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
May 12, 2025
It’s easy to get distracted and even overwhelmed by the outrageous things Trump says or does. But there is a method to his madness. And this method is shown once again by the budget plan released by the administration on May 2.
In case there was any doubt: Trump’s budget cuts everything that goes to what the population needs, even as those needs have increased.
Young people have not nearly recovered from the pandemic. Learning loss and mental health problems are through the roof, especially for poorer students. But the new budget cuts the few federal dollars that go to schools and childcare in working class and poor neighborhoods.
Remember the pandemic that killed over a million people in the U.S. and hurt the health of millions more? Instead of funding the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institute of Health to prepare for the inevitable next pandemic—those programs are falling under the axe. And money for managing Medicare and Medicaid will be greatly reduced, meaning it will be even harder to get someone on the phone or find a human being in an office to sign up or solve a problem. That will make these programs harder to get, reducing even further the health care available to a population that already has some of the worst health among the world’s wealthy countries.
Money to maintain drinking water systems and to prevent pollution of water (and air) is going up in smoke. This, even after thousands have been poisoned by polluted water and failed water systems from Flint, Michigan to Jackson, Mississippi.
As climate change accelerates, fires, floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes have been raging worse every year. But the administration wants to cut funding for disaster relief.
Opioid addiction and overdoses have killed millions of people in this country over the last decades. Trump himself campaigned on the dangers of fentanyl, which is just the latest opioid. But his budget cuts funding for substance abuse treatment.
And even as a growing share of the population cannot afford rent or the most basic bills, the proposed budget cuts funding for homeless shelters, along with the tiny bit of aid available to help pay heating and electric bills.
Of course, Trump’s proposed budget is not final. Like always, he is throwing anything and everything against the wall, and not all of it will stick. But we know whatever budget gets passed by Congress will include serious cuts in the already underfunded services that the population pays taxes for.
These types of cuts started well before Trump. For 50 years now, under Democrats and Republicans, every level of government has been reducing the share of workers’ taxes that go to fund the population’s needs. Well before Trump, roads and water systems were crumbling; education and health care for working class people were getting worse and worse.
For 50 years, the capitalist class has taken this money for itself in the form of tax cuts, bailouts, privatization schemes, bloated contracts, and every other means under the sun.
Trump’s proposed cuts are even worse. Not just because they’re so deep, but because they come on top of all those cuts that have already been made. And the population is already facing one crisis after another.
Of course, like those in the past, Trump’s cuts are going to fund tax breaks for billionaires. They represent another massive acceleration of the degradation we’ve been experiencing now for decades, so the rich can get richer.
But more than that: all the money cut from the parts of the budget that go to services for the population will be used to increase funding for the repressive parts of the government.
Here in the U.S., Homeland Security will get a big bump. There will be more money for federal agents and prisons. Maybe these are supposedly aimed today only against immigrants, but what is used against immigrants can be used against everyone.
By far the biggest amount of money cut from public services will be used for a massive increase in military spending. The budget language indicates that they are preparing to fight China. Although the U.S. is the country with military forces surrounding China and not the other way around, the budget says this money is aimed to “deter Chinese aggression.” And the budget includes big increases for military aid to U.S. allies to “counter China.”
The capitalist class is telling workers very directly with this budget that we have to accept a worse life in order to pay for the wider war they are preparing, whether it’s against China or anyone else. They are telling us to accept even more degradation in our lives so they can dominate the world. And by increasing funding for domestic repression along with the military, they are telling workers in this country that they are preparing to go after us if we get out of line.
All this, even before that wider war they are preparing has even really started.
This budget makes clear the future capitalism is preparing for us. But sooner or later, workers will have had enough of this constant downward spiral—and they will refuse to go along, explode in anger, and throw the capitalists back.
May 12, 2025
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who is considered a liberal and progressive, is proposing to lay off 1,647 workers, as well as eliminating more than 2,800 vacant positions in the past year.
These cuts mean fewer street repairs, more potholes remaining unpatched, and more streets unswept. Repairs of broken street lights, which already take as long as a year, will take even longer. Trees that are now being trimmed once every 17 years might have to wait as long as 25 years to be trimmed.
Many other city services are also on the chopping block, including affordable child care, for example. Today, the city runs only 10 child care centers, hardly a drop in the bucket for a city of four million—and now most of these facilities are faced with closure because of the layoffs Bass is proposing.
Also, at risk are some of the few cultural and recreational programs accessible to working class families, including the Lincoln Youth Art Center, and historic sites such as the Watts Towers, and the Hollyhock House at the Barnsdall Art Park.
Mayor Bass says these cuts are necessary because the city is facing a budget deficit of 1 billion dollars. It may be a sign of the ongoing economic crisis, but the cuts Bass is proposing show the priorities of the politicians who run the city government. There is no change in the ongoing expansion of the Convention Center, for example, which is expected to cost 5 billion dollars eventually. Nor any cuts in the preparations for the 2028 Olympics, whose final bill is expected to top 7 billion dollars. And L.A.’s taxpayers are supposed to cover a big part of these huge bills.
In other words, economic crisis or not, these politicians will not slow down with the expensive projects big capitalists expect to profit from.
May 12, 2025
May Day this year saw rallies in big cities and some smaller towns around the country. The rallies were largely organized by the unions and non-profit groups, particularly those involved with immigration and immigration rights.
In many cities, including Chicago, a lot of the attendees were Hispanic, coming out to protest Trump’s anti-immigrant attacks. The rallies also highlighted his attacks on the federal workforce. Major Democratic politicians spoke at many—Mayor Brandon Johnson in Chicago, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez in New York, Bernie Sanders in Philadelphia.
These rallies are part of the Democrats’ push against Trump—they seek to channel anger in the population and the working class into votes in the next two elections. Many working people were happy enough to turn out for this workers’ holiday, which is celebrated worldwide, and commemorates the beginning of the fight for the 8-hour day. Many workers do not have the 8-hour day now. But this rally, which organized a small part of the working class, did not set forward a clear demand like that.
Many will remember large May Day rallies in some cities in 2006 and 2007. Then, the Democrats spent months organizing against a Republican anti-immigrant bill in Congress. They did not keep up the tradition once Obama got elected into office.
Yes, once in a while, the Democratic Party remembers the working class, and that it has a long history. But not every year—it’s only when they think it will help them win their elections.
May 12, 2025
If anyone had any doubts before his re-election about whether Donald Trump was more concerned about billionaires and corporations, his actions during the first 100 days of his second term should make it clear. According to a report by Public Citizen, Trump’s administration has halted or dismissed 90 investigations into lawbreaking corporations.
The chief beneficiaries of the ending of these investigations, of course, are companies owned by Trump’s close buddy, Elon Musk, which were involved in 32 of those investigations. The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) was auditing Tesla, which had been accused of creating a hostile work environment, widespread racial bias, and sexual harassment. Trump’s answer? He signed an executive order eliminating the OFCCP.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture was investigating Musk-owned Neuralink, which is developing computer technology to interface with the human brain. Employees complained Musk pushed them to move too quickly, which led to unnecessary deaths and compromised the research. Trump’s response? He fired the USDA’s inspector general along with those of 16 other federal agencies.
The Department of Transportation investigated Tesla over crashes involving its self-driving vehicles, which were involved in more crashes per driver than any other vehicle on the road. Trump has responded by loosening regulations on self-driving cars.
Trump doesn’t just look to enrich other billionaires, however. He’s making sure he and his family are being taken good care of as well. Just look at his involvement with cryptocurrencies. Trump once called cryptocurrency a scam, but during his last campaign, some of the richest bitcoin holders held a fundraiser and raised 25 million dollars for his campaign. Not surprisingly, in March Trump announced the creation of a “strategic bitcoin reserve” and digital asset stockpile to back the U.S. dollar.
In the meantime, Trump and his family have created their own digital assets. Trump has his own meme coin, known as $TRUMP. His wife Melania now has one of her own. Recently, the $TRUMP website and X account have posted an offer for “an intimate private dinner” with the president to the top 220 investors. Trump-affiliated companies are said to have made at least 300 million dollars since the creation of his meme coin and the coin’s value is believed to have increased by 80% since the offer of dinner with the president.
Now, a company backed by the Abu Dhabi government has agreed to use a digital coin created by World Liberty Financial, which is owned by members of Trump’s family to make a two-billion-dollar investment in a cryptocurrency exchange.
Anything smack of corruption here?!? Supposedly both Democrat and Republican members of Congress are working with Trump on bills regulating cryptocurrencies, but shockingly, they have not yet come to an agreement.
There are plenty of politicians from both parties that have enriched themselves through their involvement in U.S. politics. It just appears Trump is taking it to a new level and bragging about it.
May 12, 2025
On April 28, air traffic controllers in Philadelphia, who coordinate planes arriving at Newark airport, completely lost communications with the aircraft under their control, unable to see them on the radar and hear from or talk to their pilots for 90 seconds. By incredible luck, no accident happened. “Only” more than a thousand flights were diverted, canceled, or delayed. Many controllers took special government leave to recover from the stress caused by this incident.
It did not take long for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) officials to admit that the agency’s “antiquated air traffic control system” affects its workforce and operations. Indeed, the FAA’s U.S.-wide system is obsolete, even 70 years old in some places. Computers are operated with floppy disks, systems are connected with copper cables and phone jacks, and records and communications between controllers are transmitted using paper printouts called “flight strips.” When radar or radio frequencies stop working, there are no fail-safes, meaning controllers must simply wait for the system to come back online. The U.S. air traffic control system suffers about 700 communication outages each week.
Every official has known for decades that this system was outdated. In 2003, the U.S. Congress directed the FAA to modernize its systems. But the earliest overhaul isn’t set to be completed until 2030, and “completion dates for planned investments for systems, especially concerning, were at least 6 to 10 years away,” according to the federal government.
In addition, every official has known that the air traffic control system was critically understaffed. More than two years ago, on December 19, 2023, the FAA warned the U.S. Congress that the Newark and JFK airports, which handle millions of flights each year, may face “airport closures” as soon as late 2024 if safety-critical staffing falls too short.
Nationwide, FAA staffing is at its lowest point in nearly 30 years, with more than 90% of air traffic control facilities operating below the FAA’s recommended staffing levels. That is, 285 of 313 air traffic control facilities are chronically understaffed, and 73 facilities are missing a quarter of their workforce. The shortage is particularly severe in the New York region, where nearly 40% of the positions are unfilled. The FAA says it needs 3,000 more controllers to be fully staffed.
Due to such shortages, the FAA overworks its controllers. The controllers union has long warned of fatigue resulting from mandatory overtime, with some controllers frequently working 10-hour days over six-day weeks.
On top of the very high stress caused by being directly involved with the well-being of millions of travelling people, the pay is not that high. The FAA recently announced that it would boost pay for students at its air-traffic control academy to $22.84 an hour. You did not read it wrong. It is barely above the minimum wage. Entry-level pay for graduates is around $47,000, according to the FAA. No wonder the FAA cannot find enough recruits, even barely, to fill its staffing shortage.
But when it comes to funneling our tax money to big airline businesses, the U.S. government does not miss a beat. The federal government subsidizes airlines through various schemes, including direct financial assistance, tax breaks, and loan guarantees. After the Covid-19 pandemic, the government funneled close to 60 billion dollars to the airlines in 2021. Most of the costs of building and expanding airports are not borne by the airlines themselves, but by the public via federal, state, and local governments. Because of such lavish handouts, Delta, American Airlines, and United Airlines are the largest in the world in revenue, reaching 300 billion dollars.
In sum, overworked, understaffed, fatigued, and stressed-out air traffic workers operate antiquated technology on the one hand, and airlines extract skyrocketing profits on the other. This is the sole wonder of this capitalist system—only profits count!!
If a tragedy was avoided last month, it’s due to pure luck.
May 12, 2025
The traditional Cinco De Mayo Parade was canceled in the Little Village, the center of Mexican-American life in Chicago. For many people who live in the area, it was an unusually quiet day.
Cinco de Mayo is often confused with the Mexican Independence Day, which is September 16th. Instead, Cinco de Mayo commemorates Mexico’s victory over the French in the battle of Puebla, on May 5th, 1862.
Hector Escobar, Head of the Cermak Road Chamber of Commerce, said that the main reason was that the Mexican community is “frightened.” The community, he said, is afraid that ICE might show up in the middle of the celebration. They didn’t want to take any chances, so they decided to cancel the whole event.
This was not how many people felt!
For many people this was a sad decision, especially the small business owners who were expecting big crowds from around the city and suburbs around Chicago. People come to eat, drink, and shop around the neighborhood.
But politics gets in the way.
May 12, 2025
A half century ago, on April 30, 1975, the final U.S. forces left Vietnam in panic and chaos. U.S. attack helicopters and planes which for years had patrolled and terrorized the Vietnamese population were stuffed with fleeing U.S. embassy and CIA officials, along with the last of the U.S. troops, and 40,000 Vietnamese who had closely collaborated with the U.S. Some of the desperate U.S. allies dangled from the overloaded helicopters and fell to their deaths on the streets below. Once the helicopters delivered their charge, there was no place to leave them, and many were simply dumped into the sea.
The people of this poor, underdeveloped country had accomplished the unthinkable. They had defeated the mighty military forces of the United States, the biggest imperialist superpower in the world.
For 50 years, dating back to the 1920s, the Vietnamese people had fought against imperialist domination. First, they fought against French imperialism, which had colonized Vietnam and the rest of Southeast Asia, in order to plunder the region’s wealth, while enslaving and starving the population. Important French banks enriched their fortunes. The Michelin Tire Company got its start exploiting the region’s rubber plantations.
During World War II, the Japanese military displaced the French and occupied the region. After World War II, the French military reclaimed Vietnam and launched a new war with an army of 400,000 troops. Yet, in 1954, Vietnamese forces laid siege to the French fort in Dien Bien Phu and defeated the French army, thus ending the war.
But the fight of the Vietnamese was not over even then. Behind the scenes, the American government had already been footing much of the bill for the French war. This money could have been used to considerably modernize Vietnam. Instead, the U.S. used the money to pay for more death and destruction. The reason was simple: U.S. imperialism was not going to let any "raggedy ass little fourth rate country," as Lyndon Johnson put it, interfere with the way the world’s superpower made its decisions about how to rule over an important part of the world.
In 1954, the U.S. government engineered an agreement with the Vietnamese to “temporarily” split the country in two. The nationalist forces under the leadership of the Communist Party took control of the North. The U.S., which didn’t want to see the whole country under the authority of the “Communists”, and therefore wanted to prevent the reunification, tried to build up a pro-American regime in the South. Under Diem, its handpicked president, a huge police state was set up. By the late 1950s, almost half a million people in South Vietnam were arrested, another 68,000 executed. Diem left the nationalists no choice but to fight. In 1959, the C.P. began to mobilize to fight against the South Vietnamese government. They called on the population to support this fight. The Second Indochina War was gearing up.
The U.S. began to beef up its own forces. Under Kennedy, the number of U.S. “advisers” went from 875 to 16,000 by the end of 1963. By the end of 1965, U.S. troop strength had jumped to 180,000; three years later, it peaked at 543,000. In total, three million U.S. soldiers served in Vietnam.
The U.S. supplemented these troops with the heaviest use of fire power in the history of warfare up until that time. The U.S. dropped 14 million tons of bombs and munitions, equal to more than three times the number of bombs dropped during World War II and Korea. The U.S. also used 400,000 tons of napalm. And it sprayed 5.2 million acres of farmlands and forests with 1.7 million tons of defoliants, destroying 40% of the farmlands and forests.
By conservative estimates, the country lost more than a million people in the war with the United States; another million were wounded, and 300,000 Vietnamese were listed as missing in action. Perhaps half a million children were orphaned and millions of peasants were forcibly moved to new homes and fields.
Yet, the U.S. was not able to defeat a Vietnamese population that fought with extraordinary courage and determination. The turning point of the war came in 1968. The Vietnamese carried out an offensive during the Tet New Year in 1968. It was a coordinated, full-force attack on 36 of 44 provincial capitals, and 65 district capitals, and many military bases. In the fighting, the National Liberation Front (NLF) lost almost half its guerrilla forces. But the Tet offensive forced the U.S. government to realize that it was waging a war in which it had an entire population arrayed against it. So, the U.S. policy-makers decided it was too costly to pursue the military escalation.
The period that followed the Tet offensive proved to be the beginning of the extremely slow de-escalation of the war. Five years after Tet, in 1973, the U.S. finally completely withdrew all U.S. combat troops. Two years after that, the U.S.-backed South Vietnamese government fell. Imperialism had finally been pushed out. Vietnam was soon united into one country.
The United States and its allies were defeated, finally driven from the South in 1975. But the United States did not stop attacking Vietnam. It just continued its war by other means. In 1975, U.S. imperialism imposed an economic embargo against Vietnam. Even countries willing to trade for Vietnamese rice, once production returned, had to avoid U.S. reprisals. In addition, Vietnam faced a constant threat of invasion from China, egged on by the United States, which forced the Vietnamese to invest a large part of their meager resources in their military. When Vietnamese troops entered neighboring Cambodia to stop the attacks of the ruthless Khmer Rouge, the United States prevented its allies from delivering even emergency food and medical supplies. So, it was the U.S. government which continued the hostilities for more than two decades, in order to punish Vietnam for the military defeat the United States had suffered.
Of course, the U.S. used the vast poverty and destruction that the U.S. had inflicted on Vietnam to reinforce its propaganda that socialism can only lead to poverty and underdevelopment, whether or not the nationalist government of Vietnam had anything to do with socialism. It is supposed to be proof to the rest of the world that it is useless to defy imperialism. Even with a military victory, a country will decline, not rise, if it goes against the wishes of the imperialists.
But nothing can be further from the truth. Vietnam is the illustration of the dead end of nationalism. The only solution for the Vietnamese people would have been the overthrow of imperialism and the establishment of a new world order. For the Vietnamese, this kind of fight would not have been any harder, it would not have meant any further sacrifices. It would only have had a different aim.
But this was not the program of the Vietnamese Stalinist Communist Party leadership. They claimed to be communist. They were characterized as communist by the imperialist governments, mainly because of their links with the USSR. But in fact, their program was simply that of nationalism, to simply build a national state, independent of imperialism. The Vietnamese revolution was on the same basis as the bourgeois revolutions in the imperialist countries two centuries before.
Even when it would have been possible to spread the fight beyond the border of Vietnam and unite the fights of the Vietnamese with the fights of those in the rest of the world, the nationalist leaders never considered it. Nor did they even attempt to bring their fight against imperialism into the imperialist countries themselves. They consciously turned their back on any fight of the oppressed beyond the borders of Vietnam.
During the 30 years of the Vietnam war, there were a whole series of struggles that took place in the underdeveloped and imperialist countries. Revolts shook China, India, Korea, Bolivia, Algeria, Kenya, Cuba, Lebanon, Angola, Mozambique, Djibouti. Vietnam, whose struggle was among the longest and hardest, having fought against three imperialist powers, certainly had earned a tremendous moral authority in all these countries. It is why Che Guevara called for “One, two, three, many Vietnams.” Yet, the Vietnamese nationalists did not try to use their authority to coordinate those struggles to direct them to destroy their imperialist oppressors.
In the 1960s, the Vietnamese war became the rallying point in most of the imperialist countries. It was over the war that student movements in not only the U.S., but in France, Germany, Japan and Italy started up. It was looked on as the beacon for people fighting everywhere.
In the U.S. the war against Vietnam occurred while black people were fighting in the streets of U.S. cities. And the two fights impacted on each other. In 1968, when the Johnson administration was faced with the choice of what policy to pursue, after the Tet offensive it chose not to continue the pace of the military escalation. The Pentagon Papers gave as the reason: “This growing dissatisfaction accompanied as it certainly will be, by increased defiance of the draft and growing unrest in the cities because of the belief that we are neglecting domestic problems, runs great risks of provoking a domestic crisis of unprecedented proportions.” Imperialism, with big problems at home, was not completely free to carry out its policy overseas.
Both the Black Revolt, and the revulsion against the war, infected the U.S. army. By the late 1960s, the U.S. army was becoming more and more unusable. Incidents of killing of officers by their own troops, as well as incidents of insubordination and desertion, skyrocketed to their highest levels in U.S. history. There were incidents of mutiny. Troops refused to go into battle. More frequent, even typical, were negotiated agreements to undertake “search and evade” operations.
The Black Movement started before the U.S. went to war in Vietnam. But the war heightened and sharpened the contradictions of the society. The Communist Party leadership of Vietnam could have tried to rely on these contradictions to find allies in the U.S. itself and maybe to help start a revolutionary fight in the heart of imperialism. But they chose not to.
So, despite having gained independence, they are still exploited by their capitalist class, as well as by imperialism—especially U.S. imperialism.
Imperialism must be overthrown on an international scale. This was never the objective of nationalist leaders of the Vietnamese Communist Party. But world revolution must be a goal for the peoples of the world.
May 12, 2025
This article is translated from the May 9 issue #2962 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
The Israeli security cabinet met on May 4 and approved continuing the military offensive in Gaza, which re-started on March 18. The official statement mentioned a plan of “conquest” or “capture” and urged that Gazans “voluntarily” leave (at gunpoint).
To seize even partial control over the Palestinian enclave, the Israeli army will need to deploy more soldiers. The army is calling up tens of thousands of reservists. Israel’s far right wing applauds the implementation of this war policy, which is the right wing’s platform. But the rest of the Israeli population shows more and more weariness to this war they see as never-ending. Military authorities admit that only between half and 70% of reservists report for duty. This is all the more true because Gaza is not the only front on which more and more Israeli troops are deployed.
A full-blown war is also being waged in the West Bank against several refugee camps, notably Tulkarm and Nur Shams. According to Palestinian news agency WAFA, more than 4,200 families—25,000 people—were forced to flee when their homes were destroyed. Meanwhile the Israeli army keeps bombing and occupying Lebanon despite having agreed to a ceasefire last November.
As for Syria, the Israeli air force bombed several military sites, saying it was responding to clashes between jihadist militias and Druze at the end of April. Israel even struck a neighborhood in Syria’s capital Damascus near the presidential palace on May 2. To justify these acts of war, Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu poses as the protector of the Druze religious minority. The Islamists who took power after the fall of dictator president Bashar al-Assad last December have threatened to persecute the Druze population of around 700,000. But this is far-fetched on Netanyahu’s part since the government he runs has militarily occupied part of the Golan Heights area of Syria since 1967 against the wishes of the Druze who live there!
In fact, Israeli leaders couldn’t care less what happens to the Druze in Syria. Quite the opposite. By claiming to protect the Druze, Israeli politicians are trying to whip up tensions between religious communities in Syria in order to be able to take advantage of instability. The Israeli army acts more and more like a conqueror in southern Syria.
None of this makes people in Israel safe or secure. Netanyahu’s policies mire Israel in endless war. The Israelis who persist in demonstrating every Saturday in Israel against Netanyahu and his far-right government know this, at least in part. But as for the leaders of major powers like the U.S., these imperialists have never stopped supporting Netanyahu, whatever concerns they express from time to time. The Israeli state remains the biggest cop of the imperialist order in the Middle East. This cop is sometimes difficult to control but is always loyal to imperialist interests.
May 12, 2025
This article is translated from the May 9 issue #2962 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
The Israeli government is guilty of the deaths of more than 52,000 Gazans in 19 months. Since Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu decided to break the ceasefire on March 18, 2,000 residents have been killed, including 437 in the last week of April alone.
A pharmacist trying to help people survive in a Gaza neighborhood described the war being waged against the residents as a holocaust. He lamented bitterly to journalists, “The world doesn’t seem bothered by 50 people dying a day from the bombings.” In addition to bombings and drone attacks terrorizing the population 24 hours a day, Israel’s complete blockade of the Gaza Strip is literally starving the two million Palestinians there who are without refuge.
The Israeli army’s hypocritical announcements broadcast by loudspeaker or by texts warn Gazans to move during bombings. But there is no place that is safe. “Everyone is a target in Gaza,” the pharmacist says.
After destroying electrical supply facilities and systematically targeting generators, cutting off access to drinking water, and ruining sewer systems, Israel rigorously prevents food, medicine, fuel, and basic necessities from reaching residents by either commercial or humanitarian means. Residents spend their days trying to find a scrap of food, a stick of wood, a drop of water. Some try to fish, using only old refrigerator doors as rafts. “No aid will enter Gaza,” the Defense Minister boasted in mid-April. His success is total.
Israeli drones even hit a Freedom Flotilla ship in international waters off Malta during the night of May 2. This humanitarian ship trying to deliver desperately needed aid suffered flames and a fire in its hull and a breach. Israel’s method, on the level of high-tech pirates, is not new. In 2010, a Turkish-flagged humanitarian ship Navi Marmara was attacked by Israel.
The liquidation of Gaza’s people is elaborated thoroughly in Netanyahu’s plan. His spokesman David Spencer summarized his position after the security cabinet meeting on May 4. He said he might allow humanitarian aid in Gaza, if it proves “necessary”—but he believes now Gaza has “sufficient” food. He claims Hamas stole food sent two months earlier and is now making up the story of famine. This provocative cynicism speaks volumes. The Butcher Netanyahu pursues a policy of extermination, with the silent complicity of his allies in powerful countries.
May 12, 2025
With a gun to its head, the Ukrainian government signed an agreement with the Trump administration to hand over much of the country’s wealth to U.S. corporations, banks and private equity investment firms.
Using extortion just like a Mafia gangster, the U.S. government threatened to withhold military weapons and the possibility of any security aid to Ukraine unless it gave U.S. corporations access to Ukraine’s natural resources. The U.S. will get a reported 50% of the proceeds from Ukraine’s mineral wealth which includes titanium, lithium, uranium and many “rare earth” metals which are essential to many modern industries. Trump said he expects hundreds of billions of dollars from this agreement.
But the U.S. exploitation of Ukraine goes far beyond that. The U.S. government will have joint control of an investment fund which will give U.S. corporations the contracts, and the large profits, of any rebuilding of the infrastructure which was destroyed in the war. The agreement gives U.S. corporations, bank and private equity the right to devour all of Ukraine’s natural resources, to control Ukraine’s fertile agricultural land and to profit off the labor of the Ukrainian working class.
The plans U.S. imperialism would make the Ukrainian people pay the price after the war, just as they paid the price during the war they did not start.
The U.S. government and its NATO allies provoked this war. For decades, the U.S. and NATO made overt military threats against Russia, right up to its borders. The U.S. trained and armed the Ukrainian military as another threat to Russia. When Putin responded and started his brutal invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. government under Biden gave the Ukrainian government the military weapons to keep the war going. The U.S. extended the war with the goal of weakening Russia, one’s of its competitors on the world stage.
Now the Trump administration is going in a different direction in Ukraine, but with the same goal—to benefit U.S. imperialism, and the people of Ukraine be damned.
During 3 years of war, much of Ukraine has been destroyed, millions of people have been uprooted from their homes; lives have been devastated; hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, and Russians, have died. The U.S. government said it was in Ukraine and kept the war going to help the people of Ukraine. The U.S. said it wanted to keep Russia from taking over Ukraine. Now the U.S. government and the U.S. capitalists it represents, plan to take Ukraine for themselves.
May 12, 2025
What follows is the editorial that appeared on the front of all SPARK’s workplace newsletters, during the week of May 5, 2025.
The U.S. Army has scheduled a military parade on June 14, to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Army’s founding.
There were a few historic dates they might have chosen: April 5, 1775, American militias went to war against the British colonial army; June 15, 1775, the Continental Army was established; September 17, 1787, the U.S. Constitution was signed, establishing a United States Army.
Instead, the Trump Administration settled on June 14—which isn’t any of those dates. But it is Donald Trump’s birthday!
This parade is supposed to be a grandiose affair, containing 150 armored vehicles, seven bands, and 6,600 soldiers marching from the Pentagon to the White House, 50 helicopters hovering overhead, fireworks set off in the evening. Ten major U.S. wars will be “re-enacted”. Trump wants tanks to rumble into Washington. The cost just to transport, house and feed men and the other vehicles will exceed 100 million dollars.
If this were only Trump, a WWE “wannabe”, pretending to be George Washington, we could all have a good laugh.
But this parade is no laughing matter. It’s a retelling of the past in order to lure us into support for future wars.
Trump’s executive orders come tumbling out so disconnected, and so rapidly, that it’s hard to make out what they all mean.
But look closely! Among Trump’s 141 Executive Orders spat out in his first 100 days were attacks on various parts of the working class—public sector workers, immigrant workers, union workers, women workers, black workers—all of us. And there were attacks designed to crush all opposition to what Trump is preparing.
Those attacks are real and they are serious. And mixed up in the middle of them are the preparations for a new global war—plans to restart old shipyards. Plans to turn out millions of more drones. Plans to rush ammunition production. Plans to drag more men and women into service. Plans to divide and disarm the working class.
Trump says he wants to rename the World Wars—U.S. Victory Day I and U.S. Victory Day II.
There were no victories in those wars, there were only colossal losses on every side. In World War I, the overall human cost from battle and its immediate aftermath was over 25 million. World War II cost humanity over 100 million. For decades after, people were killed by epidemics, starvation, and social collapse. With every war, the moral cost hit the troops. More U.S. soldiers committed suicide than were killed in the Vietnam War itself.
Only a cynical man like Trump, who never saw a day of military service in his life, could refer to war’s human destruction as a “victory”.
War is not a WWE “Smackdown”.
War is what the capitalist class of every country turns to when it is unable to solve the economic disaster which its own system creates.
Today, the capitalist class of major countries is lining up—their companies against companies, banks against banks, governments against governments.
Warren Buffett, who knows capitalism and its financial system from the inside out, had this to say: “A tariff is an act of war.... It may not draw blood immediately, but make no mistake—it’s an act of aggression that invites retaliation.”
Retaliation to another country’s tariffs can end in trade war. Trade wars end in shooting wars.
This is our future—unless the working class finds the way to throw out the capitalist class and its whole bloody system first. We are heading into the next global war—unless the working class comes on the stage of history, independently as a class in its own right, using its position in the middle of the capitalist economy to bring capitalism down. Whether the workers act before the war or during, our class holds humanity’s future in its hands.
Rosa Luxemburg once made the point clear: either the workers will find the way to socialism or everyone will face capitalist barbarism.
May 12, 2025
This book (and Stanley Kubrick’s movie with the same name) depicts the harsh and dehumanizing reality of WWI. Written by someone who fought in the war in the French army, the author depicts the senseless slaughter which serves only greedy politicians and vain officers. A regiment is ordered to charge through a barrage of machine gun fire. When advance is impossible and 50% of the men die, the general decides to court martial and execute by firing squad some of the men for “cowardice.”
The novel does not claim to present actual people or events. Instead, it is based on the French and British’s repeated horrifying practice of executing soldiers to drive the others on. The French admit to executing 600–650, the British 300, and these numbers are probably understated.
This novel powerfully shows the wholesale brutality that technology has brought to war and barbaric senselessness.
May 12, 2025
The UAW top leadership has held rallies calling on the auto companies to move work into plants that have “unused capacity.” Basically, what they are saying is, take work away from Canadian and Mexican auto workers and move it to the U.S.
Why the hell are they telling auto workers to fight each other over jobs, when the auto companies are the ones who caused the problem? You know why there is “unused capacity” in many auto plants? Because the auto companies have eliminated so many jobs though speed up that they are now building the same number of cars and trucks with half the number of workers. Every worker is doing the work two people used to do.
The way to have more jobs is to stop the speed up and put the jobs back the way they used to be. If there is a plant working only one shift, then cut the line speed in half and hire another shift to get the same production. That would get rid of “unused capacity.”
Auto workers in every country have the power to make a fight against speed up. But we can’t make a fight against the bosses if we are fighting against each other over jobs. When top union leaders try to pit auto workers here against auto workers in another country, they are covering for the companies and hiding who is really responsible for lost jobs.
May 12, 2025
On May 8, Worcester, Massachusetts police arrested two in an incident caused by an ICE arrest. The teenaged daughter of a Brazilian woman, mother of three, tried to stand in front of the ICE car holding her mother. A neighbor asked an ICE officer to show a warrant, to which he replied, “We don’t have to show you anything.” ICE called in the Worcester police, claiming residents were “hostile” to ICE.
Did the Worcester police de-escalate the situation? No. Four officers chased the 16-year-old daughter, pulling the girl to the ground and pushing her face into the sidewalk, an action caught on a video that went viral online.
Not only was the 16-year-old arrested and charged, another neighbor, a woman running for the local school board, was also arrested and charged with assaulting an officer. This woman allegedly threw a liquid at the officer. The woman and the teenager were later released, but the mother was taken away by ICE and the family currently does not know her whereabouts.
The woman arrested later told the media, “It’s disgusting seeing ICE across the country tearing families apart.” The state of Massachusetts has a law against local police helping ICE, yet the governor later stated the police were just doing “crowd control.” The Brazilian woman’s neighbors clearly disagreed and were not inclined to just be run roughshod over.
May 12, 2025
Southern California Edison, the electricity utility, now bills its customers an additional charge of more than $300 annually on average to support what it calls “wildfire-related safety costs.” Edison claims that to prevent its equipment from causing fires, it is spending on insulated wires, tree trimming, weather stations, and increased equipment inspections.
Edison passes these safety-related expenses on to its customers. Edison was allowed to do this because of a bill the Democratic Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, signed in 2019 to limit utilities’ financial liability for wildfires they caused. According to this bill, such companies are now automatically deemed to have acted “prudently” as long as they’ve obtained an annual safety certification from state regulators before any fire. So, we foot the extra bill if a utility company claims that it spends money on improving the safety of its operations. This is nothing but a scam.
But, despite Edison’s so-called safety expenses, its equipment STILL sparked 178 fires last year. Last winter, Edison’s equipment very likely caused the Eaton fire, which devastated vast areas east of Los Angeles and killed 18 people.
Whatever happens, Edison profits. Capitalism at its best: it works for free for the rich; the bill is sent to the working class.
May 12, 2025
Insane amounts of publicity happen as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or border agents viciously apprehend innocent people labeled “illegal” immigrants. The hype continues as jailing or deportation follows. Why the choreographed drama? What is hidden behind the smoke screen?
What has NOT been widely reported is that corporations place advertisements on social media to lure undocumented people with job promises have faced little crackdown during this administration. Underpaid workers in construction, meat processing, janitorial work and hotels and restaurants have NOT been big targets of ICE.
The Trump administration has let it be known that big business interests will be treated with leniency. That tracks with enforcement actions seen around immigration. When questioned about sending current undocumented workers home and then giving them a legal path, Trump said: “We have to take care of our farmers, the hotels and, you know, the various [work] places where they tend to, where they tend to need people.”
Follow the money and it shows that the largest contributions to the Trump Vance Inaugural Committee came from poultry processor Pilgrim’s Pride. This company employs thousands of migrant workers, many alleged to be undocumented.
In a speech last year before the elections, JD Vance said, “We’re done importing foreign labor—we’re going to fight for American citizens and their good jobs and their good wages. We need a leader who’s not in the pocket of big business, but answers to the working man.”
What voters got is the opposite! So, this administration “puts on a show” to hide the truth.
What big business got is business as usual. The super-exploitation of immigrant workers continues. Big business is lining their pockets.
But to manipulate public opinion, brutal social media clips—the same clips over and over—flood our airwaves. This administration uses these clips to “pretend to do something” to “help workers” and to intimidate those who might think of resisting.
The clips serve another purpose: trying to intimidate those who might think of resisting. The clips put out gangster images of enforcement officers. The clips aim to normalize disdain for humanitarian values.
This is a sneak preview of their ideal future society. As the population begins standing up, the response needs to be well-organized and massive in the face of these self-satisfied bullies.