Perú’s Prosecutor’s Office Initiates Investigation Against Boluarte

https://popularresistance.org/perus-prosecutors-office-initiates-preliminary-investigation-against-boluarte-for-genocide/






By Orinoco Tribune.

January 12, 2023


This Tuesday, January 10, the Peruvian Prosecutor’s Office ordered a preliminary investigation to be initiated against the de facto president, Dina Boluarte, for crimes of genocide, qualified homicide, and serious injuries, regarding the protests that have shaken the country after the ousting of Pedro Castillo as head of state.

Several members of Boluarte’s cabinet will also be investigated, including the president of the council of ministers, Alberto Otárola, minister of the interior, Víctor Rojas, and minister of defense, Jorge Chávez, will also be investigated. In addition, the body ordered an investigation against Pedro Angulo, as former president of the council of ministers, and César Cervantes, as former minister of the interior.

The measure will be applied in relation to “the alleged crimes of genocide, qualified homicide and serious injuries,” committed during the demonstrations in the months of December 2022 and January 2023, across the regions of Apurímac, La Libertad, Puno, Junín, Arequipa, and Ayacucho. Since the beginning of the national protests last December—which demand Boluarte’s resignation, the closure of Congress, early elections, constituent assembly and the release of President Pedro Castillo—the death toll has reached 46 so far.

This Monday, Boluarte stated that she does not understand the reasons for the protests in the department of Puno, during which at least 18 people have died and over 112 have been injured so far in massacres of police repression. “In protest of what? It is not clear what they are asking for,” she said. “It is a pretext to continue generating chaos in the cities.”
Puno rejects the massacre

Hundreds of inhabitants in the city of Juliaca, Puno, took to the streets this Tuesday after the massacre that occurred the day before. The Juliaca community repudiated the 18 deaths and the hundred-plus injured amidst rejections of the brutal repression by security forces. The association of funeral homes of the city donated coffins for those who died in the massacre. “We stand in solidarity with the brothers who fell in the fight for freedom, and for the resignation of Dina Boluarte,” a member of the aforementioned association told local media.

This Wednesday morning, 19 coffins were placed outside the Carlos Monge Medrano Hospital, the main medical center to which people injured by the protests in the vicinity of the Inca Manco Capac Airport have been transferred. So far, authorities have only confirmed 18 deaths. At least 34 people remain hospitalized at the Carlos Monge Medrano Hospital, as confirmed on Tuesday by the San Román Health Network.

Amid outrage over the 18 fatalities—and the total balance of 46 deaths since the start of the national protests last December—the de facto government of Boluarte announced on Tuesday a curfew in the city of Puno for three days, from 8:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m.

More People Are In Court This Week For Taking Direct Action For Palestine

https://popularresistance.org/more-people-are-in-court-this-week-for-taking-direct-action-for-palestine/










By Tom Anderson, The Canary.

January 12, 2023


Two trials are starting this week, of people who took direct action against Israeli arms company Elbit Systems. Elbit supplies the majority of the drones that the Israeli military use to murder Palestinians.

Last year The Canary wrote:


Elbit manufactures around 85% of Israel’s drones which have been used to massacre Palestinians in Gaza.For example – during Israel’s 51 day attack on Gaza in 2014 – Israeli drones killed 840 Palestinians. Drones were also used extensively in Israel’s 11 day attack on Gaza in 2021.

People have long tried to push the company out of the UK. And, the campaign to shut down Israeli arms companies operating in the UK stepped up after Palestine Action launched in 2020.
Court Cases

This week the case of two people who blocked the doorway of Elbit’s London office is underway. Their protest was one of a series of disruptive actions that eventually contributed to the closure of Elbit’s London HQ.

The campaign tweeted:




At the same time, the trial of three people who were arrested close to Elbit’s premises in Leicester has also begun. Police charged them with carrying items that could be used to cause damage. Palestine Action tweeted:



Court cases of people who take action against Elbit have repeatedly fallen apart. Last year the Canary wrote:


Very few people have been successfully prosecuted during the course of the campaign against Elbit. The likely reason for this is that the Israeli company is extremely scared of having its business exposed through court proceedings.

Four campaigners who trashed the Teledyne factory in North Wales – which also supplies arms to the Israeli military – remain in prison. And the courts have now remanded them for over a month.
Defiance

But, the campaign remains defiant. Palestine Action wrote over the New Year:


In trials across the country, activists have been acquitted, had their cases thrown out by judges, or have seen their charges dropped. In the courts this year, 18 activists have walked free, while 5 have seen minor convictions in the magistrates courts, those being for ‘criminal damage’ or ‘obstruction of the highways’. Dozens of other activists have had their cases dropped and trials postponed, until 2023 or 2024. Palestine Action are set for a number of major jury trials in 2023, where once again activists will deliver the message: Elbit is guilty, Palestine Action is notMobilisations are called for outside every trial, the full list can be seen on our website at https://www.palestineaction.org/elbit-on-trial/

The campaign maintains that resistance has never been stronger. They wrote:


Despite harassment by the state, resistance has never been higher against complicity in Israel’s crimes. On top of this, we are gearing up for another year of action, promising to continue the escalation as we move against Elbit’s remaining sites. Now, we’ve begun the end of Elbit — 2023 is the year to finish them off for good.

You can donate to Palestine Action here.

What Will Happen After The ICJ Delegitimizes Israel’s Occupation?

https://popularresistance.org/what-will-happen-after-the-icj-delegitimizes-israels-occupation-of-palestine/










By Ramzy Baroud, Mintpress News.

January 12, 2023

Once more, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) will offer a legal opinion on the consequences of the Israeli Occupation of Palestine.

A historic United Nations vote on December 31 called on the ICJ to look at the Israeli Occupation in terms of legal consequences, the rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination and the responsibility of all UN Member States in bringing the protracted Israeli Occupation to an end. A special emphasis will be placed on the “demographic composition, character and status” of Occupied Jerusalem.

The last time the ICJ was asked to offer a legal opinion on the matter was in 2004. However, back then, the opinion was largely centered around the “legal consequences arising from the construction of the (Israeli Apartheid) wall.”

While it is true that the ICJ concluded that the totality of the Israeli actions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are unlawful under international law – the Fourth Geneva Convention, the relevant provision of the earlier Hague Regulations and, of course, the numerous UN General Assembly and Security Council Resolutions – this time around the ICJ is offering its view on Israel’s attempt at making what is meant to be a temporary military Occupation, a permanent one.

In other words, the ICJ could – and most likely will – delegitimize every single Israeli action taken in Occupied Palestine since 1967. This time around, the consequences will not be symbolic, as is often the case in UN-related decisions on Palestine.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has done more than any other Israeli leader to ‘normalize’ the Israeli Occupation of Palestine, was understandably angry following the UN vote, describing it as ‘despicable’.

His other coalition partners were equally intransigent.

The Israeli “Occupation of (the) West Bank is permanent and Israel has the right to annex it,” said Knesset Member Zvika Fogel, during an interview on January 1 with Israeli Radio 103FM.

More than anything else, Fogel’s words encapsulate the new reality in Israel and Palestine. Gone are the days of political ambiguity regarding Israel’s ultimate motives in the Occupied Territories.

Indeed, Israel is now trying to manage a whole new phase of its colonial project in Palestine, an endeavor that began in earnest in 1947-48 and, in Israel’s own calculation, is about to end with the total colonization of Palestine – Israel’s version of a ‘one-state solution’ that is predicated on apartheid and racial discrimination.

Fogel, whose party, Otzma Yehudit, is an important member of Netanyahu’s new rightwing coalition, does not reflect his personal views or those of his ideological camp alone.

The new government, packed with extremists, the likes of Bezalel Smotrich, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Yoav Galant, among others, is now committed to an anti-peace agenda as a matter of policy. As soon as the new government was sworn in on December 28, it announced that “the government will advance and develop settlements in all parts of Israel”.

Ben-Gvir, whose raid of Al-Aqsa Mosque in Occupied East Jerusalem raised much criticism worldwide, is sending clear messages to Palestinians and the international community at large: as far as Israel is concerned, no international law is relevant, nothing is sacred and no inch of Palestine is off limits.

This time, however, it is not business as usual.

Yes, Israel’s territorial expansion at the expense of Occupied Palestine has been the common denominator among all Israeli governments in the last 75 years; but various Israeli governments, including that of Netanyahu’s early cabinets, found indirect ways to justify illegal settlement constructions. So-called ‘natural expansion’ and ‘security’ needs were some of the many pretexts furnished by Israel to justify its constant push for land acquisition by force.

Practically, none of this would have been possible if it were not for the inexhaustible United States support of Israel – financially, militarily and politically. Moreover, US vetoes at the UNSC and the relentless pressure on UNGA members allowed Israel to circumvent international law unscathed. The outcome is today’s tragic reality.

According to the official UN news website, there are currently nearly 700,000 illegal Jewish settlers. The Israeli NGO ‘Peace Now’ says that these Jewish settlers live in 145 illegal colonies in the Occupied West Bank, in addition to 140 settlement outposts, many of which are likely to be made official by the new government.

In fact, the Netanyahu-led alliance has been formulated with the understanding that the outposts would be legalized in the future, thus receiving official government funding. This should not pose a major political problem for Netanyahu, who, in 2020, had succeeded in selling the idea to the Israeli Knesset of annexing much of the West Bank and is now Determined to carry out a process of ‘soft annexation’ – a de-facto annexation that is likely to become legalized as a de jure annexation later on.

Nor would the full colonization of Palestine prove to be a legal problem. Israel’s Nation-State Law of 2018 has already provided the legal cover for Tel Aviv to flaunt international law and to do as it pleases in terms of colonizing all of Palestine and marginalizing all of the Palestinian rights. According to Israel’s new Basic Law, “the State of Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish People in which it realizes its natural, cultural, religious and historical right to self-determination”. It was this particular reference that was cited in the new government’s statement on December 29.

And there are not many in Israel who are protesting this. In a recent article in the Palestine Chronicle, Israeli historian Ilan Pappe explains how the current socio-political formations of Israeli society make it nearly impossible for alternative mainstream politics to emerge, aside from the three dominant rightwing and extremist currents at work in the Netanyahu coalition: Ultra-Orthodox Jews, National Religious Jews and Likud’s secular Jews.

This means that change in Israel could never come from Israel itself. While Palestinians continue to resist, Arab and Muslim governments, and the international community at large must confront Israel, using all means available to end this travesty.

The ICJ’s opinion is very important, but without meaningful action, a legal opinion alone will not reverse the sinister reality on the ground in Palestine, especially when this reality is bankrolled, supported and sustained by Washington and Israel’s other western allies.

Sweden Hustled Into Military Pact With US

https://popularresistance.org/sweden-hustled-into-military-pact-with-us/










By M. K. Bhadrakumar, People's Dispatch.

January 12, 2023

The US and NATO assumed that it would be easy to convince Turkey to let Sweden enter NATO.

However, Erdoğan kept shifting the goal post and refined his conditions.

The Biden administration’s efforts to put on fast track Sweden’s accession as a NATO member petered out as Turkey balked, exercising its prerogative to withhold approval unless its conditions regarding Stockholm’s past dalliance with Kurdish separatist elements is fully addressed.

President Biden was bullish and insisted publicly that Sweden’s NATO membership was a foregone conclusion. He underestimated President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s tenacity and overlooked the geopolitical ramifications.

Biden and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg assumed that all that was needed was a face-saving formula to pander Erdoğan’s vanity — ie., a few Kurdish militants in Sweden would be extradited and Ankara and Stockholm would thereupon kiss and make up.

However, as time passed, Erdoğan kept shifting the goal post and refined his conditions to include issues such as Sweden lifting its arms embargo against Turkey, joining Ankara’s fight against banned Kurdish militants as well as extradition of people linked to US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, whom the Turkish government accuses of masterminding the 2016 failed coup attempt, reportedly with US backing.

Evidently, Swedes didn’t realize that Turkey had such deep knowledge of the covert activities of their intelligence.

To cut the story short, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson finally took the exit route saying on Sunday in exasperation that “Turkey has confirmed that we have done what we said we would do, but it also says that it wants things that we can’t, that we don’t want to, give it.”

“We are convinced that Turkey will make a decision, we just don’t know when,” he said, adding that it will depend on internal politics inside Turkey as well as “Sweden’s capacity to show its seriousness.”

Stoltenberg has reacted stoically, saying, “I am confident that Sweden will become a member of NATO. I do not want to give a precise date for when that happens. So far, it has been a rare, unusual and fast membership process. Normally, it takes several years.”

Meanwhile, Sweden’s Defense Ministry announced on Monday that negotiations have begun for a bilateral security pact with Washington — so-called Defense Cooperation Agreement — which makes it possible for US troops to operate in Sweden.

As Defence Minister Pal Jonson put it, “It could entail storage of military supplies, investments in infrastructure to enable support and the legal status of American troops in Sweden. The negotiations are started because Sweden is on its way of becoming an ally of the United States, through the NATO membership.”

That is to say, the US is no longer waiting for the formalization of Sweden’s accession as a NATO member but will simply assume it is a de facto NATO ally!

A press release on Monday by the US State Department said the bilateral security pact will “deepen our close security partnership, enhance our cooperation in multilateral security operations, and, together, strengthen transatlantic security.” It referred to US commitment to “strengthening and reinvigorating America’s partnerships to meet common security challenges while protecting shared interests and values.”

The crux of the matter is that security will provide the necessary underpinning for US deployment to Sweden on an immediate basis, which is not possible otherwise without Stockholm formally jettisoning its decades-old policy of military non-alignment.

This ingenuous route signifies a monumental shift for Sweden which has a long history of wartime neutrality. Put differently, Russia strongly opposes Sweden’s NATO membership, but Washington is reaching its objective anyway.

Interestingly though, Finland, which also had thrown its hand in the NATO ring under US pressure, doesn’t seem to be in a tearing hurry to negotiate a pact with Washington, although it has a 1,340km border with Russia. Finland’s stance is that it would join NATO at the same time as Sweden.

Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto told reporters on Sunday, “Finland is not in such a rush to join NATO that we can’t wait until Sweden gets the green light.” Former Finnish President Tarja Halonen had once said that Finland and Sweden are “sisters but not twins.” They have commonalities, but their motivations are not the same.

Unlike Sweden which was all along in the Western orbit and provided secret intelligence to Western powers throughout the Cold War, both bilaterally and through NATO, Finland had a unique relationship with Russia, which was a result of its history.

Finland positioned itself as a neutral country during the Cold War maintaining good relations with the Soviet Union, riveted on the doctrine enabled by the Agreement of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance (1948) with Moscow, which served well as the main instrument in Finnish-Soviet relations all the way until 1992 when the Soviet Union got disbanded.

For sure, the 1948 pact granted Finland enough freedom to become a prosperous democracy, while, in comparison, despite Sweden’s public posture of neutrality throughout much of the Cold War, behind closed doors it had become a key partner of NATO in Northern Europe.

Conceivably, neutrality still could remain an appealing alternative for Finland. Of course, it is a different matter if the balance of power in the region changes dramatically in the event of a large-scale conflict in Europe.

Sweden’s (or Finland’s) NATO membership isn’t exactly round the corner. Sweden is either unable or unwilling to fulfil Turkey’s demands. Besides, there are other variables at work here.

Most important, the trajectory of the current Russian-brokered rapprochement between Ankara and Damascus will profoundly impact the fate of the Kurdish groups in the region — and the Kurdish-US axis in Syria. Washington has warned Erdoğan against seeking rapprochement with President Bashar Al-Assad.

What complicates matters further is that presidential and parliamentary elections are due in Turkey in June and Erdoğan’s political compass is set. Any change in his calculus can only happen in the second half of 2023 at the earliest.

Now, six months is a long time in West Asian politics. Meanwhile, the Ukraine war will also have phenomenally changed by summer.

Finland is ready to wait till summer, but Sweden (and the US) cannot. The heart of the matter is that Sweden’s NATO membership is not really about the war in Ukraine but is about containing the Russian presence and strategy in the Arctic and North Pole. There is a massive economic dimension to it, too.

Thanks to climate change, the Arctic is increasingly becoming a navigable sea route. The expert opinion is that nations bordering the Arctic (eg., Sweden) will have an enormous stake in who has access to and control of the resources of this energy- and mineral-rich region as well as the new sea routes for global commerce the melt-off is creating.

It is estimated that 43 of the nearly 60 large oil and natural-gas fields that have been discovered in the Arctic are in Russian territory, while 11 are in Canada, six in Alaska [US] and one in Norway. Simply put, the specter that is haunting the US is: “The Arctic is Russian.”

Just look at the map above. Sweden can bring quite a bit to the table to secure the Arctic through NATO. Finland may have a strong icebreaker-ship building industry, but it is Sweden’s highly effective submarine fleet that will be crucial — both for polar defense and for blocking Russia’s access to the world oceans.

2023 Outlook For Ukraine

https://popularresistance.org/2023-outlook-for-ukraine/








By Scott Ritter, Consortium News.

January 12, 2023
Educate!

Given the duplicitous history of the Minsk Accords, it is unlikely Russia can be diplomatically dissuaded from its military offensive.

As such, 2023 appears to be shaping up as a year of continued violent confrontation.

After almost a year of dramatic action, where initial Russian advances were met with impressive Ukrainian counteroffensives, the frontlines in the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian conflict have stabilized, with both sides engaged in bloody positional warfare, grinding each other down in a brutal attritional contest while awaiting the next major initiative from either side.

As the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches, the fact that Ukraine has made it this far into the conflict represents both a moral and, to a lesser extent, a military victory.

From the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff to the director of the C.I.A., most senior military and intelligence officials in the West assessed in early 2022 that a major Russian military offensive against Ukraine would result in a rapid, decisive Russian victory.

The resilience and fortitude of the Ukrainian military surprised everyone, including the Russians, whose initial plan of action, inclusive of forces allocated to the task, proved inadequate to the tasks assigned. This perception of a Ukrainian victory, however, is misleading.
The Death of Diplomacy

As the dust settles on the battlefield, a pattern has emerged regarding the strategic vision behind Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine. While the mainstream Western narrative continues to paint the Russian action as a precipitous act of unprovoked aggression, a pattern of facts has emerged which suggests that the Russian case for preemptive collective self-defense under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter may have merit.

Recent admissions on the part of the officials responsible for the adoption of the Minsk Accords of both 2014 and 2015 (former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, former French President Francois Hollande and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel) show that the goal of the Minsk agreements for the promotion of a peaceful resolution to the post-2014 conflict in the Donbass between the Ukrainian government and pro-Russian separatists was a lie.

Instead, the Minsk Accords, according to this troika, were little more than a means to buy Ukraine time to build a military, with the assistance of NATO, capable of bringing the Donbass to heel and driving Russia out of Crimea.

Seen in this light, the establishment of a permanent training facility by the U.S. and NATO in western Ukraine — which between 2015 and 2022 trained some 30,000 Ukrainian troops to NATO standards for the sole purpose of confronting Russia in eastern Ukraine — takes on a whole new perspective.

The admitted duplicity of Ukraine, France and Germany contrasts with Russia’s repeated insistence prior to its Feb. 24, 2022, decision to invade Ukraine that the Minsk Accords be implemented in full.

In 2008, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia William Burns, the current C.I.A. director, warned that any effort by NATO to bring Ukraine into its fold would be viewed by Russia as a threat to its national security and, if pursued, would provoke a Russian military intervention. That memo by Burns provides much-needed context to the Dec. 17, 2021, initiatives by Russia to create a new European security framework that would keep Ukraine out of NATO.

Simply put, the trajectory of Russian diplomacy was conflict avoidance. The same cannot be said of either Ukraine or its Western partners, who were pursuing a policy of NATO expansion linked to the resolution of the Donbass/Crimea crises through military means.
Game Changer, Not Game Winner

The reaction of the Russian government to the failure on the part of the Russian military to defeat Ukraine in the opening phases of the conflict provides important insight into the mindset of the Russian leadership regarding its goals and objectives.

Denied a decisive victory, the Russians seemed prepared to accept an outcome which limited Russian territorial gains to the Donbass and Crimea and an agreement by Ukraine not to join NATO. Indeed, Russia and Ukraine were on the cusp of formalizing an agreement along these lines in negotiations scheduled to take place in Istanbul in early April 2022.

This negotiation, however, was scuttled following the intervention of then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who linked the continued provision of military assistance to Ukraine to the willingness of Ukraine to force a conclusion to the conflict on the battlefield, as opposed to negotiations. Johnson’s intervention was motivated by an assessment on the part of NATO that the initial Russian military failures were indicative of Russian weakness.

The mood in NATO, reflected in the public statements of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (“If [Russian President Vladimir] Putin wins, that is not only a big defeat for the Ukrainians, but it will be the defeat, and dangerous, for all of us”) and U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin (“We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine”) was to use the Russian-Ukrainian conflict as a proxy war designed to weaken Russia to the point that it would never again seek to undertake a Ukraine-like military adventure. [Coupled with an ill-fated economic war, it was also designed to bring down the Russian government, as President Joe Biden admitted last spring.]

This policy served as the impetus for the injection of what would amount to well over $100 billion worth of assistance, including tens of billions of dollars of advanced military equipment, to Ukraine.

This massive infusion of aid was a game-changing event, allowing Ukraine to transition from a primarily defensive posture to one that saw a reconstituted Ukrainian military, trained, equipped and organized to NATO standards, launching large-scale counterattacks that succeeded in driving Russian forces from large swaths of Ukraine. It was not, however, a game winning strategy — far from it.
Military Math

The impressive Ukrainian military accomplishments that were facilitated through the provision of military aid by NATO came at a huge cost in lives and material. While the exact calculation of casualties suffered by either side is difficult to come by, there is widespread acknowledgement, even among the Ukrainian government, that Ukrainian losses have been heavy.

With the battle-lines currently stabilized, the question of where the war goes from here comes down to basic military math — in short, a causal relationship between two basic equations revolving around burn rates (how quickly losses are sustained) versus replenishment rates (how quickly such losses can be replaced.) The calculus bodes ill for Ukraine.

Neither NATO nor the United States appear able to sustain the quantity of weapons that have been delivered to Ukraine, which enabled the successful fall counteroffensives against the Russians.

This equipment has largely been destroyed, and despite Ukraine’s insistence on its need for more tanks, armored fighting vehicles, artillery and air defense, and while new military aid appears to be forthcoming, it will be late to the battle and in insufficient quantities to have a game-winning impact on the battlefield.

Likewise, the casualty rates sustained by Ukraine, which at times reach more than 1,000 men per day, far exceed its ability to mobilize and train replacements.

Russia, on the other hand, is in the process of finalizing a mobilization of more than 300,000 men who appear to be equipped with the most advanced weapons systems in the Russian arsenal.

When these forces arrive in full on the battlefield, sometime by the end of January, Ukraine will have no response. This harsh reality, when coupled with the annexation by Russia of more than 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory and infrastructure damage approaching $1 trillion, bodes ill for the future of Ukraine.

There is an old Russian saying, “A Russian harnesses slowly but rides fast.” This appears to be what is transpiring regarding the Russian-Ukraine conflict.

Both Ukraine and its Western partners are struggling to sustain the conflict they initiated when they rejected a possible peace settlement in April 2022. Russia, after starting off on its back feet, has largely regrouped, and appears poised to resume large-scale offensive operations which neither Ukraine nor its Western partners have an adequate answer for.

Moreover, given the duplicitous history of the Minsk Accords, it is unlikely Russia can be dissuaded from undertaking its military offensive through diplomacy. As such, 2023 appears to be shaping up as a year of continued violent confrontation leading to a decisive Russian military victory.

How Russia leverages such a military victory into a sustainable political settlement that manifests itself in regional peace and security is yet to be seen.

The Vote For House Speaker Obscured Democratic Treachery

https://popularresistance.org/the-vote-for-house-speaker-obscured-democratic-treachery/











By Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report.

January 12, 2023




House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s need for 15 rounds of voting from his party is viewed with alarm or humor.

But the right wing proved that activists win if they make demands. Democrats have no members brave enough to confront leadership, and the people’s needs go unmet.

In 2021 Democratic Party progressives asked those members of congress who claimed to share their political priorities to stand up to their leadership, which meant standing up for the people. They knew that Joe Biden promised to veto any legislation providing free, universal healthcare, known as Medicare for All. But they did what any political activist should do. They made the demand anyway. The call to #ForcetheVote was a request for House members to withhold their votes for Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House unless she committed herself to bringing Medicare for All to a vote.

The House members who called themselves progressives did nothing of the sort. They elected Nancy Pelosi without demanding that she bring Medicare for All or any other issue for a vote. The Squad and the Progressive Caucus, all failed to do what their supporters wanted.

In 2023 a different dynamic took place. Republicans won control of the House in the 2022 midterm elections. Some of their members, such as Lauren Boebert and Matt Gaetz, are considered lesser lights and are routinely dismissed by democratic pundits and propagandists as being dumb, crazy, or a host of other epithets.

Whatever one can say about them, they did something that Squad members did not. They withheld their votes from Kevin McCarthy, who needed 15 ballots to become Speaker of the House, a record in congressional history. The process was messy, the word “chaos” was used a lot, and social media memes making fun of McCarthy and the Republicans proliferated.

There was a lot of finger pointing and snobbery about the Republicans, but there was far too little analysis. Delving into the story in a truthful way would have meant dredging up the progressive democrats shameful behavior two years ago and exposing them to the level of critique that Boebert and Gaetz received.

Not only did democratic progressives run for cover when their leadership dropped the hammer, but they lied in order to hide their cowardice. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others claimed that they would lose the speakership to Republicans unless they all stayed on board. “We are just an extremely slim amount of votes away from risking the speakership to the Republican Party. It’s bigger than any one of us.”

This statement was a bald-faced lie meant to keep liberals in line. Republicans didn’t lose the Speakership to the Democrats despite taking 15 rounds of voting to select McCarthy. The overly hyped congresswoman known as AOC was doing the leadership’s bidding and protecting herself from criticism.

Actually, she may not have needed to lie. Many democrats behave like cult members, mesmerized and hypnotized by con artists, living in fear of making any demands on any issue. They easily give in and have been indoctrinated into thinking they can never make political change.

Now Joe Biden is sitting in the political catbird seat. He can wheel and deal and triangulate to his heart’s content, which is what Democratic presidents actually prefer. They don’t want to provide Medicare for All or student loan debt relief, or a minimum wage increase. Biden can now feign powerlessness; the propagandists will join him in declaring that his hands are tied because Republicans control the House.

Republicans like Boebert will be scrutinized and caricatured so that Democrats can make fun and/or scare their people into shutting up. But it is actually more important to watch AOC and her cohort. Boebert and company are just the bogeywomen and men of the moment who provide a convenient cover for liberals the next time they are ready to perform another stab in the back. Phony progressives are a far worse enemy.

In the final analysis, the Republicans’ deal making was democracy in action. Elected representatives debated and challenged one another. Most importantly, party leadership faced a challenge they couldn’t avoid. This country would be far better off if the people who claimed to be progressive had acted likewise in 2021 instead of taking a dive when they should have been willing to confront.

Oddly enough, one of the demands that McCarthy met was a proposal to cut the federal budget to FY2022 levels. Such a cut would mean a $75 billion cut to defense spending . Of course, Republicans don’t really want to do that. The military industrial complex survives with bipartisan support. But inadvertently the Republican renegades revealed how much their Democratic Party colleagues have increased defense spending.

This year on January 16, Democrats and Republicans alike will fan out across the country and claim to pay homage to the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. King broke with president Johnson when he denounced the Vietnam war, and was roundly criticized for doing so. The progressives of today possess none of his courage and go along with their party’s oligarchy when ordered to do so. The right wingers on the other side of the aisle seem to have far more conviction.

University of California grad student strike ends

https://www.workers.org/2023/01/68591/





By Martha Grevatt posted on January 12, 2023

After nearly six weeks on the picket line, 48,000 graduate students at the University of California voted to accept a new contract. This ended the largest academic strike in U.S. labor history.


Picket line, University of California Berkeley, Nov. 20, 2022. WW Photo: Judy Greenspan

Solidarity was strong throughout the strike, with student workers risking arrest by engaging in acts of civil disobedience. Construction workers stopped work on new campus buildings, and Teamsters stopped delivering packages to the universities during the strike. Members of numerous unions joined the picket lines and attended strike rallies.

Members of the three striking United Auto Workers locals — 2865, 5810 and Student Researchers United-UAW — won significant pay increases, along with transportation and child care subsidies. The contract improves health benefits, job security language and language on bullying, harassment and discrimination.

However, the pay increases fell far short of what the union initially demanded. On average, base pay remains below $30,000 after the first big raise, which doesn’t kick in until Oct. 1. UC management refused to grant a key demand of the strike: housing subsidies to offset the high cost of living in California. Other shortcomings include the retention of fees of around $15,000 per year, which out-of-state students, including international students, are required to pay.

Another concern of contract opponents — including 15 members of the 40-member negotiating team — is that the contract creates “tiers,” something UAW members in manufacturing are all too familiar with. Typically lower pay tiers are introduced for workers hired after a certain date, creating a divisive system where workers working side-by-side, doing the exact same work, are paid differently. The UC contract instead has higher pay scales at more prestigious campuses in the 10-campus system.

A rank and file-led “vote no” campaign convinced 38% of those who voted to reject the contract, but with a majority voting in favor, the contract goes into effect with the strike’s end.

Whatever the gains or shortcomings in the contract, this historic strike provided a stellar example of what solidarity looks like, today and in the future.







Martha Grevatt is a retired Chrysler (now Stellantis) worker who served on the executive boards of UAW Locals 122 and 869.