|
One advantage of a parliamentary system is that there IS a Left to at least contest the corpo-fascist policies of the center/right, to keep the pressure on, and to win major victories such as universal free medical care, by pressuring the "centrist" corpo-fascists when that is possible. Seems like those kind of victories are over, though, for the impoverished majority of the populations in both our countries. And we really need to ask WHY.
Our extremely rancid "two-party" system in the U.S. has failed us, on an epic scale. The corpo-fascists are now set to dismantle the last vestiges of the "New Deal"--already small and inadequate Social Security pensions and minimal health care for the elderly--as well as destroying public education for children. (They destroyed free public college/university education long ago.) This has nothing whatever to do with Bushwhack-created "deficits" or the Bushwhack-induced Depression. Both things were VERY PREVENTABLE by the very people who are now descrying them and screaming that "austerity" for the poor is the only answer.
Utter scumbags, they are. Murderous scumbags.
I have analyzed this situation as attributable to the corporate-run 'TRADE SECRET' vote 'counting' systems that now infest every state in the U.S. Half the states do NO AUDIT AT ALL of these 'TRADE SECRET' machine tabulations. The other half do only a miserably inadequate 1% audit (comparison of ballots to machine totals). And the whole thing (80% monopoly) is now run by ONE, PRIVATE, FAR RIGHTWING-CONNECTED corporation: ES&S, which bought out Diebold. This is not the only thing wrong with our election system, but it is the WORST thing--as well as the latest coup-- aimed at making reform IMPOSSIBLE--that is, destroying our democracy altogether.
And I've compared this situation to Latin America, where strong leftist governments have been elected in Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay, Paraguay, Nicaragua and (not as strong but still leftist) El Salvador and Guatemala.
HOW DID THEY DO IT? They have horrible corporate media. They also have a lot of bad money (--a lot of it right out of our own pockets, in USAID and other U.S. funding of rightwing groups all over Latin America).
The main difference between the U.S. and Latin America is 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting. They have honest, transparent elections. We don't.
But in reviewing this thread, I've been wondering why Canada's quite transparent vote counting system hasn't resulted in better outcomes.
Another thing that has been part of the leftist democracy movement, and leftist victories, in Latin America, has been a recognition of the entrenched power of "two party" systems (like ours) which colluded to produce U.S.-favored, "Neo-liberal" impoverishment of the majority of people. The leftists, the social movements, the grass roots movements and all who have contributed to leftist victories, have fought this "two party" entrenchment in various ways, but I need to find out more about HOW they have done this--how they have broken entrenched power. One way, I believe, is by re-writes and popular plebiscites on their constitutions--something that is a lot easier to do in most of Latin America than it is in the U.S. or Canada.
Actually, I don't know about Canada--does British law still basically control Canadian fundamental law? Seems like I read about the Queen's rep doing something--overruling something--in Canada, recently. What IS Canada's Constitution? And how easy is to amend or re-write?
In Paraguay, the left needed to defeat a ONE-party system--the fascist Colorado Party, which had earlier inflicted a heinous dictatorship on Paraguay. The Colorado Party ruled for 60 years! Their problem was the fractiousness of the left--the left was split into a lot of different, squabbling parties and interests. They needed a unifying figure--Fernando Lugo (the beloved "bishop of the poor")--whose election as president in 2008 overturned the Colorado Party's grip on power. (All the new leftist leaders of the region attended the inauguration. What a party they had!) (And Evo Morales had sent Lugo a message when he got elected: "Welcome to the Axis of Evil!")
Though I need to find out more about how the Latin American left has overcome "two party" entrenchment and the "fractious left" syndrome where that was a problem, it seems obvious that this huge leftist democracy movement has had MULTIPLE strategies--FIRST, honest, transparent elections (something that Latin Americans and international election groups, like the Carter Center, worked on for several decades); grass roots organizing (trade unionists, Indigenous, small farmers--campesinos--urban poor, women's groups and others); courageous, persistent, big protest movements; attacking the existing, entrenched parties; constitutional reform movements.
The leftist governments and new leftist leaders have, in turn, helped each other--both economically and by having each other's backs when the U.S. tried to topple them. I want to add this new spirit of cooperation in Latin America to the list of victorious leftist strategies, though I know about it mostly on a leader-to-leader level, not the people-to-people level. The list thus far:
For Latin America:
1. TRANSPARENT VOTE COUNTING.
2. Grass roots organization.
3. Think big. (Don't settle for scraps from the table. Think and act for REAL change.)
Additions: (with U.S. and Canada in mind)
4. Break up entrenched "two party" elites. (Constitutional reform?)
5. Unite fractitious leftists, where needed.
6. Unity--collective strength (among groups, across borders, including leaders)
Unity:
Brazil and Venezuela have very notably worked closely together to "raise all boats" in the region and to support economic/political integration and UNITY in Latin America. Venezuelans themselves stopped the U.S. coup in 2002 (before all the other leftist governments were elected). Brazil's Lula da Silva notably had Hugo Chavez's back, after Lula got elected ('04), on continued U.S. plots against Chavez. All the leftist leaders got involved in stopping the U.S. organized/funded white separatist insurrection against Evo Morales in Bolivia in 2008, and they also acted in accord when the U.S./Colombia bombed Ecuador in early 2008, trying to start a U.S. proxy war between Colombia and Ecuador/Venezuela.
They have been very successful on unity actions such as these (and Brazil's new president, Dilma Rousseff is also very committed to it), but not so successful in Central America, when a U.S.-supported rightwing coup d'etat toppled the elected leftist president, Mel Zelaya. Brazil's Lula tried strenuously to reverse it, but could not. UNITY, however, is the watchword. Unity, cooperation, "raising all boats," creating and exercising collective strength against the Corpo-Fascist Empire to the north.
This new cooperation in Latin America is entirely a leftist creation. It has very clear, obvious, stated goals: social justice (education, health care, decent wages, help to small business, land reform, fair taxation, human rights including food, shelter, water), social progress (racial/sexual/religious equality), the peoples' control of their own resources (such as oil), fair trade, national and regional sovereignty, regional collective strength, regional peace and world peace. These goals and unity in pursuing them create prosperity.
Much of Latin America landed on its feet in the U.S./Bushwhack-induced economic meltdown precisely because they had elected LEFTIST governments in time to head off ruinous U.S./IMF/World Bank policies. Latin America is showing an AVERAGE of more than 7% economic growth precisely because they defied U.S. dictates on deregulation, privatization, "austerity" for the poor and other "first world" banksterism and corporate gangsterism.
The left is strongest in South America and is gaining in Central America (which is why the U.S. supported the rightwing coup in Honduras). And this new spirit of cooperation is most visible, of course, among the leaders. But I wonder what lesson it might carry--and what the story is in Latin America--on people to people cooperation and unity across national borders, prior to the election of good governments. I've seen some hints of it but I don't know much. I think that, for instance, the Indigenous don't have a lot of respect for colonial borders. They have vital interests--the environment, Mother Earth--that transcend borders. I think this affected at least one election (Peru, a couple of years back). I don't know how much about trans-border trade unionist or social movement interaction on political change in Latin America. (It's happening NOW, but did it before all these electoral victories?)
So, here are some things to find out more about, or think about, as to reform in the U.S. and Canada:
How did the Latin Americans defeat entrenched "two party" oligarchies, or pull together fractious leftist groups in multi-party situations?
Is constitutional reform a feasible option in Canada? (I doubt if it is in the U.S., but maybe.)
How to get rid of the corporate-run 'TRADE SECRET' election theft machines in the U.S.?
How to get the help that Latin America got on creating honest, transparent election systems in the U.S.?
(International election monitoring groups need to be INVITED by the existing government.)
Does Canada need election reform? In what way?
How can people in Canada and the U.S. help each other bring about general reform? How can Latin American leaders and peoples help?
Latin America is struggling with a number of huge problems: On-going murders of trade unionists, teachers, community activists, peasant farmers, political leftists, journalists and others in the U.S. client states of Colombia and Honduras; the horrendous impacts of the corrupt, murderous, failed U.S. "war on drugs" (evident recently in Mexico, but affecting much of Central America and Colombia); South America has largely freed itself from the militarist/fascist aspects of this horrible U.S. "war", and some countries--Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela--have evicted it entirely); vast displacement of peasant farmers in Colombia and Mexico; the plight of migrant workers in the U.S.; U.S.-inflicted election fraud in Haiti and Honduras; Pentagon ambitions and U.S. "free trade for the rich" in the U.S. "circle the wagons" region of Central America/the Caribbean.
These issues can draw us all together. We should not let them divide us. Quite a lot of grief in Latin America would be alleviated by democracy being restored in the U.S., and thus democratic controls on U.S. policy. The U.S. government needs to stop shilling for multinational corporations and war profiteers, and the Canadian government needs to stop aiding and abetting this, in Latin America.
Latin Americans are LEADING THE WAY on restoration of democracy in the Americas. We need to know this and to study it for what we can learn. But on the whole, the best thing we can do for them--who have suffered so much at our governments' hands--is to get back control of our own countries and end the militarisim and oppression that is spawned on our shores.
More on unity:
U.S. and Canadian leaders have unity but not for social justice, for its opposite: they are unified in oppressing and impoverishing us. Our Democratic Party leaders, for instance, utterly betrayed us, and democracy itself, by their support for corporate-run, 'TRADE SECRET' vote tabulation. They, too, like the Bushwhacks, seek unity with the Corporate Rulers, not with us, the victims. Canada's leaders support these corporate war profiteers against us.
It's interesting that the Bushwhacks tried to create a literal barrier to the south--a "wall"--and border restrictions to the north--one method of disunifying all of us who seek peace and social justice. Another interesting tidbit: One of the Honduran coup generals said that their coup was "intended to prevent communism from Venezuela reaching the United States" (--quoted in a report on the coup by the Zelaya government-in-exile). The restrictions on the U.S./Canada border may have a similar purpose: specifically to restrict our knowledge about the Canadian health care system, while they dismantle Medicare and drive us all to ruination on health care costs.
Venezuela is not a communist country (except in this coup general's mind). But it IS a socially just country, which has not only provided health care to all of its citizens, but recently earned designation as "THE most equal country in Latin America" on income distribution, by the UN Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean--something our corpo-fascist newsmongers will never tell you.
Amother thing they won't tell you is that Venezuela is not alone. Venezuela--the pioneer of the leftist democracy revolution--is acting in UNITY with its leftist neighbors on their common goals of social justice, Latin American sovereignty and regional peace. Chavez, for instance, met monthly with Brazil's Lula on their common goals and strategies. Lula and other leaders adamantly resisted U.S. efforts to "isolate" Venezuela. And Lula's successor, Dilma Rousseff, just strongly re-stated those policies of unity, peace and cooperation in Latin America.
The lesson here, on the leadership level, is that unity and collective strength are vitally important not just to achieving democracy and good government, but to keeping it.
The Corporate Rulers have divided us--we, the majority of the people in Canada, the U.S. and Latin America who want peace and social justice and good government. They fractured our communities in the north, displaced multimillions of people in the south, and now are relentlessly bad-mouthing the great leaders of the south, and plotting against them. They have also played upon our fears and the worst of their operatives are clearly trying to stoke up racial, religious, national and economic hatreds.
We are the citizens of the "New World." We once stood for democracy to the rest of the world. We need to pull together and recreate democracy in the U.S. and Canada, and support it in Latin America. Think big. Think of a "New World" that doesn't pit one workforce against another, and one people against another, and in which the north isn't robbing and oppressive the south--a "New World" that closely cooperates on justice for all, and on a decent life for all--a "New World" that isn't polluted and trashed, but green again and new. We can still do this. We can. Think BIG.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
