QUETZAL CACERES—Adding the qualifier “democratic” often signals, consciously or not, a number of things about the worldview of the socialist in question, including— that the US is actually a democratic country (hence, “democratic” socialism), despite all the evidence to the contrary: that socialists in countries of predominantly non-white people, which have historically been dominated by the US and other imperialist powers, are not sufficiently “democratic” in outlook or practice; that the socialist leaders of these darker nations are likely “vicious tyrants”; that these darker nations attempting to build socialism are “authoritarian” and need to be exposed by “democratic” socialists (even if this helps US efforts at overthrow and destabilization)
VIRTUAL UNIVERSITY
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GLEN FORD—The MPP’s “Racial Justice” platform is reformist — like Bernie — not transformative. But only Black folks can map the path to racial justice and Black self-determination. The new mass party that emerges from the dissolution of Bernie Sanders’ exercise in sheep-doggery will start out disproportionately white, despite the fact that Sanders did assemble a remarkably multi-racial and largely working class electoral base, especially among the young. Black America is by far the community most deeply infested by the corporate Democratic Party – the word “occupied” better conveys the historical catastrophe that has befallen Black politics in the U.S.
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Victory Day: Remembering the Great Patriotic War
59 minutes readMICHAEL J CARLEY—The Great Patriotic War began at 3:30am on 22 June 1941, when the Nazi Wehrmacht invaded the Soviet Union along a front stretching from the Baltic to the Black Seas with 3.2 million German soldiers, organised in 150 divisions, supported by 3,350 tanks, 7,184 artillery pieces, 600,000 trucks, 2,000 warplanes. Finnish, Italian, Romanian, Hungarian, Spanish, Slovakian forces, amongst others, eventually joined the attack. The German high command reckoned that Operation Barbarossa would take 4 to 6 weeks to finish off the Soviet Union. In the west, U.S and British military intelligence agreed. Besides, what force had ever beaten the Wehrmacht?
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The CIA’s Jack Ryan Series Is ‘Regime-Change’ Propaganda Aimed At Venezuela (Video & Text)
18 minutes readALAN MACLEOD—The depiction of Venezuela has been predictably condemned by the Venezuelan government with Culture Minister Ernesto Villegas writing it off as, “crass war propaganda disguised as entertainment.” But Jack Ryan’s depiction of the country does indeed wildly distort the reality of the situation on the ground. Firstly, Venezuela’s current President Nicolas Maduro is himself a left-wing populist, while the United States’ preferred head of state is the far-right Juan Guaidó, who last weekend attempted another failed coup d’état against the elected government.
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CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—Mass media propagandists are able to distort perception even while telling the truth using the news churn memory hole. Even when forced to report on uncomfortable truths like not finding any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or the fact that the occupation of Afghanistan has been justified by an entire generation of lies, the memory of that reporting can be made to fade into the background by frantically reporting on what’s happening right now without referring back to the previous revelations.