The left in America is desperate; desperate for someone who can inspire them, if not lead them to a better world; or at least make them laugh. TV star Jon Stewart is sometimes funny, especially when he doesn’t try too hard to be funny, which is not often enough. But as a political leader, or simply political educator for the left, forget it. He’s not even what I would call a genuine, committed leftist. What does he have to teach the left? He himself would certainly not want you to entertain the thought that Jon Stewart is in any way a man of the left.
Fight Back News Service has translated and is circulating the following article from the Workers Party of Belgium’s (PTB) press service on the recent election in Belgium. The rightist, reactionary New Flemish Alliance (N-VA), which advocates the breakup of Belgium, scored major gains in this election.
PTB+ leaping in Wallonia and in Brussels, and growing in Flanders
“We are happy about the leap of the PTB+ everywhere in Brussels and in Wallonia” stated Raoul Hedebouw, spokesperson of the PTB+. “The PTB+ is also progressing in Flanders, especially in Antwerps, despite the huge success of the N-VA.”. As example the PTB+ obtained 4.2% of the votes in the county of Liège, 4.1% in Antwerps and 2% in Brussels area.
The following statement by the Communist Party of the Philippines is from the website of the National Democratic Front:
With the reactionary elections coming to a close, it now appears that the Philippine neocolonial state will be headed next by Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III.
Rubi Del Mundo
Spokesperson
National Democratic Front-Southern Mindanao January 23, 2010
The National Democratic Front of the Philippines-Southern Mindanao hits the Arroyo regime’s much-hyped dismantling of private armies calling this merely a grandstanding yet empty move by Ms. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her minions to stem the tide of the people’s wrath against perpetrators of the gruesome November 23 Ampatuan massacre.
With the people’s seething rage and persistent calls for justice, leaving this case unsolved poses a threat that could lead to Arroyo’s ouster. As the Ampatuan’s Andal Jr. and other members responsible to the massacre remain unprosecuted, Mrs. Arroyo’s plan to perpetuate in power through a daring bid in the reactionary GRP congress is in terrible danger.
The following commentary by Peter Shapiro is from Fight Back! News:
Peter Shapiro speaking at a October 15 rally for health care. (Fight Back! News)
Insurance company profiteering has laid waste to the U.S. health care system and sparked a wave of protest throughout the U.S. But the response of Congress to the crisis suggests that the battle is just beginning.
Through the month of October and the first weeks of November, hundreds of people across the country volunteered for civil disobedience, calling for a single-payer system which guarantees access to health care for everybody and pays for it with tax dollars instead of insurance premiums.
Close to 200 were arrested in sit-ins at insurance company offices in over a dozen cities. The wave of direct action climaxed with mass arrests at the San Francisco office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Protesters demanded that Pelosi allow a floor vote on Rep. Anthony Weiner’s single payer amendment to the House health care reform bill.
Since today is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall (please see my previous post, “Democracy, East Germany and the Berlin Wall” by Stephen Gowans), lets take a closer look at bourgeois democracy, since it is supposedly so fabulous according to the self-congratulatory imperialist media:
That would all be funny if this farce weren’t backed by force:
“Bourgeois democracy, although a great historical advance in comparison with medievalism, always remains, and under capitalism is bound to remain, restricted, truncated, false and hypocritical, a paradise for the rich and a snare and deception for the exploited, for the poor.” – V. I. Lenin, Bourgeois and Proletarian Democracy
This video is from the 9/12/09 “Tea Party” in DC, against basic reforms (particularly health care reform) and for basically everything reactionary and backwards imaginable.
“Fascism will never come to America as fascism. It will come as 100 percent Americanism.” – Huey Long
Dangerous hatred in the US?
By Rob Reynolds, senior Washington correspondent
Michelle Bachmann, the US Republican Representative for Minnesota, tells a radio interviewer she believes Barack Obama, the US president, plans to set up mandatory “re-education camps” to indoctrinate young Americans.
Glenn Beck, a television personality working at the Fox news network, says on the air that Obama is a “racist” with a “deep-seated hatred for white people”.
Comparing Obama to Adolf Hitler, an Iowa man named Tom Eisenhower speaks up at a town hall meeting held by Republican Senator Charles Grassley, and says “The president of the United States, that’s who you should be concerned about.”
“I’d take a gun to Washington if enough of you would go with me.”
Retired FBI agent Ted Gunderson, a prolific writer and speaker about conspiracy theories involving devilish sex cults and the Illuminati, tells a gathering of right-wing “Patriots” in Florida that the federal government has set up 10,000 internment camps across the country and is storing thousands of guillotines for mass executions.
Mel Sanger, a self-described “political researcher”, offers visitors to his website a $24.97-report full of “cutting edge evidence” that Obama is the biblical Antichrist.
Tens of thousands of right-wing demonstrators march on the US Capitol waving signs reading “Bury Obamacare with Kennedy” and calling Obama a “bloodsucking Muslim alien”.
Steven Anderson, the pastor of the Faithful Word Baptist Church in Arizona, preached a sermon last month entitled “Why I hate Barack Obama”, in which he declared, “I’m going to pray he dies and goes to hell”.
El Salvador's new Vice President Salvador Sanchez Ceren, with former CISPES Executive Director Cherrene Horazuk and solidarity activist and Fight Back! reporter, Brad Sigal
FMLN Takes Power in El Salvador
By Brad Sigal
San Salvador, El Salvador – In an historic day here, June 1, Mauricio Funes and Salvador Sanchez Ceren were sworn in as the new president and vice-president of El Salvador. Funes and Sanchez Ceren are members of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), a leftist political party which was formerly a guerrilla movement that fought against the U.S.-backed right wing dictatorship in El Salvador in the 1980s. Funes and Sanchez Ceren won election on March 15, marking the first time there will be a leftist government in El Salvador’s history.
Hugo Chavez wins, Venezuelan people chalk up victory
By Erik Sperling
Venezuelan socialists netted another electoral victory, Feb. 15, winning a popular referendum on constitutional changes. The changes will remove the two-term limit on elected office.
Minnesota People’s Bailout Act introduced in legislature
By staff
St. Paul, MN – The Minnesota People’s Bailout legislation was introduced in the Minnesota State Senate and House, Feb. 9. Authored by Senator David J. Tomassoni (D-Chisholm), and Representative David Bly (D-Northfield) the Minnesota People’s Bailout Act is a legislative attempt to protect the interests of low-income and working Minnesotans from the worst effects of the deepening economic crisis in Minnesota and the nation.
The following article by William Blum is from CounterPunch.org: 
