between 2006-2010.

Lumpenization: Central America

Drug gangs dominate the streets of the major cities and countryside of all the countries which were militarized during the US backed counter-revolutionary wars between the 1960’s to early 1990’s. US proxy military dictators and their civilian clients, in El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Honduras decimated civil society and particularly the mass popular organizations. In El Salvador over 75,000 people were killed and hundreds of thousands were uprooted, driven across borders or into urban shanty towns. In Guatemala over 200,000 mostly Mayan Indians were murdered by the US trained “special forces” and over 450 villages were obliterated in the course of a scorched earth policy. In Nicaragua, the Somoza dictatorship and the subsequent US financed and trained counter-revolutionary (“contra”) mercenary army killed and maimed close to 100,000 people and devastated the economy. In Honduras, the US embassy promoted and financed in-country and cross-border counter-insurgency operations which killed, uprooted and forced thousands of Honduran peasants into exile. Highly militarized Central American societies, in which US funded and armed death squads murdered with impunity, in which the economy of small producers was shattered and ‘normal’ market activity was subject to military assaults, led to the growth of illegal crops, drug and people smuggling. With the so-called “peace agreements”, the leaders of the insurgents became “institutionalized”in elite electoral politics,while large numbers of unemployed ex-guerrillas and demobilized death squad militia members found no place in the status quo. The neo-liberal order imposed by the US client rulers with its free market ideology built “fortress neighborhoods”, hired an army of private “security” guards, while the productive bases of small scale agriculture was destroyed. Millions of Central Americans faced the familiar “routes out of poverty”: outmigration, forming or joining criminal gangs, or attempting to find an economic niche in an unpromising environment. Outmigration for semi-educated former members of armed bands led to their early entrée into armed groups, deportation back to Central America, swelling the ranks of narco traffickers in their “home country”. Highly repressive immigration policies implemented in the new millennium closed the escape valve for most Central Americans fleeing violence and poverty. Former guerrilla fighters and their families, abandoned by their former leaders embedded in electoral parties, turned their military experience toward carving a new living, as security guards for the rich, or as armed traffickers competing for ‘market shares’ with and against the discharged deathsquad militia members. Between 2000-2010, the annual number of homicides exceeded the number of deaths suffered during the worst period of the civil wars of the 1980s. US imposed peace agreements and the neo-liberal order which resulted, led to the total lumpenization of the economy and polity throughout the region, the practice of electoral politics and even the election of “center-left” politicos in El Salvador and Nicaragua notwithstanding. Lumpenization was a direct consequence of the ‘scorched earth’ and ‘mass uprooting’ counter-insurgency policies which were central to US re-establishing dominance in the region. Economic and personal insecurity and social misery were the price paid by imperial Washington to prevent a popular revolution.

Case Study: Colombia

The ties between the world centers of finance and the most degenerate and blood curdling ruler in the Western Hemisphere were most evident in the slavishly laudatory puff-pieces published in the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal in praise of President Alvaro Uribe, while over 3 million Colombians were driven off their lands, several thousands were murdered, over a thousand trade unionists, journalists and human rights activists were killed. Two thirds of his Congressional backers were financed by narco-traffickers. Incarcerated deathsquad leaders identified top military officials as their primary supporters. All of Colombia’s Presidents collaborated closely with US military missions and all were financed and associated with the multi-billion dollar drug cartels, even as the Pentagon claimed to be engaged in a “war against drug trafficking”. Landlords and their financial and real estate backers organized private militias, which terrorized, uprooted and killed hundreds of thousands of peasants, others fled to the urban slums, or across the border to neighboring countries. Others joined the guerrillas, and still others were recruited by the death squads and military. With the advance of the guerrilla armies and then President Pastrana’s opening to peace negotiations, President Clinton launched a $5 billion dollar military scheme, “Plan Colombia” to quadruple Colombia’s air and ground forces and deathsquads. With Washington’s backing, Alvaro Uribe, a notorious narco-deathsquad politico, so identified by US officials, took power and launched a massive scorched earth policy, murdering and displacing millions of peasants and urban slum dwellers in an effort to undermine the vast network of community organizations sympathetic to the agrarian reform, public investment and anti-military program of the guerrilla movements. Mass terror and population flight emptied whole swathes of the countryside; livelihoods were destroyed and landlords in alliance with drug cartel bosses and Generals seized millions of acres of land. For the financial and respectable mass media, the massification of terror mattered not: the insurgents were ‘contained’, driven back, put on the defensive. They trumpeted the killing of key guerrilla leaders: foreign corporate property was secure. Rule by Uribe, the military and the narco-death squads secured US power and influence and created an ideal “jumping off” location for destabilizing the democratically elected Venezuelan President Chavez. The latter was especially important by the mid 2000’s when Washington’s internal assets attempted coup and lockout were resoundingly defeated in 2002-03. Having gained strategic territorial advantage over the guerrillas, Washington in collaboration with Uribe moved to shift the balance of power between the narco-deathsquads and the state: a disarmament and demobilization and amnesty was proclaimed. The result was detailed revelations of the deep structural links between narco-deathsquads and the Uribe police state regime, up to and including family members and cabinet ministers. While ‘nominally’ the cartels are in retreat, in fact, they have become decentralized .Equally important top politicos and military officials continue to collaborate in the production, processing and shipping of billion dollar cocaine exports … with major US banks laundering illicit funds.

Rule of Lumpen-Capitalism in the Imperial System

Drug trafficking has deep roots in the economies of North and South America and has profound ramifications throughout their societies. One cannot understand the tremendous growth of US banking and financial centers if not for the $25 to $50 billion dollar yearly income and transfers from laundering drug funds and double that amount from illegal money transfers by business and political leaders directly and indirectly benefiting from the drug trade. Lumpen capitalists, their collaborators, facilitators paramilitary mercenaries and military partners play a major political role in sustaining the imperial system. Washington’s major influence and principle area of dominance resides in those countries where lumpen power and deathsquad operations are most prevalent, namely Central America, Colombia and Mexico. Both phenomena are derived from US designed ‘scorched earth’ counter-insurgency strategies that prevented alterations, modifications or reforms of the neo-liberal order and blocked the successful emergence of social movements and center-left regimes as took place in most of Latin America. The contemporary imperial system relies on lumpen capitalists, their economic networks and military formations in practically every major area of conflict even as these collaborators are constant areas of friction. As in Afghanistan and Iraq today and in Central America in the recent past and in Latin America under the military dictatorships, the US relies on drug traffickers, military gangsters engaged in extortion, kidnapping, property seizures and the pillage of public property and treasury to destroy popular movements, to divide and conquer communities and above all to terrorize the general public and civil society. The singular growth of the financial sector especially in the US is in part the result of its being the massive recipient of large scale sustained flows of ‘plunder capital’ by lumpen rulers and their economic partners via ‘political crony’ privatizations, foreign loans which never entered the local economy and other such forms of pillage characteristic of ‘predator’ classes. The deep structural affinities between Wall Street speculators and Latin lumpen-capitalists provided the backdrop for the ascendancy of a new class of lumpen financiers in the imperial financial centers: bogus bonds, mortgage swindles, falsified assessments by stock ratings agencies, trillion dollar raids on state treasuries define the heart and soul of contemporary imperialism. If it is true that the promotion and financing of lumpen warlord capitalists was an essential defense mechanism at the periphery of the empire to contain popular insurgencies, it is also true that the growth of lumpen capitalism severely weakened the very core of the imperial economy, namely its productive and export sectors leading to uncontrollable deficits, out of control speculative bubbles and massive and sustained reductions of living standards and incomes. Lumpen classes were both the agencies for consolidating the empire and its undoing: tactical gains at the periphery led to strategic losses in the imperial centers. Imperial policymakers resort to terrorist formations resulted from their incapacity to resolve internal contradictions within a legal, electoral framework. The high domestic political cost of long term warfare led inevitably to the recruitment of mercenary lumpen armies who extracted an economic tribute for questionable loyalty. Lacking any popular constituency, mercenary armies rely on terror to secure circumstantial submission. Having secured control, local warlords preside over the rapid and massive growth of drugs and other lumpen economic practices. The alliance of empire and lumpen capitalists against modern secular and traditional insurgencies, brings together high technology weaponry and primitive clan based religious-ethnic racists in Iraq and Afghanistan and deracinated psychopaths in the case of Colombia, Mexico and Central America. For Washington military and political supremacy and territorial conquests take priority over economic gain. In the case of Colombia the scorched earth policy undermined production and lucrative trade with Venezuela. Imperial ascendancy had similar consequences in Asia, the Middle East and Central America.

When Lumpen Power becomes a Problem for the Imperial State

Lumpen capitalism develops a dynamic of its own, independent of its role as an imperial instrument for destroying popular insurgency. It challenges imperial collaborator regimes. It displaces, threatens, or cajoles foreign and domestic capitalists. In the extreme, it establishes a private army, seizes territorial control, recruits and trains networks of intelligence agents within the armed forces and police, undermining imperial influence. In a word lumpen organized military capitalism threatens the security of imperial hegemony: newly emerging predators threaten the established collaborators. The imperial attempts to use and dispose of lumpen counterinsurgency forces has failed; the demobilized paras become the professional gunmen of a “third force” – neither imperial nor insurgent. The decimation of the reformist center-left option, which took hold in Latin America, precludes a socio-economic alternative capable of integrating the young combative unemployed, stimulating the productive economy, diversifying markets and escaping the pitfalls of a US centered neo-liberal order. The divergence of priorities and strategies between Latin America’s center-left and Washington has as much to do with economic and class interests as it has with ideological agendas. For the US security means defeating the rising power of lumpen military economic formations in their remaining ‘power bases’. For Latin America, security concerns are secondary to diversifying and boosting market shares within Latin America and overseas. Lumpen power is currently under the political control of domestic rulers in Latin America; it is out of control in US clients. The US solution is military; the Latin approach is greater growth; social expenditures and police repression especially in Brazil. The Latin solution has greater attraction, evident in Colombia’s break with the US military base and encirclement strategy toward Venezuela. Colombia’s new President opted for $8 billion dollar trade deals with Venezuela’s Chavez over and against costly million dollar military base agreements with the US. Clearly the US economic decline in Latin America as a direct result of its reliance on military and lumpen power, is in full force. The driving force of accelerated decline is not popular insurgency but the attraction and lucrative opportunities of the economic marketplace within Latin America and beyond for the local ruling classes. Insofar as militarism defines the policies and strategies of the US Empire there is no remedy for the challenges of lumpen power in its ‘backyard’. And Washington has nothing on offer to recapture a dominant presence in Latin America. The world market is defeating the empire. Latin America’s twenty-first century capitalists are leading the way to further decline in imperial power.

An Examination of the Frog Extinction Epidemic

Repost from the old site. Although many factors are involved in this epidemic, one of the worst is the Chytrid fungus epidemic. It is being spread by Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), which causes chytridiomycosis. This fungal disease is devastating frog populations all over the world, but particularly in Australia, and North, Central and South America. The devastation in Central America has been particularly acute, with many species simply vanishing from the face of the Earth. Bd is just now spreading here in the US, with serious devastation of Sierra Mountain Yellow-Legged Frog populations in the Sierra Nevada. However, some populations are apparently surviving the epidemic with some some survivors intact and thereupon rebuilding their populations. A paper in Nature (Pounds 2006) made the case that the chytrid epidemic was being driven by global warming. They suggested that Bd had always been there but had only become pathogenic in the face of global warming. A new paper (Lips 2008) in the journal PLoS Biology challenged that theory with some interesting data. I did not read the Pounds paper, but the Lips paper was quite convincing. Their argument is rather simple. If Bd had always been there, it would not show a spread rate typical of a spreading disease epidemic. Instead, it would tend to erupt in all places at once. Lips’ team showed first of all that Bd had not always been in the environment, that is, it was not an endemic. It appears to have escaped from an Australian lab around 1970 and from there spread through Australia. From Australia, it made its way to the Americas. We can see several places where it seems to have been introduced, and we can plot the years of introduction on a map. So Bd is acting like an invasive alien species.

Bd appears in Costa Rica in 1987 and then heads south to Panama. It seems to be following mountain ranges there too. The number of species lost in Costa Rica is very large.
Bd spread in South America following two introductions, one in 1977 and one in 1980. The 1980 Ecuadorian introduction heads both north and south along the Andes. The 1977 Venezuelan introduction heads south along the Andes. For some reason, Bd in South America is sticking to the Andes.

This is precisely how we would expect an epidemic following an introduction by an alien species to operate – a geographical spread from a point of introduction with a rate of spread in miles per year. Furthermore, the testing of many specimens in museums failed to find Bd in any of them prior to 1977. This suggests strongly that Bd is an invasive alien fungus that was not present in the environment before. An alternative hypothesis was not tested but did occur to me: That even though Bd was an alien exotic invasive fungus spreading after accidental introduction, global warming had somehow made Bd much more lethal to frogs. I can’t figure out a way to test that hypothesis, and I guess none of the researchers are considering it. The Pounds team is sticking to their guns on this one, but I think that they are wrong. It’s a good mind exercise to read academic science journal articles that test scientific hypotheses against competing hypotheses. It’s hard to read that stuff, but if you can get through it somehow, personally I find these brain puzzles to be a lot of fun. If you see learning as virtually a sensual activity as I do, this kind of stuff is almost as fun as a vacation, sports, sex or any other other purely sensual activity. Learning and thinking is actually a blast, to me anyway. Try it sometime!

References

Lips, Karen R., Diffendorfer, Jay, Mendelson III, Joseph R., Sears, Michael W. 2008. Riding the Wave: Reconciling the Roles of Disease and Climate Change in Amphibian Declines. PLoS Biology 6:3. Pounds JA, Bustamante MR, Coloma LA, Consuegra JA, Fogden MPL, et al. 2006. Widespread amphibian extinctions from epidemic disease driven by global warming. Nature 39: 161–167.

Problems of Leftwing Democracy

Repost from the old site. In the comments section, astute commenter huy remarks on the conundrum of socialist democracy when capitalists retain control over the media and culture::

The only problem is that a socialist revolution would probably require a dictatorship and repression. This is because without dictatorship and repression, rich capitalists would be able to prevent significant social services and state planning in a democracy via their control of the media and peoples’ thoughts. I’m not for socialism as a long term thing, but only as a way to quickly develop a country’s infrastructure and economy, before gradual privatization of suitable sectors.

I respond: huy is are correct as far as his first two sentences go. I will deal with the third sentence at the end. This conundrum is why Communists opted for the dictatorship of the proletariat, not because they are lovers of repression and haters of freedom. The rich capitalists, through their media control and also their cultural construction and fertilization creating Gramscian cultural hegemonies (what huy referred to as “control over people’s thoughts”), are typically able to prevent social services and state planning in a democracy. This is why Communists say that you never really have a democracy in capitalism. You always have a dictatorship of capital. Be that as it may, most folks nowadays do not seem to want to live under a dictatorship of the proletariat. Nevertheless, the roadblocks in the way of socialist democracy present a a serious problem. Not only are the capitalists able to thwart significant progressive change via media and cultural control, but the same capitalists, via control over the economy, are able to stage lockouts and capital strikes, to send their capital out of the country, to artificially create shortages, and to send wealthy housewives out into the streets beating pots and pans in a middle and upper class strike, etc. These housewife pot-banging strikes occurred in Chile under Allende, Venezuela under Chavez, and just recently occurred again in Argentina when President Kirchner tried to tax booming agricultural exports. The big ag producers in Argentina responded by trying to starve the cities by staging ag strikes and refusing to ship produce to the cities so the people would have nothing to eat. What is ominous about this is that these same rich housewife pot-banging demos and a latifundista (large landowner elite) strike presaged the coup that brought the death squads into power in Argentina in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. The generals stayed in power for several years, during which they murdered 30,000 leftwing Argentines, the vast majority of whom were just idealistic young people working with the poor and had not taken up arms at all. The capitalists will usually try to stage a coup through their control over the military too. That is why Hugo Chavez is correct in cleansing the corrupt bosses’ oil workers’ union, in cleansing the officer corps of the military of reactionary elements, and putting in some state media. The corrupt state oil workers union was a white collar union of well to do managers who had been operating the state oil company as a personal ATM for decades. They were behind the owners’ lockout strike that followed the coup, and after Chavez fired those who had been behind the lockout and sabotage, they destroyed much of the records and paperwork of the oil company before they left. Clearly they had to go. In the previous coup attempt, the middle and upper-class officer corps supported the coup, but the enlisted men, who came from the poor, did not. The poor rank and file military refused their officers’ orders, and the officers backed down. Hence, cleansing the officer corps of coup supporters was a must. Getting a foot in the door of the Right’s media monopoly was also important. Previously, the rich had all of the papers, magazines and especially TV stations and they used these to wage continuous lying propaganda war against Chavez. Furthermore, the entire rightwing media not only supported the coup attempt against Chavez but was actively complicit in it. For that treason, Chavez is perfectly within his rights to shut down the entire rightwing media. He only does not do this because of the international outcry it would arouse. The Right did the same thing with their media control during the Allende regime in Chile, printing wild lies about Cuban armies offshore and hiding in Chilean bases ready to invade Chile and impose Communism at gunpoint. Middle class and upper class capital strikes can be devastating to the economy, and most folks, no matter how revolutionary, just get tired of the economic pain after a while and vote to put the reactionaries back in power. Sanctions work the same way. The US and UK and sometimes France and Canada (when those two latter states are in an imperialist mood) usually slap sanctions on democratic Left states as soon as possible. Recent examples are Nicaragua, Haiti and Zimbabwe (at first democratic, now increasingly dictatorial), and this alone is enough to devastate the economy and cause the people to vote out the Left and put reactionaries back in power. What happens is that in an effort to get some control of the country back and fight back against all of this US plots, the Left regime often starts becoming more authoritarian and less democratic. Then the US says it’s a dictatorship and needs to be overthrown on that basis. If that doesn’t work, the US forms a reactionary contra counterrevolutionary army that goes around killing any civilian that is pro-Left, murdering teachers and health care workers, burning down schools, ag cooperatives and health care facilities and just making the place ungovernable. In order to fend off contras and coups, Chavez has built up his military and even armed the population. One more thing the US does is to flood money into the democratic Left country to buy the election of the reactionaries via all sorts of fake civil society groups. A good way to stop this is to ban all money coming to political groups from outside the country, but that is easier said than done. The money seems to find its way in anyway. The US and its reactionary allies also stage bombings, shootings, riots, etc, against democratic Left states, and then often blames them on the Left. This is what they did in Chavez’ Venezuela, Aristide’s Haiti and Mossadegh’s Iran. If worse comes to worse and none of the above works, the Left regime is overthrown by a coup and replaced by a reactionary dictatorship. This dictatorship typically then institutes a reign of terror in which anywhere from 100’s to 1 million progressives are killed all over the land. This is what happened in Indonesia in 1965, when 1 million Leftists were killed in a CIA coup. What is even creepier is that while the Left is in power, the CIA is usually running around the country making up lists of leftwingers. As soon as the coup comes, the CIA hands over the lists to the death squad Right now in power, and they use these lists to hunt down progressives and murder them. So if a Left regime is in power, there is always the terror of a future coup followed by a murder spree against anyone politically active in the regime. This is enough to make people afraid to get politically active. The reign of terror itself so so terrorizes the population that most people are afraid to get involved in progressive politics for years or even decades afterwards. Why get involved? Who is to say when the death squads will come back in power and try to kill you for being politically active in Left politics? All of this makes socialist democracy or even social democracy in backwards states almost impossible to achieve. On the other hand, lots of leftwingers are trying to figure out a way to have some sort of socialist or even Marxist democracy, despite all the challenges. The Sandinistas had a democratic socialist revolution, and Hugo Chavez is having one too. The Nepalese Maoists support 10 When I look at Cuba and I think about a few dissidents getting thrown in prison, is that really worse than masses of people dying early from preventable death or not having enough food to eat, or living in shantytown hovels, or prostituting themselves, or homeless kids sniffing glue, turning into criminals and getting killed by cops as happens all over Latin America? Third World capitalist nightmare states punish an awful lot of innocent people too. Doesn’t Cuba punish a lot fewer innocent people by clapping a few dissidents in prison than are harmed in these failing 3rd world capitalist states? In India, capitalism is killing 4 million people a year. That’s a five-alarm fire right there. If we had a socialist revolution there even with a dictatorship and saved 4 million lives a year, would it be worth it for a few folks slapped in prison? I do think that the new way of Chavez, the Sandinistas, the FMLN of El Salvador and the Nepalese Maoists is the better way to go. Nothing wrong with democracy. If the people reject socialism at the polls and go back to capitalism and lots of them go hungry, go homeless, drink sewage water, get sick, get crippled and start dying, I guess we can say that they made a choice to have that happen to themselves. Most socialist countries did go socialist for a while (usually decades) to develop the economy and then go towards capitalism after they were pretty well developed. People have no idea how much of China’s economic growth is based on the foundations laid by decades of Maoism. At any rate, most do not realize China is still a very socialist country in many ways. The Communists in Russia built that place up from nothing. Without the USSR, Russia would probably be like India or Afghanistan. The Vietnamese and Laotian Communists are also putting in a lot of capitalism, and North Korea now has joint partnerships for foreign investors. I support Vietnam, Laos, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela in their experiments at mixed economy. I also really like social market of Belarus. Really what we ought to look at is does the system give us the outcomes that we want? If it does, it doesn’t matter what mixtures of socialist, collective and private ownership it has. There are also all sorts of ways of enterprise ownership. We can have nonprofits, labor collectives, family-run businesses, single owners and ownership by neighborhoods, towns, cities, states and nations. All of these forms of ownership are operating all over the world as you read this. The cooperative sector in particular is a great way to go, and most do not realize it is a non-capitalist economic system. Worker-owned firms compete with each other, and there is no exploitation of labor as in capitalism. One of the best examples of that is the Mondragon cooperatives in the Basque Country. Most Cuban agriculture is now run by cooperatives. In the cooperative model, you get away from the management-labor conflict you see in capitalism.

Pancho Villa, Presente!

Repost from the old site. In the comments section, Uncle Milton comments that Mexican history shows that Mexican revolutions have quickly turned into kleptocracies. He also says that the Mexican electorate has more sense than we think they do. He also makes a lot of good points about Mexico and decides that it is neither a capitalist nor socialist state, but some sort of a kleptocratic oligarchic state. I argue, first, that the Mexican electorate is ignorant and does not vote in its best interests. Second, that we Americans owe the Mexican revolution a tremendous debt and that the achievements of the revolution are deliberately ignored and downplayed by the US ruling class. Third, that while the revolution did degenerate into a corrupt, fat, lazy, greedy and fake-revolutionary PRI mess, it did make very real and substantial achievements. Fourth, that no socialist on Earth would claim Mexico, one of the most unequal states on Earth. Fifth, that Mexico is actually a fairly wealthy country. If you’re a poor Mexican, like most of them are, you have to vote for the Left and against the oligarchy. It’s the only rational thing to do. Mexicans haven’t voted for the Left and won since Cardenas in the 1930’s. The Rightwing parties, including the fake revolutionary PRI, haven’t done fuck-all for the poor Mexicans since 1920. The PRI was originally a revolutionary party that went corrupt and bad with time, stasis, greed and inertia. It’s true that the Mexicans voted for Cardenas and the Left in 1988 and had the votes stolen from them. In the last election, they voted Left again, for AMLO, and it was stolen again. I think you have to agree that the Left is the party that is going to benefit poor Mexicans the most. They may well be bad to neutral for middle class and rich Mexicans, but they will be good for the poor. As for the rightwing parties, what have they done for Mexicans in the last 80 years? US conservative apologists need to explain why conservative politics has failed the Mexican poor so horribly for most of the last century and all of this one. When is rightwing politics going to start working down there, anyway? I say they had their chance. Milton: Historically rebellions and revolution in Mexico have led to the same old kleptocrats running the show. This is not really completely true if you are arguing that all Mexican revolutions have failed. The Mexican revolution was a great thing. 10-20 million people died, but it had to be done, just like World War 2. You must understand that prior to Pancho Villa, Mexicans lived in a state of feudalism. I am not kidding. Read descriptions of Mexicans in 1910. The revolution broke up the big feudal estates and destroyed the power of the Catholic Church who supported the feudal lords. The reason Americans don’t know this is because we were not taught this. At the time, our government hated the Mexican revolution and supported the feudal lords, and it probably still hates the Mexican revolution, because the American government hates all populist rebellions. They don’t want us to know about a successful populist revolution in Mexico, or anywhere. One thing the revolution did was give land to the average Mexican. It is the case to this day. Most Mexicans have access to land if they wish to farm it, often collectively. These collective farms have been very successful for the last 90 years, at least in terms of warding off starvation and putting food in stomachs. Our government never teaches us this either because they don’t want us to know about a successful experiment in collective agriculture. At least the average Mexican can eat; he need not go hungry. To this day, Mexico has one of the lowest rates of malnutrition in Latin America. The revolution also created public schools and public health care. Most Mexicans do have access to free and public health care. The health care is not the greatest, and you may have to wait ages, but it’s there. In the rural areas, many kids are pulled out of schools to work on farms, but the schools do exist. The US should be indebted to the Mexican revolution. When Central America was in flames in the 1980’s, did you notice that Mexico was quiet? At the time, I asked my Mother why Mexico was not in flames and she shrugged her shoulders and said, “They already had their revolution.” We should throw a shout out to Pancho Villa that he kept Tijuana from becoming San Salvador in 1989. It’s clear that this venal Mexican elite uses the US border as a safety valve to send their poor to the US so the rich don’t have to share with them. I think that rightwingers in the US ought to admit that conservatism in Mexico has failed in that it has caused the illegal immigrant crisis in the US. To call Mexico a socialist country is an insult to socialists everywhere. If it were a decent social democracy, I do not think we would be having all these Mexicans flooding up here. Mexico is not a poor country. It has a PCI of almost $13,000/yr, and that is not bad. Mexico has Robert LindsayPosted on Categories Americas, Capitalism, Catholicism, Christianity, Conservatism, Economics, Education, Health, Hispanics, History, Illegal, Immigration, Latin America, Left, Mexicans, Mexico, Nutrition, Political Science, Politics, Public Health, Regional, Religion, Reposts From The Old Site, Socialism, South America, The Americas, VenezuelaLeave a comment on Pancho Villa, Presente!

error

Enjoy this blog? Please spread the word :)