https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOTCalhJZ9M
Monday, August 17, 2020
As Bolivian Regime Delays Elections a Third Time, Media Continue to Ignore Coup
US media has a history of supporting right-wing coups and not much seems to be changing. That media narratives remain unchanged even after acknowledgment of new evidence indicates it is official dogma, not reality, that sets the tone for coverage.
August 15, 2020 Bryce Greene FAIR
https://portside.org/2020-08-15/bolivian-regime-delays-elections-third-time-media-continue-ignore-coup
In the Bolivian elections last October 20, incumbent President Evo Morales of the Movement Toward Socialism party (MAS in Spanish) won a 10-point victory over his nearest challenger, as pre-election polls predicted. The next day, the Organization of American States issued a statement challenging the legitimacy of the elections, asserting a “hard-to-explain change in the trend of the preliminary results.” Immediately, right wingers violently took to the streets to protest the president. The OAS issued a followup statement confirming their analysis on November 10. The same day, the military forced Morales to step down.
Senator Jeanine Añez declared herself president with the support of high-ranking members of the Bolivian military, as well as the US State Department—despite the fact that her conservative party earned a mere 4% of the vote during the elections.
This military coup was immediately decried by observers who have seen this familiar pattern of toppling governments. Mark Weisbrot, director of the Center for Economic & Policy Research, debunked the OAS statement, noting that it provided “absolutely no evidence — no statistics, numbers, or facts of any kind,” to support its conclusions. The CEPR objections were largely ignored by corporate media (FAIR.org, 11/18/19).
Immediately after Añez took power, security forces unleashed deadly violence against those who resisted. Añez began to sell off public resources and take loans from international creditors.
When a country’s military forces the ouster of a sitting president, that is a military coup. Referring to it simply as a “resignation”—as in the Washington Post’s “Bolivia’s Morales Resigns Amid Scathing Election Report, Rising Protests” (11/10/19)—fails to capture the nature of the overthrow. Describing Morales’ ouster as merely happening “amid widespread unrest” is a way of telling readers: “This sort of thing happens all the time in this part of the world. No need to look into it.”
US media ignored dissenters from the OAS throughout this period, and endorsed the coup, as FAIR (3/5/20) has previously reported. Even when dissenting views were brought up, there was little discussion of the implication: that the US had supported yet another unlawful coup.
Four months after the coup was a done deal, with Morales and others forced from the country, the Washington Post published a research piece (2/27/20) that found that “the OAS’s statistical analysis and conclusions would appear deeply flawed.” The piece opened by explicitly describing the November 10 ouster of Morales as a “military-backed coup.” There was still no mention of the US role.
Añez came into power as an “interim” president, with a mandate to hold elections as soon as possible. The government instead delayed elections in March, then again in May, both times citing concerns about coronavirus. Notably, polls show that the MAS candidate, Luis Arce, has been leading in the polls for some time and would win fair elections.
Even the New York Times (3/30/20) acknowledged that this delay was a way of consolidating power, publishing a piece headlined, “For Autocrats, and Others, Coronavirus Is a Chance to Grab Even More Power” that included the (first) delay of Bolivia’s “much anticipated” elections. It’s unclear whether Añez is meant to be considered an “autocrat” or one of the “others”; the piece only mentions that “a disputed election last year set off violent protests and forced President Evo Morales to resign.”
The New York Times (6/7/20) has since reported its own analysis of the Bolivian election results, concluding that “the Organization of American States’ statistical analysis was itself flawed.” The irregularities the OAS found were “an artifact of the analysts’ error,” the academic paper cited by the Times found.
FAIR (7/8/20) has previously reported on the Times’ belated admission. Glenn Greenwald, writing for the Intercept (7/8/20), put a fine point on the subject in a piece headlined “The New York Times Admits Key Falsehoods That Drove Last Year’s Coup in Bolivia: Falsehoods Peddled by the US, Its Media and the Times.”
Yet after both of the nation’s leading papers admitted that the reason for declaring the October election a fraud was itself a fraud, few have asked the critical questions about why the OAS and the United States were so quick to have Morales removed from office. In fact, few media outlets altered their coverage of Bolivia at all.
Reuters (7/9/20) described how “a disputed election led to widespread protests that eventually toppled…Evo Morales,” with a later piece (7/15/20) reporting that Añez “took power in a political vacuum.” A CNN segment (7/17/20) on the COVID crisis in Bolivia described how “widespread unrest last year led to the resignation of longtime leader Evo Morales.” None of these gave any hint that the complaints about the election had been debunked, and that the shift in power amounted to a coup.
Last week, the Bolivian government announced that elections would be delayed for a third time. Critics again claim that the crisis is being used to further consolidate power. Former President Morales, who is currently living in exile in Argentina, said that “the de facto government wants to gain more time to continue the persecution of social leaders and against MAS candidates. It’s yet another form of persecution.” One of the coup leaders, far-right leader Fernando Comacho, is calling for elections to be canceled altogether.
In Western reporting on the latest election delay, outlets consistently failed to place it in the context of the coup. It is as if the Times and Post’s admissions never happened.
A Reuters piece (7/23/20) headlined “Bolivia Election Delayed to October as Pandemic Bites, Opposition Cries Foul,” described how the current government came to power: “A fraught election last year sparked widespread protests and led to the resignation of the country’s long-term leftist leader.” They kept to the official narrative of a “fraught election,” rather than the reality of a right-wing usurpation, given cover by false OAS proclamations. There was no indication that the delay could be a form of power consolidation.
The Associated Press (republished by Washington Post, 7/23/20) not only ignored the context of the coup, it also whitewashed the opposition’s criticism of the delay. Morales was cited as objecting to the delay on procedural grounds, and worrying about the “country’s crisis of legitimacy.” No direct quotes from the former president were used.
US media have a well-documented history of supporting right-wing coups and regimes around the world, and not much seems to be changing. It is abundantly clear that Morales was unlawfully overthrown by his country’s military on false pretexts. The United States supported and continues to support this coup. That media narratives remain unchanged even after the release and acknowledgment of new evidence indicates that it is official dogma, and not reality, that sets the tone of journalistic coverage.
‘We Have to Get Rid of Trump’: Pro-Bernie Group Launches Effort to Boost Biden
RootsAction.org is asking swing state progressives to bite the bullet and support the Democratic nominee whose record they've described as abysmal. Their message: “vote Trump out —and then challenge Biden” after November.
August 15, 2020 Holly Otterbein POLITICO
https://portside.org/2020-08-15/we-have-get-rid-trump-pro-bernie-group-launches-effort-boost-biden
A left-wing group that opposed Joe Biden in the primaries is launching a six-figure digital campaign aimed at persuading progressive voters in battleground states, especially Bernie Sanders supporters, to cast a ballot for the former vice president.
But don’t expect it to air rose-colored ads about Biden: RootsAction.org, POLITICO has learned, has recruited some of the biggest critics of Biden within the Democratic Party to make an unvarnished case for why they’re voting for him despite their disagreements.
“Our organization fought fiercely in the primaries for Bernie and against Biden,” said RootsAction.org co-founders Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon in a statement. “But the general election is far less about Biden than it is about Trump — the most dangerous president in modern U.S. history, who opposes virtually every policy and principle that progressives are fighting for.”
The group said leftist professor Noam Chomsky, former Sanders surrogate Linda Sarsour, ex-Sanders adviser Winnie Wong, longtime Sanders ally RoseAnn DeMoro, Medicare for All advocate Ady Barkan, Code Pink founder Medea Benjamin and ex-Sanders campaign co-chair Rep. Ro Khanna are among those who have signed onto its “#VoteTrumpOut” initiative.
The organization’s kickoff video, which stars Chomsky, paints a picture of a world that is under threat by imminent climate disaster and President Donald Trump.
“Another four years of Trump may literally lead us to the stage where the survival of organized human society is deeply imperiled,” Chomsky said in the spot. “It doesn’t matter how I feel. It doesn’t matter whether you like Biden or not. That's your personal feelings, irrelevant, nobody cares about that. What they care about is what happens to the world. We have to get rid of Trump, keep pressure on Biden, just as Sanders and associates have been doing.”
RootsAction.org said its effort, which includes a micro-targeted social media campaign featuring the voices of its high-profile left-wing supporters, “will be entirely independent of — and often in opposition to — corporate Democratic leaders.” The group, which once described Biden’s record as “abysmal,” recently got behind a pledge by Sanders delegates to the Democratic National Convention to vote against the party platform if it doesn’t adopt Medicare for All.
In 2016, Benjamin endorsed Green Party candidate Jill Stein after backing Sanders in that year’s primary. DeMoro tweeted in May that the Obama-Biden administration is “how we got the horrendous Trump years,” and Wong said recently that it was “shameful” that members of a key committee for the DNC — most of whom were appointed by Biden — voted against adding support for single-payer to the party platform.
But RootsAction.org’s message to progressives is “vote Trump out — and then challenge Biden” after November. The argument centers on the idea that it is impossible to push Trump to embrace left-wing ideas, whereas Biden can potentially be nudged in that direction through activism.
“In messaging to persuade voters who dislike Biden’s record to vote Biden in swing states, we’ve learned that it works well to characterize Biden as a far better opponent to be fighting against in the White House than the immovable Trump,” said Solomon, referring to his group’s testing of Facebook audiences.
Solomon added that the group will spend “several hundred thousand dollars” on the effort, and that it has hired full-time organizers in the swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona.
Trump is Trying to Destroy the US Postal Service. We Should Expand It
A completely politicized and manufactured crisis threatens to destroy the US Postal Service, our most important, successful and trusted institution by any measure. While the Trump Administration seeks to destroy it we must embrace and empower it.
August 15, 2020 Bhaskar Sunkara THE GUARDIAN
https://portside.org/2020-08-15/trump-trying-destroy-us-postal-service-we-should-expand-it
There is an American corporation that employs 633,108 people, handles 142.6bn pieces of product every year, and holds a 48% global market share in its sector. It constitutes a domestic retail network larger than McDonald’s, Starbucks and Walmart combined, one that spans even the most rural and isolated parts of the United States. It is an iconic brand tremendously popular with the American public. Even during a devastating pandemic, this firm has seen its total third-quarter revenue increase by $547m year over year.
Instead of trumpeting that 3.2% gain, however, the corporation’s CEO ominously warns that the company is “in a financially unsustainable position absent significant fundamental change” and threatens to start scrapping it for parts.
The notion is bizarre. Yet that is exactly what’s happening to the United States Postal Service (USPS). A completely politicized and manufactured crisis threatens to destroy one of the most important institutions in the United States.
The US Post Office Department was created by the federal government soon after the American Revolution with a mission to connect a geographically diverse country and avoid the state censorship that plagued colonial America. In the centuries that followed, it has only expanded that mandate, maintaining tens of thousands of far-flung retail offices and postal boxes, all at no taxpayer expense.
No surprise that 91% of Americans hold a favorable view of the USPS.
Contrary to common tropes of state inefficiency, the post office is both fulfilling a broad social service, far beyond what is expected of any private corporations, and doing so profitably. Those profits are disguised, however, by a 2006 law imposed by Congress that requires the USPS to create a $72bn fund to pay for its post-retirement healthcare costs 75 years into the future. It’s a requirement no other organization, public or private, has to fulfill.
Business leaders often worry about state intervention “picking the winners and losers” of market competition. But the decades-long campaign against the USPS is more like the opposite – the state undermining its own successful project in pursuit of ideologically driven cutbacks and privatization schemes.
The damage being done won’t just affect American consumers, particularly those in rural areas that rely the most on the USPS. It will also affect voters – during a pandemic when voting by mail is more important than ever – and hundreds of thousands of workers.
Postal employment is one of America’s most powerful engines of upward mobility. As early as 1861, the Post Office Department began hiring black employees and maintained that practice throughout the century of racial apartheid that followed the end of slavery. Today, a full quarter of USPS workers are black and the vast majority of them unionized. For these workers, and millions of others, stable public sector employment is the only viable route to union protections, job stability and a decent living.
Given the status of the USPS as one of the largest employers in the United States, a needless austerity program of any size would directly affect every community in the country. But the indirect effects would be just as profound. Collective bargaining influences pay and benefits across sectors, benefiting even non-union workers in private companies like FedEx. USPS unions, such as the American Postal Workers Union, have intervened more widely, too, in defense of social goods enjoyed by all working people and backing Bernie Sanders and his demands for new programs like Medicare for All.
However, rather than just trying to protect the USPS as it currently exists from Trump administration attacks, we should go further. Let’s expand the USPS’s mandate.
We can imagine, for example, the USPS using its unrivaled logistical reach to deliver food and other essentials to the poor and elderly
For example, we should consider resurrecting postal banking. Throughout much of the 20th century the Post Office Department operated a savings system, which allowed customers to make deposits. Today, numerous countries offer postal banking services, including France, New Zealand and South Korea. The return of the postal savings system could help the millions of American adults who currently don’t have a bank account, but may regularly access the more than 17,000 post offices in zip codes where there is only one or no bank branch location.
As private banks continue to operate in predatory ways and close local branches and “payday lenders” prey on workers without bank accounts, a viable public option is needed more than ever.
We can imagine, for example, the USPS using its unrivaled logistical reach to deliver food and other essentials to the poor and elderly, or expanding into the field of telecommunications by helping to improve access to broadband internet in rural areas. No single part of our government is going to be able to do everything well. But it’s worth considering expanding the scope of our best-functioning agencies to meet the challenges of the 21st century.
Despite our country’s tremendous wealth we’re failing behind our peers in the industrial world on a range of metrics such as poverty, hunger, life expectancy and infant mortality. Part of the reason is our refusal to invest in and develop our public sector and services. We’re failing ourselves and generations to come. Now is the time to double down on our most beloved and efficient public institution, not jeopardize its future.
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