The Left-Progressive movement is on the march around the world.

November 21, 2005 -- The Left-Progressive movement is on the march around the world. The neo-cons and their assorted allies are on the run. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon saw the writing on the wall. He announced he is quitting the Likud Party, which he helped to create. That decision will fracture the Israeli right and leave rudderless the neo-cons in Washington, London, Rome, Canberra, and other capitals.

In another dramatic development, Israel's Labor Party dumped the pedantic Shimon Peres and replaced him with social democratic labor union firebrand Amir Peretz, a decision welcomed in Damascus, Cairo, and elsewhere in the Arab world. Peretz is an Arabic-speaking native of Morocco and is on very good terms with Israel's one million-strong Arab community, especially the Arab working class. He says he will scrap the ridiculous pro-Likud American "Road Map" and negotiate directly with the Palestinian Authority. The Likud, which will now be headed by neo-con radical Binyamin Netanyahu, will drift even further to the right and irrelevancy. Look for Peretz to squeeze the Russian-Ukrainian-Israel Mafia of wealthy Russian and other former Soviet gangsters who have seized control of Israel through their alliance with the corrupt Likud Party.

Sharon obviously read the tea leaves and is jumping a sinking corrupt right wing ship dominated by gangsters and religious fanatics (sounds a lot like the Bush administration). Sharon is forming his own "centrist" political party with the ousted Shimon Peres, deeply fracturing the Israeli Right and consolidating the left around Peretz's Labor Party.

The purge of Peres from Labor is being echoed in the U.S. Democratic Party, where Rep. Jack Murtha's anti-war speech last week is putting the spotlight on leading Democrats who oppose a withdrawal from Iraq -- namely, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Joe Lieberman and Representatives Rahm Emanuel and Steny Hoyer. All are "neo con lite" and quikcly becoming irrelevant as the Democratic Party finds its anti-war footing thanks to Murtha, Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, Russ Feingold, and others.

In Sri Lanka, leftist Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse won the presidency on a platform of nationalization of the economy, a direct slap in the face of the World Bank of Paul Wolfowitz, which abhors state control of any portion of any national economy. His defeated opponent was a free market proponent. Sri Lanka now joins neighboring India (and its ruling Congress Party) in an emerging bloc of leftist governments in South Asia. Seven opposition parties have held talks with Communist rebels in Nepal with a view that Nepal may soon relegate its fascist pro-American King to the ash heap of history.

In Europe, British Prime Minister Tony Blair faces a rebellion in his own Labor Party and possible impeachment over the Iraq war. France is turning against the right-wing neo-con Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy and the Socialists, Communists, and Greens remain strong at the regional and municipal levels. Italy's neo-fascist Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is on the electoral ropes from Italy's leftist coalition, including the Communists. In Norway, the Socialists beat a conservative Prime Minister with ties to the Christian Right in the United States.

It is Latin America that is leading the global progressive resurgence. Michelle Bachelet, tortured by the U.S.-supported Pinochet regime is the front runner to become the next President of Chile. After Pinochet's coup and after being tortured, she moved to the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) to rebuild the Chilean Socialist Party. Bachelet is 24 percentage points ahead of her conservative and global neocon-backed rival. In next year's Mexican presidential election, former Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, is the front runner to succeed conservative Vicente Fox. The election is scheduled for next July 2. Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez is as strong as ever and continues to berate Bush, calling him "Mr. Danger." Chavez and a phalanx of Latin American leaders of Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Brazil blocked Bush's Free Trade Area of the Americas pro-corporate contrivance at the recent Americas summit in Argentina. In Bolivia, coca growers' union leader Evo Morales leads in polls for the Dec. 18 presidential election. He will reverse privatization and begin a policy of state control of the energy industry. In Nicaragua, Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega stands a good chance of becoming the country's president after elections next year.

The signs are unmistakable that the progressive left is on the march throughout the United States and around the world. Meanwhile, Bush couldn't make it out of a door in Beijing.