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
Dec 16, 2024
The UAW had barely signed off on its 2023 contract with Stellantis before the company began to cut jobs and tear up its promise to start up the closed Belvidere plant. The contract had also promised that “supplementals” would be given permanent status. Instead, 2000 of them soon found themselves with no job at all. Another 2000 permanent workers were laid off from scattered facilities, including two Detroit Jeep plants and a Sterling Heights truck plant.
Even bigger cuts were to come. Stellantis laid off one whole shift, 1500 workers, at its Warren truck plant and announced the cut of a whole shift at a Toledo Jeep plant. The Warren plant and the Jefferson Jeep plant also had “temporary” shutdowns for several weeks.
The UAW turned its anger on Carlos Tavares, the European CEO of the Stellantis conglomerate, calling for his ouster.
Well, Tavares is now gone, pushed to resign by a management board not at all concerned by broken promises to the union, but only by the company’s broken promises to investors that profits would keep soaring.
Of course, the layoffs didn’t stop. Mobis, a subcontractor for Stellantis in Toledo, laid off hundreds of newly permanent workers, only to offer them a job—if they agreed to come back at half their pay rate.
Nor did the layoffs hit only Stellantis.
By the end of 2024, GM will have laid off nearly 2,000 workers in Kansas City and 250 part-time workers at an Indiana truck plant. It cut almost 400 workers at a Lansing Michigan plant and over a thousand engineers, mostly at its tech centers. GM had already tried to extort lower wages at its Indiana Truck plant, and seems eager to try it at Kansas City. GM also shut its Orion Township Bolt plant in early 2024, laying off nearly another thousand. GM says it will retool the plant to produce electric trucks, but that’s only a promise. Belvidere shows what promises will get you.
Ford was also retrenching on promises, delaying the opening of four new battery plants, in Kentucky, Tennessee and Michigan, along with a Tennessee electric truck plant. Ford was also cutting jobs. An assembly plant in Wayne, Michigan axed 400. Ford’s Dearborn Lightning Truck Plant cut out two shifts in April of 2024, eliminating over 1500 jobs. It shut down the remaining shift for seven weeks, from November 2024 to January 2025.
The auto industry is beginning to shake itself out—as it has done periodically, most notably from 2007 to 2009, when the contracts signed by the three companies with the UAW proved to be worth less than the paper they were printed on.
It was during those years that GM and Chrysler (now called Stellantis), using the cudgel of bankruptcy and government threats, effectively dumped the contract. Ford did the same, even without bankruptcy. Lower wages—two-tier—were set for new workers. Retirees lost the company’s guarantee of a pension and medical care. Individual paid days off were reduced. Wage increases were suppressed. Break time was reduced. Draconian absentee programs were instituted. The threat of discharge hung over every worker’s head. Production speeds took off. The numbers working in auto went down, then down again.
Auto once again is beginning to shake out, this time blaming the transition to electric vehicles for the problem. But the cuts are not just caused by the transition to electric, and they are not just at the three American companies linked by the UAW contract. Exclusively electric vehicle producers like Tesla and Rivian have no transition to engineer, but they are cutting too. So are companies in other countries, led by VW, which is closing three plants in Germany, and Nissan, which is cutting one fifth of its whole global work force. Even BYD, the main Chinese company, is cutting back in Brazil.
The fact is, the whole capitalist world is caught in the snare of a financial crisis which, ever since 1970, has gone through one shake-out after another, affecting not only one company, not only one industry, but the whole global economy. A union contract has never been protection against something like this.
GM expects to make between 14 and 15 billion dollars this year. Clearly that’s more than enough to produce both gas-powered vehicles and electric—and to continue producing vehicles that ordinary workers could afford. But GM has other uses for its profit. It needs to satisfy Wall Street’s big financial investors, the capitalist class. So far this year, GM has plowed 12.4 billion dollars into “stock buybacks,” which is a maneuver that enriches the very wealthy investors holding large blocks of stock. It has also paid them a regular dividend every quarter. In fact, more money flowed out to investors than the amount of wealth that production created.
The wealth that is created in the productive economy—that is, by the labor of workers who produce all its goods and services—does not go into activities that would improve the conditions of life of the population, nor does it improve the work lives of those who produce it. This wealth goes into the chase for more wealth.
This is the deadly spiral capitalism has trapped us in, and that we will continue to be trapped in, until the system collapses—or until the working class regains confidence in itself, until it rediscovers the power that it actually could hold in its own hands. But for the working class to do that, it needs to fight beyond what one union can do, it needs to fight in more than one company, in more than one industry, and even in more than one country. The working class urgently needs revolutionary militants, whose aim is to engage workers in wider struggles that allow the working class to gain a sense of its own power.
Dec 16, 2024
It’s the “most wonderful time of the year”—but not for retail workers. While the holiday season is supposed to be filled with joy and relaxation, many retail workers find themselves working longer hours for elf-sized pay.
Companies like Target hire just enough seasonal staff to cover the basics—if that—then pile the extra work on their regular employees. Instead of festive cheer, workers are stressed and overworked, with little time or money to enjoy the holidays themselves. Many workers can’t even afford to buy presents from the same store they’re busting their backs for.
Looks like the holidays are only merry for the company, not the people doing all the work!
Dec 16, 2024
A young couple—a teacher and a doctor’s office worker—in College Park, Maryland, outside Washington, D.C., joined a class action lawsuit against their Houston-based landlord, Camden Development, to fight the excessive fees constantly added to their rent. The one-bedroom apartment was advertised at $1,729 per month, but mandatory monthly fees add $188 for technology and $37 for trash pickup. Plus, they had to pay a one-time $450 “community fee.”
Camden owns almost 60,000 apartments around the country and relies more and more on these added-on “junk fees” to increase its profit, like other big landlords. A similar landlord, Invitation Homes, told investors in 2022 it makes 30 million dollars more in profit per year by charging these fees.
Rent is already impossibly high—one-fifth of renters spend their ENTIRE paycheck on rent, or need to work a second job to pay it.
These fees make housing cost even more. And they’re not even included in the rosy government inflation statistics.
Dec 16, 2024
The Detroit Public School Community District (DPSCD) is on the hook for 3.5 billion dollars in “legacy debt”—debt incurred by what was once called DPS, Detroit Public Schools, before 2016, and debt incurred since then. Recently the Detroit Schools superintendent said the district is on track to make its last payment on the old district’s debt, of 1.8 billion, in March, using proceeds from an 18-mill tax levied on non-homestead properties. Since 2016, this has been the means used to pay off the debt.
But in response, State Treasury officials say that once DPS operating debt is fully repaid, proceeds from the levy must go to district operations, and not outstanding debt. Without these non-homestead tax funds, the superintendent said the district won’t be able to repay the rest of the debt, possibly not until 2040, costing taxpayers about 326 million dollars more interest.
There is a long history—a tangled web—that goes into understanding how Detroit’s public schools accumulated so much debt in the first place. You could go back to as far as when big auto plants were shut in the 1980s; people lost their jobs and their homes, and property taxes, that had been used to fund public schools, went to hell in a handbasket.
Governor Engler changed the way schools were financed, changing from property taxes to the state providing the main financing—on the basis of per pupil funding. Soon thereafter, the growth of charter schools and “schools of choice,” where students could attend schools outside their district, and their funding would follow them, led to money being drained from the Detroit Public Schools.
And yes, there were a few bad apples in school administrations who siphoned off some funds for personal gains.
But over the years, a whole series of steps were taken by the state to take over the school district and have it overseen by emergency financial managers, like the notorious Robert Bobb, appointed by Democratic governor Jennifer Granholm and known as “Rob Bob” by Detroit residents. Under a whole series of “emergency managers,” expensive consultants were hired. Bobb cut the workforce by 25% and privatized custodial and other services. Fifty-nine buildings were closed. Between the exodus to charter schools and schools of choice, enrollment fell and, no surprise, deficits grew. And so the emergency managers went to the legislature to ask them to guarantee money for more bonds—which are, in fact, gifts to the banks, paying interest.
This pattern was repeated over and over again under each of the four emergency managers: close schools, drive more students out of the district, take on more debt. Use the debt to justify more closings … repeat.
In the 1970s, there were 370 public schools in Detroit. Today, there are about 110. Today, there may be 48,000 kids in Detroit public schools, while there are many more Detroit kids in charter schools and out of district.
And every time you turn around, the conversation is about how much more taxpayers must pay in interest because of the debt. How much more of the per-student funding from the state should go right back to the banks to service the debt, before the funding can ever reach the schools.
Never is the conversation about the fact that, in the last 10 years, more than one billion dollars intended for Detroit’s schools, libraries and other city services have been used to pay for real estate projects that benefit wealthy investors. Or the fact that 2.1 billion in tax money has been given away to rich corporations for projects such as battery plants in Michigan.
The working class of Detroit, the children of Detroit, the teachers and other school employees of Detroit need a real solution: wipe out the debt. The State created it, not them. Return all schools to public schools, in Detroit, and fully fund them. The money is there.
Dec 16, 2024
Anger felt by millions in the U.S. at the horrible state of U.S. healthcare bubbled up and erupted like a volcano when UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson was murdered.
The uproar allowed an important fact to come out. Did you know that in the health insurance industry, money paid out by insurance companies to provide health care to human beings is called medical “losses”? Your gain of better health is considered a loss by corporations!
The Affordable Care Act was supposed to require 80 to 85% spending by insurance companies on what the law calls “Medical Losses.” Or, what any humane person would call HEALTH CARE! The other 15 to 20% NOT spent on healthcare is then available to be funneled to Wall Street investors as profit.
But in order to take a bigger bite of the profit apple, companies like UnitedHealthcare stopped being just insurance companies and purchased health care providers—healthcare clinics, doctors’ offices and pharmacy companies.
As big health insurance whales like UnitedHealthcare started eating up smaller fish providers, they became Wall Street darlings for shoveling ever increasing profits to wealthy investors.
According to one former health insurance insider, “Hundreds of acquisitions later, UnitedHealth is now the fourth largest U.S. company—just behind Walmart, Amazon and Apple. At the end of trading on Monday of this week [12/9/24], the share price was $560.62. That’s an increase of more than 2,100% since June 24, 2009. By comparison, the Dow Jones average has increased 438%.”
In other words, health insurance corporations are using denials of medical care to make Wall Street investors even more filthy rich than they already are.
The phrase “Blood Diamonds” came to describe the human price of diamonds mined in war zones. A healthcare system making obscene profits off denying care ought to be called out for what it truly is—Blood Healthcare!
Dec 16, 2024
The administration of Mayor Brandon Scott announced a 15% increase in water and sewer bills for 2025, and a 9% increase in each of the years 2026 and 2027. That’s 33% higher—actually more, due to compounding. The administration mentions that in 2022 and 2023, the rates only went up 3%. This bragging ignores the 9% increases each year from 2016 to 2021, adding up to 56% more, and not including previous increases.
In other words, AGAIN the bills have almost doubled for water and sewer, in an area with some of the worst poverty in the state of Maryland. In addition, Baltimore’s sewer system still backs up into houses, more than 20 years after a consent decree was signed between the city and the EPA. The estimate for repairing such disasters is $6,000 per house. And where are the most back-ups recorded? In three of the poorest areas of Baltimore, almost entirely black and with an average annual household income of $34,000.
But yet, the city finds money to pay private contractors to “fix” the horrible water and sewer pipes. The contractors can pay minimum wage to some workers and make a nice profit. The politicians also propose to give yet another developer more funding—is it for the Inner Harbor? No, that was last year’s promised money. This year it is to develop the empty Old Town mall near downtown.
A water system built in 1905 still serves the city and surrounding county residents poorly more than 100 years later. Credit goes to a heck of a lot of Democratic Party politicians.
Dec 16, 2024
A jury in New York City acquitted Daniel Penny, who is white, of murder for the chokehold killing of a black mentally-ill homeless man, Jordan Neely, on a city subway train in 2023. Right-wingers like J.D. Vance, Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump, Jr., and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis were quick to celebrate the jury’s verdict. Later in the week, Vice President-elect Vance invited Penny to attend the Army-Navy football game with him that Saturday.
On May 1, 2023, Neely boarded the subway train and began shouting. “I don’t have food, I don’t have a drink, I’m fed up,” he yelled, adding, “I don’t mind going to jail and getting life in prison. I’m ready to die.” That’s when Penny walked up behind him and put him in a chokehold, with other riders helping him to subdue Neely. Penny kept him in the chokehold, even after Neely stopped breathing and went limp. After Penny finally let go, other riders attempted to revive Neely without success. Police did not arrive until the train reached the next station—Neely was pronounced dead.
Another rider on the train said at the time that Neely didn’t seem like he wanted to hurt anyone and never directly contacted Penny in any way prior to Penny putting him into the chokehold.
Neely had been homeless for years and had struggled with mental illness, in part as a result of his mother’s brutal murder when he was just 14 years old. He was known at the city’s subway stations for impersonating Michael Jackson as a way to earn money.
These prominent right-wingers celebrate Penny getting off scot-free for the killing of a mentally-ill homeless man. What is the likelihood that they or any of the other politicians are about to do anything about the suffering of so many others in this society—suffering from mental illness, unable to get the help they need and left to find a way to survive while living on the streets?
Dec 16, 2024
This article is translated from the November issue #320 of La Voix des Travailleurs (Workers Voice), the journal of the Organisation des Travailleurs Revolutionaires (Organization of Revolutionary Workers) active in Haiti.
In just 21 days, over 40,000 Haitian migrants living in the Dominican Republic were repatriated, including 31,000 deported by the Dominican state. These record-breaking waves of deportations represent yet another offensive by the Dominican state against Haitian migrant workers.
On October 2, 2024, Dominican President Luiz Abinader announced a plan for the mass deportation of Haitian migrants. The aim is to deport 10,000 each week. To justify this odious measure, he cited the security crisis in Haiti, which is causing Haitians to flee to the Dominican Republic, overwhelming Dominican public services.
Since this announcement, a veritable hunt for Haitians has been launched in the Dominican Republic. Pregnant women, mothers with babies and children are being deported, with the immigration authorities showing them no consideration. Children are snatched from schools, women from hospital beds or their homes, workers from building sites, businesses or on public transportation. Every day, hundreds, if not thousands, are taken to the border after suffering violence at the hands of Dominican immigration agents and soldiers. Some human rights organizations have even reported cases of rape.
In the Dominican Republic, xenophobia and anti-Haitian racism have risen to the level of a political doctrine, on the basis of which nationalists orchestrate propaganda and campaigns against Haitian migrant workers. And the Dominican government’s migration policy is nothing other than an echo of these racist campaigns. Since coming to power in 2020, Luiz Abinader has done nothing but persecute migrants by tightening migration policy and orchestrating mass deportations. This has made the situation of Haitian migrants even more difficult.
He had a 100-mile-long wall built along the border to separate the two countries. In 2023, the construction of a canal at Ouanaminthe was used as a pretext to close the border for several months and to deploy soldiers at the border, provoking a crisis between the two states. Since then, the Dominican state has suspended granting visas to Haitian nationals. Many Haitian students are unable to renew their visas.
Only solidarity between the Dominican poor and Haitian migrants can prevent the spread of anti-Haitian xenophobia in the Dominican Republic.
Dec 16, 2024
This article is translated from the November issue #320 of La Voix des Travailleurs (Workers Voice), the journal of the Organisation des Travailleurs Revolutionaires (Organization of Revolutionary Workers) active in Haiti.
Every year on November 18, political leaders take the opportunity to celebrate Vertières, which they present as the Army’s feast day. But the Army of slaves that defeated colonial France was at the service of the poor, the classes oppressed by the slave system, whereas today’s Haitian National Police and army are nothing more than watchdogs trained to protect the lives and property of the rich, and to repress the poor classes, whether in struggle or not.
On November 18, 1803, at Vertières, the indigenous slave army soundly defeated Napoleon’s army, known at the time as the best equipped and strongest in the world. An army of over 22,000 well-trained and armed French soldiers was routed and defeated. The va-nu-pieds (literally, “those who go barefoot”), poor people with nothing to lose and everything to gain, buried Napoleon Bonaparte’s mad dream of re-establishing slavery, already abolished since 1793, by force of arms and the struggle of the slaves. The beating was so severe that even the word “Vertières” was banned from French vocabulary and books, until it was recently reintroduced.
It was one of the greatest revolutions of modern times, both anti-slavery and anti-colonial. The slave army tore down not only the slave system, but also the white colonists, the representatives and profiteers of this social organization in the colony of Saint-Domingue, the richest and most prosperous at the time. In the United States, in 1776, the English colonists had been expelled from American territory, but slavery was maintained, particularly in the south of the country. This is why the U.S. joined forces with the colonial powers of the time, including France, to isolate Haiti, suffocate the former slave population and prevent the revolution from spreading to other colonies. These powers have never been able to digest the crushing defeat of the French army, which they considered their own, and have done everything in their power to make Haiti pay for its audacity, right up to the present day.
This victory, attributed exclusively to the chiefs and generals of the indigenous army, was indeed the work of the determined, angry slave masses, ready to do anything to put an end to slavery. At Vertières, the former slaves shed their blood and gave their lives to put an end to the barbarity of slavery and to appropriate this land and its resources.
Every year, the property-owning classes, their minions in power and the pack of diplomats at their side, who celebrate this date, are instead sullying the memory of Vertières.
Those who plunder the public coffers, who kneel to receive the diktats of the rich and foreign diplomats, who make pacts with gangs, should not allow themselves to celebrate Vertières. It’s a mockery and an insult!
This is why, faced with the barbarity of gangs, the dictatorship of the wealthy classes and the plundering of public coffers, urban and rural workers, like their slave ancestors, have a great interest in mobilizing to forge their own army, to give themselves their own instrument of struggle, to dare to reclaim and renew Vertières. This is the only way to defeat the property-owning classes, their political henchmen and the criminal hordes who sow grief in the neighborhoods on a daily basis. The people’s ordeal has gone on far too long!
Dec 16, 2024
This article is translated from the December 13 issue, #2941 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the Trotskyist group of that name active in France.
When Trump met Zelensky in Paris, he declared that 400,000 Ukrainian soldiers, and many more civilians, had died “unnecessarily” and that it was therefore necessary “to reach an agreement as quickly as possible” to get out of the war.
The Ukrainian president felt compelled to respond to Trump with his own figures on what had previously been a state secret. According to him, Ukraine has so far suffered 43,000 deaths and 370,000 injuries. Has Zelensky downplayed these military and civilian losses, for fear of offending the Ukrainian population? It wouldn’t be surprising. But, in any case, this assessment can only be provisional, as fighting and bombing continue. They are even intensifying, precisely because Washington seems intent on obtaining a ceasefire sooner rather than later.
Nevertheless, this bloody toll alone is enough to indict the organizers of this butchery. That is: American imperialism and its Ukrainian ally, in their drive to marginalize Russia even further in the former Soviet space, and the Kremlin, through its warmongering response. They bear responsibility for the criminal policy that has pitted two peoples, united by a thousand historical, cultural and even family ties, against each other in a fratricidal war.
Shortly before Kyiv acknowledged its losses, Moscow had also done so, albeit clumsily. It happened, at the end of November, during a round-table discussion in the Russian Chamber of Deputies, the Duma, on “social support measures for members of the armed forces and their family members.” There, the Deputy Defense Minister announced that the authorities would satisfy “the requests of 48,000 families of missing soldiers” by “offering free DNA tests” to identify the unknown dead.
The head of the Duma’s Defense Committee immediately demanded that these “figures not appear anywhere in the minutes,” as “this closed information is very sensitive.” Bad luck for him: the Duma website doesn’t breathe a word about it, but the recording fell into the hands of an independent media outlet, which published it.
The deputy minister doesn’t risk much for her blunder, since she’s related to Putin. It may be “sensitive information,” but the public has no shortage of clues. Rosstat, the official statistics agency, reports that the average price of a cemetery plot has risen from 4,400 to 7,700 rubles in the two years of the war, with the cost of digging a grave reaching 10,000 rubles. It’s only a short step to conclude that prices are keeping pace with exploding demand. And it’s all too apparent in the provinces: on television screens invaded by advertisements for funeral monuments, while undertaker’s stores open in fancy shopping districts in cities such as Perm in the Urals.
Dec 16, 2024
Three Iraqis who were tortured in the U.S. prison in Abu Ghraib, Iraq more than 20 years ago finally won a lawsuit against the private military contractor which tortured them, CACI.
Fruit vendor Asa’ad Zuba’e, middle school principal Suhail Al Shimari, and journalist Salah Al-Ejaili along with many others were stripped naked, forced to engage in group masturbation, attacked with dogs, and knocked unconscious by blows to their heads. After invading Iraq in March 2003, the U.S. military hired CACI to “soften up” detainees before interrogations.
Some surviving prisoners, that is, many more than the three who just won this lawsuit, later sued the company. But even though the military’s own investigation in 2004 had exposed the torture, CACI tried to have the lawsuit dismissed more than 20 times over 16 years.
And the liability—three million dollars each in compensation plus $11 million in punitive damages—is nothing for CACI, with its military contracts for hundreds of millions of dollars every year. More than 1,000 Wall Street investment firms including Vanguard, BlackRock, State Street, and Morgan Stanley own stock in CACI, which reports profits of over 120 million dollars a year on revenues of over two billion dollars.
The U.S. military does not go to war to liberate or help people, but to help predatory companies like this make more profit.
Dec 16, 2024
Before leaving office, President Joe Biden used his authority to pardon his son Hunter for crimes for which he had pled guilty. In doing so, Biden said he was doing what any father would do for his son.
So what were the crimes Hunter Biden committed? The one which received the most attention was that he lied on an application for purchasing a gun in 2018 when he denied being addicted to drugs at the time. In a separate trial, though, he admitted he failed to pay 1.4 million dollars in taxes from 2016 through 2019. It seems he couldn’t afford to pay his taxes because he needed the money to pay for drugs, prostitutes, luxury hotels, a sex club membership and online pornography.
It must be nice to have connections with powerful people! It’s hard not to think, what would happen to any of the rest of us if we somehow forgot to pay 1.4 million dollars in taxes? But it’s okay. In the five years since, he’s turned into a fine, upstanding citizen.
Dec 16, 2024
This article is translated from the December 13 issue, #2941 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the Trotskyist group of that name active in France.
In less than ten days, the coalition led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) militia, heir to the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda, backed by Turkey, took Damascus and brought down the bloody dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad, who took refuge in Russia. The speed with which the regime collapsed shows that it had lost all support. From outside, it was the weakening of its regional allies, the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Iranian Pasdaran, who have been under Israeli attack for a year. From within, the population is exhausted by deprivation, while the regime’s military and cadres have given up on it.
Despite the many uncertainties it raises, the coalition led by Ahmed al-Shara, alias Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the head of HTS, who repeats everywhere that he is no longer a jihadist, has appeared to liberate a large part of the population. In a matter of hours, electricity and telephone networks were restored and food distributed in the towns.
Most poignant of all are the images of thousands of families making their way to the regime’s sinister prisons in the hope of finding their missing loved ones. A symbol of the regime’s barbarity, Sednaya prison near Damascus, was nicknamed the “human slaughterhouse” because tens of thousands of opponents were tortured there, walled up alive and, for the most part, executed. Some survivors were released after 20 or 30 years of imprisonment.
The fall of the tyrant was celebrated by the millions of Syrian refugees living in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and other European countries. Among those surviving in refugee camps, suffering from unemployment in exile, and xenophobia orchestrated by politicians, many seem to be considering returning home. But what will they find?
HTS’s leader, al-Jolani, who has overthrown the Assads, has been preparing for this role for a long time, presenting himself as a reasonable Islamist, and, why not, a democrat? However, he cut his teeth in Iraq after the 2003 American invasion, where he made friends with all the jihadist leaders, particularly in the American army’s prison camps. He gradually distanced himself from Islamic State, then Al Qaeda, over the years as his HTS militia was able to establish itself in the region around the city of Idlib, in northwestern Syria. In this region, where the various rebel factions were grouped together under Turkish protection, al-Jolani succeeded in imposing his authority. He set up a civilian government that restored trade and the infrastructure essential to daily life, including hospitals, taking advantage of the region’s proximity to Turkey. This relative stability is to his credit, even though his “government of salvation” suppressed demonstrators, imprisoned opponents and set up a religious police force. But he is also said to have tried to moderate the repressive zeal of jihadist militiamen, and to have succeeded in integrating secular opposition members into his ranks. He benefited from Turkey’s benevolence but certainly also cultivated contacts with Saudi Arabia, the United States and even Israel.
Al-Jolani is still classified as a “terrorist” by U.S. officials, who are certainly keen to warn him that he remains under surveillance. But having trimmed his beard and dropped his nom de guerre, he is now seeking to appear as a champion of a united Syria that respects its minorities. He organized the transfer of power between the Prime Minister of the fallen regime and Mohammed al-Bashir, the head of the Idlib government. He promises a transitional government with former ministers from Assad’s Baathist party and claims a liberal economic model in the image of Qatar. But the Syrian population would be wrong to trust al-Jolani’s promises.
The country has been ravaged by thirteen years of civil war. It remains divided into territories administered by competing politico-military apparatuses, sponsored by rival regional powers; maneuvering rages to determine who will prevail. Since the fall of Damascus, Turkey has intervened in the north against the Kurds, the United States is bombing the remnants of Islamic State, while Israel is destroying as many Syrian military bases as possible and moving its tanks across the border to reinforce its domination of the region.
There is every reason for civil war and wars of influence to resume, with the risk of Assad’s dictatorship giving way to that of reactionary Islamists rapidly resorting to the same means.
Dec 16, 2024
This article is translated from the December 13 issue, #2941 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the Trotskyist group of that name active in France.
At 10:20 p.m. on Tuesday, December 3, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law. At around 4:30 a.m., he was forced to recognize the failure of his initiative and rescinded the decision himself. This event, shocking to the South Korean population, shows just how dangerous those in power can be.
The South Korean president is a hard-right politician who, just over a year ago, broke a massive strike organized by the truckers’ union by declaring it “illegal.” Shortly afterwards, he also imprisoned representatives of the construction union. But the last parliamentary elections, this past April, were a defeat for his party, giving the opposition almost a two-thirds majority. Yoon Suk Yeol has been exasperated by this opposition, which stood up to him in Parliament over the budget vote, so he attempted his military takeover. He declared that he was introducing martial law to “eradicate pro-North Korean forces and protect the democratic constitutional order.” As in the good old days of South Korea’s military dictatorship, the threat from the North was used as a pretext. It seemed like he wanted to remind all those who had forgotten that in Korea, dictators were not only in the North.
Yoon and his Minister of Defense set up a special staff, comprising a number of senior officers, including the commander of the First Special Forces Brigade. For a few hours, in the middle of the night, troops were stationed in the capital, Seoul, and stormed several public buildings, including the National Assembly. Several people were arrested, including trade unionists and the president of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU).
The announcement, made live on television, chilled a large part of the Korean population. “When I heard the news, I screamed. I couldn’t sleep. I watched the news on YouTube because I didn’t trust television,” said a protestor against martial law. “I was on the subway when I heard about it. I immediately thought of Gwangju. I imagined tanks and soldiers in the street,” said another.
The last time the South Korean government implemented martial law was at the height of the military dictatorship, in March 1980, to suppress protest movements, including the uprising in the southern city of Gwangju. In this city, after the army fired on a demonstrating crowd, the population looted police stations to arm themselves, organized militias and held the city for a few days until the army re-entered and carried out a bloodbath.
So it’s easy to understand why, 40 years on, thousands of Koreans reacted spontaneously, in the middle of the night, and demonstrated in front of the military-held National Assembly, like the man who said of Yoon: “He wants to plunge the country into darkness. Just like previous dictatorships. We won’t let the youth of our country fall to his blows.” On Saturday, December 7, hundreds of thousands of people—one million according to the organizers—demonstrated to demand the president’s impeachment.…
[On December 13, after massive protests, Korean lawmakers finally voted to impeach Yoon and suspend him from office.]
The U.S. Deputy Secretary of State described imposing martial law as a “serious error of judgement.” In other words, “you don’t attempt a coup d’état lightly and without sufficient preparation.” The United States has several military bases in the country, and an American general even heads the South Korean army. Since the Korean War, the South Korean army has been part of the military forces “allied” against North Korea, under American tutelage. Although the United States claims not to have been informed of the President’s intentions, it does seem to want to spare him and find him an honorable way out. After all, the South Korean state and its army are the guarantor of their political and economic interests in this country, and a pillar of their presence in this part of the world.
The media showed opposition MPs confronting the military and presented them as the bulwark that prevented the coup. This is a lie. If Yoon Suk Yeol’s coup can be seen as a farce, it’s because it was the initiative of an individual with dreams of dictatorship for himself and his cronies, who failed to get the bulk of the military leadership on board. It was certainly not the resistance of the deputies that could have prevented it.
This sudden turn of events showed that the army’s general staff has its finger on the trigger, and that some of the country’s political leaders are ready to opt for military dictatorship. All this, ultimately, under the protection of the U.S. government.
Dictatorship in South Korea has a long history. It was only at the end of the 1980s that the regime put on a democratic façade, particularly after the working class mobilized in explosive, long-lasting strikes affecting the whole country and involving millions of workers.
In fact, the apparatus of dictatorship is still there, ready to resurface.
Dec 16, 2024
What follows is the editorial that appeared on the front of all SPARK’s workplace newsletters, during the week of December 8, 2024.
In the early hours of Wednesday, December 4, as he was walking toward the Manhattan Hilton for a shareholder meeting, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot in the back and killed by an unknown assailant who then escaped.
The perpetrator’s motives for the shooting are not firmly known. But when it was reported that police found several bullet casings with the words “Deny,” “Defend,” and “Depose” written on them, speculation—and reaction—started pouring in, to social media and elsewhere. For the words echo a phrase, “Delay, deny, defend,” that has been used to describe practices of the health insurance industry to raise its profits at the expense of people in need of healthcare.
Testimonials from UnitedHealthcare customers AND medical professionals started flooding social media sites: People who lost their homes or went deeply into debt to pay off medical bills. People who lost family members because treatment was denied or delayed. Doctors who could not perform life-saving procedures because they had to wait for ‘prior authorization’ from the insurance company before they could do anything. And these came from across the political spectrum, across many diverse backgrounds.
In any case, the election is over. But reality didn’t go away.
And in addition to the testimonials came coarser reactions. Some people expressed glee and satisfaction at this murder, and some even see the murderer as a hero. A lecturer at the Columbia School of Social Work posted on X: “Today we mourn the death of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, gunned down ... wait, I’m sorry—today we mourn the deaths of the 68,000 Americans who needlessly die each year so that insurance company execs like Brian Thompson can become multimillionaires.”
Clearly, this murder touched a nerve. The reaction shows many, many people in this country share similar complaints about health insurance companies and about the health care industry as a whole.
UnitedHealthcare brought in 281 billion dollars in revenue last year. It has denied nearly one-third of all claims it receives. It has also deployed computer programs to review—and deny—customer claims immediately. No chance for human intervention. How cold-blooded! Appeals take time, and medical situations can worsen without swift intervention.
UnitedHealthcare is not the only major insurance company to engage in these practices; it is just one of the largest and most egregious. And the insurance companies are not the only perpetrators—the United States health care industry is built, from the ground up, for the production of profit above all else, from hospital chains to medical device makers to pharmaceutical companies.
So people let loose anger at this system when a top executive in that system, a symbol of all that they had been forced through, was gunned down. Such a reaction is understandable, and it demonstrates just how many people feel screwed by the health care industry.
But nothing fundamental will change in the healthcare industry from this murder. Individual acts of violence are not a solution to a broad social problem. Thompson will just be replaced by another CEO. UnitedHealth, and CEOs across the country, are beefing up their security, while changing absolutely nothing about the profit-making that makes so many people so furious. And in fact, behind the CEOs making millions of dollars are the shareholders, banks and Wall Street making billions.
The only time things change for working people is when we come together in collective action. When we organize collectively with the goal of changing this system and taking control away from the corporations playing with our lives for the sake of their profits and wealth.
But now we can see just how deep the rage goes. And now we can start organizing and using our collective power to build a system that truly serves us.
Dec 16, 2024
This documentary about healthcare in the United States from 2007 is just as relevant today as it was then. The film focuses on those lucky enough to have health insurance, and shows how even they can lose loved ones because they are denied coverage of doctor-ordered medical procedures, get saddled with huge devastating medical debt, and/or are not able to afford needed treatment or medications. And this happens to people with medical coverage! Millions have no coverage at all.
Though the film does glorify other countries with national health care, it does hint at what it could mean if profit were truly removed from health care.
The film examines the history of health care and medical insurance in this country. It exposes how the profit-seeking lobbyists pay to control our government, and how they control the narrative in our media and culture. This film demands we take a second look at the system that we are told is the best in the world, but benefits only those in control.
Dec 16, 2024
A renewable energy company, Avantus, which KKR, a private equity company, owns, is chopping thousands of 100-year-old Joshua trees into pulp just outside Boron, a California desert town, to make way for a 2,300-acre solar project. The construction also kicks up dust containing a fungus that causes valley fever. “Let’s destroy the environment to save the environment. That seems to be the mentality. It’s hard to comprehend,” said Deric English, who teaches at Boron Junior-Senior High School (Los Angeles Times, May 31).
On paper, solar energy is supposed to be green, reducing pollution. But when it is produced on a large scale in solar farms, solar energy damages the environment in the long term or irrevocably.
Solar energy currently makes up 3% of the U.S. electricity supply. Producing it on a large scale to replace fossil fuel-driven electricity requires large land areas. For example, the Solar Star project in California, which is among the largest solar energy facilities in the world, requires 1.7 million solar panels spread over 3,000 acres north of Los Angeles. A natural gas power plant 100 miles south produces the same energy on 122 acres.
To increase solar energy production to 45% of the U.S. electricity supply, the land area required to install solar panels reaches twice the size of Massachusetts, according to the Department of Energy (DOE).
And not any land will do, either. To deliver solar energy to consumers, the land must be flat, dry, sunny, and near electric transmission infrastructure.
One such land choice is the deserts of California. But solar power plants require water for cleaning solar panels or cooling turbine generators. Using large volumes of groundwater or surface water in such arid locations permanently depletes precious underground water.
Another choice is the Midwest. If the solar panels are installed, nearly half would be on the U.S.’s best land for producing food, fiber, and other crops. To install solar farms, builders must clear the land of vegetation, including trees. After the solar panels are installed, the topsoil, nutritionally rich for crops, is depleted by erosion over time. Its recovery requires decades.
Such environmental damages could be minimized or prevented by first investigating, developing, and deploying environmentally friendly technologies before launching them. But such effort takes time and money. For this reason, solar energy companies do not include their projects’ environmental damage in their “business calculations and projections.” After all, they are after profits at all costs in the very short term.
Dec 16, 2024
Because power companies increasingly oversupply solar power in California, they are hitting residents with higher electricity bills. They are effectively paying these companies over a billion dollars per year to generate this excess energy, although they are not using it.
The State of California has long-term contracts with solar farms and other renewable energy producers that guarantee their income and profits. California set these contracts under a 2018 bill “incentivizing” companies to build these solar farms. Taxpayers indirectly and consumers directly pay for these “investments” and sale of their energy. At the same time, these government contracts incentivized solar energy producers to increase their power production instead of cutting it. Because, whether needed or not, more energy entails more profits for these companies. That is, the state colludes with these schemers to rip us off.
California could transmit this excess power to other states. But, because other states may not need it, California often has to pay them to take it.
Seeing a killer opportunity, electricity traders got into this scheme by buying this excess energy at meager prices from California and then selling it at higher prices to consumers in other states. Giant banks like Citigroup and hedge funds like Citadel, which have nothing to do with electricity generation, but are in the market to make more money out of thin air, are in this very profitable trade.
As a result of such and similarly creative scheming, California’s electric rates are currently twice the U.S. average, with only Hawaii having higher rates, as the Los Angeles Times reports. Rates at two power companies, Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric, increased by 51% over the last three years.
These companies sell us solar energy, marketing it as green and reducing pollution. Currently, it only inflates our bills and steals our taxes.
Dec 16, 2024
News media reported that President Biden spent his family Thanksgiving at Nantucket, as he usually does.
Very few reported on where exactly he stayed. For many years, he has regularly been the guest of the billionaire co-founder of the Carlyle Fund. His personal net worth is estimated at 3.7 billion dollars.
The billionaire’s estate on the wealthy retreat of Nantucket Island consists of a main house of 8000 square feet and several separate guest houses, spread over 13 acres.
The Carlyle Fund manages about 426 billion dollars of assets, with a special focus on war industries.
The Republican billionaire class gathers at places like Mar-A-Lago. The Democratic billionaire class gathers at places like Nantucket. The billionaires chat about billionaire things, while ordering workers around. This entire society is built in that image.