the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Feb 18, 2008
Even before the military began withdrawing combat troops from Iraq, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced a “pause.”
“Pause”–that’s another one of those fuzzy words used to blur the reality of the U.S. war on Iraq. A little like “collateral damage,” when the military means that its planes kill hundreds of civilians in a bombing raid; or like “stress,” when it means that U.S. soldiers were put in such horrible situations that some of them were driven to kill themselves or others when they came back.
Pause? You can’t pause what you never started. And the U.S. military hasn’t yet started to withdraw its troops from Iraq–only to rotate them.
If the military were envisioning a significant withdrawal–even if gradual–it wouldn’t have demanded so much money this year for the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: 189 billion dollars. The military demanded, the Republican administration agreed, and the Democratic Congress gave–87 billion dollars already, with another 102 billion or so slated to come.
That 189 billion dollars is for one year alone, 2008. It’s nearly double what was appropriated during the previous year, 2007. And it’s added to the “regular” military appropriation of 483 billion dollars for the year.
A spiraling cost in dollars, which is a direct, simple reflection of the spiraling cost in Iraqi lives, as well as the lives of U.S. troops.
Today, people like Gates dare to say that Baghdad is relatively calm and peaceful. If so, it’s only the “peace” of the graveyard and the “calm” of ethnic ghettoes, into which Baghdad’s millions have been herded at gunpoint.
More than four million people in the whole country have been driven from their homes, with more fleeing every day, as the U.S. continues its bombing on civilian areas, and the ethnic and sectarian militias working with the U.S. continue to terrorize people.
Pause?
The only pause that matters will be the complete, total, absolute final pause in all U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan–a complete end to the U.S. war. And that’s nowhere in sight. The U.S. politicians who continue to fund these wars, Democrat and Republican alike–McCain, Clinton and Obama among others–offer only a continuation.
The U.S. population, if it wants an end to these wars, will have to impose it, just as the population of the U.S. helped to impose an end to the U.S. war on Viet Nam and the rest of Southeast Asia.
Feb 18, 2008
The primary selection process has been used to generate excitement and interest for the elections, and for the eventual Democratic and Republican party nominees. But that doesn’t mean it allows the population to really express itself. No, far from it: whether Democratic or Republican, the primaries are anything but democratic.
This may be more obvious in the Republican nominating process. In the vast majority of state contests, whoever wins a state’s caucus or primary wins all the delegates in that state. That means that a candidate might have barely more popular votes than his competition, yet run away with the nomination–like this year, with McCain vs. Romney. Or, it might even mean that someone gets the nomination with fewer popular votes than someone else. The Republican nominating process works a lot like the Electoral College in the general election. And we saw how undemocratic that was, in the 2000 general election: Bush, with a minority of the popular vote, still won the election and the presidency.
The Democratic Party process allots its delegates somewhat proportionally, according to the popular vote in each state’s nominating vote. But that still doesn’t mean that it reflects the will of the people–for a number of reasons.
For starters, only five states were allowed into the first “round” of elections: Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina and Wyoming. All of these states are overwhelmingly rural or small town, or Southern, where mostly conservative politics hold sway. That helped to make sure that, from the beginning, the campaign was not framed by the concerns of industrial workers, living and working in large cities; instead, the campaigns were shaped by the more conservative concerns of small state constituencies.
Two more heavily populated states, Michigan and Florida, pushed their primaries closer to the beginning of January, to give themselves more weight in the nominating process. Both were punished by the Democratic Party by having their delegates not count in the nominating process.
Second, each state decides just how it is going to allocate its delegates–and it’s almost never exactly proportional to the vote. In Nevada, Barack Obama lost the popular vote but gained more delegates; in Missouri, a similar thing happened to Hillary Clinton.
Caucuses, both Democratic and Republican, are particularly undemocratic. First, these are special meetings held at specific times–not many workers are able to make it to those meetings. That way, they are slanted so that only active party members, as well as students and other privileged layers, dominate the caucus meeting.
Second, the votes taken at these meetings are to elect representatives to a later county-wide caucus–which then elects delegates to a still later, state-wide caucus. It’s at this state-wide meeting that delegates to the conventions are actually chosen. The representatives chosen to go to this meeting are charged with voting for a specific candidate or another–but they don’t have to. They can vote any way they choose; and the final delegate count coming out of a caucus might have nothing to do with the original popular vote, as has often been the case.
For example, in the Iowa caucus four years ago, if the popular vote had translated directly into delegates, John Kerry would have gotten 21 delegates, John Edwards 17, and Howard Dean 7. But instead, after the statewide meeting decided the delegates, Kerry received 39 delegates. Edwards received four, and Dean got two.
Finally, almost 20% of the delegates to the nominating convention are never voted on by the public. These are the so-called “superdelegates,” party officials given a special status to cast their votes however they please. And many times, like this year, the superdelegates will decide the nominee.
All of these procedures have been put in place precisely to make sure that no insurgent, or “dark horse” candidate, speaking to the true concerns of working people and therefore very popular, would be able to “hijack” the Democratic nomination from the party machine. Even apart from the massive amounts of money spent by the wealthy to control these parties, the primary process itself makes sure that the eventual nominee will reflect the interests of the true party bosses–the wealthy ruling class.
It’s just the same as if the candidate were decided in a “smoke-filled back room”–but hidden by the mirage of “democratic” elections.
Feb 18, 2008
Bush’s budget proposal increases the annual defense budget to $515.4 billion for 2009. “If it is approved in full, annual military spending, when adjusted for inflation, will have reached its highest level since World War II,” wrote the New York Times.
And that is not all. This budget does not include the production of nuclear weapons or most of the funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nor does it include funding for the VA, or military aid to other countries. When you add all that up, the military budget comes to close to one trillion dollars.
That is one big wet kiss from the Pentagon to the biggest companies in the world, all paid for out of our tax money.
So don’t believe it when politicians and big business say that there is no money for education, unemployment, health, social security and infrastructure.
Feb 18, 2008
School districts across California stopped serving beef on January 31, after The California Department of Education warned school officials about meat distributed by Westland Meat Co.
A day earlier, the Humane Society of the United States had revealed a video showing “downer” cattle–animals too sick to stand or walk–being taken to slaughter with forklifts at a Westland facility. “Downer” cows are known to carry a high risk of mad cow disease, and their use for food is banned by both federal and California laws.
For years, eight USDA inspectors had ignored this reckless (and illegal) practice. Yet it took just one activist with a hidden camera only six weeks to show what was happening–and the fact that inspectors routinely approved “downer” cows for slaughter.
It comes as no surprise! For the last two decades, the U.S. government has consistently refused to test cattle for mad cow disease before they are slaughtered–which is standard practice in Japan and some European countries where mad cow cases have been seen. If few cases of this deadly diseases have been discovered in this country, it’s only because authorities weren’t looking.
How many schoolchildren–and adults–have already been contaminated with mad cow? How many of them will die? We don’t know yet–it can take as long as 20 years for the symptoms of this deadly brain disease to be seen.
What’s certain is that Westland has already supplied millions of pounds of meat–including meat from sick cows–to schools and some large fast-food chains in California. And who can really believe that Westland is the only company doing this?
To protect and increase profits, company and government officials have put millions of people in danger of a deadly disease. Blood-sucking criminals!
Feb 18, 2008
California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration is handing out at least 170 million dollars of bond money to two railroad companies, Union Pacific and Burlington Northern Santa Fe, according to the Los Angeles Times.
In 2006, California voters passed a bond measure approving 20 billion dollars for public transportation. The money going to Union Pacific and Burlington Northern comes from this bond issue.
How much more of it is being milked by big business? How many other companies are doing the same thing? We may never know, as this kind of information usually never sees the light of day.
One thing is clear: These companies are making California taxpayers pay for their normal business expenses.
The bosses like their profits private, but obviously they have no problem socializing their expenses.
Feb 18, 2008
At the large Cook County Hospital, famous from the TV program ER, hundreds of women with serious health problems are waiting months for an appointment. This is a direct result of the 87 million dollar cut in the county health system pushed through last year by county board president Todd Stroger and passed by the Democratic Party majority on the board.
The gynecology department is now open only two half-days a week. At the end of January, there were 244 women with abnormal Pap smears and 733 women with pain, unusual bleeding or other symptoms who were waiting for appointments. A woman who had a dangerous Pap smear in September was only notified in February that she could see a gynecologist in April! In contrast, at the privately-run Advocate Lutheran General, the vast majority of women with this situation would be treated within 24 hours.
This information was provided by gynecologists talking to the Chicago Tribune. But the Cook County budget cuts also affects men and children. The number of basic medical service providers–doctors, nurses and physician’s assists–went from 101 to 44. According to Dr. Enrique Martinez, a chief medical officer for the county, the demand for basic medical care is at least two to three times greater than the county can handle.
The Cook County Board cut millions from the hospital so that local government could continue to lavish tens of millions of dollars in subsidies and tax breaks on wealthy downtown developers and businessmen. And let 850,000 uninsured residents be damned!
Feb 18, 2008
Sayed Perwez Kambakhsh, a 23-year old journalist, was just condemned to death by a court in Balkh province, in northern Afghanistan.
Kambakhsh was tried in a closed court, without access to a lawyer, for the crime of downloading an article and giving it to his friends at the university. The article was considered “insulting to Islam and interpreting verses from the Koran in an erroneous manner.” Kambakhsh apparently pointed out that the Koran authorizes a man to marry several women but prohibits a woman from marrying several men. He was convicted of “blasphemy,” punishable by death according to the Islamic law called “Sharia.” Despite protests from international organizations, including journalists, the president of the Afghan Senate upheld the sentence of the court. A public prosecutor even threatened to arrest journalists who supported their colleague.
The Taliban regime, supposedly responsible for the desperate situation of women in Afghanistan, ended more than six years ago. But today, in the part of Afghanistan administered by the supposedly democratic regime of Hamid Karzai, supported by the U.S., conditions of life, particularly for women, are like those in the Middle Ages. Under the rule of the warlords, Afghan women and girls remain victims of the customs and religious laws that allow them to be murdered in crimes of “honor.” It’s is not just domestic violence they suffer. In addition, women are refused access to health care, education, justice, jobs and the right to move about freely.
There are 55,000 foreign soldiers, over half of them from the United States, engaged in Afghanistan, with the numbers increasing monthly. The daily problems of the population, and especially those of women, not only haven’t lessened. On the contrary, the assaults, the violent attacks and the permanent state of war in certain regions makes the poverty and backwardness of Afghan villagers even worse.
This is why an Afghan male, a journalist who dared to draw attention to this situation, faces the death penalty.
Feb 18, 2008
On Saturday February 9, the Turkish Parliament adopted a constitutional amendment proposed by the AKP, the party of the prime minister. This amendment authorizes women wearing the Islamic veil to have access to the university, something the once-secular Turkish state had forbidden up till now. The vote, thanks to support of an extreme right-wing nationalist party, was 75% in favor.
The government is playing to the most reactionary part of the electorate, creating a diversion to take people’s minds off growing economic difficulties.
The following article was translated and excerpted from an article written by comrades in Turkey who publish the journal Sinif Mucadelesi (Class Struggle).
Even as the entire world worries about economic recession, the AKP government gives priority to the issue of wearing the veil. But it is not just the AKP. All the bourgeois parties and their leaders have fed into religious reaction.
The veil is not “a right that allows women to be more free.” Nor is the veil “a question of human rights,” as these politicians repeat. The veil is a symbol of religious reaction and of the domination of women by men. It makes women even more like slaves than they already are. The male politicians discuss how women should wear their veils without even asking their advice. Doesn’t this prove the point?
There are about 2,400,000 students at the universities, of whom 1,040,000 are women. An estimated 3,000 women students wear veils. But now religious pressure is going to increase this number enormously. It’s not a good sign for women’s rights.
If the government stood for civil liberties for women, it would do what is necessary to lessen the pressure, the violence, the rapes and the assassinations committed against women in the name of the past. It would improve working conditions, create childcare centers, etc.
Of course, the government doesn’t lift a finger to resolve any of these problems that weigh so heavily on women and children. The AKP government, in power for the last six years, not only doesn’t find solutions to these problems, it adds to them.
Feb 18, 2008
Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner about men in Afghanistan, wrote a book about Afghan women. In his 2007 book, A Thousand Splendid Suns, Hosseini pays tribute to the plight of Afghan women, who have suffered through much more than 20 years of war. Afghanistan suffered in the war with the former Soviet Union, the war between various factions and then the Taliban war against everything supposedly “modern.”
The first woman about whom Hosseini writes is Mariam, child of a wealthy businessman in Herat and a servant he raped. She and her mother are sent to live in a hut in the countryside. Every Thursday her father spends a few hours visiting her. Her mother angrily warns her daughter of what will happen: “Like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. Always. You remember that, Mariam.”
When Mariam is 15, she runs away to her father, hoping to force him to right the wrong done to her and her mother. Instead her father sells her to Rasheed, an older man and a shoemaker. She learns what she must in order to prevent Rasheed from beating her too often. But she is unable to complete a pregnancy, losing fetus after fetus.
On Mariam and Rasheed’s street are neighbors from the various ethnic groups all found living in modern Kabul. The father in one family is a teacher. The sons proudly march off to war against the Soviet Union. The youngest child, a girl Laila, struggles to understand her mother’s mental collapse when the sons don’t return.
Finally, as the Taliban take over in Kabul in1996, Laila’s life meshes with Mariam’s. Mariam and Laila will pay dearly for the disaster that is the new religious-led Afghanistan. The poorer one, Mariam, will pay with her life for standing up to the brutal Rasheed. Laila will suffer real horrors but she is the more privileged Afghani who eventually escapes from Afghanistan with part of her family.
Westerners seldom know the reality of women’s lives in such a society. Not only are men completely free to beat and bully as they please; in addition, self-righteous religious fanatics can murder women, or men, using religious excuses. Of course, Western women also face enormous violence and personal disaster from men willing to beat, rape and terrorize them. And in every society women are constantly demeaned by men who consider one half of humanity useful only for cooking, sex and child-rearing. But, the more privileged is a woman’s background and situation, the more possibilities she has, like Laila, to escape.
For the majority of women in the poorer countries of the world, like Afghanistan, there is seldom a way out. In their world men make sure that few women gain an education, get a job which would pay for a roof over her head or for food for the children. Women and children are considered the property of the men, who pay no price at all for their brutality. In fact, other men admire them for their “traditional” behavior, for keeping women “in their place.”
But in leaving readers with this brilliant picture of what women suffer in many countries throughout the world, Hosseini tells a deliberate lie. He ends his story in 2001, without any mention of what the next six years would bring the people of Afghanistan. The U.S. attack and occupation have made an already horrible situation worse, if such a thing can be imagined.
Reading A Thousand Splendid Suns helps us better understand the lives of women in Afghanistan and in every country dominated by traditional patriarchal customs and religion–patriarchy that U.S. imperialism has been perfectly ready to use to reinforce its control over countries or even regions.
Feb 18, 2008
In 1968, starting on the Vietnamese New Year holiday known as Tet, Vietnamese fighters carried out an offensive against U.S. forces in over 100 cities and towns in the southern part of the country. The Vietnamese insurgents attacked military installations, police stations, government offices and radio stations. The drive lasted throughout the month of February.
A group of 19 commandos fought their way into the U.S. embassy in Saigon and held out for six-and-a-half hours. Images of the fighting were broadcast around the world.
The insurgents held the city of Hue, the third largest city in the South, for 25 days before the U.S. recaptured it through house-to-house fighting.
The U.S. responded with a massive attack on the Vietnamese population. It pulverized cities supporting the insurgents, aiming to terrorize the population. In Hue, 116,000 of the city’s 140,000 people were made homeless. Across the South, 630,000 civilians were driven from their homes, turned into refugees within two weeks. When the U.S. recaptured the completely destroyed town of Ben Tre, a U.S. major made the now infamous remark, “It became necessary to destroy the town in order to save it.”
What the Tet Offensive demonstrated was not simply this vulgar brutality by the U.S. forces. It also showed that the United States itself would have to pay an enormous price if it were to remain in Vietnam. The U.S. may have had a massive advantage in military technology over the Vietnamese fighters. What the U.S. didn’t have was the support of the Vietnamese population, no more than it has support from the Iraqi people today.
Up to Tet, U.S. officials steadfastly claimed the war in Vietnam was going well. Those claims had no more basis in reality than do the claims today about the success of the “surge” in Iraq. In very dramatic fashion, the Tet Offensive put the lie to the official story. And that created a much more widespread opposition to the war in this country.
Tet marked a turning point in the war. It led to the end of Lyndon Johnson’s presidency. Johnson’s public approval ratings had already been dropping, but they dropped dramatically after the attack. Public approval for his handling of the war dropped from 40% to 26% in the following six weeks.
Tet forced Richard Nixon, in his run for office, to promise to end the war. When he didn’t, the situation in Vietnam turned support away from him in the American population.
After Tet, the U.S. decided to rely more heavily on South Vietnamese troops to police the population, in the same way today that it relies on Iraqi warlords, tribal leaders, and the ethnic militias to police the Iraqi population.
Some in the antiwar movement argued at the time that the war in Vietnam was a mistake. It was not a mistake, but rather part of a policy dating back as far as the 1800s, when the U.S. went to war repeatedly to extend its domination over first the entire Western Hemisphere, then into Asia and eventually the Middle East.
The U.S. went to war in Vietnam to put up a barrier to the nationalist revolts that were spreading across Asia and Africa. Knowing it was going to leave Vietnam, the U.S. decided to demonstrate to the world the heavy price the Vietnamese population had to pay for standing up to U.S. imperialism.
In the same way, the U.S. decision to go to war in Iraq was not about removing Saddam Hussein or about weapons of mass destruction. It is part of a long-term policy to control oil and strategic areas of the Middle East.
In Vietnam, the U.S. was ultimately driven out by the insurgency, the Vietnamese population, and an ever wider opposition in the U.S. population, particularly the black revolt in U.S. cities.
Feb 18, 2008
Smithfield Foods runs a very worker-unfriendly hog slaughterhouse in Tar Heel, North Carolina. Low paid and extremely dangerous work has led many workers time and again to attempt to unionize. One of the court rulings against Smithfield judged that the company had engaged in “intense and widespread coercion” against its workforce.
The company has now filed a bizarre lawsuit against the UFCW (United Food and Commercial Workers). The suit basically claims that the union violates the RICO anti-racketeering law if it dares to tell the truth about Smithfield! Its twisted logic claims that organizing protests and boycotts is the same as the Mafia shaking down a storeowner for “protection.”
In an even crazier twist, a Virginia district court actually agreed to let the case go to trial!
A New York City councilwoman labeled the suit for what it is. “It’s a wacky strategy that is aimed at coercing the union into backing off.”
And Smithfield has found a friendly judge to help its plans along. It’s nothing but a measure of how freely the courts today expose their core function: to defend corporate interests by any means possible!
But if the courts wanted to enforce the RICO law, they could begin with Smithfield, which has already been judged to use “intense and widespread coercion” against its workers. It could expand into the oil and gas industry, which schemes every day–every hour!–to extort an outrageous price per gallon from consumers. It could include the banks which schemed to trap workers into subprime mortgages and their “resets.” And what about the racket of “deregulating” energy companies so that they can demand an arm and a leg for heat and electricity, and cut us off if we don’t pay?
No, there’s no shortage of racketeers to bring to trial. But the racketeers are running the government!
Feb 18, 2008
“GM buyout offers could usher in cheaper workers.” “Veteran employees need to go to make way for lesser paid.”
So there it is. Those headlines from Detroit newspapers said it all. GM, Ford and Chrysler are pushing a new round of buyouts to get rid of all their current workers, to replace them with workers making half pay, no pensions and minimal medical benefits.
Never mind that last fall’s UAW contracts promised to limit the new lower-paid workers to 20% of the workforce. Even that contract–as lousy as it was–is being ripped up by the corporations.
UAW workers have no reason themselves to honor it.
Feb 18, 2008
Prices of wheat, corn and soybeans have all reached all-time highs.
The economists say that part of the reason for the price increase is that weird weather in the past year has hurt crops–from the droughts in the southwest and southeast last summer to the freak snowstorms in China this past month. Part of it is supposed to be the increase in the amount of corn going to the production of ethanol.
Whatever amount of truth is included in those excuses (and there’s lots of reason to say they’re exaggerated), one thing’s for sure: a big reason for the high prices is pure speculation: financial speculators have been looking for places to put their money since the real estate bubble burst last year. As speculators have bought up grain futures, THEIR demand for the futures sent prices through the roof.
The higher grain prices have already affected the price of all sorts of groceries we depend on daily. They affect not only the prices of bread and pasta, but also prices of beef, milk, chicken and eggs, because cows and chickens are both fed grains. And prices will only get worse as the speculation spreads.
At a time when workers’ wages are falling, not rising, this spike in the prices of staples is catastrophic for the working class.
Speculators couldn’t care less. And not just about the population. Jumping from commodity to commodity, looking to make a quick buck NOW, they gleefully watch as the prices jump up–even when their speculation threatens to bring the whole capitalist system crashing down around their ears.
Feb 18, 2008
For 65 days in l968, from February 12 to April 16, black workers in the sanitation department of Memphis, Tennessee, carried out a powerful strike and led a citywide movement against racist treatment of city workers. It was here, while supporting the workers’ strike, that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.
The Memphis strikers won in the face of fierce repression. In l968, the practices of Jim Crow segregation still held in Tennessee, enforced by the wealthy white power structure with all the means at their command, the KKK included.
Black sanitationmen’s pay was so low that 40% received food stamps. These workers were not listed as city employees, so they received no benefits and were not eligible for workers’ compensation when injured. They were provided no washrooms, lunchrooms, showers, or protective clothes. In bad weather they had to report for work, subject to being sent home with no pay if the weather stayed bad.
Before 1968, the city government had twice broken unionization drives, but many workers had not given up trying to organize.
In January of 1968, two black workers were killed by a defective trash crusher in their truck. The city paid off their families with a mere $500 each, angering the whole community.
Then on February 11, some black workers were sent home due to bad weather while other black and white workers were kept to work. It was the last straw. The workers all went on strike, under the AFSCME banner. And this attracted other workers to the strike, including white workers ready to follow in the steps taken by the black sanitation workers.
T.O. Jones, chair of the workers’ committee, changed from a suit into his “jail clothes” and dared the mayor to arrest him.
In Memphis, the militancy of the black population, its readiness to stand up to the powers that be, was linked to the power of workers on strike. For two months the uncollected garbage piled up in Memphis. For two months the black community boycotted central Memphis businesses and responded to every attack on the strikers with more and bigger boycotts. National union leaders and national civil rights leaders poured into Memphis.
On March 28, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference organizers called a protest meeting and march. The city government unleashed the cops to beat and tear-gas the marchers, then declared martial law and a curfew. National Guard troops occupied the city’s black districts.
The movement would not retreat. Another march was called for April 8. Dr. King stated, “Memphis is important to every poor working man, black or white, in the South.” On the night of April 4, Dr. King was shot down on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel.
Immediately, the rage of black communities across the country erupted. Central cities burned. Troops that had lately occupied Vietnam now occupied U.S. cities.
The national movement had boiled over. As part of trying to put the lid back on, President Lyndon Johnson ordered the Memphis mayor to settle with the workers.
When they began, the workers did not know how their struggle would turn out. But because they were ready to fight, they were able to attract to their side the local community, and to realize something of the real power they had.
Feb 18, 2008
A poll conducted in early February asked how to stimulate the economy. “Get out of Iraq,” said almost half the respondents. Another 43% of those polled said the government needed to increase the funds spent on health care, education and housing. The least popular response for how to improve the economy was to give this fake rebate the politicians have been bragging about.
Of course, as we long ago learned, Congress and the president have other things on their minds than the wishes of the population.