A TRIUMPHANT RETURN TO POWER FOR BOLIVIA’S SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

By Leonardo Flores, Popular Resistance.

November 11, 2020



https://popularresistance.org/a-triumphant-return-to-power-for-bolivias-social-movements/




Tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Bolivia on November 8 to celebrate the inauguration of President Luis Arce. They would celebrate again the next day, as former president Evo Morales re-entered the country almost a year to the day after his government was overthrown in a coup backed by the Organization of American States (OAS). Almost a month ago, on October 18, the Bolivian people delivered a resounding 26-point electoral victory to the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) party. They voted against the neoliberalism represented by candidate and former president Carlos Mesa and his Comunidad Ciudadana (Citizen’s Community), as well as against the fascism and white nationalism of candidate Luis Fernando Camacho and his Creemos (We Believe) party.

The most important victory, however, did not come at the ballot box, but rather on the streets. After the coup regime of Jeanine Añez had postponed elections multiple times in 2020, hundreds of thousands of Bolivians protested last summer to demand a fixed election date. Even after authorities set a date, protests continued, calling for justice for those murdered by the regime, insisting that those who had been jailed be freed, and denouncing the regime’s corruption and malfeasance. Had it not been for that massive display of people’s power against a coup government known for “summary executions and widespread repression”, Bolivians may have not even had the opportunity to vote.

América Maceda of the Bolivian collective Abya Yala Communitarian Feminism, interviewed by CODEPINK’s electoral observation delegation, explained why people were willing to risk everything: “Although on the one hand there was terror and fear, on the other there was hope and struggle, fundamentally by social organizations, to recover democracy and deepen the Bolivian process of change.”

This process of change can be traced to 1998, when Evo Morales and others founded the IPSP (Political Instrument for the Sovereignty of the Peoples) in an attempt to have a political party work in conjunction with social movements and labor unions. Banned from competing in elections, in 1998 the IPSP merged with the MAS, then a fringe party with virtual zero membership. By 2005, Morales was elected to the presidency under the MAS-IPSP banner, which began the country’s transformation and remains the official name of the party.

The call for creating a political instrument came in the late 1980’s from a conference that included five of the country’s biggest unions and social movements. Bolivian sociologist Juan Carlos Pinto explained that “the idea from the start was that a party is division, a party isolates some and separates others, it creates bosses and owners. The people are the revolutionary axis, and we needed [the IPSP] to enable us to fight for the revolution.”

Both Pinto and social leader Maceda noted an imbalance between the party and the social movements that comprise it in the years prior to the coup. As the party grew stronger following repeated electoral victories, social movements became bureaucratized and the IPSP became an afterthought. Despite the continued presence of “capitalism, patriarchy and colonialism… one couldn’t protest against a brother president [Morales],” Maceda mentioned in explaining the challenges for social organizations of having an ally in office.

This bureaucratization and demobilization would prove costly in the wake of the October 2019 election in which Evo Morales was elected but the OAS declared the election fraudulent. People were anxious to get out onto the streets to defend their democracy from the coming coup, but were prevented from doing so by state and party officials who urged restraint. “These errors were paid for by the Bolivian people,” she said.

There is some resentment towards the MAS leadership, Evo Morales included, for the fact that he and others fled or hid in embassies, while average citizens were gunned down by the coup regime. There is also the idea that the coup may not have happened had Morales chosen not to run for a controversial third term.

Yet Morales remains broadly popular and has a “mystique”; even those within the movement who are his harshest critics speak of him with a certain reverence. As the nation’s first indigenous leader after 500 years of colonial, then white settler rule, Morales will continue to have significant influence within the country, yet he has rejected the possibility of joining the government in any official capacity. He is still the president of the Six Federations of the Trópico, a grouping of agrarian unions in the department of Cochabamba and “the most important social movement in Bolivia,” according to journalist Ollie Vargas.

There is speculation that Morales might become the next president of UNASUR (Union of Southern American Nations), the multilateral organization that saved Bolivia from a possible coup in 2008. Following a failed recall referendum to remove then President Morales from office, there was an attempt to destabilize and delegitimize the Morales government as right-wing groups took over government buildings. UNASUR called an extraordinary meeting, declared its support for the Bolivian government, and subsequently investigated and condemned a massacre committed by right-wing civic groups. In the years prior to the 2019 coup, there was a concerted effort by the U.S. and its allies to weaken the institution, as Chile, Brazil and Colombia withdrew from its constitutive treaty. President Arce has already committed to rebuilding UNASUR and someone with the stature of Morales would grant it significant influence.

Among the grassroots, however, there is hope that he will dedicate himself to political education. Speaking about the important progress made by Bolivia under Morales, including a 42% drop in poverty and a 60% reduction in extreme poverty, Maceda noted that “material conditions for the people improved, [yet] this was not accompanied by a process of political education, consciousness and self-criticism.”

Despite the criticisms, the overwhelming MAS-IPSP victory is a sign that social movements will not abandon the party. Furthermore, the results of this year’s election are the final nail in the coffin for claims of fraud in the October 2019 vote, particularly since comparisons by CEPR (Center for Economic Policy Research) and CELAG (Latin American Strategic Center for Geopolitics) of last year’s tally sheets to this year’s in precincts with alleged “irregularities” show the MAS-IPSP getting equal or greater support. Morales won cleanly last year; arguments to the contrary are baseless and should finally be put to rest.

The immediate future for Bolivia is complex; the new government will be saddled with the coup regime’s mishandling of the economy (including taking on a $300 million loan from the IMF that was unauthorized by the Senate), and the economic downturn from the pandemic. There is also a question about accountability: although President Arce has promised not to seek vengeance for the regime’s crimes, he will not be able to ignore the clamor for justice.

This accountability should extend beyond the key members of the coup regime and include one of the key players in the 2019 coup: OAS Secretary-General Luis Almagro. Almagro has ignored questions about the OAS response to the 2019 elections made by four U.S. representatives. Immediately after the 2020 elections confirmed a MAS victory, President Arce, Morales and others in Bolivia called on Almagro to resign. They have been joined in this by the Puebla Group, an organization that includes some of the region’s most prestigious politicians, including former presidents Dilma Rousseff (Brazil), Ernesto Samper (Colombia), Rafael Correa (Ecuador) and Fernando Lugo (Paraguay). Additionally, Bolivian social movements and others throughout the hemisphere are demanding Almagro resign, including CODEPINK.

Terrifying Winter Ahead As HALF Of Hotels, Restaurants Face Closure

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MB2CHFO2zP8&ab_channel=SecularTalk

Workers’ lives are not expendable! Take action to stop the COVID-19 pandemic!

Marcus Day




https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/12/pers-n12.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws




Ten months into the COVID-19 pandemic in the US, daily new cases are shattering previous records as the virus surges uncontrolled throughout factories, workplaces, schools and communities.

The scale of illness and death is staggering. On Wednesday, new cases again set a record, with over 144,000 reported, according to the COVID Tracking Project.

Over 1,400 died from COVID-19 yesterday, reaching a level last seen in early August, with deaths set to explode as hospitals begin to be overrun. In El Paso, Texas, the bodies have piled up to such a point that six mobile morgues have been established, and four more are being prepared.

By the end of the year, experts warn, close to half a million people could be dead as the death rate surges in line with caseloads.

The homicidal policies of the capitalist oligarchy, demanding the subordination of the preservation of human life to the generation of profits, have led to a catastrophe. The disaster looming before millions of workers cannot be averted without emergency measures. Workers must demand the immediate shutdown of non-essential production, with full compensation for lost wages!

At every turn, the profit interests of the major corporations and banks are blocking the urgent measures necessary to bring the pandemic under control and save lives.

It is increasingly clear that industrial and other worksites are major vectors of virus transmission, despite the lying claims by corporate executives and trade union officials that effective safety protocols are in place. Roughly one-third of Illinois’ outbreaks since July 1 have been traced by the state to factories and workplaces. In additional data collected by the state but kept secret until leaked to the press, outbreaks were revealed to have taken place across a broad swath of corporate employers, including automakers Ford and Fiat Chrysler; logistics and delivery giants Amazon, UPS and DHL; and meat and food producers JBS, Frito Lay, Smithfield, and Tyson.

Across the state border from El Paso, meatpacking company Stampede Meat is suing the state of New Mexico in an effort to reopen, seeking to overturn the health department’s order to close for two weeks despite a new outbreak of cases among workers in late October, with 100 workers already having tested positive at the plant throughout the year. In its lawsuit, the company is citing President Trump’s April executive order stipulating that meat producers stay open under the Defense Production Act.

New research is demonstrating that offices and schools also pose significant risks of transmission. Employed adults who tested positive for COVID-19 were twice as likely to report regularly going to work at these locations than those who tested negative, according to a study released by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week.

An accurate, detailed and comprehensive picture of the pandemic’s spread at workplaces is being covered up by the corporations, the trade unions, the corporate media, and local, state and federal officials. The capitalists and their defenders all fear that if the full scope of the extent of the virus and its imminent threat were made available to workers, they would overwhelmingly revolt and refuse to work, as happened in the wave of wildcat strikes which led to the shutdown of the auto industry and other non-essential businesses in March.

What information has come to light about the spread of the virus at auto factories explodes the lies by the companies and their accomplices in the United Auto Workers union that the plants are safe. Dozens to hundreds of cases have been reported by workers in recent days at plants, such as Fiat Chrysler’s (FCA) Sterling Heights Assembly and Stamping Plants and the Jefferson North Plant in the Detroit area, the FCA Tipton Transmission Plant and Faurecia Gladstone auto parts plant in Indiana, in addition to large outbreaks earlier reported at General Motors’ Wentzville, Missouri, plant, Ford’s Kentucky Truck Plant, and many others.

If it were not for the independent efforts by workers, who have begun to organize rank-and-file safety committees in collaboration with the World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Party, little to no information would have emerged at all about the number of cases and the blatant disregard of safety by the companies and the unions.

In contrast to the spring, when outbreaks were centered in New York City and other major urban areas, the pandemic is now surging through virtually the entirety of the US, urban and rural alike. Forty-two states are in the “red zone” for new cases, according to the latest report by the White House’s coronavirus task force, meaning they had a rate of over 100 people testing positive per 100,000 residents in the past week. “There is continued, accelerating community spread across the top half of the country,” the task force wrote, with “the most diffuse spread experienced to date.”

Even as there is no end in sight to the exponential rise in cases, hospitals and health systems are on the brink of being overwhelmed, facing widespread staffing and resource shortages.

Hospitalizations across the country reached a new peak yesterday of 65,368, with 3,404 more hospitalized patients than the day before. Some hospitals in the worst-hit states in the Midwest, including the Dakotas, Wisconsin, and Iowa, are already at capacity, and Illinois is set to run out of ICU beds by Thanksgiving. At the same time, a new explosion of cases is in the offing on the East Coast, with a 19 percent test positivity rate reported last week in Newark, New Jersey’s largest city.

A vast social crime is being carried out by the corporations and the government, with workers being threatened with unemployment, homelessness and hunger if they do not continue laboring at non-essential factories and workplaces and exposing themselves to the deadly virus—all in order to ensure there is not a moment’s let-up in profitmaking for the ruling class.

Both the Democrats and Republicans are in fundamental agreement that non-essential production must continue, and an incoming Biden administration, if it takes office, will be just as determined to keep business operating. The same underlying pro-corporate policy is being pursued in Europe, where governments of all political stripes have ensured industrial enterprises and schools remain open, resulting in a similar explosive growth in cases.

The result of these criminal policies is an utter catastrophe which, as terrible as it is, is set to worsen to a degree which is almost unimaginable. The worst nightmares of infectious disease experts are being realized.

If action by the working class is not taken, hundreds of thousands of lives in the US alone will be threatened and countless more throughout the world.

To save themselves and their loved ones, workers must take matters into their own hands. Rank-and-file safety committees must be expanded and organized to prepare walkouts to shut down the non-essential plants, warehouses and other workplaces. If governors, state and federal officials will not close the plants to protect lives, then workers must.

Rank-and-file committees must shut down non-essential workplaces and schools and demand full compensation and income security while the pandemic is brought under control. At essential workplaces such as food and medical supply producers, genuine safety measures must be implemented, overseen by workers’ safety committees in consultation with public health and infectious disease experts. A massive redistribution of wealth must take place, with resources directed towards implementing universal testing, contact tracing, free treatment provided to all, and social support provided to the unemployed.

The realization of such necessary life-saving measures requires the independent political mobilization of the working class in a struggle against the capitalist system, which subordinates all social needs, including life itself, to profit.

72% In Fox News Poll Want Government Run Healthcare System

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmlL8SRrImQ&ab_channel=SecularTalk

Russia, Turkey negotiate cease-fire in Armenian-Azeri war over Karabakh

Alex Lantier




https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/12/cauc-n12.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws




On November 10, a cease-fire backed by Moscow and Ankara went into effect in the six-week war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. Unlike previous truces negotiated by Russian, French and US officials which collapsed immediately, this cease-fire has so far held. This appears to be largely because, unlike previous ceasefires, it has support from the Azeri government and its main international backer, Turkey.

The two former Soviet republics have repeatedly waged fratricidal wars over the Karabakh, which first broke out in 1988 in the run-up to the Stalinist regime’s 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union. Whereas Armenia took over the Nagorno-Karabakh in the 1988-1994 war, however, the current cease-fire agreed by Russian, Armenian and Azeri officials makes substantial concessions to Azeri territorial demands, handing much of the Karabakh to Azerbaijan.

Recent weeks saw major Azeri advances, relying on devastating strikes from Turkish and Israeli high-altitude drones. Evading Armenia’s older air defense systems with tactics worked out against Syrian and Russian forces in the decade-long NATO proxy war in Syria, they destroyed Armenian missile batteries, artillery and armored vehicles. After Azeri forces reported this weekend that they had captured Shusha, Nagorno-Karabakh’s second-largest city, Armenia agreed to a ceasefire.

According to the truce, Armenian and Azeri troops are to initially remain on their current positions. As 1,960 Russian peacekeepers with armored vehicles and equipment deploy along the contact line, however, Armenian troops will withdraw. Armenia will retain those parts of the Karabakh it currently holds, including the capital, Stepanakert. It must also return to Azerbaijan the districts of Agdam and Kalbajar, which it took over during the 1988-1994 war, by November 20.

The deal also calls to secure complex land routes through the mountainous region. Azerbaijan is to guarantee the security of the Lachin Corridor linking Stepanakert to Shusha and then to Armenia. The corridor will be patrolled by Russian peacekeepers. Armenia will guarantee the security of land routes from Azerbaijan via Armenia to the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, a landlocked Azeri-administered enclave separated from Azerbaijan by Armenian territory.

This shaky cease-fire, even if it holds, will not resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which the region’s capitalist regimes have proven incapable of resolving for three decades. Not only does it leave the way open to more aggressive nationalist elements on both sides to advance claims on the entire enclave, but it is likely to trigger new population displacements Armenian authorities only 10 days to abandon regions they have held for a quarter century.

This comes after a new, massive loss of life in the latest war. Russian officials have stated, based on estimates privately communicated to them by Azeri and Armenian officials, that at least 5,000 people died in the war from September 27 to October 22. Official Azeri or Armenian casualty totals have still not been published, however. Moreover, Azeri forces’ advances and Armenian bombardments also forced an estimated 90,000 Armenians and 40,000 Azeris to flee their homes.

Nonetheless, officials across the region applauded the deal, which Turkish official sources said was negotiated on Saturday between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Kremlin press secretary Dmitri Peskov applauded the “not insignificant efforts” involved.

The Foreign Ministry of Iran, which like Russia has traditionally supported Armenia, declared that it was “content about the signing of an agreement” and expressed “hope that the agreement would lead to the final arrangements for long-lasting peace in the Caucasus.”

After Azeri President Ilham Aliyev hailed the ceasefire as being “of historical importance” and a “capitulation” by Armenia, Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar visited the Azeri capital, Baku yesterday and declared: “The present situation is very pleasing for us. This operation is an awakening ... The Azeri army has shown its power to the whole world.”

In Armenia, where the government had largely hidden its growing military setbacks, protesters stormed the parliament and beat parliamentary speaker Ararat Mizoyan.

The cease-fire is a humiliating defeat for Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. Elected in 2018 after mass protests against former Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan, he advanced a chauvinist platform demanding full international recognition of Armenian authority over the Karabakh.

Pashinyan announced on Facebook the cease-fire handing over much of the Karabakh to Azerbaijan, calling it “unspeakably painful.” He continued, “The decision is made basing [sic] on the deep analyses of the combat situation and in discussion with best experts of the field. … This is not a victory but there is not defeat until you consider yourself defeated. We will never consider ourselves defeated and this shall become a new start of an era of our national unity and rebirth.”

Pashinyan had to hide as protesters stormed his official residence, tearing his nameplate off his office door and chanting, “Nikol betrayed us.”

Middle East Eye reporters at protests in Yerevan saw a woman shout at riot police: “I have lost all my relatives. I have lost my house. What are you going to do about it?” Another man, a former Armenian inhabitant of the Nagorno-Karabakh, who fought in the 1988-1994 war but had to flee to Yerevan in the current war, approved the cease-fire: “If we had carried on, we would only have lost. Many more people would have been killed.”

The Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union proved to have disastrous geopolitical consequences, throwing the Middle East and Central Asia open to bloody ethnic conflict and imperialist wars.

Enormous uncertainty still hangs over the cease-fire. As Russia and Turkey wage proxy wars as they back rival sides in the civil wars triggered by NATO intervention in both Libya and Syria, Azeri forces shot down a Russian Mi-24 on November 9. Baku subsequently called it a “tragic mistake.” The Kremlin also appeared to contradict Turkish claims that they would deploy peacekeepers to enforce the ceasefire, saying that only Russian peacekeepers would be deployed.

Perhaps the greatest danger comes from the explosive political crisis in Washington after the 2020 elections, and the risk of new US wars in the region. As Trump launches a coup trying to remain in office even after Democrat Joe Biden won the vote, both Trump and Biden have signaled a highly aggressive policy. While Trump nearly went to war with Iran last year, the Democratic Party has relentlessly demanded aggression against Russia, denouncing Trump as a Russian agent.

Significantly, both Russia and Iran have warned against CIA-backed Syrian Islamist militias who were transported from the Syrian war to Azerbaijan with tacit Turkish support. Iranian state-run IRNA agency warned that “the Islamic Republic’s firm response to the terrorists should they transgress against the Iranian borders is a calculated, firm and strategic position. … If after having expelled the [Al Qaeda-linked militias] from Syria and Iraq, some people help their deployment in Iranian borders, they have certainly made a grave mistake.”

Russia, whose war-torn regions of Chechnya and Dagestan also border Azerbaijan, made similar warnings. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called to “prevent the transfer of mercenaries, whose number in the conflict zone, according to available data, is already approaching 2,000. In particular, Putin raised the issue during a phone call with Turkish President Erdoğan on October 27 and during regular conversations with leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia.”

Concerns are mounting in Russia’s post-Soviet capitalist oligarchy that this truce could prove to be not the end but the beginning of a regional war across the former territory of the Soviet Union. This was the subject of the financial daily Vedomosti ’s article yesterday titled “How Russia Lost the Second Karabakh War.”

Warning that Ankara’s successful support for the ethnic-Turkic Azeris would encourage “pan-Turkic plans,” it wrote: “The balance of power in Turkic republics of Central Asia will also change radically … There is no doubt that Turkic nationalist and separatist groups inside Russia itself will also act more strongly.” It added, “Also we must suppose that this operation, judging from its execution, was not planned by the Azeris, or even by the Turks.”

Noting that the NATO-backed regime in Ukraine is now purchasing Turkish drones as it pursues its conflict with Russia in eastern Ukraine, Vedomosti called for a Russian build-up of “loitering weapons and strike drones.” It added, “The Armenian catastrophe of 2020 must serve as a warning to others, so that we do not end up learning a similar lesson.”

These statements are urgent warnings of the necessity of a struggle against ethnic nationalism and its encouragement by Stalinist forces, and the building of an international and socialist, that is to say Trotskyist, anti-war movement against imperialism among workers across the region and the world.

Hilariously Out of Touch Democrats Blame Leftists for THEIR Failures

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IefyVRoy_c4&ab_channel=TheHumanistReport

Fox News show has total contempt for its own viewers

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emdYuxqgiPw&ab_channel=ChristoAivalis