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 19, 2024
We are being bombarded with images of so-called “migrant crime,” fentanyl deaths, and violence put out by Trump and the Republican Party. Harris and the Democrats, on the other hand, bombard us with images of top cops and border patrol agents, while Harris brags that she prosecuted “transnational gang members.” While their rhetoric is different, by arguing over who will police the border better, both push the idea that immigrants are a threat.
But this idea that immigrants are criminals, responsible for the violence facing working people, turns reality on its head. They don’t run this country, or this world: it is run by the capitalist class. That capitalist class is responsible for the increasing violence of the world we live in—that class is the real criminal.
The capitalist class creates the conditions for crime by denying a future to millions of young people, destroying jobs and underfunding schools. Its “legitimate” pharmaceutical companies are the drug dealers who pushed opioids—and fentanyl is an opioid: blaming immigrants covers for the crisis they caused.
This same U.S. capitalist class is also behind the catastrophes that have displaced hundreds of millions of people around the world, including the migrants trying to get to this country. The vast majority of these migrants are themselves victims of the world’s largest criminal enterprise: U.S. imperialism.
U.S. imperialism is organized to ensure that the lion’s share of the wealth produced around the world flows to U.S. banks and corporations. Those corporations exploit workers in every corner of the globe, employing local henchman who get a percentage to keep the profits flowing. The U.S. state apparatus backs up this system of exploitation with the deadliest military apparatus in the history of the world. It can inflict death and destruction in any corner of the globe within minutes.
The same imperialist system that is attacking workers here, has made many poor countries totally unlivable. That is why so many have braved trackless jungles carrying their small children, tried to cross the sea in makeshift boats, or walked across the desert, risking the violence of both cartels and the border patrol.
In Mexico, still the biggest source of immigrants, almost half of the population is stuck in poverty, while U.S. corporations extract untold billions from the labor of the poorly paid Mexican working class, backed up by the Mexican police and army that protect U.S. investments above all else. When the second biggest source of immigrants, Venezuela, tried to keep a little more of its oil wealth in its own country, the U.S. imposed crushing sanctions that have pushed Venezuela’s economy to collapse and one third of its population to flee. El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras were wrecked by U.S. funded and trained death squads and terrorist groups in the 1980s and 1990s and have been run by U.S.-backed repressive regimes ever since.
Yes, there are gangs and cartels in these countries, and U.S. politicians should know about them: after all, the U.S. helped set up many of these gangs to fund its dirty wars. In many countries, these gangs, the police, and the army are one and the same. Far from being against the gangs, the U.S. state apparatus has worked with gangs all over the world to keep populations under control.
So no, the migrants aren’t the criminals—they are the victims of U.S. imperialism’s crimes. They are fleeing the ravages of a system based in this country, that has destroyed the lives of people all over the world in order to maximize the profits of a tiny club of millionaires and billionaires—the same club that is ravaging our standard of living in this country. Yet the leaders of both parties who run this gigantic murderous enterprise of U.S. imperialism have the nerve to portray those fleeing U.S. imperialism’s crimes as a threat, and expect workers here to fall for it?
Most migrants were workers where they come from, and they will be workers if they make it here. They are part of our class. Blaming part of our class excuses the capitalist criminals that are responsible for the problems facing workers here and all over the world. But even worse, it weakens the one force that can stop the capitalist onslaught: the unity of the working class.
Aug 19, 2024
One of the reasons COVID infected and killed so many people in this country is that so many workers don’t have sick days or can’t use them. Even during the height of the pandemic, companies like Target demanded employees report to work sick as long as they wore masks. Workers who had to go to work with COVID spread the disease to coworkers, customers, family, and friends.
You’d think the loss of millions of lives would’ve sparked some change. But no. COVID is spreading again, along with all the old diseases. Sick workers who try to call off work are still met with “if you don’t come in tomorrow, don’t bother coming in ever again.” This capitalist system is already preparing the next pandemic.
Aug 19, 2024
Since early June, over 40 people in the U.S. have contracted listeria infections after eating Boar’s Head deli products, with three people dying. The infections all appear to have originated from one meat processing plant in Virginia.
Late in July, some Boar’s Head delivery workers, working for a local franchise, were told that some products were under a “voluntary recall”—because Jewel, the big grocer, did not want to accept tainted products. However, for at least a few days, Boar’s Head continued to deliver those products to smaller independent delis—ones that had not gotten the word.
So ... a big company with deep pockets sends back meat that might be deadly. But the delivery company lets the mom-and-pops risk their customers’ lives to save a few bucks.
Aug 19, 2024
Computers handling 9–1-1 calls in Washington, D.C. went down eight times since late May, and twice in the last week, with one outage lasting two hours. A family says they tried to get help for their unresponsive five-month-old during that time. The baby died.
On top of that, 88% of 9–1-1 shifts don’t have even the minimum staff. The problems with D.C.’s 9–1-1 have been chronic and long term. Not only is this not improving, but it has gotten dangerously worse.
City residents cannot depend on getting immediate help. The government has proved it is unwilling or incapable of solving these essential problems.
Aug 19, 2024
The number of heat-related deaths in the U.S. increased from about 1,600 in 2021 to 2,300 in 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control. This trend is only likely to continue, given the pattern of increasingly warm annual temperatures occurring in recent decades.
As a result, some people in a few places like New Orleans, Phoenix and Tempe have succeeded in getting local politicians to impose maximum indoor temperature standards in rental housing, according to Reuters. Yet while every state requires landlords to maintain existing air conditioning units, Reuters found that none required landlords to provide air-conditioning to their tenants.
Landlord associations, of course, are doing everything they can to prevent the passage of laws requiring landlords to ensure tenants are not subject to dangerous heat. They’ve succeeding in stopping laws from being passed in places like California, Texas, and Hot Springs, Arkansas—hardly places where one can count on cool temperatures year around!
The landlord groups try to make it sound like they’re looking out for tenants, by saying spending money on air-conditioning would require them to raise rents. Many people live paycheck-to-paycheck due to the bosses paying low wages. Not surprisingly, a Boston University study in 2022 of 115 metro areas in the U.S. found that households with no air-conditioning are most often occupied by low-income residents, primarily renters.
What’s wrong with this picture? Somehow, landlords, utility companies, and bosses employing workers manage to find no shortage of profits from year-to-year, and the landlords find politicians willing to accept their excuses and not step on their toes.
This is capitalism’s answer to rising temperatures likely due to climate change. Let those who can’t afford housing with air-conditioning deal with the heat themselves, and if some die from heat-related causes—oh, well! One more reason this sick, decrepit system needs to go!
Aug 19, 2024
In the August primary election, the voters in Baraga and Ontonagon counties in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan voted to increase funding for their ambulance services. Those in Ontonagon felt that there was really no choice as their hospital was closed down.
Baraga County has a hospital with emergency services and inpatient care. Ontonagon does not. Their hospital was closed in April 2024 because Aspirus, the hospital system that owns the hospital, decided the people in Ontonagon County didn’t need a hospital.
Says who? The hospital corporation, that’s who. The owners that put profit before people. Aspirus left the people with a Monday through Friday clinic with no emergency or in-patient care. It does not meet the health care needs of the people. It could not even deliver mammogram services, as promised, because the clinic has the equipment but lacks the workers to operate it!
The Ontonagon hospital closure is resulting in more risk to patients and EMT workers, and an increased burden on Baraga County hospital workers and staff. So now the ambulance is the only hope of triage, of emergency services? It is 47 miles, one way, to bring patients to Baraga.
This is rotten medicine, the product of a rotten system that always puts profit ahead of people. This is a life and death issue.
Aug 19, 2024
California’s three big investor-owned utility companies, which serve about 70% of the state’s households, have doubled their rates for residential customers in the last ten years.
Electric rates in California are now second only to Hawaii among the 50 states, and about twice the national average. Not surprisingly, one out of five customers of these three utilities is behind on their electricity bills, owing 747 dollars on average.
The companies say they have to increase the rates to pay for upgrades and improvements in the grid, but most of the extra money they are charging is going to boost profits. The biggest of the three companies, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), made a gross profit of 20 billion dollars in 2023—20% more than the previous year. Over the five years ending in 2023, PG&E’s profit was a whopping 81 billion dollars. Southern California Edison, which is smaller than PG&E, made a gross profit of 42.6 billion dollars in the last four years.
Ratepayers have also been paying for the millions of dollars courts have ordered these companies to pay to victims of deadly wildfires. Many of the large wildfires in California started because the utilities’ aging equipment failed, or because the utilities had not cleared vegetation around their power lines. This is a result of the companies’ conscious policy of cutting down on maintenance to increase profit.
These companies are getting away with murder. They also continue to shake down their customers to add billions of dollars to their bottom line. And all this with the complicity of California’s utility regulators, who just approve all the rate increases these companies ask for.
Aug 19, 2024
Eva Goodman, a 15-year-old, was handcuffed, forced to wear a Wayne County jail uniform, and threatened with jail time. Her crime? She dozed off in the courtroom of Judge Kenneth King while on a field trip. Her mother, Latoreya Till, pointed out that her daughter did not understand the gravity of the situation because she had never been in a courtroom before, and had never been in trouble before.
Judge King held an impromptu hearing, where he berated Goodman and told her, “You sleep at home in your bed, not in court.” It turns out that she is homeless, does not have her own bed to sleep in and did not sleep well the night before.
The judge has since been suspended and sent to sensitivity training. But, for 18 years he has been practicing his brand of “fair and equitable justice,” meaning he is in charge, he has the power. King is not the only judge who thinks he is king. Judges have been given this immense power. Is it any wonder why black teenagers don’t trust the court system to be fair?
King justified and doubled down on his horrific behavior, stating that he wasn’t punishing the girl. It was his version of “scared straight.” Till’s response to the judge was, “You didn’t scare nobody straight!”
The only lesson anyone could get from this judge’s criminal behavior is that he can bully a homeless young woman and put her in handcuffs for being a normal teenager.
Aug 19, 2024
It’s 77 days and counting down to the Presidential election and promises abound on the campaign trail. Kamala Harris is at the top of the Democratic party ticket, and she is focusing on economic issues: costs of medicines, affordable housing, and grocery prices.
The Democratic Party is promising price cuts on popular medicines prescribed for such diseases as diabetes, heart, Crohn’s, and cancer. First time homebuyers are being promised some tax credits, and possibly some down payment support. A federal ban on price gouging across the food industry is being put forward as an answer to high grocery prices.
But there is no magic wand waved by a politician that can solve these economic problems within the framework of this system, which is based on profit, capitalism. For it is a system where pharmaceutical companies set astronomical prices on drugs and make obscene profits on them, even when prices are reduced; it is a system where millions of people are “house poor” or “rent poor” or even homeless, because property developers, real estate magnates, banks, and private equity groups keep hiking up home and rent prices. It is a system where grocery prices are determined by agribusiness, and giant grocery store chains, with no regard to whether people can afford to eat, or not.
Life-saving drugs should and could be FREE. Housing could and should be affordable. Prices could and should be based on the amount of labor put into producing them, and not on how much profit could be made by a billionaire class. And wages could and should be indexed to costs.
And the truth is—this will only happen, not because workers vote for one capitalist party or the other every four years to save us, but when workers are organized to shut down this system and build one where everyone has the right to health care, to housing and food—that is, to live in a rational, humane society.
Aug 19, 2024
It turns out, the ballot initiative to lower taxes in Baltimore City was just a bunch of rich real estate men trying to lower their taxes. After all, they can afford to own property, often many many properties. They called themselves “Renew Baltimore” and got some big-name preachers to endorse their efforts.
They spent thousands of dollars to hire people to collect the signatures all over the city. If you don’t look closely, you could think it’s set up to get relief for ordinary residents. Baltimore City residents pay double what other jurisdictions pay for property tax in Maryland, although it is one of the poorer areas.
These property taxes make up a third of the city’s income in the current budget. If that money was cut in half, either city services would get cut or the politicians would find another way to collect the money from city residents.
Like doubling the water rates, and then doubling them again. Oh, wait, they already did that.
The only thing “Renew Baltimore” could possibly “renew,” assuming the ballot initiative makes it past some current lawsuits, is that old political fact: the richer you are, the less tax you pay.
Aug 19, 2024
This article is translated from the August 13 issue, #2924 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the Trotskyist group of that name active in France.
In Bangladesh, the military leadership finally decided on Tuesday, August 6 to hand over power to a transitional government headed by Muhammad Yunus, winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize and a popular figure among the opposition. This government also includes two leaders of the student movement, placed at the head of secondary ministries, Telecommunications and Sport.
In this country of 170 million inhabitants, the change of government is the result of more than a month of demonstrations and student riots. The movement had started against the restoration of reserved job quotas in the civil service, which favored the ruling party’s circles, while young graduates were suffering massive unemployment. But the number and determination of the demonstrators grew enormously in the face of increasing violence from the authorities. Arbitrary arrests, torture, and police shootings (including of children), which have claimed up to 400 lives, have further multiplied the number of protesters and changed their objectives. On August 5, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators converged on her residence, putting an end to the regime of the former Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, who had just fled by helicopter.
Today, the police, hated after the killings of demonstrators, have deserted the streets, and former demonstrators, often students or even high-school pupils, direct traffic, mark crosswalks, protect public monuments or the homes of Hindus who are targeted.
It’s clear that this population, which has overthrown a regime, could take the running of society into its own hands.
For the time being, however, the majority is probably unaware of the possibilities offered by the situation. And while the revolt has won a victory over repression, the state remains in place in the service of the possessing classes, and the generals retain control of it. After considering forming an interim government themselves, they decided it would be better to leave it to civilians favored by the demonstrators and dismissed certain high-ranking officers who had compromised too much with the old regime.
The importance of the working class in Bangladesh and its determination were evident in major strikes for higher wages, last October in the textile industry, and two years ago in the tea plantations. It is not likely to be content for long to see social violence hidden behind the benevolent figure of Muhammad Yunus.
Aug 19, 2024
This article is translated from the August 13 issue, #2924 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the Trotskyist group of that name active in France.
Muhammad Yunus, set to become Bangladesh’s new Prime Minister, has been dubbed the “banker to the poor,” and he obviously owes his appointment to the illusions such a title can inspire.
The new Prime Minister, aged 84, was an industrialist, then an economics professor for years in the United States. After a terrible famine in Bangladesh in 1974, he is best known for advocating “micro-credit”: poor farmers and craftsmen grouping together to lend each other small sums of money.
Yunus founded the Grameen Bank, the “village bank.” The bank flourished, and in 2008 he wrote that “social business is the missing piece of capitalism.” This earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, and the Medal of Freedom from Obama in 2009. It didn’t put an end to poverty or to the crisis of capitalism, but it did earn him an image in his country as a man of integrity, concerned with ways to combat poverty. He opposed Sheikh Hasina’s authoritarian rule, and for years had been accused of defamation, embezzlement, and infringement of labor law, under harassment by the authorities.
So, it was a man with the image of a friend of the poor who was chosen to give a new facade to Bangladeshi power, no doubt because it is likely to make a predominantly very poor population, perhaps on the verge of a social explosion, wait.
It remains to be seen how long he can maintain the illusion of change without attacking the privileges of the ruling classes, unequal social structures, and imperialism.
Aug 19, 2024
This article is translated from the July 31 issue, #2922 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the Trotskyist group of that name active in France.
Following the presidential election in Venezuela on July 28, incumbent President Nicolas Maduro claims victory, which is being contested by opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia.
Maduro is said to have won 51% of the vote and his opponent 44%. But his opponent denounced the result as fraud and claimed to have won 70% of the vote. Gonzalez was supported by opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who was prevented from standing for election by Maduro. Clashes broke out between opposition supporters and police. It is not known how widespread the fraud was, or who really benefited from it, but the aftermath of the elections is further confirmation of the crisis facing the Chavista regime.
In 1998, Hugo Chavez took advantage of the collapse of the main parties on the right and left, changed the constitution and launched social programs. For him, oil revenues—Venezuela holds immense oil reserves—should no longer benefit exclusively the big American or British companies and the wealthy class, but also the working classes. Until Chavez’s death in 2013, social programs had been implemented and the poverty rate had fallen significantly.
However, in the early 2000s, as soon as a small share of the oil income went to the poorest, the bourgeoisie, with the support of the United States, attempted two coups to overthrow Chavez. The population opposed the coups. Chavez benefited from high oil prices and had established partnerships, notably with Cuba. In exchange for Venezuelan oil, Cuba sent its doctors. This was known as “Bolivarian Socialism.”
To counterbalance American economic sanctions, Chavez sought support from Russia, China and Iran, alliances that were intolerable to Washington. Knowing he was dying, he appointed Maduro as his successor. Although Maduro was then elected, the United States refused to accept him and stepped up sanctions, depriving Venezuela of important resources. At the same time, falling oil prices made the situation much more difficult. In the 2019 elections, the United States pushed its candidate to attempt a coup d’état, as he tried unsuccessfully to rally the army.
During his twelve years in power, Maduro was able to place his loyalists in positions of responsibility and give the army a prominent place. He has also strengthened his hold on working-class neighborhoods by relying on armed groups supposedly opposed to drug traffickers. This has led to rivalry with police and gangs, and increased the already high level of insecurity.
The economic situation has continued to deteriorate. The fall in the price of oil has caused the oil income to melt away, and oil production has collapsed. Maduro’s opponents, supported by the United States and the European Union, have no problem denouncing the regime’s corruption and mismanagement, even though part of the problem stems from their economic sanctions.
The population has paid a heavy price for this deterioration. Insufficient imports of food and medicines have led to hyperinflation and a black market, making it impossible for the working classes to buy basic necessities. Seven million people have left the country. The wealthiest have gone to the United States or Europe, while the poorest have crowded into refugee camps in neighboring countries.
The Chavista party retains support among the poorest, although they often have to make do with an inadequate monthly food package, and it still has the backing of the army. But how long can this situation last? While the United States has renounced the direct armed intervention raised under Trump, it has always kept up the pressure, hoping to provoke an uprising by the population or the army against Maduro.
If the so-called “Bolivarian socialism” has turned out to be a mirage, and if the regime today holds on only thanks to the grip of the army, it is first and foremost the result of this pressure from imperialism. There can be no socialism in a single country, even in Venezuela with its oil wealth: it is the imperialist system that must be brought down. To achieve this, it will take much more than the policies of a Third World army officer like Chavez.
Aug 19, 2024
This article is translated from the August 13 issue, #2924 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the Trotskyist group of that name active in France.
On Saturday, August 10, tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of some forty towns and cities across Great Britain to protest against the xenophobic violence of the previous week, saying “Welcome Refugees!” and “No to Racism! No to Fascism!”
The scale of this mobilization was far greater than that of the August 3 and 4 riots, with consequent demonstrations in Glasgow and Edinburgh, for example, even though Scotland had been spared the racist attacks. In London, several rallies took place, the largest of which brought together 5,000 people in front of the headquarters of Reform UK, a violently anti-migrant party that attracted 4 million voters in the general election. In Belfast, demonstrators numbered 15,000. They also topped the thousand mark in major English cities like Liverpool, Newcastle and Manchester, and there were hundreds in smaller towns like Hull, where there were fears of a resurgence of racist attacks.
This success may have given comfort to all those who do not want to let the white supremacists and their troops go unchallenged. Counter-demonstrations took place as soon as the riots began, and on the day after the riots, local residents came to the aid of those in immigrant neighborhoods affected by the rampages. By the evening of Wednesday, August 7, following the publication of a list of potential targets, including mosques and shelters for asylum seekers, thousands of people had already gathered around the threatened sites. A whole section of young people and the working class, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, are clearly refusing to accept the poison of division that the far right is trying to spread.
If this reaction is a start, only the most naive can imagine that the far right will stop there. True, the government boasts that it has already arrested almost 800 individuals and convicted over 350, but after a decade of relative discretion, Britain’s Nazi apprentices—whether or not they’ve passed through the BNP (British National Party) and the EDL (English Defence League)—can already rejoice, despite their tiny numbers and loose structure, at having rallied, via social networks, a crowd of young people with nothing to lose and ready for a fight. They believe that the deepening crisis will provide them with a large recruiting ground.
Above all, the political class, right and left, has long since embraced the idea that immigration is a problem. Farage, leader of Reform UK, and the Conservative front-runners spend their time reproaching the Labour government for its “lax attitude” toward undocumented immigrants, against all the evidence since Starmer is hostile to free movement. They also accuse it of being more repressive toward racist rioters than toward those who defend the people of Gaza or fight against global warming. A sickening comparison ... and a false one: Starmer recently welcomed the sentencing of Extinction Rebellion activists to long prison terms, as a reminder of his commitment to “law and order.”
Faced with the demagoguery of politicians and the rise of the far right, these demonstrations are an encouragement against all aspects of the crisis of capitalist society.
Aug 19, 2024
This article is translated from the August 13 issue, #2924 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the Trotskyist group of that name active in France.
After ten months of war against the Palestinian population in Gaza, on August 10 the Israeli army bombed a school near Gaza City, killing more than ninety people.
Faced with the condemnation expressed, at least in words, by some representatives of its allies, the Israeli general staff put forward a vague argument, citing the “high probability” of the elimination, during the strike, of a Hamas commander located in this school, described as a “command center,” and the presence among the dead of “nineteen Hamas members.”
The school, the 21st to be bombed by the Israeli army in five weeks, was home to many Gazan families, who had been driven out of their homes and apartments and were constantly forced by a simple text message to evacuate the refugee camp or neighborhood that the army had been ordered to sweep, in search of hypothetical terrorists. As a result, many of Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants wandered from north to south and south to north, abandoning their belongings, either to escape the bombardments or on the orders of the Israeli authorities. "Some people didn’t move when the last evacuation order was issued, because they don’t know where to go. So, they prefer to stay where they are. I’m sure several of them died in those blocks," a young father told Médiapart.
This umpteenth murderous attack speaks volumes about the state of mind of Netanyahu’s government, which says it is ready to enter into truce negotiations. After assassinating the Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was leading the negotiations in the shadow of Qatar, and at the same time eliminating a military leader of the Lebanese Hezbollah, the Israeli government is constantly launching new provocations. The day after the attack on the school, it ordered the thousands of inhabitants of the northern districts of Khan Yunis to evacuate before a ground operation, which they know only too well will bring new disasters. These are the preliminaries to the negotiations announced by the United States, Egypt, and Qatar for August 15.
Western condemnations are hardly likely to affect the war policy of Netanyahu’s government. The British Foreign Secretary referred to the Palestinians and Israel back to back: "Hamas must stop endangering civilians. Israel must comply with international humanitarian law," and while the French government condemned the attacks on schools, the White House expressed its concern ... while reinforcing its military presence in the region, which already includes an aircraft carrier and F-35 fighters, with 4,000 additional Marines and twelve warships. The U.S. Navy cruises off the coasts of Israel, Iran and Saudi Arabia. A nuclear missile submarine is also planned. All this presence is not there to protect the population of Gaza, but to guarantee the Israeli leaders that they can continue their provocations, including in Gaza.
The Palestinian population, crushed under the bombs, but also the Israelis kept in a state of war, have no reason to derive from the policy of Western leaders any hope of seeing the conflict come to an end.
Aug 19, 2024
Three Israeli soldiers recently publicly refused to serve in the massacre in Gaza and were sentenced in early August to 30 days in military prison, with more prison time certain to follow. Yuval Moav, Oryan Mueller, and Itamar Greenberg raise the number of Israeli war refusers to six.
For some soldiers to simply refuse to serve won’t stop Israel’s massacre in Gaza. But they should be heard.
Mueller told reporters, “I encounter a huge wall that separates Israelis from what is happening five kilometers south of where they live…. You must talk about the scale of the destruction and death in Gaza, about the oppression and about how deep the roots of apartheid are in the West Bank…. We want to support and promote the struggle against the occupation.”
Greenberg said, “I have friends [in the West Bank] who face daily oppression, people who want to kick them out of their homes… There are people here who are fighting, maybe not enough, but still fighting, and are willing to pay a very heavy personal price for choosing to fight for justice and equality.”
Moav said, “I can only hope that people will stop and think when they carry guns and are asked to do things they might not want to do… I refuse to participate in genocide.”
Sofia Orr, the second soldier to refuse duty earlier this year, told reporters that the third, Ben Arad, made his decision when he saw the first, Tal Mitnick, go to prison. Orr was imprisoned with draft dodgers, deserters, and absentees. She said, “It’s usually young women who come from a low socioeconomic position who have many difficulties in life, or who were badly harassed at their bases and weren’t given any help or allowed to transfer bases… A system that dehumanizes Palestinians will eventually dehumanize its soldiers… I’m not pro-Palestinian and I’m not pro-Israeli. I’m pro-all of us as people and our right to live well.”
Aug 19, 2024
An armed mob of over 100 Israeli thugs carried out a coordinated attack on the village of Jit in Israeli occupied West Bank. Some in the gang were armed with knives and at least one machine gun; others threw stones and Molotov cocktails. They burned homes and cars and punctured water tankers. When some young Palestinians attempted to resist, the settlers fatally shot one, 23-year-old Rasheed Seda, and critically wounded another.
One Palestinian man who managed to escape with his family, later returned to find his home burned. He said the settlers threatened him, saying “We’ll come back and kill you!” and said he should go to Jordan or Syria.
Over 600 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since October 6, in addition to the over 40,000 killed in Israel’s attacks on Gaza. After the latest rampage, Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu dutifully condemned the attack, claiming that those who carried out the attack would be prosecuted. His words ring hollow, however, since Israeli settlers who carry out violence against Palestinians are rarely even arrested and even fewer actually prosecuted. In 2022, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz found that charges were only pressed in 3.8% of cases of Israeli settler violence in the West Bank.
The attack was so blatantly violent that Israel’s far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said Israelis shouldn’t take the law into their own hands.
This is simply lip service coming from a powerful figure who has incited such violence. When 10 soldiers were arrested for the gang rape of a Palestinian prisoner and a far-right mob attempted to free the soldiers, Ben-Gvir said that any action, including gang rape, was permissible if it is undertaken for the security of the State of Israel.
Attacks by Israeli settler mobs like the one in Jit amount to pogroms, not unlike the ethnic-cleansing attacks carried out against Jews throughout history in Eastern Europe and Russia. If Israel’s history is any indication, the Zionist state will simply look the other way while encouraging further violence.
Aug 19, 2024
Michael Jackson-Bolanos was acquitted by a jury of the murder of Samantha Woll in Detroit, yet a judge sentenced him to as much as 15 years for lying to police. Woll was stabbed inside her home and died outside it.
During the trial, prosecutors placed Jackson-Bolanos in the area of the crime, showing surveillance video of him breaking into vehicles and stealing from them. When he was interviewed by police, he initially said he didn’t see Woll’s body, but after police found a small amount of her blood on his jacket and backpack, he admitted he had. He testified that he checked her pulse in her neck, and after realizing she was dead, he fled the area. As a black man, he feared correctly that he would be blamed for her death.
There were too many holes in the prosecution’s case to convince a jury of Jackson-Bolanos’ guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. A former boyfriend of Woll’s confessed to the crime, but later attributed the confession to a psychotic episode due to a new drug he’d been prescribed by his doctor. The prosecution granted him immunity for his testimony, so he can’t be charged for lying to police like Jackson-Bolanos was.
Feeling pressure from Woll’s family and friends to punish someone for her death, the judge sentenced Jackson-Bolanos, a small-time petty thief, to up to three times the usual maximum sentence for “lying to police.”
In how many situations does this same thing happen? The jails are full of black men locked up for similar “reasoning.” A travesty!
Aug 19, 2024
What follows is the editorial that appeared on the front of all SPARK’s workplace newsletters, during the week of August 11, 2024.
We are caught in the grip of a deadly system, ruled by its drive for profit.
This system, capitalism, creates inflation, driving down our standard of living—letting the corporations, banks and financial groups take an even bigger share of society’s wealth.
This same system pushes many people into unemployment, temporary or part-time work, while forcing others to work overtime. This, too, comes from the drive to amass profit.
The profit-driven system cheats schools, roads, water systems and other public services in order to grab money for war.
Military spending props up the profits of almost every big corporation in the country, depriving us of needed schools and services. But it’s not just a question of money. Today, the U.S. is involved in actual wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and in shadow wars throughout the Middle East and elsewhere. These wars are spreading.
But instead of confronting these crises, TV, newspapers and social media focus on the election—and on candidates of the two parties.
It’s true, the two parties have candidates who seem a little different. Donald Trump doesn’t talk like the usual Republican banker, even if he’s a billionaire like the others. Kamala Harris appears sprightly, more reflective of the population in its diversity—at least, compared to Biden, an old, square, political hack.
They seem different, yes. But so what? Candidates come and candidates go.
But behind candidates are parties. And behind these two parties is the capitalist class.
Whatever squabbling the two parties do, at the end of the day they conspire to make sure society functions well for the very rich—and basically only for the very rich.
Under Trump, the Republicans gave tax breaks worth nearly half a trillion dollars a year to the corporations and the wealthy who own them. Under Biden and Harris, the Democrats gave subsidies worth trillions more to the corporations and their wealthy owners.
It’s two different ways of doing business, but the result is the same: more of society’s wealth flows to the very top of the social order. That wealth comes from the public treasury, originally created by the labor of the men and women who make the wheels of society turn.
The wealth stolen from our labor over the years is more than enough to have solved the crises we face.
Every person could have had a decent standard of living. Every child could have had a complete education, given culture and the skills needed to function in modern society. Public services could work to serve the good of the public.
These two parties haven’t turned society’s wealth to the population during the last 168 years they shared the government between themselves. Why would anyone believe they will do it now?
Face facts. To have what we need, we, ourselves, will have to fight for it.
The only way workers have ever had even a slight improvement in their lives is that they fought for it. What really moved things is that working people brought the economy to a halt—from the moment the slaves left the plantations en masse in 1863 up to the mass strikes, then to urban revolts, working people have spread their movements.
We will have to do the same thing, but this time we cannot stop at shutting down the economy. The capitalists who created this mess will have to go—along with the two parties serving them.
There are no political saviors. The working class has only itself to depend on.
But that’s more than enough. Our class lives in the heart of the economy. We produce the food, goods and services society needs; we transport it all; we distribute it. We work in the center of finance and accounting. Making everything run, we can shut it down. This gives us power—if we organize to use it.
Aug 19, 2024
This is a four-part, four-hour documentary about a music company that rivaled Motown. It published R&B out of Memphis. It started in the back of a family-owned record store, funded by a second mortgage by one of its founders. It was a different brand of R&B: raw, passionate with funky Southern-fried elements. It reflected the uprising of the times.
The film features wonderful clips of many of its stars: Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, Booker T and the MG’s and Sam and Dave. It was the time for creativity to burst out in spite of the monopoly of the music industry, though, as you see, the monopoly did cause its eventual downfall.
This book has multiple story lines. On the one hand it is about a woman trying to balance aging, her job, and caring for her family. The book also focuses on the terrible living and working conditions of refugees in England, even exposing how they work in bonded servitude, virtual slavery. It shows the dreams of the refugees and their dashed hopes. The book does an excellent job of showing how these third world conditions exist in our very neighborhoods today, all to feed the ever-hungry monster called greed.
Aug 19, 2024
Rents rose by almost a third in four years across the U.S., forcing more and more workers to live on the street or in their car because they can no longer afford housing, according to a recent article in the Washington Post. Hardly anywhere in the country can a full-time minimum-wage worker afford a one-bedroom apartment. One in four renters spends half or more of their income on rent and utilities. Federal data shows the number of people without a home rose 12% last year.
A hotel and casino worker in Biloxi shares a hotel room with two disabled relatives. She says, “The cost of living is high, and $15 an hour barely covers rent and utilities.” An Amazon worker near Nashville earns $21 an hour and works 50 hours a week but can’t keep up with expenses. Living with his mother in their car, he spends a lot on water jugs, prepared food, and gas for air conditioning. It takes a huge effort to keep homelessness a secret from others, especially employers, for example by showering in gyms.
Capitalism is taking us from the “working poor” to the “working homeless”….
Aug 19, 2024
Stellantis’ Warren Truck plant is going to lose a shift when the Ram 1500 Classic production ends. This is just the latest in a round of shifts being cut and/or workers being laid off due to sales and inventory problems at the plants.
The 2023 UAW contract had been called a “historic” contract—mostly because it did include some raises. But what about working conditions? What about the cutting shifts at plants—like at the Ford Rouge electric vehicle plant? That was NOT something workers voted for.
Aug 19, 2024
On Monday, August 5, stock markets crashed around the world. Over six trillion dollars in financial holdings evaporated into thin air. But within a matter of days, the stock markets recovered, almost like nothing had happened.
These wild gyrations demonstrated the complete instability of the financial system.
Big financial companies bankroll hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of bets in virtually every corner of the world. They bet big on the value of the Japanese yen. They make complex wagers on cryptocurrencies, like bitcoin. They pile into the stocks of hot tech companies.
To super-charge their profits, these companies borrow huge amounts of money, or as they call it, “leverage.” So, as stock markets rose through the first half of 2024, these bets generated windfall profits. This inspired copycat traders to get on board and pushed prices higher.
But betting with borrowed money is very risky. When bets go bad, the borrowed money multiplies losses. To cover their losses, financial companies are forced to sell big amounts of stocks and bonds all at once. This sets off a chain reaction of forced sales. In the age of super-fast computers and networks, these losses can grow at practically the speed of light, threatening to destabilize and bring down the entire global economy.
For several years, financial companies all over the world had been borrowing insane amounts of Japanese yen to finance speculation of all kinds. What made the yen so attractive was that the interest rates in Japan were super low, practically zero. Borrowing money at super-low interest rates was a sure-fire recipe for easy profits: Just borrow in Japan, then plow all that free money into Mexican bonds yielding over 18%, or big tech companies’ soaring shares or even Bitcoin. It is an old speculator’s trick that is called the carry trade.
Nobody knows how much yen were borrowed to make those bets. But estimates run in the tens of trillions of dollars’ worth of Japanese yen.
All that borrowed money was like a time bomb.
On August 3rd, the fuse was lit. Faced with rising inflation, the Japanese central bank raised interest rates by a tiny amount, one-quarter of one percent. Fearing bigger increases in the near future, financial companies unwound their bets based on trillions of dollars’ worth of borrowed yen … all at the same time!
By Monday, August 5, stock markets crashed worldwide. Losses rippled through Asian markets and into Europe, where major stock indexes slumped, and then into the Americas. High-flying shares in technology companies were wrecked. The crypto market was hit by billions in forced sales.
Nobody knew how far this crash would go. Bloomberg News’ August 5th headline was: “$6.4 Trillion Stock Wipeout Has Traders Fearing ‘Great Unwind’ Is Just Starting.”
This time, the crash did not continue. The Japanese central bank issued assurances that it would not raise interest rates any further, despite rising inflation. Hedge funds snapped up shares of stocks at what appeared to be bargain prices. Financial markets recovered.
So, the rampant speculation that had resulted in the financial crash started up all over again, guaranteeing that there will be new crashes, even much bigger crashes that could finally set off “The Great Unwind” that ushers in a new, much worse economic depression that everyone knows lurks in the future.
This is the insanity of a huge economic system, that ties humanity together, but that is run solely for the profit of a tiny, tiny minority of capitalist owners. Those capitalists are in constant competition with each other to make more profits in the shortest time possible. In their quest for ever higher profits, they are ready to gamble away and destroy all the wealth created by the working masses worldwide.
This can only change when the working masses, that is, the people who actually do the work and produce everything, take control away from that tiny minority of predatory capitalists, and run the society in the interest of all of humanity.
Aug 19, 2024
Federal student loan rates are going up: the fixed interest rate on Federal Direct Stafford loans will climb to 6.53% for undergraduate loans, up from 5.5% last year. This rate is the highest it has been since 2013 when the rate was 6.8%.
But that’s not all. Direct PLUS college loans jumped to 9.08%, up from 8.05% last year. These loans are often taken out by parents to bridge the gap and pay expenses not covered by other financial aid and federal student loans.
The average cost for in-state tuition attending a 4- year public institution is $9,750 a year, and if you add other expenses onto this, like room and board, it comes to over $27,000 a year. This really means the cost of higher education is more and more out of reach for most working class families … unless they want to face years of debt.
It’s just another proof that we live in a class society where it’s “how much education can you afford.”