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
Jul 22, 2024
At their national convention, the Republicans sounded like a whole new party. Donald Trump said he was upset that people are suffering from inflation and the lack of good jobs. And he proclaimed he would fix all that. Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance presented himself as a defender of the working class. Vance joined with Trump promising to improve things for workers, union and non-union. The Republicans even had a speech from Teamster president Sean O’Brien denouncing corporate greed.
What is clear is that the Republicans, despite being led by Trump and Vance, two multi-millionaires, are trying to make a shift away from being known as the party of big business. They try to present themselves as a party fighting for ordinary working people. The Republicans clearly are trying to cover up decades of their anti-worker history, including Trump’s own history.
As a businessman, Trump ripped off many people who worked for him and advised the auto companies to move their plants to where they could pay cheaper wages. As president, Trump took overtime pay away from millions of workers, weakened safety rules for coal miners, oil rig workers and farm workers, and issued executive orders to reduce wages for federal workers. Trump’s platform includes blaming immigrants for any and all problems that workers face. He tries to divide the working class in order to weaken it.
Despite the Republicans’ history, their attempt to sound pro-worker may gain the votes of many workers, who are angry about inflation and the economy and blamed Biden. But the whole Democratic Party opened the door for the Republicans by defending the Biden administration. It’s not a surprise that many working people wanted to vote against Biden and may now vote against whoever the Democrats finally decide to run.
For decades, the Democrats presented themselves as the party of the working class. But that, too, has always been untrue. The Democrats have taken credit for gains made by the working class through its own struggles.
In the 1930s and 40s, the working class conducted a massive fight with sit-down strikes that improved their lives and established unions. During the 1960s civil rights movement and rebellions, millions of people protested and came into the streets, pushing back Jim Crow laws and the worst abuses of racism. After these fights, the Democrats tried to claim credit for what the working class and the black population had done themselves by passing a few weak laws. Democrats used the votes of workers and black people to get elected, but once in power the Democrats served the interests of the capitalist class. This is what has opened the door for the Republican party and people like Trump, a boss and a billionaire, to masquerade as a friend of the working class.
The Republican and Democratic parties both serve the same master—the capitalists, the billionaires, the CEOs. They serve the interests of capitalism, which are directly opposed to the interests of workers. The capitalists’ interests are to wring every penny of profit and every ounce of labor from the working class.
The Republicans and the Democrats both have proved what side they are on. They are our enemies. We have always needed our own party.
No matter who wins this year’s election, the Republicans or the Democrats, it is not going to change things for the working class. Both parties will continue to serve the capitalist class, and the capitalist class will continue to exploit the working class, taking more of what workers produce. The economy will continue to worsen for workers.
The only thing that will change our situation is when the working class is ready to use the power we have and make a fight for a better life. A working class party can speak for the working class and can help to organize the fight that is needed. That party needs to be built.
Jul 22, 2024
Do voters in Arizona agree that women should have the fundamental right to have abortion access if they so choose? The answer is: 823,685 voters, or roughly 1 of every 5 registered voters in the state, signed to put the Arizona Abortion Access Act on the November ballot.
If this isn’t a mandate—what is?
Jul 22, 2024
It used to be that stamps went up a penny, twice a year. Then two cents. Now, “FOREVER” first class postage stamps are going up another 5 cents—the second five-cent increase in 2024.
It may seem small, but when you add up all the other price increases—for food, car insurance, prescription drugs, etc., for ordinary folks, who still write letters and pay their bills by mail, this is yet another price increase that cuts into their income.
And that money DOES NOT go to postal workers.
Jul 22, 2024
Chicago is hosting the DNC. Its leaders hope to showcase the beautiful downtown, the wealthy neighborhoods, and the many parks, restaurants, bars, and museums. They hope the tens of thousands of visitors don’t notice the human disaster inflicted on so many who live here.
To this end, the city demolished tent encampments of homeless people that were “too close” to the convention site. Some of those living in them were even offered shelter spaces. But no new shelters were opened—that would be too much like right. Instead, other homeless people were kicked out to make room!
Jul 22, 2024
Michigan taxpayers keep funding big corporations in the form of tax breaks that the legislature and governor approve. A recent example shows how the money is being wasted.
A company named Switch, near Grand Rapids, promised to create 1,000 jobs by 2022. It was given millions of dollars in tax breaks. But as of 2024, they have created only 26 jobs. Switch is still receiving some of the tax breaks—a million dollars worth!
That comes out to a $38,000 tax break the company gets, per job!
Jul 22, 2024
Marcellus Williams is scheduled to be executed by the state of Missouri on September 24 for a murder he didn’t commit. He has already spent 25 years on death row.
In August of 1998, Felicia Gayle, a former newspaper reporter, was killed when she was stabbed 43 times with a butcher knife from her own kitchen. There was plenty of evidence left at the scene, including footprints in Gayle’s blood, fingerprints, hair samples, and DNA evidence on the murder weapon. None of the evidence matched Marcellus Williams.
At trial, there were no eyewitnesses to the murder. The prosecution based its case on the testimony of two police informants. Both claimed that Williams confessed to them, but each of their stories changed over time and were inconsistent with the evidence in the case. The family of one of the witnesses, Henry Cole, later told investigators he made up the story to get the reward money put up by Gayle’s family.
Williams’ execution was set for August 27, 2017, and he was actually fed his expected last meal before the governor at the time, Eric Greitens, stayed his execution. Though Greitens called for a board inquiry to look at the case, including the DNA evidence, years went by with no action taken.
The governor who replaced Greitens, Mike Parson, terminated the board of inquiry. Though lawyers from the Midwest Innocence Project sued to stop the breakup of the board of inquiry, the Missouri Supreme Court upheld it, and his execution date was set.
Unfortunately, Williams is not alone in being railroaded in this way. A study by the Center on Wrongful Convictions found that testimony from jailhouse informants accounted for 49.5% of wrongful convictions nationally since 1971.
It also didn’t help Williams that he’s black and the female victim was white. In St. Louis County, history shows that a black defendant in a case in which a murder victim is white is 3.5 times more likely to receive the death penalty than a white defendant.
Workers have an interest in opposing the death penalty imposed by courts that provide different “justice” to those with money versus those without.
The Innocence Project is asking supporters to sign a petition to stop the execution at https://innocenceproject.org/petitions/stop-the-execution-of-marcellus-williams-an-innocent-man/.
Jul 22, 2024
Healthcare conglomerates, including CVS Health, UnitedHealth and Cigna, swindle patients by inflating prices of prescription drugs to mind-boggling levels, according to a recent report by the Federal Trade Commission.
For example, a generic drug, Gleevec, which is used to treat a blood cancer, costs only $97 to a patient at Costco. But this drug’s price skyrockets to $9,000 at Walgreens and reaches a mind-boggling $19,200 from a home delivery company.
These price jumps are engineered by a complicated network of health insurance companies, middlemen (known as pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs), and pharmacies that are owned and controlled by just three healthcare conglomerates nationwide, CVS Health, UnitedHealth and Cigna. Together, these three companies control 80% of all the prescriptions filled in the U.S., which brings them over one trillion dollars in sales every year. This massively high revenue makes these conglomerates among the biggest and the richest companies in the world.
Because of such market domination, these healthcare conglomerates steer patients to their own pharmacies and mail order companies. If you are insured by Aetna, which is owned by CVS Health, your pharmacy will certainly be CVS. Insurer Cigna owns a mail-order drug company and pharmacy benefit manager, Express Scripts. UnitedHealth’s mail-order drug company is Optum Home.
So, the three healthcare conglomerates don’t give their customers any choice but to buy the drugs at a wildly inflated cost from the companies in their own networks.
These companies are only in business to increase their sales, profits and control. Our health is another opportunity for them to extract ever more money for themselves.
Jul 22, 2024
The 2024 homeless count in Los Angeles found that, for the first time in six years, the number of homeless people had not increased since the previous count.
City politicians immediately jumped on this announcement, bragging that mayor Karen Bass’s policy of sweeping homeless encampments and placing people in temporary housing “is working.” Bass called it a “change in trajectory,” saying that the number of the “unsheltered homeless” was down 5% in the county and 10% in the city.
But these “sheltered” homeless are still homeless, sheltered temporarily. And the overall homeless count, over 45,000 homeless in the City of L.A. and over 75,000 in L.A. County, represents an increase of 40% from 2018.
Working class people in L.A. feel the crisis in their bones. In a recent survey conducted by UCLA researchers, about 4 out of 10 renters said they had worried about becoming homeless in the last few years—a record high.
The main driving force behind L.A.’s enormous homelessness crisis is skyrocketing rent. Paying millions of dollars of taxpayer money to hotel owners and landlords for “temporary housing,” as city politicians do, will not improve the situation when, every day, new workers are joining the ranks of the homeless.
Homelessness, caused by capitalists’ profit drive, cannot be solved within the workings of a profit-based system. The thousands of tents that have been occupying L.A.’s parks, underpasses and sidewalks for years prove that.
Jul 22, 2024
Eighty to ninety women in Michigan die each year during pregnancy or within 42 days after pregnancy ends, and that number is on the rise, increasing 33.6% from 2019 to 2020.
This is hardly a problem limited to Michigan. 4,300 women died during pregnancy in the United States between 2018 and 2022. The U.S. had a worse maternal mortality rate in 2020 than 64 other countries, despite being one of the world’s wealthiest.
Maternal mortality is often associated with poverty and worse medical care as a result. Medicaid pays for the medical care in 40% of births in the U.S. and federal law only requires states to provide Medicaid-funded care to women for 60 days after giving birth. Some states have extended that period of funding to 12 months, but others have not.
Maternal mortality also results from racial discrimination and mistreatment of women during pregnancy by the medical system. The Centers for Disease Control reported last August that one in five women are mistreated while receiving maternity care. One in three black women report mistreatment. Discrimination has concrete negative consequences.
For all the constant claptrap we hear about the right-to-life from anti-abortion forces, somehow, we never seem to hear much talk about the right-to-life of mothers!
While women are expected to birth and raise future generations, that role is not valued at a level that ensures a real financial support for their health nor for their newborns.
Jul 22, 2024
The Washington, D.C. Metro raised bus and rail fares by 12.5% this month. The lowest rail and bus fares rose to $2.25. The maximum rail fare, monthly rail base costs, and MetroAccess maximum fees all rose. Last summer, Metro had already raised fares for longer rail rides.
Officials insist these increases—higher than other cities—are needed to avoid “catastrophic service cuts.” Really? They also say these fare hikes are “in line with cost of living adjustments.” But Metro is also freezing hiring and wages!
More and more of us can’t afford cars. Metro is making sure we can’t even afford the damn bus!
Jul 22, 2024
Maryland raised vehicle registration fees between 60 and 75% this month. The next time people register their vehicle, it will cost $221 for two years for small cars, up from $137. Bigger vehicles will be even more. There are now annual surcharges for electric vehicles, and a new fee for ride-hailing services.
The tobacco tax on a pack of cigarettes will also go up by $1.25 (up from $3.75 to $5), and the tax on vapes also went up.
The politicians are acting just like all the businesses that are also charging way too much for food, gas, and rent.
Jul 22, 2024
The big contractors demanded, and Los Angeles World Airport management agreed, to pay an additional 400 million dollars for what the contractor says are cost overruns. That’s on top of the 200 million dollars in cost overruns the airport agreed to pay last month. They also want another 50 million dollars more to pay for even more cost overruns in the future.
These big contractors are like giant vacuum cleaners, hoovering hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money at a time.
Jul 22, 2024
The following speech was taken from the independent website, workingclassfight.com
It’s really exciting to be here to start another campaign for Working Class Party. So, I would just like to take a few minutes to say some things about what we’re going to talk about in this campaign this year and why we’re running.
Trump and Biden both work for the enemies of the working class. These two parties, these two politicians and their parties, the Democrats and Republicans, are faithful servants of the capitalist class, which exploits the working class. These politicians work for the same capitalists who raise prices and hold down our wages. They work for the same capitalists who cut jobs and work the rest of us harder.
Republicans and Democrats need our votes because the millionaires and billionaires who fund their campaigns are only a handful of people, a handful of votes. So, the Republicans and Democrats want the votes of the millions of working people who make up the vast majority of the population of people in this country.
These politicians need our votes, but we don’t need them or their parties. The working class needs its own party. And that’s what we will say in our campaign this year. The Working Class Party is not the mass party that the working class needs, but it is a step toward building that party.
We will talk about the problems faced by the working class today. And we all see these problems, low wages and high prices, people living paycheck to paycheck, jobs that are only part time or temporary, working conditions that are getting worse. We all see that the schools for our children are declining. We can’t afford to buy a house or rent an apartment. Healthcare costs are out of control. Roads and water lines and sewer systems are falling apart.
The Republicans and Democrats have no answer for these problems. Trump had four years, and Biden had four years, and the Republicans and Democrats had over a hundred years, and the problems are getting worse. But the working class has their own answers to these problems.
We will talk about inflation, which is killing working people today. The corporations raise prices faster than they raise the wage that they pay us. It means higher profits for the corporations and a lower standard of living for the working class. So, this inflation really amounts to a wage decrease.
A price increase without a wage increase means a pay cut. Okay. And so, we say no more pay cuts. We need a pay raise. Our wages should go up immediately for us to catch up for all the ground we have lost to inflation. And in the future, when prices go up, our wages should go up and immediately go up every week. And the same should be true for pensions and Social Security and all retirement money. Money should go up for disability and unemployment and any other money that working people get.
The truth is that millions of people don’t have a job, but the government doesn’t count them as being unemployed. And we know that the only jobs available are part-time or temporary jobs. Not enough to live on, much less support a family. And while all this is going on, the people who do have full-time jobs often have jobs that are more than full-time. They’re working 50 or 60 or more hours a week doing the work of two people or three people or four people. The people who do have jobs are being worked to death.
The working class answer to jobs is very simple. Divide up the work among everyone who wants a job. The people who do have a job can work fewer hours at a reasonable pace. The people who need a job can have a job. And everyone can be paid a full wage, a decent wage, more than we get now, enough to live comfortably.
The corporate bosses of course are going to cry they can’t afford this. That they can’t afford to pay higher wages and work more people. And the politicians are going to back them up. They’re going to back up the bosses, saying, “Oh, this is impossible. The money isn’t there.”
To that we say, “Bullshit.” We say, “Open up the books and let the workers look at them.”
We already can see that the capitalists are making record profits. We already can see that most of these profits are going to wealthy billionaires through dividends and stock buybacks.
From what we can already see, we know there’s enough money to pay for higher wages and jobs for everyone. And how much more money are they holding and hiding that we would see when we opened up the books?
What about everything else that is falling apart in this society?
We see everything getting worse today. The schools for working class children don’t have enough money. Hospitals and health care clinics are closing. Roads are crumbling. Water mains are breaking. There is lead and PFAS in our drinking water.
It’s all happening because money is not being spent on these things. But the money is there. And workers pay plenty in taxes, as everybody knows. But most of this public money does not go for what the public needs. Most of the money goes to wealthy people and corporations in the form of tax breaks, subsidies and grants. Hell, the rich who get most of the tax money don’t even pay any taxes themselves.
So, workers are paying for the rich to get richer.
But the working class has an answer to that. Take the public money that is being given to the wealthy and the corporations and use it for public use for what people need. Use the money to fix the damn roads, clean up the water, improve our schools and provide the health care that we need.
Immigration has become an issue because Biden and Trump and the media talk about it every day, putting it in front of the working class. Biden and Trump are trying to outdo each other, blaming immigrants for everything that’s going on.
Instead of talking about who is really responsible, they blame immigrants for working for low wages and pulling down the wages of all workers. And that’s one thing we can say is true. When the bosses get away with paying some workers less, it makes it easier to pressure other workers to work for less. It’s just like when UAW auto workers, like myself, we were forced to give a concession and it helped the bosses push down everybody’s wages.
But let’s put the blame where it belongs. Put the blame on the capitalists who are exploiting every worker wherever they were born.
Immigrants don’t come here wanting to work for low wages and work under unsafe conditions. They want what every worker wants, decent pay and safe working conditions. But immigrant workers are forced to work for less money, and they have to work unsafe jobs, because the politicians of both parties keep immigrant workers in an illegal status, which means that the bosses can threaten them anytime they want with deportation if they ask for more money or better working conditions. Keeping immigrant workers in an illegal status is just another way for companies to pay workers less and increase their own profits. And the politicians who make the immigration laws are doing the bidding of their corporate masters.
By keeping immigrant workers illegal, the capitalists benefit in another way. The capitalists and the politicians hope to keep the working class divided against itself. Just like the bosses always try to use racism to divide white workers from black workers, they also want workers whose families were immigrants in the past or who were brought here in chains in the past, they want us to blame the newest immigrants who are coming here now looking for work.
But that only works if we are foolish enough to listen to the politicians and listen to the bosses. It only works if we listen to the very people who are exploiting us every day. We know these people are not on our side, so why should we listen to them? We can’t fall for their tricks and their lies.
The world is moving toward war, a bigger war, even a world war. If there’s another world war, the working class in this country will not escape it, will be affected and suffer for it.
We are already affected by the buildup for war. The U.S. military budget is taking many billions of dollars that could be and should be used for the needs of the population.
The U.S. military budget is already the biggest in the world, by far. The U.S. spends more money on its military than the next nine countries in the world put together.
But the U.S. government is not stopping there, because this monstrous military budget is increasing every year. It is now getting close to one trillion dollars a year. And what are they spending all this money for, if not for war?
And it’s not just the increased military spending. Look at all the wars going on around the world today with the U.S. government right in the middle of them. The war in Ukraine is basically a U.S. war against Russia. The U.S. and its NATO allies have been surrounding Russia for decades, stationing more troops and missiles right up to the very border of Russia. These threats against Russia finally provoked Putin into launching his brutal invasion.
Then there is the war in Gaza, or rather what should be called the genocide in Gaza. Hamas may have struck first by killing over a thousand Israelis, but since then the Israeli government has slaughtered over 37,000 Palestinians, children, women, and men, most of whom have nothing to do with Hamas. The Israeli government could not be conducting this massacre without the weapons and support of the U.S. And this U.S.-supported war in Gaza has turned the whole Middle East into a tinderbox that could draw in more countries and explode into a bigger war.
There are also wars going on in Africa and Asia, wars where the big powers, including the U.S., are involved behind the scenes, arming and supporting one side and sometimes supporting both sides against each other.
What we see happening today is very similar to what happened right before World War II. And there are more indications of a coming war. Today in this country, we are being inundated with propaganda designed to prepare people to accept to go to war. This propaganda comes from politicians and the corporate-owned media.
Today, much of that propaganda is aimed against China, as well as against Russia. They want us to believe that somehow China is threatening the U.S., when in reality, the opposite is true. And when the media and the politicians try to tell people that China is a threat to the U.S., when it isn’t, they are doing it for a reason.
Today the capitalists and their two political parties are preparing workers here to accept this coming war. They want to convince us to go to war to kill the working people of another country, and in turn be killed by them. Working people in every country have no reason to go to war against each other. Workers in every country in the world all want the same thing. We just want to benefit from our labor and have a decent life. Workers in every country should be fighting against their own bosses, not against each other.
The Working Class Party is the only party that stands on the side of the working class and says what needs to be said. The Working Class Party is the only party that speaks the truth to the working class. By voting for Working Class Party, workers can vote for something that really expresses our own interest as working people.
By voting for Working Class Party, we can say to them what we really think instead of voting again for the lesser of two evils.
We know that voting is not going to change things. We know that voting is not going to change things for the working class, and we’ll say that in our campaign. We know that it will take a fight of the working class using the power of the working class to change things.
By voting for Working Class Party, workers can make a statement and show that there are many other workers who agree with what we have to say.
Jul 22, 2024
On June 25, the Kenyan government sent several hundred police to patrol Haiti, as the first contingent of what the U.S. had promised to be a “multinational” force. The U.S. is calling this a “peacekeeping force,” in a country that U.S. imperial domination has turned into the poorest in the Western hemisphere. Haiti is so wracked by poverty, corruption, and gang violence, that the Haitian government, military and police force have completely collapsed. (For more details, see the article on Haiti in this newspaper.)
In reality, the Kenyan police are a force of brutal repression. On that same day, June 25th, as Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, was rocked by mass protests, the Kenyan police shot and killed at least two dozen people and arrested hundreds more.
As for Kenyan President William Ruto, he is nothing but a brutal dictator. Back in 2007, when Ruto was deputy president of Kenya, he orchestrated a brutal campaign of ethnic violence following a disputed election campaign. More than 1,300 people were killed. Many were hacked to death. Others were burnt up alive inside their own homes. In 2009, the International Criminal Court charged Ruto with crimes against humanity, although it later dropped those charges after witnesses “recanted” their testimony or disappeared.
The U.S. government is now deepening its ties with the Kenyan military and police. In return for sending police to Haiti, the U.S. is sending the Kenyan government over 250 million dollars in military aid, along with logistical support and equipment. The Biden administration also named the Kenyan government a “major non-NATO ally,” meaning much more U.S. military and foreign aid in the future. Kenya was the first sub-Saharan African government to get this designation. This U.S. sponsored military build-up is most likely an extension of the U.S. wars and rivalries against Russian and Chinese powers.
To mark these deepening ties, on May 23, Ruto paid an official visit to Washington, D.C. President Biden honored him with a state dinner, the first time a U.S. president hosted an African leader with a state dinner since 2008. Ruto also met with top U.S. business executives from Google, Microsoft, Mastercard and other top companies in order to boost the country’s expanding status as a hub of technology and commerce in East Africa. “Silicon Savannah,” in reference to the country’s vast grasslands, is the new brand name.
None of this spells a lessening of poverty, nor of violence for the people of either Kenya or Haiti.
Jul 22, 2024
This article is taken from the July 5, 2024 issue of La Voix des Travailleurs, issue # 316, published in Haiti by the Organization of Revolutionary Workers (OTR-UCI).
Supported by American imperialism with 360 million dollars, the first contingent of Kenyan soldiers landed on the tarmac of Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince on Tuesday, June 25. The various factions of the Haitian ruling class once again resort to international military intervention to extricate themselves from a bloody crisis with out-of-control gangs.
They themselves established these gangs in their competition to seize the surplus value from the exploitation of the working class and the popular masses. The primary victims of these clashes, in “times of peace” as well as during open conflicts, the exploited masses must unite to make their voices heard to stop their endless suffering.
Having not yet found the means to free themselves from the barbarity of the gangs, the popular masses have not shown hostility toward the arrival of foreign soldiers. Many have expressed the wish to see these soldiers work toward a return to a “normal life.”
Riding on this weariness of the population, Prime Minister Gary Conille took the opportunity to praise the messianic virtues of the Multinational Support Mission for Security (MMSS). "We will reclaim our territory house by house, neighborhood by neighborhood, city by city," he declared on Wednesday, June 26, during a press conference. This intervention is a maneuver by the government, Western embassies, and the U.N. to hide their responsibilities, those of the bourgeoisie and the political class, in the poverty and centuries-old violence suffered by the population.
The life of a worker, a poor peasant, a day laborer, or a young person from the poor classes is a long ordeal until death comes, often at a very young age. Wages have always hovered around $4 a day. Unemployment has exploded. There are no basic services. The exploited masses have also always suffered violence from the state’s legal repressive forces, militias, and gangs of the ruling class whenever the masses dared to rise up to demand better living conditions. In the impoverished neighborhoods where they live, they are permanently at the mercy of all kinds of criminals.
While the rich get richer, the poor masses become even poorer. Since independence and even before, the bourgeoisie and the big landowners have left them no chance. Caught between the demagoguery of politicians and the exploitation by the bourgeoisie, their struggles are repressed with the utmost severity by the army or the police, or both at once.
As long as the rich continue to have control over the country’s economy, nothing will change in the objective situation of the population. As long as employers continue to pay poverty wages to workers, as long as agricultural lands, private properties of absentee landowners, remain unused, as long as access to education, health, culture, and housing remains impossible for the poorest, the tandem of poverty and violence will only persist.
The laboring population will only put an end to their exploitation and violence by taking away these means of production, that are today the property of this minority, through a revolution.
The current intervention of American imperialist military forces is primarily a support to the ruling class, employers, bankers, big merchants, and the political class. It is up to the working class, the popular masses, to organize and take the lead in the fight to defend their demands.
Jul 22, 2024
The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the top judicial arm of the United Nations, ruled on July 19 that the Israeli military should end its 57-year-long occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Golan Heights. More specifically, the court ruled that Israel should evacuate existing settlements, stop building new ones and pay reparations to Palestinians who have lost land and property.
This ruling, which is considered to be “a non-binding advisory opinion,” will change nothing, just as the dozens of U.N. General Assembly resolutions condemning Israel’s colonial occupations passed over the last 57 years have changed nothing. International law, in a world dominated by the biggest capitalist and imperialist powers, is the law of the jungle, the rule of the biggest and strongest powers in the world, especially the power that is United States government and its military.
The United States government and its military decide what international law is. And they make those decisions based upon what furthers the interests, profits and power of the big U.S. oil companies, banks and military contractors. For them, arming and reinforcing the Israeli military is a huge priority because the Israeli military is the main defender of U.S. imperial interests throughout the Middle East. That is why the U.S. government arms the Israeli military to the teeth. It is why the U.S. supports its barbaric wars in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank today, and the possible spread of this war into Lebanon in the near future.
No U.N. resolution or ruling by the International Court changes this. The so-called “international community” cannot stop or even slow the horrific toll taken by the nine-month Israeli war in the Gaza Strip. It cannot stop the Israeli military’s daily annihilations by F-16s, tanks, and arbitrary executions, combined with Israeli bans on food, water, medicine, electricity, and fuel that have generated starvation, diseases, untreated injuries, homelessness. No shocking revelations by courageous doctors or humanitarian organizations can prevent the destruction of Gaza’s hospitals and healthcare facilities, adding to the military-caused casualty toll.
These wars are the product of the capitalist and imperialist system. The wars will only end through revolution, starting with the overthrow of all the reactionary and dictatorial regimes that uphold the imperialist order, by all the working and poor masses of the region, Israeli, Palestinian, Arab, and all others.
Jul 22, 2024
During the peak of the pandemic, the Pentagon tried to discredit Chinese-made COVID vaccines. It set up at least 300 Twitter accounts in the Philippines broadcasting the slogan that “China is the virus” to convince people not to take the Sinovac vaccine.
This took place when COVID was sweeping though the Philippines, a U.S. ally which had one of the highest death rates in the region. And it came when there was a worldwide shortage of U.S.-made vaccines. In other words, if it was effective, this campaign undoubtedly contributed to many deaths from COVID.
When it was caught red-handed by Reuters, a Pentagon spokesperson admitted everything. He said that the U.S. military “conducts a wide range of operations … this process is deliberate, methodical, and comprehensive.” He added that the military “uses a variety of platforms, including social media.”
So not only have we learned once again that the U.S. military is willing to kill countless innocent people to undermine a rival—we’ve also learned that what you thought was your cousin’s tweet might really have been written by a general!
Jul 22, 2024
What follows is the editorial that appeared on the front of all SPARK’s workplace newsletters, during the week of July 15, 2024.
"No place in America for this kind of violence, for any violence."—this was President Biden’s first public reaction to the assassination attempt on former President Trump.
Trump quickly posted a one-word statement on Truth Social: “AGREED!”
"Violence,” Biden added, “violence has no place in our American democracy.”
In fact, violence is exactly what “American democracy” rests on. Violence is the means through which the American capitalist class, a tiny minority, imposes its rule on the majority, that is, on the working class, whose labor produces the material wealth, the food, goods and services society needs.
Yes, of course, Trump and Biden oppose violence when it hits people like themselves. But oppose violence? The two of them? Forget it!
Biden and Trump and presidents before them signed authorizations for U.S. military resources to be used against people in other countries. The U.S. military is implicated today in wars from Gaza to Ukraine to the “shadow wars” in Sudan, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Syria.
U.S. corporations invest all over the world, stealing wealth in raw materials, stealing wealth from the labor of low-paid workers. The U.S. government and its military back up the thieves.
Not only is violence directed at draining wealth from other countries, thus impoverishing their people, for the benefit of the U.S. capitalist class. Violence is directed in this country at the American working class, the force whose labor provides wealth for that same capitalist class.
From the movement for the eight-hour day, begun in 1883, right up to the law passed by Congress and signed by Biden in 2022, blocking a national railroad strike, the big attempts of workers to improve their situation, to work fewer hours, to have safer workplaces, were all met with violence.
In 1886, leaders of the eight-hour day movement were condemned to death. In the 1980s, police forces from all over descended on Ottumwa Iowa, attacking picket lines that went up in support of striking workers fired by Hormel. In 1997, the leader of the big UPS strike was removed from the union by the federal courts, threatened with prison time. The gains of the strike were taken back. In 2022, organizers of the rail strike would have faced prison time if the strike had gone on. Their union faced such large fines, it would have run out of money. Whether explicit like the death penalty, or implicit like the blocking of a strike with legal barriers and the courts, the state apparatus of the capitalists stands ready to use violence or its threat against workers who mobilize themselves.
From the Reconstruction movement of the 1860s up to the massive protests that erupted with the murder of George Floyd, the attempts of people to stand up for basic human rights have been met by violence. Many of the civil rights activists of the 1960s were assassinated: Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King Jr., George Jackson, the Mississippi 3 (Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, Michael Schwerner), Viola Liuzzo.
Today, young men face death in the street because violence is this capitalist society’s answer to poverty, to mental problems, and to the desperation that both create. More often than not, those killed were just in the wrong place at the wrong time and gave an answer the cops didn’t like. Malice Green, in 1992 Detroit, was beaten to death. Freddie Gray, in 2015 Baltimore, was given a “rough ride.” Breonna Taylor, in 2020 Louisville, was sleeping in her bed in an apartment the cops entered by mistake. Every year, some thousand more are killed.
Does Biden dare to pretend that violence has no place in his American democracy? In the 1960s, H. Rap Brown already answered that absurd claim: “Violence is as American as Cherry Pie.”
A minority of extremely wealthy people rule over the big majority and get their wealth by exploiting the labor of the majority. And all of that has always been imposed by violence. Violence is the reality on which “American democracy” rests.
The working class will find no way to provide a decent life for itself and the rest of humanity until it faces that fact of life, until it organizes itself to defend against the capitalist state and its violence.
Jul 22, 2024
Green Border, a 2023 movie by Polish filmmaker Agnieska Holland, follows a family of Syrian refugees as they try to make their way across Europe to a relative in Sweden.
We meet them on a plane from Turkey to Belarus. From there, they are thrust into a nightmare. They spend much of the film trekking across the swampy no-man’s-land at the border between Belarus and Poland, with each country’s border guards violently expelling them to the other country. Holland follows first the family, then a Polish border guard, then a group of Polish immigrant rights activists.
We hear much about the “migrant crisis” in this country—but the issue is worldwide. This film lets us see it in a different perspective.
Jul 22, 2024
With temperatures reaching record-breaking levels, workers in much of the country are suffering on their jobs. While many office workers have air conditioning, many others do not. And outside workers such as construction and agricultural workers suffer from over-heating.
In Maryland, recent temperatures have been in the 90s and the heat index over 100 for days on end. The state legislature has passed a heat standard to keep workers safer. It provides for mandatory cooled and shaded breaks every two hours when temperatures go over 90 degrees. But these standards will not go into effect until most of this summer’s heat has passed.
Officially, only 36 U.S. workers died from heat sickness in 2021, the last year in which complete data is available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In the decade from 2011—2020 there were 34,000 work-related heat injuries and illnesses severe enough that workers had to take time away from their jobs. These figures are surely a severe undercount, according to the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA), because states have varying definitions for heat sickness and most data comes from corporate self-reporting.
Employers across the U.S. are pushing back on the idea of having to lose productive time to longer, more frequent breaks. They don’t want to own the problem of heat and climate change.
But guess what! The capitalists have created the current crisis through their complete disregard of earth’s climate and the life on it. For workers, it is a matter of survival to fight the bosses for protections against the heat.
Jul 22, 2024
Donald Trump and the Republican Party are carrying out a massive propaganda campaign to convince U.S. voters that immigrants are the root of our problems.
In his speech accepting the Republican nomination, Trump repeated the claim that immigrants are carrying out an “invasion, the worst that’s ever been seen anywhere in the world.”
The worst invasion in the world, really? The U.S. has invaded 84 countries in its history and been militarily involved in 191 out of 194 countries! These invasions, bombing campaigns, and interventions, in the interests of the U.S. capitalist class, have helped cause the crisis of migration around the world. Millions have fled Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Haiti—all countries the U.S. has been militarily involved with recently, including under Trump.
He claimed this “invasion” is “killing hundreds of thousands of people a year.”
Crime does kill thousands a year in this country—but it’s not brought here by immigrants. The capitalist class creates the conditions for crime by destroying jobs, stealing the money for education, and denying young people a future.
And the capitalists are themselves the biggest criminals. For instance, opioids have killed a million people since 1999—but they were pushed by U.S. pharmaceutical companies, not immigrants. The capitalists steal the money needed for health care; poison people with chemicals in the air and water; drive workers to killing paces in the heat—they are the criminals!
Trump also said that other countries are emptying their prisons, mental institutions, and asylums into the U.S. He claimed that the crime rate is going down in Venezuela and El Salvador, while it’s going up in the U.S., “because they’re taking their criminals and they’re putting them in our country.”
This turns reality on its head. The gang Trump mentioned by name—MS-13—was literally created in the U.S., and then spread to El Salvador when its members were deported!
The U.S. also helped create the cartels in Mexico and Central America to fund its dirty wars in those countries. And the U.S. destroyed the economy of Venezuela with sanctions—begun under Obama, made harsher under Trump, and maintained under Biden—which created a wave of crime in that country like nothing ever seen here. That is one of the reasons so many are fleeing.
Trump highlighted three women he says were assaulted and killed by “criminal alien(s).” It’s as if he’s channeling the worst of the old promoters of lynching in the Jim Crow south.
And Trump said, “That’s why to keep our families safe, the Republican Platform promises to launch the largest deportation operation in the history of this country,” citing Eisenhower’s mass deportations in the 1950s. But the mass deportations of the 1950s weren’t aimed at keeping families safe. The U.S. deported millions of people to Mexico—including U.S. citizens born in this country—even as it was bringing millions in through the Bracero Program on temporary work permits. Those deportations kept workers desperate and dependent, helping companies super-exploit them and use them against the entire working class.
The Republican attack on immigrants is a giant con job, aimed at getting workers to blame other workers for the degrading society we see all around us—and in so doing, they cover for the capitalist class that is really responsible.
Jul 22, 2024
On July 19, many motor vehicle administrations were closed across the country, people couldn’t get needed medicine or hip replacement surgery or other elective surgeries, thousands of flights were canceled or delayed. Some banks were impacted, meaning people didn’t have access to their money; and on and on. In other words, a computer-generated nightmare for millions of people around the world.
Apparently, countless computers relying on the Microsoft 365 app suite were suddenly taken offline because of an antiviral update. This led to a critical operating system crash, or the dreaded “Blue Screen of Death.”
CrowdStrike, the company that provides these updates for Microsoft Windows, like all companies and corporations, is in this for the money. And, just like other corporations, they don’t hire nearly enough people, and the people they do have work long, tedious hours.
And like most industries, CrowdStrike pushes production, forcing workers to send out patches before they have been tested sufficiently. All this increases their profit margins, but at the same time can unleash these horrendous catastrophes on the population.
It is clear these computers and the software they use are part of the infrastructure, like roads, bridges and water and sewage systems, that allows this society and its economy to function. When they don’t function, all hell breaks loose.
This economy is based on the capitalists continually making ever increasing profits at all costs. This has led to what appears to ordinary people as really crazy decisions. Things that cut into profits, like back-up systems, are not even considered.
What is to stop this from happening tomorrow? All the bosses across the board have been dealing with the global economic crisis in similar ways, like cutting their workforce to bare bones. So long as the economy is based on making ever-increasing profits for the bosses, these sorts of disasters will continue.