DEM VOLKE DIENEN

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Category: Lateinamerika

After leaving school, it is almost compulsory for petty-bourgeois graduates to go abroad for a year in petty-bourgeois circles to "find themselves". Work and Travel in Australia or Au-pair in the USA are no longer the favorite destination of European young adults. Rather, "exotic" countries in Latin America or Southeast Asia are now preferred. Because in the semi-colonies and semi-feudal countries of this world, you can really learn something for life, for example to value the "simplicity" (besides, one can experience much more for little money than in imperialist countries). If they also help in social projects, then there is also something well done for the reassurance of the bad conscience that may overcome some who have grown up in the imperialist nations. Of course, such a year abroad is also outstanding in the CV. Not to mention all the great pictures in front of a picturesque backdrop. Of course, this "simplicity" is actually the harsh reality of the most oppressed and exploited peoples in the world. And of course, profit is being squeezed out of it. In Peru, a trip to the Machu Picchu becomes an adventure trip when the tour groups are “allowed” to experience poverty in Inca villages on their way there. Locals will even sale a couple of their products and serve as cheap hotels, which will then give the tour operator the title "social project". Because according to the Hamburger Abendblatt, "both sides benefit from this". But at the end of the day there is nothing romantic about being watched by some backpackers while fearing for their very existence every day and not having enough money to satisfy the most basic needs. In truth, the local people are only kept in economic dependence on foreign visitors. Just as the oppressed nations are held dependent on the imperialists. And against that the people will rise.

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Category: Lateinamerika

The boycott of the electoral farce was even greater than in the second round with 42 million abstentions, which corroborates the rejection of the masses to this rotten state and the lack of perspective within this bankrupt institution. The following is translation of excerpt from this important article written by Igor Mendes:

 Just the starting point

"...

The truth is that part of the masses, not seeing any alternative that clearly represents their interests and hardened by years of recession and unemployment, has been captured (for now) by those who have spoken louder "against all that is there." This is shown by the fact that all the main parties of the "new republic", not only and not even the Workers Party (PT), have suffered from the defenestration of former “caciques” [indigenous political leaders, term used to say the one who orders] and the considerable loss of seats in the Legislative and the Executive powers. Nor should we forget that about 30% of the electorate, 40 million, did not attend or voted white or null, the largest non-vote in decades. Rather, it marks the illegitimacy of these elections, as an instance completely incapable of representing the popular will.

In fact, when we see the Stock Exchange rises and the dollar falls as Bolsonaro moves forward, it seems clear that the "market", this invisible government, has already taken its stand. This corroborates the thesis, always defended by this newspaper, that the elections are nothing more than a grotesque set of marked cards.

But what, after all, is the meaning of an eventual victory of the Bolsonaro-Mourão duo?

It must be said firmly: his victory will be Pyrrhus's victory, for the simple fact that his government will represent interests diametrically opposed to that of the immense majority of the Brazilian people. Although, in the short term, it can present a solid appearance, picking up a ride in the National Congress (which adheres almost by inertia to anyone on the Government), its unmasking will be fast. Two types of contradictions undermine the ultra-reactionary list: the contradiction between the summit and its bases, because - on the contrary to what they say - they will govern with/in favor of everything that is there, frustrating those who have backed them up; and within the very summit itself, already divided between a so-called ultraliberal wing, linked to the international banking sector, which wants to privatize everything as soon as possible, and a wing that claims to want to "preserve the strategic sectors" identified as the bureaucratic sectors of monopoly capital (role of the military patriot-like speech).

An eloquent example of the insoluble contradictions that resides in the rat's nest is the question of taxes. Take the latifundium ("agribusiness") for example: it only survives at the expense of massive state subsidies, either as credit or as tax waivers, and its support will be maintained as long as the population as a whole continues to be squeezed to sustain it. The promised "minimum" state, therefore, will be minimal only with regard to labor and social rights for the majority, because it will continue to be of the size it has in the distribution of privileges for the minority. The large "middle class" of small and medium proprietors (in commerce, transport, services, industry, etc.), who are so fiercely "bolsonarist", will soon receive the invoice of expenses in the Ipiranga Station [a common gas station]. Their current enthusiasm may then turn into its opposite.

The crisis, therefore, will continue, and together with it will also the popular dissatisfaction and the protests. October 28 will mean neither its solution nor some great "retrogression," however crazed as it tends to become the anti-communist wave, but only the starting point of a new wave of great political commotions that will inevitably come.
The great project of national conciliation represented by the PT over the last decades has failed and is seemingly crumbling. Since the Struggles of June, the class struggle in Brazil has rapidly radicalized. Marx told us that revolution will be done by those who have nothing to lose but their chains. What we see is that the official left of the country, tied by a thousand ties to the old order, represents those who have something to lose, and are missing the times when the social upheavals did not come to remove their expensive stability in office and disrupt their routine. This, not to mention those who have made a fortune from the top of the reactionary state apparatus.

Petism [supporting the PT] (backed by PcdoB [Revisionist Hohxaist Party] revisionism and other false Communists) who, over the last decades sold the independence of the people´s labor movement, which demobilized it, depoliticized it and made it a harmless appendage of bourgeois democracy, ended up on this. The emergence of the extreme right did not arise by any divine determination, nor by lottery. It is the historical process that explains it. Pretending to replace class struggle with welfare populism while applying the entire economic prescription of imperialism was part of the general offensive of the world counterrevolution unleashed in the 1980s and only deceived most of the masses. And all those who have fostered illusions with a kind of peaceful and painless transformation of Brazilian society, guarded by the high, respectful with "authorities and laws" - we know very well in which classes these authorities are recruited and to whom its laws serve - are reaping what they have sown and of these, those who still identify with the real people´s interests are obliged to give a thought with the utmost seriousness and honesty about it.

Reformists treat the reactionary phenomenon as situated outside the classes and the class struggles, in a supposed struggle between "civilization or barbarism", very unconvincing for the miserable ones who already know about barbarism at the hospital doors or in the ranks of the unemployed. They do not want to defeat the iron heel of the reaction in a death struggle, but to tie it up with the laws formulated by the bourgeoisie itself. At the end of the day, you still have to mourn the disorder. These people read the bourgeois philosophers and piously believed that bourgeois democracy was indeed democratic, eternal and unchangeable. Lima Barreto [a Brazilian writer], one hundred years ago, was far ahead of these contemporary intellectuals when he said: "The law! What a mockery, a blunder to plunder the weak and the naive!"

The process of reactionarization of the bourgeois-latifundium state, lackey to imperialism, is inevitable. What other form of government is compatible with the brutal concentration of income, of land, with the millions of unemployed and underemployed, with an increasingly primary-exporting economy? This has no way back. In fact, the reaction does not have and has never had any modesty in tearing up its own laws if this is of its interests. Attacking the constitutional illusions, so characteristic of a opportunist electoral false left, typical manifestation of the petty-bourgeois ideology, Lenin said: If political power in the state is in the hands of a class whose interests coincide with those of the majority, that state can be governed truly in line with the will of the majority. But if political power is in the hands of a class whose interests diverge from those of the majority, any form of majority rule is bound to become deception or suppression of the majority. Every bourgeois republic provides hundreds and thousands of examples of this kind. …. Hence, from a materialist and Marxist, and not from a formally juridical point of view, we must expose this conflict, and combat bourgeois deception of the people.  [Lenin Constitutional Illusions, 1917]

Not only the fascist regimes, but even the most democratic constitutions have always predicted and envisaged the most extreme measures against mass rebellion (the different states of exception). The democratic freedoms serve us as a means to prepare for the great battles to come, and in this sense they must be defended, but not as a pretext to renounce those battles, which will start sooner or later. The antipode of fascism, after all, is not bourgeois democracy, but proletarian revolution."

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Category: Lateinamerika

Situation in Argentina sharpens its crisis. The agreement with IMF is already 50 billion dollars for a period of three years. Many protests and general strikes are taking place in the country against the policies of the IMF that demands several cuts in the rights of the workrers and social security. 

The inflation rises very quickly and the currency loses a lot of influence compared to Yankee dollar. The A Nova Democracia made an article explaining the contradictions in this crisis that arte still valid for this period.

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Category: Lateinamerika

We publish an english translation of the note that was published on A Nova Democracia about the news on the death of the chairman of CEBRASPO, José Pimenrta.

Comrade Pimenta: Present in the struggle!

"José Sales Pimenta, chairman of the Brazilian Center for Solidarity to the Peoples (Cebraspo) and prominent defender of the right of the people to fight for their rights passed away last Friday, October 19th.

Pimenta also had intense political activity since the student movement in the late 1970s, when he participated in the reconstruction of the National Students Union (UNE). Since then he has always participated in the struggles of the poor in the countryside and in the city.

During his activity in Cebraspo, he extended solidarity to the revolutionary movements and national liberation movement abroad, denounced the attacks on the peasant movement and the poor people of the favelas of big cities, he organized international missions to investigate massacres in the countryside. He was especially involved in the constitution of the Brazilian Association of People's Lawyers (Abrapo).

Zé Pimenta was also an enthusiast of the popular and democratic press and an important supporter of the A Nova Democracia newspaper, publicizing the newspaper, suggesting guidelines, indicating sources, selling signatures, debating and constructively criticizing our work.

The comrade died in his hometown, Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais state, where he was also veiled, on October 20. He was honored with an exciting and combative ceremony by his family, struggle comrades and friends."

Among many other homages to Pimenta that were published in CEBRASPO website, we publish a video that was uploaded with a homage to him by a democratic youtube channel where Pimenta gives an interview about his activities.

In the video, among other things, he talks about his history and the history of his family, particularly his brother that was a lawyer that was assassinated by the military regime in Brazil, in 1982, about the situation of the people in Brazil and the world, about the A Nova Democracia newspaper, also about the struggles against the G20 in Hamburg. In general he makes a statement about the need to support the struggles of the peoples, the People´s Wars around the world, the struggle of the peasants and the poor people in the favelas.

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Category: Lateinamerika

Acting President Martin Vizcarra wants to clean up the old state of Peru. He took over the post this year after Pedro Pablo Kuczynski was forced to resign from office due to his involvement in the corruption scandal surrounding the construction company Odebrecht. Corruption is always a big issue in all oppressed nations. The bourgeois politicians put as much money in their pockets as possible, get bribed and let themselves be used by the imperialists, and don’t give a crap about the people. This will eventually become public and they will be replaced by a new bourgeois politician, who is also a lackey of the imperialists, but is staged as “so much better” than his predecessor. They then fight against corruption, make up for the mistakes of their predecessors, in short: they pretend that they really care about the well-being of the people. And that's exactly what Vizcarra and the rest of the government in Peru is currently trying to teach the people. So he is himself publicly flown into a jungle to inaugurate a bridge. "If you've forgotten, that's changed," Vizcarra claimed. "From now on, you have a president who cares." He wants to take special care of the poor, eradicating corruption anyhow. He is the good Samaritan of Peru. The one who makes everything better. A reserved politician who suddenly became president. And although no one had really believed in his leadership qualities, he had staged himself as an aspiring, popular person.

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Category: Lateinamerika

We publish an english translation of the report of the Solidarity Mission to Enilson Ribeiro Camp, in Rondonia state, that was published on A Nova Democracia. This area has been stage of many struggles that was reported by us and it is under threat of eviction by the state for a long time. The invitation to the mission can be found here.

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Category: Lateinamerika

We publish an unooficial english translation of the next editorial on A Nova Democracia Newspaper that analyses how the working class is reacting to the electoral sham that is currently taking place in the country.

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