For now we can give the Black Community their day in the sun. It probably won’t last long, so let’s hope they all enjoy it while it lasts. - 史蒂夫・奥多
Even our local The Wichita Eagle has had a lot of coverage this Sunday.
One example is:
Obama weighs his first steps in office
Chicago Tribune
WASHINGTON - Forget "hope" and "change" and "yes, we can." The word that will matter most, when Barack Obama assumes the Oval Office, is "doable."
Teary-eyed jubilation is giving way to clear-eyed realism. As his campaign rhetoric runs into governing reality, Obama will have to contend with a set of political and practical restrictions that are perhaps more daunting than any faced by an incoming president since Franklin Roosevelt took over amid the Great Depression. And he will have to tailor his early policy agenda accordingly.
………….Click here for the rest.
They even found a way to cash in on the story:
“BUY A PIECE OF HISTORY
Single copies of Wednesday's Eagle, which featured the election of Barack Obama on Page 1 and other coverage, have sold out. You can still order a high-quality copy of the Eagle front page by going here. Or purchase a keepsake reprint at The Eagle, 825 E. Douglas, between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. Monday through Friday. They are $10 each, or three for $22.
Then there are different reactions for organizations in other parts of the world:
(new)Italian Communist Party, (n)PCI
5 November 2008
The victory of Barack Obama in US presidential elections is an excellent sign for the Communists, the progressives and Democrats of the entire world, for oppressed peoples and classes in every corner of the world, who resist the undeclared war of extermination carried out by the imperialist bourgeoisie and its agents and accomplices!
Let's advance in building socialism and making Italy a new socialist country!
Barack Hussein Obama's victory in US presidential elections and Democratic Party's victory in US Congress and Senate elections show that a large part of American people's masses want to change his life and no more tolerate the effects produced by imperialist bourgeoisie's domination. The vote for Barack Obama sums and sometimes combines the votes against the economic crisis, against war, against police's arrogance, against torture and racial discrimination, against oppression of women and minorities, against immigrants' persecution, against the evictions and confiscation of houses, against the lack of education and health care, against the thousand deteriorations of the economic and cultural, moral and intellectual, social and environmental conditions that the American people's masses have experienced in the latest 28 years, from Ronald Reagan's election as president in 1980 until today.
Barack Obama's victory over John McCain, who distinguished himself in Vietnam war as a war criminal and in these elections was the champion of conservatives, is a good sign for us Communists, for progressives, for Democrats, for all those who around the world resist the aggression of US imperialism and its allies, accomplices and servants, for all those who, in the oppressed countries, in the former socialist countries of Eastern Europe, of Soviet Union and Asia and in the imperialist countries are struggling to create regimes of new democracy or to establish socialism. This shows that the rebellion is hatching even in USA. The American people's masses less and less tolerate the conditions which they are forced in. The heroic resistance and the glorious struggle led by all those who, from Palestine to Colombia, Iraq and Afghanistan, from the Philippines to Somalia and in many other countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America resist the aggression and the interferences of US imperialists and their Zionist abettors, have severely weakened the cultural, ideological and political hegemony of US imperialist bourgeoisie over American people's masses.
Barack Obama's victory denies the trends and the people who, in Italy so as in other countries, confer on nature, character or other metaphysical characteristics of American people's masses the responsibility for the criminal operations of exploitation and aggression carried out in every corner of the world by the troops, by agents and accomplices of US imperialist bourgeoisie. These are tall stories as those that confer on Italian character the misdeeds the fascists did, on German nature the crimes the Nazis did, or on Jewish character the misdeeds the Zionists do. As a matter of fact, the exploited and oppressed people around the world have US people's masses as a potential ally. US people's masses so as the rest of humanity need to establish socialism. They can do it. This still is not done, mainly because we communists have not yet sufficiently understood the conditions, forms and results of class struggle in USA; then, despite the heroic efforts made by many Communists, vanguard workers and representatives of oppressed minorities in the United States of America, we have not been able to mobilize US people's masses for following the path needed to accomplish the historical deed they have to do. But there are premises for its accomplishment. Sooner or later the gendarme and the bulwark of reaction in the world will fall, as ninety years ago the Czarist regime, that was the bulwark and the gendarme of the reaction in Europe and Asia, has fallen.
The Communists may lead US people's masses to victory and to establish socialism, because they need it. Yesterday vote has been a demonstration of this need, although probably the great many people who voted Barack Obama do not know what they really need. They are still under the illusion to escape the chaos they are carried in by 30 years of unchallenged reactionary policy of the imperialist bourgeoisie thanks to a better government of the imperialist bourgeoisie itself.
Secondly, the election of Barack Obama as President of the USA is a sign of weakness of US imperialist bourgeoisie, of Zionist groups, of the Vatican and all the other allies, partners and accomplices the US imperialist bourgeoisie uses throughout the world: Indian comprador bourgeoisie, the restorers of capitalism in China, the Berlusconi's gang in Italy, etc.
Nevertheless, Barack Obama was one of two candidates for president the US imperialist bourgeoisie proposed to American voters. Barack Obama has not done his career, from the modest background in which he was born until his candidacy for the presidency, in the ranks of those who in USA struggle against imperialist bourgeoisie and its system of oppression and discrimination, in political or trade union organizations of vanguard workers or in the organizations of those who are fighting in USA against racial national and gender discrimination, that plague their country. On the contrary, he made his career climbing step by step the political system of US imperialist bourgeoisie and showing himself skilful and faithful to the environment he was admitted in: as a priest of humble origins who gets on in the Catholic Church until become a cardinal and even pope.
The Democratic Party is one of the two major parties of US imperialist bourgeoisie. Choosing as its presidential candidate a black senator of humble origins who anyway for years had proved its reliability and capacity in the ranks of US political system, the Democratic Party aimed to stop and reverse the mounting wave of the struggle against US imperialist bourgeoisie domination that is growing all over the world and even in USA. The US imperialist bourgeoisie will use in every way the race of Barack Obama and his talents to weaken peoples and oppressed classes resistance, to mitigate the condemnation and hatred that surrounds it everywhere for its misdeeds.
Will Barack Obama succeed in the role that the imperialist bourgeoisie gave him?
Barack Obama may be a very clever, the best suited man to the role the Democratic Party gave him. Anyway, there were not its individual qualities and characteristics that led him to US presidency. The US imperialist bourgeoisie goes from bad to worse. It already turned to Colin Powell to Condoleezza Rice and other talented "freedmen" to escape its destiny. The bourgeoisie has an individualistic conception of society and history. It believes that individuals make history, that if it will find the right people it will succeed in reversing its fate. Facing the disastrous results of his criminal conduct dictated by the preservation of their interests and privileges, it has personally heaped the blame on George Bush, former alcoholic and ignorant, whom it placed at the head of his state. Now it tries to find an alternative with Barack Obama, in its intellectual and human qualities, in the illusions that he can give rise within the American people's masses, within his race. The problem is that the conduct of the US State and its government, of the US industrialists, bankers and speculators and of their partners, allies, officers and competitors is not dictated at all by the personal characteristics of a government leader. It is dictated by the interests of the US imperialist bourgeoisie and by its practical relations with its competitors, the groups of the imperialist bourgeoisie of other countries, and with the oppressed classes and peoples of USA and of the other countries in the world. The government of a modern country of some size is not headed by an individual, but by a management team of which the chief is the spokesman , the coordinator, or in some cases, like that of Berlusconi, the owner. It will not be the US imperialist bourgeoisie that will adapt itself to Barack Obama; it will be Barack Obama and his government that will do what US imperialist bourgeoisie needs to preserve its interests and privileges.
Will Barack Obama and the administration he will build, supported by the new Congress and the Senate, where its representatives consolidated their majority, make prevail in USA and worldwide the interests of those who gave him the power? Will he succeed in keeping US people's masses under control at least for some years, feeding them with promises, illusions, small concessions now to one and then to others? Will he succeed in defeating those who everywhere in the world are struggling to free themselves from US imperialist bourgeoisie's aggression, interference and exploitation? Can US imperialist bourgeoisie give up its global empire without losing power also in USA?
These are the issues which the role and fate of the new US president really depend on!
For almost 30 years now the world capitalist system has been corroded by a new general crisis. For several decades, in order to keep afloat the capitalist economy must increasingly rely on financial speculation. It passes from a speculative bubble to another, each one greater than the previous. The speculative bubble of US mortgages was so great that its outbreak shakes all the castle of capital. Now it is very difficult for the imperialist bourgeoisie to get out from the current crisis with some ordinary mends, moving further away (in time or in space, namely from one country to another) the crisis, as it did from the'70s until now. Now the involvement of productive capital in speculative capital (through financial capital) is in advanced stage and the crisis concerns the whole world. General Electric, the largest industrial capitalist company of the world, announced that one third of its income comes not from exploitation of its direct employees or on the monopoly price with which it was selling its products and it was purchasing, but on financial transactions (incomes of shares and bonds, capital gains from transactions of financial securities, foreign exchange speculation, issuance and sale of junk bonds, etc.). In general, other companies of productive capital do the same. The outbreak of US real estate bubble involves not only money funds (speculative, pensions, insurance, asset managements), finance companies and banks, but also directly production companies. So it involves all the real economy. Anyone who has its fingers in the pie knows that almost every major company is based in a determinant part on a fictitious capital done by junk bonds and loans that it will never recover, it has debts which other capitalists may claim at any moment and to which it has no intention to pay. The liquid money is a huge quantity, so that, if it were put in circulation, prices would be sky-high. But this money is safe elsewhere. Each rich secured himself, the tax havens are crammed with money, the Vatican and other similar institutions have stored enormous wealth, the market for luxury goods has never been so prosperous. Each one of companies, banks and funds managers knows how he is, and so easily understands how people like him is. So no one capitalist trusts the other capitalists: no credit and no sales on credit. Reduction of business, of workers' income, of consumption, of government revenues. It may be that here and there some bourgeois group can impose itself to the others, sacrifice the interests of the others and set the machinery in motion again. But it will be a war to the knife. The claims, the impatience and the revolts of the workers will sharpen fighting between bourgeois groups.
The US imperialist bourgeoisie led the dance of speculation and the exploitation of the bourgeoisie and the rich of the entire world. The acute phase of the general crisis puts its global role at stake. Armed forces, aggressions, wars, plots are a means to defend it. The imperialist bourgeoisie did not get out from the great crisis of the '20s in the last century because of Roosevelt's New Deal, but thanks to the enormous destructions of the Second World War. War or revolution are probably the ways in which humanity must walk in the coming years. Or by revolution we will forestall and prevent war or we should try to transform war into revolution.
Will Barack Obama be a good choice for US imperialist bourgeoisie? We are not able to know it. Certainly it will not change his destiny. Certainly the favour with which the American people's masses have accepted his promises of a better future and the illusions of a general upheaval of the situation, indicate that also the American people's masses do not want continue to live any more as are they have done till now. Certainly the resistance and the struggle that stronger and stronger rises from every country against US imperialist bourgeoisie, its agents, accomplices and abettors strengthen the opposition of American people's masses, will make them even more impatient of the effects of the imperialist bourgeoisie's domination and will create more favourable conditions for the rebirth of the communist movement even in the USA. Anyway, this will ultimately depend on the Communists themselves.
We Italian Communists we must lever on this. Our task is to establish socialism in Italy, making Italy a new socialist country and so contribute to the second wave of proletarian revolution advancing worldwide.
The outcome of US elections is a good sign for us.
The US imperialist bourgeoisie keeps afloat by promises that it can not keep, making foresee a future far different from what it actually prepares. It is an operation similar to the one the Berlusconi's gang made in Italy. The struggles of these days are the result of his success in elections in April and means to overcome the result and overthrow Berlusconi's gang, the government that it formed, its representatives (Vatican, US imperialist bourgeoisie, Zionists groups, Criminal Organizations, Italian Manufacturers' Association, the national confederation of the Italian traders, the Italian Banking Association) and establish a progressive power constituted by the organized workers and people's masses.
The acute phase of the crisis in which we have entered is not only a tragedy. It is a tragedy and it is also a possibility, a chance. Have we to suffer the tragedy or to grasp the opportunity? If we consider the only progressive path humanity can do, the acute phase of the crisis is mainly the premise of the establishment of socialism, it brings near the end of torment that now reached a level that would stifle humanity: we must take the opportunity.
This is the main aspect on which we Communists have to settle our direction and to present and explain to the masses. We must use the acute phase of the crisis in which the bourgeoisie has plunged us, mainly as a favourable background for socialist revolution. We should not encourage the people's masses' despair and resignation, the "every man for himself," that is inevitable and logical facing a disaster without way out. On the contrary we should encourage and organize the struggle. As all great tragedies do (on individual and on collective level), this one will break and brutalize somebody, but it will also strengthen other ones and lead them to heroic deeds. We must make prevail with all our strength this second effect of the acute phase of crisis in which the capitalists have thrown us.
Who does not see the establishment of socialism as a possible, concrete and near event, those who do not conceive the establishment of socialism as the only possible and realistic way out of the stagnation in which the bourgeoisie has thrown and every day is sinking us, who does not work every day with conviction and conscience to build socialism, sees the acute phase of the crisis of capitalism only as a huge tragedy that hits the people's masses. He does not see other possible way out from the current crisis than a great misfortune for the people's masses. (…)
On the contrary, those who struggle to organize the socialist revolution in this event sees two things:
2. the tragic context that creates for people's masses favourable conditions for the final and complete emancipation from capitalism and from the stagnation in which it led us.
The one will split in two. Which of the two will prevail? This is the real challenge!
Who (in various degrees, in various forms and with different social roles) brings ruling class' conscience ignores and tries to ignore that there are two possibilities.
The routine and servile conscience of the oppressed classes "spontaneously" sees only the first aspect: they give in it, moan and rebel.
The communist conscience sees the two aspects and mobilize and lead people's masses for making prevail the second one.
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