Left Politics

Digital Corbynism

July 20, 2021 Katrina Forrester, Dissent Magazine. Strategize! Left Politics, Organizing, Science and technology, Social Movements

The first time I saw protesters dancing on the roof of a police van was at a May Day demonstration in London in 2002. Over the dulcet acid techno beats of a bike-powered sound system, a friend explained that we were imitating the Reclaim the Streets movement of the 1990s—free parties on highways doubled as tactics of resistance against infrastructure projects in the name of halting ecological and capitalist crisis. I learned then that I had come too late for anything new. The late British cultural theorist Mark Fisher described this era as one of nostalgia (-algia, the suffix, signifies pain, distress). Thanks to the ideology of what Fisher called “capitalist realism,” faith in the future had been canceled.

The New Green-Red Zagreb

July 2, 2021 Paul Stubbs, Tribune Magazine. Create! Croatia, Electoral Politics, Finance and the Economy, Left Politics

In the local elections held in Croatia on 16 and 30 May 2021, a left-green political platform Zagreb je Naš/Možemo! (‘Zagreb is Ours’/’Yes, We Can!’) won 23 out of 47 seats in the City Assembly, and its candidate for mayor, Tomislav Tomašević, won a convincing victory, defeating his right-wing opponent with 65% of the votes. The platform was formed in early 2017 by a group of activists from social movements and NGOs working on issues of public space, the commons, environmental concerns, independent culture, human rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ+ initiatives, workers’ rights, and more. Frequently presenting themselves with ‘one foot in activism, the other in electoral politics’, the motivation for fielding candidates in the 2017 Zagreb local elections was to advance a genuine alternative to the corrupt nationalist-populist politics that had defined local government in Croatia’s capital for two decades.

Pedro Castillo’s Victory Raises Hopes Beyond Peru

June 21, 2021 Steve Ellner, Orinoco Tribune. Educate! Elections, Latin America, Left Politics, Peru

Peru’s long-standing polarity between a large extension of coastal region, where the nation’s wealth is concentrated, and the much-neglected interior was on full display in the June 6 presidential election. But the polarity was not just geographical. It wasn’t just that the winning candidate, Pedro Castillo, received the lion’s share of his votes from the interior, known as the “Other Peru.” Nor that Lima and other coastal cities favored Keiko Fujimori, particularly in middle class districts. The election also pitted two candidates with very dissimilar backgrounds against each other: Fujimori, a former first lady and three-time presidential candidate with the solid support of the nation’s elite, against Castillo, who is the epitome of an outsider. Castillo, a primary school teacher since the age of 25, has never held an elected office.

A Peasant-Teacher Just Won The Peruvian Elections

June 17, 2021 Matt Kirkegaard, Novara Media. Educate! Elections, Electoral Politics, Left Politics, Peru

On the ground in Lima, the cloud of political uncertainty remains so thick it can be difficult to grasp the basic facts about this election and its historic importance for the people of Peru. The election of peasant-teacher Pedro Castillo from the Perú Libre (Free Peru) party as the new Peruvian president on 6 June was a victory for the country’s popular forces – an outcome almost impossible to imagine even just a few months ago. Castillo’s win has seen Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of former Peruvian neoliberal dictator Alberto Fujimori, lose the presidential race for the third time in ten years – and to a coalition of rural peasants, the urban working classes, Indigenous communities from the Andes to the Amazon, and leftists of all stripes.

Meet The Communists Who Now Govern Chile

June 17, 2021 Vijay Prashad and Taroa Zuniga Silva, People's Dispatch. Educate! Chile, Communism, Electoral Politics, Left Politics

Javiera Reyes, who is 31 years old, is the new mayor of the Santiago municipality of Lo Espejo in Chile. “I grew up in a home where [former President of Chile] Salvador Allende was always the good guy,” she told us, “and [military dictator] Augusto Pinochet was a tyrant. That marked my life.” Reyes’ comment reflects the old divides that have convulsed Chile’s politics since General Augusto Pinochet’s coup d’état against former President Salvador Allende of the Popular Unity coalition on September 11, 1973. Almost 50 years have gone by and yet Chile is still influenced by the legacy of that coup and of the Pinochet dictatorship, which lasted from 1973 to 1990. The May 2021 election that propelled Reyes to the mayor’s office in Lo Espejo also voted in a new Constitutional Convention to rewrite the Pinochet-era Constitution of 1980.

Will Keiko Fujimori Burn The Country Down Before Accepting Defeat?

June 14, 2021 Daniel Espinosa, The Grayzone. Educate! Electoral Politics, Left Politics, Peru

Lima, Peru – Keiko Fujimori, the political heiress to the jailed Peruvian former dictator Alberto Fujimori, appears to have lost her third election in a row. This time, she has been defeated by Pedro Castillo, a leftist teacher from the rural Andes who narrowly leads in a deliberately delayed poll. Facing a possible 30 years sentence for an array of corruption-related charges, Keiko is now challenging hundreds of thousands of ballots already deemed to be valid. In a move that resembles former US President Donald Trump’s recent defeat and subsequent rejection of election results, Fujimori is going for a hat-trick: she has called “fraud” on the two last elections after losing, both times without success.

Peru: Castillo Ahead By 100,000 Votes

June 9, 2021 Carlos Aznárez, Resumen English. Educate! Electoral Politics, Left Politics, Peru

Peru Libre candidate Pedro Castillo has rejected accusations of fraud in the Peruvian elections and has encouraged his supporters to defend the vote in a “historic vigil”. Monday night’s vigil showed the streets of downtown Lima full of supporters of Prof. Castillo, who waving flags and chanting “the people united will never be defeated” showed exemplary discipline and commitment to the new Peru that is coming. On the other hand, the narco-corrupt candidate Keiko Fujimori, in her desperation for a defeat that is becoming inevitable as the hours go by, denounced on Monday night something that even the most fanatic of her supporters do not believe; a “systematic fraud”, for which she did not provide any consistent evidence.

Fujimori Also Cried Fraud In 2016

June 8, 2021 Kawsachun News. Educate! Elections, Electoral Politics, Left Politics, Peru

Peru’s far-right presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori is making allegations of electoral fraud, as leftist candidate Pedro Castillo has maintained the lead in the official count. This is not the first time she’s made unsubstantiated claims, however there is far more at stake for Keiko in this election. Today’s sequence of events have been remarkably similar to the presidential election in 2016, in which Keiko Fujimori also failed in the second round run-off, at that time against liberal candidate Pedro Pablo Kuczynski. Like in this election, exit polls showed Fujimori ahead by a tiny margin within a statistical margin of error. Once the votes were counted, that small lead was reversed to deliver a narrow victory to her opponent.

Rural Teacher Pedro Castillo Poised To Write A New Chapter In Peru’s History

June 8, 2021 Medea Benjamin and Leonardo Flores, Popular Resistance. Create! Elections, Left Politics, Neoliberalism, Peru

With his wide-brimmed peasant hat and oversized teacher’s pencil held high, Peru’s Pedro Castillo has been traveling the country exhorting voters to get behind a call that has been particularly urgent during this devastating pandemic: “No más pobres en un país rico” - No more poor people in a rich country. In a cliffhanger of an election with a huge urban-rural and class divide, it appears that the rural teacher, farmer and union leader is about to make history by defeating--by less than one percent--powerful far-right candidate Keiko Fujimori, scion of the country’s political “Fujimori dynasty.” Fujimori is challenging the election’s results, alleging widespread fraud. Her campaign has only presented evidence of isolated irregularities, and so far there is nothing to suggest a tainted vote.

Peru: Exit Poll Shows Technical Tie

June 7, 2021 Orinoco Tribune. Educate! Elections, Left Politics, Neoliberalism, Peru

The pollster Ipsos published this Sunday the exit polls of the second round of the presidential elections in Peru. With a difference of 0.6% of votes, the candidate Keiko Fujimori, from Fuerza Popular, and her rival, Pedro Castillo, from Peru Libre, are in a technical tie, considering that the margin of error of the study is +/- 3 %. “We have a statistical tie, within the margin of error, a very tight tie. There is no way to declare a winner at this moment,” the director of Ipsos Peru, Alfredo Torres, told América TV channel. Alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa from Chicago, who is in Peru monitoring the elections, recalled a similar incident in the 2016 presidential election in Peru, when Keiko Fujimori, candidate that time also, had a similar advantage in exit polls, and a few hours later Pedro Pablo Kuczynski had won.

Peru Elections: Will There Be A Left-Wing Resurgence?

June 6, 2021 Peoples Dispatch. Resistance Report Elections, Latin America, Left Politics, Peru

On June 6, 25 million Peruvians will elect their next president and two vice presidents for the period 2021-2026. Leftist candidate Pedro Castillo of the Free Peru political party will face off against far-right candidate Keiko Fujimori of the Popular Force party. All major polls have predicted a victory for Castillo. With inputs from Daniela Ramos of ARG Medios who is in Lima.

‘The White Republic’: A Response By Gerald Horne

May 24, 2021 Gerald Horne, Organizing Upgrade. Educate! Left Politics, Settler colonialism, White Nationalism, White Supremacy

The good news is that Comrade Bob Wing’s analysis represents a step forward in terms of the U.S. Left’s understanding of the nation—“republic”—in which it struggles. The bad news is that the U.S. left has not necessarily kept pace with the U.S. ruling class in terms of similar issues, or even with non-radical African-Americans, for that matter. Consider the multi-part series on HBO Max (a member in good standing of the much reviled “corporate media”) that premiered recently, i.e. Black filmmaker Raoul Peck’s “Exterminate All the Brutes,” a sweeping analysis and condemnation of settler colonialism (a term curiously absent from ordinary discourse on the left) and white supremacy. His other credits include the superb docu-drama “The Young Karl Marx.”

Chile Is Reborn: A (Political) Earthquake Emerged From The Streets

May 23, 2021 Patricio Zamorano, Council on Hemispheric Affairs. Resist! Chile, Elections, Left Politics, Neoliberalism

What happened in Chile this past weekend seems to be one of those historic events that cannot but follow its inexorable course. It is like an enormous, powerful tsunami wave whose size cannot be appreciated on the high seas, until it comes crashing into the coast, stunning everyone with its massive strength. This happens with processes of change from the left and the right, in times of democracy and times of dictatorship. Could any human force have stopped the inexorable onslaught of that immoral showman Donald Trump on his path to the U.S. presidency? Who would have believed that someone so dysfunctional on so many levels could have governed the most powerful country on the planet for four years?

Chile: Left, Independent Forces Win Majority Of Constituents

May 17, 2021 Telesur English. Create! Chile, Constitution, Elections, Left Politics

While the nationwide results for governors, mayors and councilors will not be known until later Sunday night, and final results may not be known for another week, the vote for Chile's constitutional convention has been tallied and announced this Sunday night. In a surprise for Chile's left and independent parties, the center-left Apruebo list has received 24 seats while the left-wing Communist-Broad Front Apruebo Dignidad list has finished in second with 28 seats. With three milion votes counted, representing just 15% of the registered electorate, the Nueva Constitución list has received 9 seats whereas the Del Pueblo list has received 21. 17 of the 155 seats have been reserved for indigenous people and 15 other seats have been won by a mix of other independent parties.

In Kerala, The Present Is Dominated By The Future

May 7, 2021 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Strategize! Elections, India, Kerala, Left Politics

Kerala, a state in the Indian union with a population of 35 million, has re-elected the Left Democratic Front (LDF) to lead the government for another five years. Since 1980, the people of Kerala have voted out the incumbent, seeking to alternate between the Left and the Right. This year, the people decided to stay with the Left and give the Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader, Pinarayi Vijayan, a second term in office as the Chief Minister. Health Minister K. K. Shailaja, popularly known as Shailaja Teacher, won her re-election with a record-breaking tally of over 60,000 votes, far exceeding her closest contender. It is clear that the people voted the Left government back in for three reasons...

«1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 »

assetto corsa mods

Daily movement news and resources