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
Aug 7, 2023
Donald J. Trump, 45th president of the United States, was indicted on August 1 on four counts stemming from his attempt to have people stop the Congressional certification of the results of the 2020 election on January 6, 2021. He was arraigned on August 3, when he pled “not guilty” to all four charges.
This is the third time Trump has been charged with felonies in the past six months—and by some measures it may be the most serious, since his actions were certainly meant to stop the transfer of the presidency to Joe Biden, winner of the November 2020 election, and they certainly led to a riot at the Capitol Building.
Democrats, and the liberal bourgeois press, say that Trump’s actions were a dangerous threat to “democracy,” nothing less than an attempted coup. They’ve been urging his prosecution in order to “save democracy.”
Trump and the right-wing media outlets have called Trump’s prosecutions a “witch-hunt", purely political, the “real” “threat to democracy". They call his indictments an attack on his supporters, the ordinary people who support him.
In this whole dog-and-pony show, we’re bombarded by messages from both sides about the “threat to democracy” presented by the other side. We’re told that the only way to “save democracy” is to support Trump or his Democratic opponent in 2024.
Which begs the question, “What democracy?” And for whom? Whose democracy is this supposed to be?
Working people have known for a long time that these two parties that talk about democracy do not serve our interests. Nothing fundamental changes. That’s why so many have quit voting.
In this “democratic” system, we are locked into a choice between two major parties, Democratic and Republican, neither of which represents working people. Both truly represent capitalists and the capitalist system.
Both parties sit in both Senate and the House of Representatives. Members of both parties sit as governors, mayors and state legislative representatives. Both parties appoint the millions of functionaries that daily transfer our tax revenue to the big corporations, to cover tax breaks for the rich, the upper class.
Meanwhile, in this so-called democracy, it is a shit-storm for the working class every day as these so-called “representatives” engineer the tearing apart of jobs, hospitals, schools, infrastructure. Who’s truly fixing the damn roads! What about the heat! Have they made any real efforts to stop the climate disasters?
What about the ruinous war in Ukraine? Both parties fund that on-going massacre of both Ukrainians and Russians with almost 100 billion dollars of our tax money, with no discussion!
When railroad workers were on strike, Biden AND Congress forced those workers into an agreement that stopped far short of what they needed. They broke that strike.
Trump and his Republicans talk about standing for the “forgotten people” of the working class. But what he focused on during his presidency was dividing working people: native-born against immigrants, white against black, men against women. His policies benefited the wealthy against all of those working people, even those he said he represented.
Just like every president, Republican or Democrat. And every Senator, and every Congressperson, when push comes to shove.
THIS is the “democracy” they want us to protect, whether for or against Trump.
Working people need a different democracy. One that WE create, one WE control, from top to bottom. One in which OUR needs take center stage. A democracy in which ALL of us could truly be part of making decisions and fixing things, every single day.
A Workers’ Democracy.
To fall into their trap, to care whether Trump gets convicted or exonerated, is to get pulled away from what really matters: our true interests as a class, and building our own political organizations.
These vultures and the capitalists they serve will never willingly give over control to working class representatives with a working-class agenda. The power will have to be taken from them and the corporations by force.
So be it. We need our own working-class party to lead a fight for the majority, not the billionaire minority.
Aug 7, 2023
UAW President Shawn Fain addressed UAW members on a livestream and laid out the contract demands that the union bargaining team is presenting to the Big 3 auto companies—GM, Ford and Stellantis.
Fain said the UAW will be demanding an upfront 20% wage increase and 5% increase every year after, as well as regular cost-of-living (COLA) raises. The union wants an end to two-tier pay and wants pensions and retiree health care for all the autoworkers hired since 2007, who now make up more than half of the workforce at the Big 3 companies. The UAW is also demanding a shorter work week, to be accomplished by giving every worker regular paid days off, on top of their holidays and vacation days.
Fain condemned the greed of the auto bosses and said that they could afford to give autoworkers what they were asking for. He put forward the slogan “Record Profits. Record Contract.”
Greed is right! Record profits is right! But, in fact, the demands that Fain laid out would not be a “Record Contract.” They would just be a return of the level of wages and benefits that autoworkers used to have, before the many years of concessions, if they got them all AND more.
From the end of World War Two through the 1970s, autoworkers and other workers were able to gain pensions, COLA, retiree health care, regular wage increases and more paid time off work when necessary to protect again heat or unsafe conditions. The U.S. capitalists had established economic domination over most of the world and were willing to give a little in the face of strikes by autoworkers and other workers. But starting in the early 1980s, the auto companies began to take back some of these gains.
Even bigger concessions were taken from autoworkers, starting in 2005, up through the 2015 contract. The UAW leadership always believed that the working class could address its problems within the framework of a capitalist society built on the exploitation of the workers. With that said, it’s true, there could only be takeaways.
Although many autoworkers were against these concessions and, at Ford and Chrysler, voted down contracts, these takeaways were finally imposed on UAW members. To go further would have required that workers have the perspective of fighting as a class.
Fain, the newly-elected UAW president, says it is going to take a fight for autoworkers to regain what they lost. Yes—and that fight has to aim at engaging other parts of the working class, right from the beginning. Today, workers are not just going against individual companies. For example, the biggest stockholders of both Ford and GM are the same investment firms, including BlackRock and Vanguard. Wall Street capitalists and investment firms own, not just the auto companies, but many other corporations and control much of the economy. These capitalists have imposed concessions on the whole working class and these bosses don’t want to see that reversed anywhere. A fight by autoworkers against even one auto company will be going up against, not just that one company, but against the whole capitalist class.
But that fight can start in auto, above all, with all the autoworkers making this fight together against Ford, GM and Stellantis.
In the past, fights by autoworkers opened the door for other workers to make a fight. Today autoworkers still play a key role in the working class, and the auto industry still has a major economic impact. A fight by autoworkers would bring the possibility that the fight could spread throughout the working class; it could spread to all those other workers who have been losing benefits and are paid wages that don’t keep up with prices.
This kind of fight by the working class would be going up against the whole capitalist class. But it also opens the door for the working class to see the power of a united working class against the bosses, a power large enough to bring the bosses’ system to a standstill.
Aug 7, 2023
As late as Saturday, July 22nd, Teamster president Sean O’Brien was holding out the possibility of a strike at the largest private sector employer in the U.S.—what might have been the biggest fight by workers here in a generation. He had set out the necessary goal of ending "part-time poverty" for workers at the company.
The tentative agreement to be voted on by 340,000 union members ended the “22.4 combo driver” positions—jobs that had workers driving package routes at much lower pay rates than the other drivers. But it goes without saying that this contract does NOT end the two-tier scheme that has existed at UPS since the early ‘80s, with senior drivers only able to make money while working lots of overtime. Meanwhile, most of the package handling is done by part-timers languishing at low pay. $26 may sound like a lot of money, but how much of that will be eaten up by inflation by 2027? And the $21 an hour this year is just in the ballpark of what many workers were getting with their pandemic bonuses.
Jose Francisco Negrete, a UPS part-timer in Anaheim, told CBS: "$21 is still poverty pay—it’s $1.50 more than the In-N-Out, which is a two-minute drive away … Are you still going to be working two or three jobs? Are you still going to be on government assistance? You have to fight big, and I don’t think we fought big."
UPS workers themselves will have the final word: voting continues through August 22nd.
Aug 7, 2023
Here are some strikes that are currently going on in the U.S. These strikes may remain isolated and separated today. But others could join them. All the workers have the same basic problems.
Actors in the Screen Actors Guild—American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG—AFTRA) continue their strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and TV Producers (AMPTP). The 11,500 Writers Guild of America (WGA) workers are on strike since May 2. Altogether the strikers number 76,500, against the combined entertainment giants of Disney, NBCUniversal, Netflix, Warner Bros., Apple, Amazon, and Discovery.
United Electrical Workers Locals 506 and 618, 1,400 strong, have been on the picket line since June 22. They are on strike against Wabtec Corp., previously the Westinghouse Air Brake Company, which bought out the General Electric locomotive business in 2019 for 11 billion dollars. The UE strikers build the locomotives.
Wabtec buys up rail-related businesses all over the world. Its profit in 2022 was 1.011 billion dollars.
The UE workers’ issues are low pay, too much mandatory overtime, poor healthcare coverage, and job security related to their diesel-engine assembly work. In addition, the union is demanding the reinstatement of their right to strike over unresolved issues, in between contracts.
Wabtec is busing in scab labor and housing them in a downtown hotel. Wabtec got a court order that workers cannot block plant gates. An on-scene federal mediator supports the company’s right to use these tactics.
Striking workers of UNITE HERE Local 11, whose contract expired June 30, have been walking off the job for anywhere from three to five days in “rolling strikes” against major Los Angeles hotels and hotel chains.
The workers’ jobs are more hurried and less safe, as the hotel business has picked up after COVID, but hotels have not hired back enough workers to keep up. One typical hotel demands that a 90-minute job now be done in 30 minutes.
The workers’ wages are extremely low, compared to the cost of living in Los Angeles. Workers can only find affordable housing if they live hours of commute time away. Along with a big wage increase, Local 11 proposes that the hotels join with the city to create affordable housing near to work. Who else knows housing better than hotels?
Aug 7, 2023
In July, extremely high temperatures scorched a large part of the U.S. During two separate weekends in July, about one out of three Americans was under an excessive heat warning.
Especially in the South and Southwest, temperatures not only reached record levels, but stayed there for a long time. While Phoenix, Arizona, reported a temperature of 110 degrees or higher for 31 days in a row, the temperature stayed above 100 degrees for 40 straight days in El Paso, Texas.
Of all weather events, it’s heat that kills the most people. And such extremely high and lasting temperatures cause the most deaths. A recent study found that extreme heat caused more than 61,000 deaths in Europe last summer, which otherwise would not have occurred.
So, how many tens of thousands of people is this heat wave killing? We might never know. Heat-related deaths are typically under-reported. Doctors usually report an immediate cause for a death, such as a stroke or heart failure, even if that condition was brought about by heat.
And in capitalist society, who gets sick and dies from heat is mainly a question of social class. The hottest neighborhoods, in every city, are working-class neighborhoods—neighborhoods with more concrete, less green space and fewer trees to provide shade. Large apartment complexes in these neighborhoods are heat traps. Residents often have to buy their own air conditioning units, if they can afford them. Last month, an emergency room doctor in Las Vegas reported that an elderly patient he treated had gotten ill because they were keeping their thermostat at 80 degrees to keep down electricity costs.
At work, working-class jobs are more likely to expose workers to extreme heat—construction and farm workers, for example, who have to work outdoors, under the sun. And when indoors, many workers have to put up with high temperatures without air conditioning.
Few U.S. states have heat standards to protect workers, outdoors or indoors. And in those states that have passed legal protections for workers exposed to heat, state governments often don’t enforce those protections. In a recent study in California, about one out of four of the 1,500 surveyed farmworkers reported that their employers “never or rarely” provide shade when the temperature is 80 degrees or higher, as required by state law. And about one out of five said that their employer never provides the mandated 10-minute cool-down break.
Nor is the federal government any help. During Phoenix’s month-long 110-degree streak, for example, a city official complained that the city didn’t get federal funds to help keep cooling centers better staffed and open for longer. That was certainly true everywhere hit by extreme heat across the country.
The federal government allocates more than a TRILLION dollars a year for military spending; it has already spent more than 50 billion dollars on the war in Ukraine, and counting. But it’s nowhere to be seen or heard when it comes to protecting working people from extreme, deadly heat—a result of the changing climate that their own policies helped bring about.
It’s not a surprise. It’s what the U.S. government—a government of big corporations, military contractors and financiers—has always done.
Aug 7, 2023
The heat wave experienced in Chicago the last week of July was so severe that several workers suffered on the job. The heat index was around 115 degrees but for workers working in warehouses, inside wagons loading and unloading trucks it was worse. Like Paramount EO, an electrical supply store in Woodridge, or in places like Walterscheid Company, a powertrain parts supply for John Deere. This company has giant fans on the ceiling, but under those conditions and the humidity they just blow hot air.
In many cases, workers were suffering dizziness, headaches and many other problems.
In places like WeatherTech Inc., which makes floor mats for cars, it was so miserable that people were going through a hellish experience. This place has ovens to treat the floor mats that have to be set around 500 degrees and some have to work around these ovens. Exactly that week, a worker could not resist the heat. She lost consciousness and had to be hospitalized, but could not be saved.
These are just a few examples that workers had to go through during the heat wave in the Chicago area.
Companies don’t care about these conditions. They try to comfort workers with Gatorade in some cases. But many workers cannot drink it: workers who suffer from diabetes or high blood pressure. Some bosses just come around the working areas asking people if they are OK. They should give extra breaks, slow down the work, and install A/C in the workplaces. But they won’t spend money for the workers. Workers have to force the companies to do it by banding together.
Aug 7, 2023
Gilead, a giant drug manufacturer, deliberately delayed introducing a more effective drug to treat HIV in order to increase its profits, as recently reported by the New York Times. Gilead’s internal documents are the evidence.
In 2001, Gilead started to sell a drug, tenofovir disoproxil, which is very effective for the HIV treatment but has many harmful side effects. In 2004, Gilead worked on a much safer variant of this first drug, called tenofovir alafenamide. But Gilead did not immediately start to market this second, much safer drug.
As Gilead admitted in its documents, the reason was to extract billions of dollars of profits first from their first drug, and delay the marketing of the second to stretch their profit extraction. Gilead finally started selling the much safer second drug 11 years later, in 2015. This stretching strategy and the patent protection of these two drugs provide a monopoly to Gilead until 2031.
Gilead’s second HIV drug now has a sticker price of $26,000 annually. It still markets the first HIV drug, which is much less safe, for less than $400 a year. As Gilead admitted, this strategy has brought vast sums of money to the owners and shareholders of this company.
These profits came at the cost of the health of the patients. Many developed chronic kidney failure and bone damage, which could have been easily avoidable if Gilead had introduced the second drug in 2004 instead of 2015.
Scientists working in the U.S. government labs invented, developed, and patented these two HIV drugs funded by taxpayer money. Then, the U.S. government licensed these patents to Gilead for their exclusive use, therefore creating a private company monopoly over their marketing.
Thus, most of the huge sums of money Gilead generated by the sales of these two drugs rested on taxpayer funded government research and development, and on callous patent strategies followed at the expense of patients’ suffering. All drug manufacturers do the same. Gilead is not an exception.
Aug 7, 2023
More than 11,000 people are living in RVs parked on streets across Los Angeles, as CNN recently reported. Many of the RV dwellers have jobs but can’t afford to pay rent in Los Angeles, where the median monthly rent is more than $2,900 for a two bedroom apartment, according to Zillow.
So, they live in these vans. Some RV dwellers own their vehicles, but others rent them on a monthly basis, ranging from a few hundred dollars to more than $1,000.
Pointing out that most of these RVs are beaten up and falling apart, city officials and politicians label the business owners that rent these RVs “vanlords,” and the politicians are moving to ban these vehicles from most city streets.
But what is the alternative? Where are these people supposed to live? The wages in Los Angeles are meager for big parts of the working class. For example, health care support jobs pay $17.58 an hour on average, barely above the minimum wage of $16.78. So, even RV rents can be relatively high for low-income workers.
The City of Los Angeles recently allocated $1.3 billion to supposedly “fight against homelessness.” If this money is directly distributed among people with housing issues, it could easily pay the $2,000 monthly rent of close to 55,000 families for a year. (The city estimated in 2022 that there were close to 70,000 homeless people. And this doesn’t even count the people living in the vans, since they are not considered homeless!)
But this is not the plan. The city channels this money to construction companies, hotel, and rental property owners, and other businesses that want to enrich themselves under the guise of solving homelessness and RV dwelling.
So, the working class is trapped by high housing costs, low wages, and scheming profiteers and politicians. Such a vicious trap leads to third-world conditions in one of the wealthiest cities in the world.
Aug 7, 2023
Understaffing at Washington, D.C.’s youth jail—where arrested children are detained while awaiting trial—is a problem, as more youths are being arrested for violent crimes.
The city hires around 30 fewer jailers for youth than five years ago. It has 40 fewer guards than the courts require. According to a recent news story, when a fight broke out on April 10 the jailers were overwhelmed. They called in police and locked down all the children for three days. Some say longer. The youths could only leave their cells for one or two hours a day. The jail’s teachers had to pass lesson plans through their cell doors. The youths had to pass them back the next day. Understaffing delayed response to another fight on June 17. What else is not reported?
Their solution to not having enough guards is to keep children, who have not been convicted of crime, locked away in their cells.
The facility was under court monitor until 2020 because of a lawsuit filed by young inmates back in 1985 over, guess what, understaffing. In 1980 the guards had a two-day wildcat strike over, guess what, understaffing. Nothing changes.
The government just won’t spend the money on young people capitalism throws away.
Aug 7, 2023
What follows is the editorial that appeared on the front of all SPARK’s workplace newsletters, during the week of Jul 30, 2023.
The Russia-Ukraine war has settled into a classic war of attrition, with battles raging for months over small bits of territory or a few streets in a village. Thousands are being killed on both sides. The carnage is so bad, most of the professional soldiers have already been either killed or wounded. In the place of trained soldiers, both governments have been throwing poorly trained and poorly armed soldiers directly into battle. Many of these fresh troops are also much older and are being killed much more quickly.
How many have been killed and wounded so far? The U.S. government refuses to say. U.S. officials want to hide from the American public just how bloody this war really is. On the contrary, they glorify this bloodbath in order to gain greater public support for it.
The U.S. government justifies this war by saying that it has to stop Vladimir Putin, who the news media call a madman. That’s their usual lie. They always demonize the other side. Remember how U.S. officials labeled Saddam Hussein a madman, with weapons of mass destruction? It was just a convenient excuse to invade Iraq to take control of its oil.
In reality, U.S. officials have been laying the groundwork for war in Ukraine since the 1990s, after the old Soviet Union split into 15 separate countries. That break-up provided the opening for the big U.S. oil companies, mining companies, timber companies, and banks to try to get their hands on Russia’s vast natural resources.
Their goal, as well, is to greatly enhance the dominant position of the U.S. military over the entire world. But standing in their way have been Russian rulers and oligarchs, who control the region and its wealth. So, the U.S. bribed and threatened corrupt Ukrainian rulers to align with the U.S. side against Russia. When the U.S. government began to arm Ukraine against Russia, it provoked a war to weaken and bleed Russia.
No, the U.S. government is not financing and arming the Ukrainian military to help defend the Ukrainian population. Just the opposite. The U.S. government is using the Ukrainian population to fight a war against Russia for the profit of the U.S. capitalist class.
History shows that this war is going to get worse. Even if there is an eventual truce, the U.S. capitalists will continue to pursue their profit conquest. And that means we are on the road to a bigger, all-out war. It’s why the U.S. military and its NATO allies are furiously arming themselves. It’s why the U.S. is using NATO to mobilize a big troop build-up along the Russian border.
Today, to a lot of workers here, the war in Ukraine seems far away, like a lot of other wars. But that is likely to change very quickly. And when it does, U.S. rulers will expect workers in this country to sacrifice even more, to accept lowering our standard of living to pay for the war, and to accept to be sent off to fight and die for the enrichment of a handful of U.S. billionaires and their families.
Workers in this country have no reason to accept this.
The only justifiable war for U.S. workers is a war against all those who profit from our labor, all those capitalist blood suckers who fatten themselves off of our blood, sweat and tears. Workers need to tear down their entire rotten system. Our fight starts right here.
Aug 7, 2023
In July, the Biden administration said it would send cluster bombs to Ukraine for use in its war against Russian forces.
Cluster bombs are a munition that explodes before hitting the ground and spreads tens or hundreds of small bomblets over a wide area. These bomblets are supposed to explode on impact and kill or maim soldiers in the area. However, many of these bomblets fail to explode when they hit the ground, but they stay there and can explode in the future when stepped on or touched.
The International Commission of the Red Cross estimates that 10 to 40% of the bomblets fail to detonate on impact, but they can kill civilians months, or even years, later. An estimated 40% of the later victims of cluster bombs are children. The vice president of the International Committee of the Red Cross said that “cluster bombs remain one of the world’s most treacherous weapons. They kill and maim indiscriminately and cause widespread human suffering.”
123 countries in the world have signed an agreement to not use cluster bombs. However, the U.S. government refuses to sign this agreement. The U.S. government used cluster bombs during the war in Viet Nam and Southeast Asia. Since the end of the war, about 25,000 people in Viet Nam and Laos have been killed or wounded by cluster bombs that the U.S. dropped during the war. The U.S. also used cluster bombs in Iraq when it invaded that country from 2003 to 2006.
Human Rights Watch has called the use of cluster bombs a “war crime.” Earlier in the Ukraine war, the White House accused Russia of using cluster bombs and called this a “war crime.” That certainly was the height of hypocrisy. Now it is the U.S. government, which is, once again, the one committing this “war crime.”
Aug 7, 2023
This article is translated from the August 4 issue #2870 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ Struggle), the newspaper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
Drone strikes hit commercial buildings in Moscow the night of July 29—30 and again August 1. Without openly claiming responsibility for these attacks, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky declared, “Gradually, the war is returning to Russian territory … it is an inevitable, natural and absolutely fair process.”
If the current escalation remains limited, it was basically inevitable from the moment the war began. Russia’s capital has been targeted on several occasions, as have Russian territories next to Ukraine. The U.S. and its allies have been sending Ukraine increasingly devastating and offense-capable weapons, like aircraft, longer-range missiles, and cluster bombs. The U.S. still holds back from intervening directly, which sets a limit to its support for Ukraine. But clearly this limit can shift. Only a few months ago the U.S. was still refusing to send weapons that would let Ukraine hit Russian territory.
Meanwhile, Russia keeps bombing Ukraine’s capital Kyiv and other cities. Odessa suffered massive bombings the night of July 23, which destroyed a lot, including the historic cathedral. Russian mercenary Wagner Group based in nearby Belarus has considered incursions into Poland or Lithuania. Those countries quickly reinforced their own troops on their eastern borders.
This fratricidal war for the last year and a half has opposed the Ukrainian and Russian peoples, who were united by many ties until now. Given the brutality and contempt for ordinary people which characterize his dictatorial regime, Putin’s attempt at occupying Ukraine is his response to the pressure exerted by the imperialist powers. Led by the U.S., these powers have aimed at bolstering their grip on this region of the world ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The Russian and Ukrainian populations pay ever more dearly for this confrontation between brigands representing the interests of the ruling classes—the imperialist bourgeoisies on the one hand, and the bureaucrats and privileged Russians on the other.
Aug 7, 2023
This article is translated from the August 4 issue #2870 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ Struggle), the newspaper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
President Mohamed Bazoum of Niger in West Africa, a big ally of France, was overthrown by a military coup on July 26. The putsch was led by Abdourahamane Tchiani, head of the presidential guard. Macron and the French government immediately responded with threats.
This is the third recent coup in the Sahel region of Africa. It follows a coup in Mali in August 2020 and one in Burkina Faso in January 2022. The French army has been at war in this region of Africa since 2012. French president François Hollande decided to deploy the army there to fight Islamist militias in Mali. But despite this decade-long deployment, massacres of civilians happen one after another—particularly in the so-called “three borders” area between Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso. Since 2013, more than three million inhabitants of the Sahel have had to flee, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
The French army has only contributed to the chaos. It has not helped. How could it be otherwise? The only real goal was to perpetuate the looting of France’s former African backyard by French companies—firstly Orano, formerly Areva, which supplies France’s nuclear power plants.
Niger is the world’s fourth largest exporter of uranium. But it is also one of the world’s poorest countries. The International Monetary Fund ranks Niger as 182 out of 187 countries. In 2010, the portion of revenue from uranium sales going to Niger was barely 13%. The rest went to Areva. This economic domination fuels the legitimate anger of the population against France and the regimes France protects in the name of defending alleged democracy.
Demonstrators attacked the French flag and the logo of the French embassy in Niger’s capital Niamey on July 30. The French government and media claimed the protesters were manipulated by the military junta or by Russia. But demonstrations demanding that France get out are nothing new. In November 2021, in Téra in Niger’s west, people got angry enough to block a convoy of French soldiers. The troops responded by shooting. They killed two people and wounded 18.
French imperialism was forced to relocate its troops during the coups in Mali and Burkina Faso. But the coup in Niger is not the same situation. Macron threatened an “immediate and firm response.” U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken defended coup target Bazoum. This contrasts with U.S. policy until now. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), a group of government leaders loyal to imperialism, threatened military intervention. They gave the junta a one-week ultimatum to return Bazoum to office.
Is an armed intervention next? What is certain is that following the putsch, great powers like France are concerned about their control over strategically important minerals in the region, and their control over the Sahel in general. To be able to continue their looting, they are ready to turn threats into action—their own or that of their local allies.
Aug 7, 2023
It’s been 78 years since the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II. Today, we see the U.S. providing powerful weaponry to Ukraine in its war with Russia. The U.S. has repeatedly engaged in provocations against China off its coast in the South China Sea. And recently the U.S. and other NATO countries agreed to construct new bases in eight countries bordering Russia and to mass a quarter of a million new troops there in the next two years.
The big imperialist powers have agreed to greatly increase their military spending in the coming years. The recent debt ceiling bill between President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy included an agreement to increase “regular” military spending at least one percent faster than the rate of inflation. Japan plans to increase its military budget by at least 65% within five years. Germany says it will increase military spending by 25% this year. France will increase its military spending, which now stands at 45 billion euros, more modestly, by 3 billion euros every year from 2024 to 2030.
The corporate media and the bosses’ politicians hint that Vladimir Putin has considered the use of nuclear weapons. Yet the United States remains the only country to have actually used nuclear weapons against another country, and in the current tense situation it’s not hard to imagine the next world war and the possibility of nuclear weapons being employed.
All this makes it important to understand the real history behind the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The recent release of the film Oppenheimer has also put the issue front and center for many.
The history taught by the U.S. military and its supporters would have us believe that the U.S. needed to drop the bombs to force Japan to surrender, and that had it not done so, the U.S. would have had to launch a bloody invasion of Japan that would have cost the lives of one million U.S. soldiers.
In fact, Japan was on the verge of surrender before the bombing. Over 1.7 million Japanese soldiers and sailors had died in combat between 1937 and 1945. Another 300,000 Japanese died from disease and starvation and nearly 400,000 Japanese civilians died from the firebombing of Tokyo and bombings of 65 other Japanese cities by the U.S. and its Allies in the spring of 1945. In total, over 2.7 million Japanese had died, compared to 100,000 American deaths.
Records show that the U.S. government knew perfectly well that Japan was already defeated, and that no invasion would be necessary to secure the unconditional surrender the U.S. insisted on. After the war, the U.S. military’s own Strategic Bombing Survey Report concluded that even without the use of the atom bombs, Japan would have surrendered by at least the end of 1945 and possibly by November 1 of that year.
Yet U.S. military officials pushed President Harry Truman to order that the newly developed atom bombs be dropped on Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9. It is estimated that between 130,000 and 226,000 people were killed in the bombings of the two cities, not counting all those who died in the following years from the effects of the radiation. Everyone and everything close to the blasts was simply vaporized. People further out were crushed by falling debris, burned by fires, or inundated with radiation that made them go blind or made their skin fall off.
The U.S. chose to use the end of its war with Japan to put the world on notice that it would and could bomb and murder indiscriminately to protect its interests, its domination of the entire world.
The U.S. has proved its willingness to use the same kinds of murderous tactics that it used against Japan many times since: firebombing North Korean cities in the Korean War, bombing villages in Vietnam, more recently in Iraq and Afghanistan.
What guarantee is there, that the U.S. and other military powers wouldn’t use nuclear weapons in the next war, another war over control of the world’s resources? None! They have demonstrated the opposite! If decisions are left in the hands of those who serve the wealthy ruling classes of the world, we are guaranteed a deadly result.
Aug 7, 2023
This article is translated from the July 17 issue #497 of Power to the Workers (Le Pouvoir aux Travailleurs), magazine of the revolutionary workers’ group Internationalist Communist African Workers’ Union active in Africa and France.
Mining giant Rio Tinto extracts titanium-iron oxide ore from sand on seashores and beaches in southern Madagascar. The company dumps toxic waste into the rivers.
Spokespeople for the Fight for the South association (LUSUD) say destruction of the environment and impoverishment of the population are accelerating because of non-compliance.
Drinking water sources are contaminated by heavy metals such as uranium, aluminum, and cadmium. Radioactivity is rising and sickening villagers. The number of women giving birth to stillborn or deformed children increases exponentially.
The people in the area have been fighting for a decade against this criminal contempt by Rio Tinto and by the government, which owns a one-fifth share in mining subsidiary QMM operating in Fort Dauphin-Taolagnaro. Several freshwater lakes and rivers rich with fish in the past have become sterile cesspools poisoned by the mine. People who live from fishing have lost their livelihoods. Farmers suffer considerable damage.
The mine sows desolation and death in plain view of officials. Each time the crisis broke out, token amounts of money were disbursed to a few traditional chiefs and notable members of civil society. This was accompanied by demagogic gestures like distributing a few bags of rice, cows, and basic foods. All this was presented with folk ceremonies with drums, trumpets, and appearances by government ministers.
Madagascar’s president Andry Rajoelina is a businessman. Neither he nor his predecessors have ever refused anything to the kings of the mine, since the country’s bourgeoisie have enriched themselves in the process.
During the commemoration of the country’s independence in June, the president launched calls for national unity, patriotism, the spirit of sacrifice by citizens, and all sorts of nonsense intended to fool working people.
But workers and other people in the impoverished Anosy region are not fooled. That same day, they took up their struggle again despite savage repression unleashed on them. They barricaded the access road to the mine courageously and resolutely for the umpteenth time. Their outrage has broken out again and again. The government doesn’t shrink from repressing any source of protest by poor people. Several LUSUD leaders have been arrested and imprisoned. Others have fled.
The region’s population is not asking for charity. They do demand their due: substantial financial compensation for all of them, without discrimination against people who don’t own a lot of land.
Many villagers say their long-term aspirations are to have safe drinking water and electrical supply infrastructures like what executives and technicians housed near the mine enjoy. Rio Tinto does not lack resources. With some ups and downs, the fight by and for those left behind continues. Long live their fight!
Aug 7, 2023
This article is translated from the July 28 issue #2869 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ Struggle), the newspaper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
The latest United Nations (UN) report on “The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World” gives figures showing how serious this problem is.
Last year, 2.4 billion people suffered from food insecurity, 900 million of them severely. This is 122 million more people than in 2019. In 2021, 3.1 billion people did not have enough to eat properly. Malnutrition and stunted growth or being overweight affect more than one in five children under five years old.
International institutions say it is a positive sign that the numbers haven’t risen much since 2021. But what about all the goals to reduce world hunger, which get repeated year after year at international conferences? They have proved impossible to reach.
The UN blames the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. These circumstances have contributed to worsening the situation. But they do not explain the underlying trend. Hunger, malnutrition, and food insecurity continue to afflict a large part of the world’s population in the 21st century. The economic system is directly responsible for this situation because it excludes billions of poor people from the market. Even more scandalous, humanity has the means to satisfy everybody’s needs.
Aug 7, 2023
Every day truckers drive and deliver finished products, raw materials and foods, throughout the country. They deliver more than a billion tons per month. Their huge vehicles require them to go to a truck driver training school, to pay for learning how commercial driving is regulated, how to keep logs of their work on a computer, and how to drive trucks that are as long as three or four cars end to end.
More than a million truckers are on the road at any given time, truckers licensed with a CDL, and delivering three quarters of everything we buy. There are many more truckers with a CDL who have given up driving these big rigs. Their main reason is working 80-hour weeks with an average pay of $48,000 a year.
Fifty years ago, truck driving was still a good-paying job with benefits. The Kennedys already were prosecuting the leader of the Teamsters in the 1960s. In the ’70s, the largest carriers were demanding deregulation and laying off drivers. In 1980, after heavy lobbying from the trucking industry, President Reagan deregulated the industry. That forced thousands of trucking companies out of business. Life expectancy for truck drivers began to fall. The majority could no longer get home very often, with a harsh result on families or individuals who turned to drugs and alcohol.
Today, 90% of truck drivers quit in their first year of training, which costs an average of $4,000, money most have to pay back. In their first year, they average half of what they will make when they have experience. When they are on the road, they wait around for hours because companies don’t have enough staff to receive shipments or to prepare what goes out. Truckers today are threatened with cameras looking at their every move and threatened by the talk of self-driving vehicles putting them out of work.
The biggest trucking companies repeatedly tell truck drivers during training that they will be able to live the American Dream, but only if they buy their own trucks. This lie saves the companies the cost and maintenance on big trucks, not to mention the cost of benefits. Such lies are told throughout society, as wages for all blue-collar workers have fallen during the last 40 years.
Imagine you manage to get a loan to buy a big rig, which costs more than many houses. You will have a mortgage, with interest, and you must be insured. You will pay your own gas, tolls, taxes and maintenance. You will have to advertise and negotiate as an individual trying to get good loads. A single accident putting the truck in a shop means no wages. Health insurance and pensions—that’s all at your own cost. The largest trucking carriers will give the best loads to their own drivers.
Truckers and all of us are put at risk by a broken-down system, which allows the bosses to profit while our lives become more and more impoverished.
Aug 7, 2023
Being a long-haul truck driver means spending the majority of your time in your truck. It’s where you sleep, eat, watch TV, exercise and generally live your life when you’re out on the road. The cabin becomes your second home.
For car haulers, the problem of cabin space has been coming up. Companies have been putting pressure on drivers to haul more cars so they can make more money. One way to do that is to get a trailer that can fit another car on the roof of the truck. But this often reduces the amount of cabin space. Some drivers can barely stand up to stretch.
Companies are making the drivers suffer as they line their pockets with the profits drivers create.
Aug 7, 2023
Film: Selma Lord Selma, directed by Charles Burnett, 1999; Available on Disney+ and YouTube
Selma, Lord, Selma is a 1999 American film based on true events that happened in March 1965, known as Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama. The film tells the story through the eyes of an 11-year-old African-American girl named Sheyann Webb (Jurnee Smollett-Bell). The movie is based on the book of the memories of Sheyann, who was eight years old when she participated in the events, even skipping school to get involved. It shows how the whole community came to be swept up in the fervor of the fight for voting rights, how protestors met and organized in the face of threats and violence. In spite of the danger, they decided to march from Selma to Montgomery. The police attacked in force, injuring at least 60, some very seriously. The film (and book of the same name) shows the quiet heroism and the high courage in the face of danger.
Book: Hiroshima, by John Hersey, 1946
Hiroshima tells the story of the effects of the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan with the first atomic bomb on August 5, 1945, and the aftermath. The book consists of the descriptions of the experiences of six survivors of Hiroshima. The details of what they saw are horrifying: melted eyeballs, skin sliding off, individuals who were vaporized leaving only their shadow etched onto walls, “a parade of misery,” and almost the entire city in ruins. The after-effects followed people for decades.
As seen in the movie Oppenheimer, the atomic bomb was developed by bringing together the best scientists in the world and by not sparing any expense. However, this scientific endeavor sought only to benefit the ruling elites and to scare and subjugate the working people of the world. Why should science benefit only them at our expense?
This book was considered so important for the world to know that it was printed in magazines, read on the radio, and was distributed for free. Even today the audible version is available without charge.
Aug 7, 2023
On January 5, 2023, the Biden-Harris administration announced new immigration measures through a program called “humanitarian parole.” This new process would give nearly 30,000 people a month the opportunity to enter legally and work in the United States for two years, if they are sponsored and meet the conditions imposed. Haiti, Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua are the four countries concerned. According to the most recent figures, by the end of June 2023, nearly 160,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans had arrived legally in the USA under these new immigration procedures.
Through this program, Joe Biden’s government seems to be posing as a benefactor. In Haiti, this program has been warmly welcomed and has triggered a veritable euphoria among the population, which is plagued by misery and gang dictatorship. One imagines that the situation is no different in the other countries concerned, which shared a common history of impoverishment by the United States, whose wealth has been built on the plundering of Latin America, including the four countries benefitting from this program.
It is very likely that many families in these four countries will be able to improve their living conditions thanks to this opportunity. However, many of the Haitian beneficiaries who have arrived in the U.S.A. complain that they are unable to find work, despite having their work permits.
Indeed, since the beginning of 2023, many American companies have been carrying out mass lay-offs. Such is the case of the CVS pharmacy chain, which will be laying off 5,000 employees as part of a cost-cutting policy, according to officials. Some have even closed their doors, like the 99-year- old Yellow Company, which halted operations on July 30, announcing the layoff of 30,000 workers, the majority of whom are immigrants, Haitians, Latinos, etc.
This program is being launched against a backdrop of rising unemployment. Therefore, it is worthwhile to ponder what is the motive behind these new migratory measures, when the number of immigrants awaiting regularization of their situation in the USA runs into the millions? We cannot forget the savage repression and mistreatment of Haitian migrants by American border guards on horseback at the Mexican-American border, which caused a huge media scandal in September 2021.
So why this about-turn? There are at least three explanations for this new approach to migration. None is based on generosity.
Firstly, the United States is under considerable migratory pressure, with thousands of people piling up at the border every day, or extending their stay on American soil beyond the validity of their visas. By dangling the hope of legal entry, which must be applied for by beneficiaries living in their own country, these new measures aim to encourage migrants to clear the border and discourage attempts at illegal immigration. According to human rights organizations, the number of migrants on the border has been considerably reduced following the implementation of this program.
With less than two years to go before the presidential elections, the leaders of the Democratic Party are playing the generosity card to win the sympathy of the fraction of the electorate of Haitian and Latino origin, whose weight is by no means negligible in the electoral balance in the USA, while the Republicans are adopting the nationalist stance of fierce guardians of the Star-Spangled Republic’s borders to win over voters who are hostile to immigration, or even racist. Indeed, border management between Mexico and the USA has always been a key issue in U.S. election campaigns.
Thus it hardly came as a surprise that on January 23, the Republican response fell like a thunderclap in a serene sky. Twenty states filed a lawsuit seeking the withdrawal of the measure announced by President Joe Biden, which, they argue, would violate current U.S. immigration laws. Suddenly, the stage was set for yet another battle between the Democratic and Republican parties, two sides of the same coin, cowardly exploiting the distress of desperate peoples for purely electoral ends.
This measure can also be explained by the timing of the next World Cup, to be held in North America (USA, Canada, Mexico) in less than 3 years. In Qatar, preparations for the event required the employment of 30,000 immigrant workers, 6,500 of whom lost their lives building the infrastructure. It is highly probable that the attraction of cheap labor is one of the motivations behind the U.S. government’s new migration measures. The two-year residency period and guaranteed work experience support this explanation.
While this humanitarian program offers many a way out to the famous “American dream,” it is clear that the majority of the poor in the recipient countries will not be so lucky. What is needed is the awareness that the salvation of us all will not come through individual escapes or humanitarian programs of this kind, but through the collective struggle of workers and the poor classes in general to expropriate the possessing classes on an international scale and put the planet’s immense wealth at the service of the collectivity.