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
Mar 17, 2003
Job losses in the U.S. are accelerating. According to the U.S. Labor Department, 308,000 jobs were lost in just one month, February.
Things were even worse in the private sector. Officially, 321,000 were lost, as businesses cut jobs at a near record pace. Except for the period just after September 11th, this was the worst loss in private sector jobs in more than two decades, that is, since the depths of 1982, the biggest recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
The current huge job losses may signal a turning point in the U.S. economy. Over the last three years, the economy had already gone through one recession, as the speculative bubble in the stock market burst, business investment in production collapsed and businesses slashed over two million jobs.
But what kept the U.S. economy from sinking further was the flood of plentiful credit and growing debt. It fueled consumer spending–at least among those who still had some income and had not already maxed out on their credit. In the housing sector, there were all those new first, second and third mortgages, home equity loans, etc. There was also all that zero% financing for the purchase of big ticket items, from cars to home appliances. At the same time, state and local governments cushioned the drop in the economy by burning through whatever surpluses they had built up in the preceding years.
While big business raked in the profits from both the new purchases and the increased finance charges on the growing debt, it did not use those profits to reinvest in production or to increase hiring. On the contrary, business continued to slash investment and jobs. As a result, unemployment, especially long-term unemployment, continued to grow.
Everyone knew that without increased business investment and jobs, the debt-fueled consumer spending would soon run out of steam. And now, apparently, it has.
Business is beginning a new round of cuts in jobs and hours of work. In the large auto sector, Ford announced that it would cut production by 17% in the second quarter of the year, and General Motors and Chrysler are embarking on new "restructuring" schemes, which in plain language spells new job cuts. The state and local governments have also begun severe cuts, which spells not only job losses, but enormous cuts in education and social services, which will hurt the working class and poor the hardest.
This will only be the beginning. The bosses use job cuts and increased unemployment to pressure those left working to give up everything else–wages, health benefits, pensions, working conditions, safety, productivity.
To justify attacks against our right to survive, make a living and support a family, the bosses may say it is an emergency, the economy is in a mess, businesses or the government are in trouble. Maybe so, but it is their emergency, their mess. They are the ones who used their positions to ensure that their profits, their wealth and fortunes come first, no matter what. Let them be the ones who pay for the mess they made.
Workers have no reason to sacrifice–yet again–just so the bosses, the wealthy, the elite can continue to profit and grow richer.
To the bosses’ call for new sacrifices, the workers can have only one answer: no more. That means no more job cuts, no more speed-up, no more wage and benefit cuts! We have to draw the line. And we have to back this up with actions.
Mar 17, 2003
Any further delay in invading Iraq will result in much higher casualties to U.S. troops–so says the Bush administration.
No–what endangers the troops IS the invasion itself. So if Bush wants to protect them–as he says he does–he would quash plans for the invasion. He would bring the troops home now.
But the only thing Bush is trying to protect are the interests of the big corporations who want this war. That’s why he’s signing the orders and putting the troops in harm’s way.
Mar 17, 2003
Bush keeps talking about Iraq’s "weapons of mass destruction." Then, hypocrite that he is, he turned around to brag abut a new U.S. bomb and ordered a special test to show its enormous destructive power.
Blowing up part of Florida on March 11, the Air Force detonated this Massive Ordnance Air Burst bomb which has to be dropped from the ramp of a cargo plane because it’s so big, has 20,000 pounds of high explosives and whose shock is felt 10 miles away.
If that’s not a "weapon of mass destruction," what is?
And if Bush is not a war criminal, no one is.
Mar 17, 2003
While Bush called his trip to the Azores "a summit on Iraq," it looked more like an attempt to escape from the diplomatic shambles he left behind. After threatening, promising, cajoling and attempting to bribe most of the members of the U.N. Security Council in an attempt to cobble together nine votes for a new vote authorizing a U.S. war on Iraq, Bush ended up with only four votes–and one of those votes was his own. The other three were Britain, Spain and Bulgaria. If the U.S. had pushed for the vote, as it promised it was going to, the other eleven countries on the Security Council had made it clear they would not have supported the U.S. resolution.
No one should believe, however, that war has now been averted. Bush has said it too many times: he intends to carry out this war, regardless of what the U.N. says, and regardless of what the inspectors find.
Nor should anyone believe that the U.N. will prevent this war. After all, this same Security Council agreed to the earlier resolution, the famous Resolution 1441, which was worded so ambiguously that Bush could say it was all he needed to go to war, while other countries proclaimed that no war could take place without a second resolution. And not a single one of the 11 countries which wouldn’t give Bush their vote has proposed to censure Bush or the U.S. for bombing Iraq today and for massing troops on Iraq’s border, making war nearly inevitable. Nor has a single country dared call Bush to account for his many threats to carry out war when he wants, under any ridiculous pretexts he wants. Nor did a single one of them call for the vote–which could have clearly illustrated how much the U.S. was at odds with world opinion. No, they let Bush slink off to the Azores, pretending that he was carrying out a "summit."
So there’s nothing to say absolutely that a new resolution couldn’t be put together. But whether or not it is, the diplomatic saga being carried out in the U.N. is nothing but a cynical farce. Some of the same governments which pose as the champions of peace have helped the U.S. and Britain to put their troops into the region–furnishing material, or opening up their own military installations in the area, or sending in their own "technicians" to help the troop deployment.
And what will happen when the U.S. military goes into Iraq? Which of the other big powers will refuse to put their own forces into Iraq after the first phase of the war–like the so-called "peace-keepers" Germany, France and Russia today have in Afghanistan. They’ll be there because it’s what they must do to grab some of the contracts for "reconstructing" Iraq for their big companies–not to mention, putting their hands on Iraq’s oil. And in being there, they will give their approval to this war–even if after the fact.
Behind this charade is the reality of what this new war will bring to the Iraqi people: a blood bath. The Pentagon talks about all the supposed "high-tech" weapons it has sent into the region. In fact, what it is really counting on in all this affair is the massive amounts of ordinance it has sent into the region: 3,000 guided missiles are already there, along with a whole fleet of B-52s armed with bombs able to take out many city blocks in one blow. Bush may talk about "high precision" weapons–but the fact is that this war to be carried out against a nearly defenseless country will be carried out with weapons whose aim is to bring a population to its knees.
Whether the war on Iraq starts this week–as Bush right now threatens–or whether it starts a month from now, it will be a bloodbath. The only thing that can prevent it or attenuate it if it starts is a mobilization of people around the world–and starting, first of all, in this country.
On March l5, hundreds of thousands in the U.S. protested the war, in cities large and small, from tens of thousands in Washington D.C. and San Francisco to some hundreds in places like Tampa, Indianapolis, Albuquerque and Des Moines. Millions more protested in cities and capitals around the world. Following on the January 18 and February 15 mobilizations of many millions worldwide, the renewed protests linked major cities with small and out-of-the-way towns. Those who gathered expressed the real will of the population of this country and the populations of the globe: NO to this war!
The working people and others in this country who know that this war is not in our interest have the means to call Bush’s bluff. And we have an obligation to show that his policy is not ours, that his war is not ours.
Mar 17, 2003
On March 5, tens of thousands of students from several hundred high schools throughout the country, walked out of school to protest the build-up of the U.S. war against Iraq. These protests were loosely organized and spontaneous, as students from different schools found out about the protest on the internet, or local anti-war groups or through their teachers.
Many school districts, such as in Los Angeles and Chicago, either tried to stop the walk-outs, or penalize students who made it out. In Los Angeles, administrators barred the school doors, had the schools surrounded by police, and ticketed anyone who made it out for truancy. At Whitney Young High School in Chicago, administrators suspended 20 students for two weeks for walking out of school.
The reaction of these officials shows their fear that a new generation will not passively accept whatever fate the government has in store for them, that a new generation will play a role in determining its own future.
The protests may not yet be massive. But officials understand perfectly well that they could very quickly grow and have a big impact.
As in all wars, it is the young, those aged 18, 19 and 20, who make up the bulk of the fighting forces, especially the youth from the working class. Many have family and friends who have already been called up or are already serving in the Middle East region. Moreover, many of those in high school today could very well be in uniform and at war tomorrow.
The students who protested this war ignored all those hypocrites who tell them that they are too young to really understand it. They understand it all to well! That’s why they protested.
Mar 17, 2003
The following article was taken from two articles which appeared in Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the newspaper of our comrades in France, issues #1805 and #1806.
After the spectacular mobilization against the war in Iraq, which took place in London on February 15, Tony Blair is now facing a "rebellion" from inside his own Labour Party. Clare Short, the Secretary of State for Cooperation, without any warning, announced before the television cameras that she intended to resign from the government if Blair engaged British troops in the war without U.N. sanction. The day before, an assistant of the Minister of Industry had resigned. Then several members of Parliament occupying lower positions with the government announced their intention to follow this example.
Meanwhile, the number of Labour Party members of Parliament taking a public position against British intervention outside the framework of the U.N. rose in just two weeks from 122 to 250, or more than half of the Labour Party group in the House of Commons. Many of these "rebels" had previously voted for the motion presented by Blair that supported Resolution 1441 of the Security Council and the efforts of the United Nations to remove weapons of mass destruction from Iraq. So the distance that separates these "rebels" from Tony Blair is not very big. Their change of heart was no doubt motivated by the fact that local party organizations are right now starting to nominate candidates for the parliamentary elections of 2005-6. Even though the rules permit the party apparatus to impose its choice on local organizations, the first two current members of Parliament up for nomination were removed as candidates due to their unconditional support for Blair.
Even the leadership of the Trades Union Congress, the central body of British unions, which up to now had maintained a prudent silence, has joined the ranks of this opposition, even if it’s using the most measured terms possible.
This opposition within the Labour Party came at a bad time for Blair, when the majority of public opinion remains against this war. Nonetheless, he doesn’t seem too bothered by the Labour Party rebellion. First of all because, thanks to the Conservative Party members of Parliament, Blair holds a strong majority for his war policies. And, as supreme head of the armed forces, he doesn’t have to get approval for military action. Furthermore, this "rebellion" may help move the center of gravity of the opposition into Parliament and out of the streets, which most of the "rebel" deputies fear as much as Blair does.
In any case, Blair showed no sign of backing down faced with his setback in Parliament. On the contrary, it was with a calculated arrogance that he appeared before television cameras during a series of special programs on the subject, when he affirmed that he did not hesitate to risk his political career by going against the majority public opinion.
Nonetheless, Blair did judge it necessary to change his rhetoric. Because the scarecrow of "weapons of mass destruction" didn’t take hold, he has now begun to hammer away at the idea that to renounce the war is a way to undercut the authority of the United Nations and to sign its death warrant, just as the policy of appeasement to Hitler at the time of the Munich Agreements caused the decline of the League of Nations, the forerunner of the United Nations, opening the path to World War II. Never mind the fact that this parallel, as stupid as it’s demagogic, equates Iraq–a poor country, exhausted by two wars and 13 years of economic sanctions–with Germany–which in the 1930’s was the second most powerful imperialist country! The only thing that counts is the emotional appeal of this message.
Despite all these efforts by Blair, the opposition to the war remains solid within the British population. All over the country, including in the most out of the way localities, there have been a rash of initiatives–boycotts, vigils, demonstrations, meetings and debates, invasions of military bases, etc.–marking this opposition.
These initiatives, as chaotic as they are symbolic, are marked by the limits of the public movement which inspires them, by diverse religious influences and by the illusions held in the United Nations; as well as by a basic anti-Americanism and non-violence. But one thing is certain: no matter what Blair will say, he cannot claim that he launched his missiles against the people of Iraq with the support of the British population.
Then, on March 5, there occurred an event without precedent in a country where high school strikes are practically unknown. In response to word-of-mouth appeals, the Internet and leaflets, tens of thousands of youth throughout the country took the authorities by surprise, deserted their high schools in massive numbers and organized sit-ins against the war. In London, under the eyes of the dumbfounded police, several thousand students converged on the House of Commons and the residence of Blair on Downing Street, armed with signs against the war and sacks full of petitions.
These demonstrations by the youth probably didn’t weigh more heavily on Blair than did the mobilization of February 15 or public opinion in general. But they contribute to nourish the climate of current opposition against the war and to give it a dynamism that the pangs of conscience of politicians most worried about their careers wouldn’t be able to give it.
Mar 17, 2003
What does the Bush administration have in store for the people of Iraq if the U.S. carries out the war that it has promised so long? In his State of the Union address at the end of January, President Bush claimed that, "As we and our partners are doing in Afghanistan, we will bring to the Iraqi people food, medicines, and supplies and freedom."
In other words, according to Bush, Afghanistan is something of a model for what the U.S. will do in Iraq.
More than 18 months ago, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, ousted the Taliban government, and imposed a new government headed by Hamid Karzai. In so doing, according to Bush, the U.S. "helped to liberate an oppressed people."
This official version of history has been generally repeated in the U.S. news media. But here is how London-based Jane’s Terrorism & Security Monitor, a report meant for the government and military establishment, described U.S. military operations in its February 24th edition: "U.S. forces have used tactics that are offensive to Afghans. They treated every Afghan with suspicion as if he was a member of Al-Qaeda; they entered houses without permission; they body searched women–a taboo in the Muslim world, especially Afghanistan; and they bombed innocent civilians and arrested and mistreated people, all because of mistaken identity or misinformation. They did not show sensitivity to Afghan culture."
U.S. officials might claim that the purpose of these military operations is to fight various warlords, who ravage the country. But Jane’s report gives another story. It says that the U.S. military has restored the power of the warlords in different regions of the country. According to Jane’s, "U.S. forces brought the warlords back, arming, financing and guiding them back to their lost thrones. Worse yet, they even created some new ones, the so-called ‘American warlords."‘
In other words, the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan has not liberated the Afghan population. It has only imposed an army of occupation in alliance with a whole series of warlords.
U.S. officials also claim that the situation of the Afghani people has begun to improve. In his recent State of the Union, President Bush claimed the U.S. was now helping the people of Afghanistan to "secure their country, build their society and educate their children."
This is another lie. The budget that Bush submitted to Congress immediately after he made these claims did not even include any aid to Afghanistan whatsoever. Not a penny! Only when the news of this came out, did Congress hurriedly insert a few dollars into the U.S. budget for Afghanistan–but that was just to avoid embarrassment.
This means that the U.S. has done nothing either to begin to rebuild the infrastructure it shattered–the roads, schools, hospitals, electric power, water systems, etc.–which Bush had promised to do after he launched the war in Afghanistan. Nor has it even bothered to send in more than a token bit of "humanitarian" aid, such as emergency food, for the tens of millions of people who have been driven from their land and homes by the U.S. invasion and continue to live in refugee camps or hovels around the cities and towns.
In Kabul, the capital, where conditions are better than they are in the rest of the country, the United Nations reports that severe malnutrition of children actually increased from 6% in 2001 to 11% in 2002, the year that the U.S. established its domination over the country.
Just as telling is the policy of the government of the U.S. puppet in Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, toward women. After taking office, Karzai’s government made a big deal of appointing one woman to his cabinet and of allowing a few women to attend schools. But these were nothing but public relations gestures. The reality is that Karzai’s government has neither repealed any of the edicts imposed by the Taliban, nor has it abolished the religious police that are used to enforce those edicts. So, women are still imprisoned in rat-infested cells–often with their children–for such "crimes" as walking out on their husbands, refusing forced marriages or being named as adulterers. And women are still being murdered–or lynched–at the hands of mobs for any of those and other "crimes" with no interference from the Karzai government.
No, for the people of Afghanistan, conditions under the U.S. and its puppet governments and warlord allies, is only a continuation and a worsening of the same oppression, suffering and misery as before.
When the Bush administration follows through on its threats to invade Iraq, the people of that country should expect the same brand of treatment.
Mar 17, 2003
With the U.S. war approaching against neighboring Iraq, the Turkish government has begun a new crackdown against the 15 million Kurds living inside Turkey. On March 13, a Turkish court outlawed a Kurdish party, the People’s Democracy Party, and banned 46 of the party’s leaders from running for office for five years. On the same day, the senior prosecutor filed a petition to ban a reorganization of the party.
At the same time, the Turkish military began to prepare for an attack against the Kurdish minority inside Turkey’s neighbor, Iraq. Last month, the Turkish military announced that it intended to send 60,000 to 80,000 troops into northern Iraq, where large numbers of Kurds live. These additional troops would supplement the 5,000 to 15,000 troops it has had inside northern Iraq for some years. In mid-March, the Turkish military began to move these troops, sending 300 trucks and 200 other vehicles, including M-47 tanks, self-propelled howitzers and other artillery, along with 1,000 soldiers in buses, to within four miles of the Iraqi border.
Obviously, the U.S. government did not utter a word in protest to these actions by the Turkish government and military against the Kurds in Turkey and Iraq. For the last 12 years, the U.S. government might have posed as the supposed champion of the Kurdish cause–inside Iraq. And in the last year, as the U.S. government began its preparations for war against Saddam Hussein, dozens of U.S. journalists ventured into northern Iraq to report how supposedly free the Kurdish minority was under U.S. tutelage.
But, in reality, the U.S. government was just using the Kurdish minority as a pawn in its own power games against Saddam Hussein, a pawn that for the U.S. has always been quite expendable. With war approaching, now the U.S. government’s main concern is to make sure that the Kurdish minority does not do as it did after the first Persian Gulf War–rise up in revolt. For if the Kurds in Iraq rise in revolt, then this might, as it has done in the past, encourage revolts of other sections of the Kurdish minority, potentially upsetting U.S.-sponsored dictatorships all over the region.
Because of the almost unanimous opposition to the war within the Turkish population, as of this writing, it is unclear whether the Turkish government will formally agree to let tens of thousands of U.S. troops pass through Turkey to open a second front from the north against Saddam Hussein. But what is clear is that the Turkish military is preparing to massively intervene against the Kurds.
For the Bush administration, that’s what really counts.
Mar 17, 2003
The Bush administration has already started awarding lucrative contracts for post-war Iraq. The contracts are for everything from putting out oil well fires and rehabilitating oil field equipment, to rebuilding and administering roads, seaports, airports, water and electrical systems, to trucking in and storing water, food, electrical generators and other supplies. All told, the contracts are supposed to come to at least 20 billion dollars a year for who knows how many years.
The first contract to be awarded was for putting out oil well fires and assessing the damage to oil fields and equipment. But the recipient of this contract is guaranteed to get other oil-related contracts worth even more. And who gets this great big fat sugar plum? None other than a subsidiary of Halliburton, the company that Dick Cheney headed before becoming vice president of the United States. Or so the rumors go–and Bush hasn’t denied them.
Let it never be said that there aren’t billions of dollars to be made by a few rich people off of the invasion of a country, the massive destruction of its roads, buildings and industry, and the killing of thousands of its people.
Maybe this explains why Bush, Cheney and gang are such supporters of this war!
Mar 17, 2003
Shortly after midnight on February 23, about 30 skinheads attacked a group of eight teenagers–black, Filipino, Arab and white–in Yorba Linda, California. Shouting racist slurs and white supremacist slogans, the attackers surrounded Rashid Alam, an 18-year-old Arab American. As many as 20 of them kicked Alam’s jaw, hit him with golf clubs and baseball bats, stomped repeatedly on his head and stabbed him with a screwdriver. Alam survived, but was left with a fractured jaw and shattered facial bones which needed reconstructive surgery.
Three days later, police arrested two of the attackers, but not those who beat Alam. The two were released after being booked on misdemeanor assault charges for punching another victim. Since then no other charges have been filed, nor arrests made, even though some of the attackers have been openly bragging about the beating around the schools they attend. Police officials have actually admitted that they know the identities of at least four of Alam’s attackers, including the person responsible for some of his worst injuries. But they say that "it takes time" to build a case against the perpetrators. A detective told the victim’s father that the incident needed to be kept quiet until a thorough inquiry could be conducted. And the police have denied the racist nature of the attack, saying instead that this was an "arranged fight between rival gangs"–as though eight people would "arrange" to engage a fight with 30!
Since 9/11, physical attacks against Arab Americans have been on the rise across the country. According to the FBI, 26% of the 11,451 "hate crimes" reported in 2001 targeted Arab and Muslim Americans. In California’s Orange County, where the recent beating took place, such attacks increased by about 50%, from 122 to 181 in one year. Rashid Alam and his brother Mohamed, both recent high school graduates, said that at school they were used to being harassed for their ethnicity.
The Bush administration’s drive for a war against Iraq has certainly added fuel to an already existing racism against Arabs living in the U.S. And the thugs who physically attack people will certainly be encouraged by the protection Alam’s attackers have been getting from the supposed upholders of "law and order."
Mar 17, 2003
The Senate passed a bill making it a felony for a doctor to perform a dilation and extraction abortion procedure. This procedure is the one used late in the second trimester of a woman’s pregnancy, and is ordinarily performed only when the risks of continuing the pregnancy are greater than those of carrying out this procedure, since it entails some risk to the woman.
These medical risks are not, however, what prompted the vote. Once again, the reactionary minority which opposes abortion continues to chip away at the supposedly fundamental right to abortion which the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade acknowledged in 1973. Calling this procedure "partial birth" abortion–a medically and scientifically incorrect name–the opponents attempt to portray women who undergo abortion and the doctors who carry it out as murderers.
Prior to January 22, l973, when the Supreme Court issued its Roe v. Wade decision, abortions were illegal in two-thirds of the states, and even in those states where they were legal, they were hemmed in by many restrictions.
Of course, even when abortion was illegal, women with money had access to abortions performed under medically competent circumstances. But for poor women, the home remedies and "back-alley" abortion methods meant danger and even death.
Support for legalizing abortion had been strong before Roe v. Wade–and ever since. A poll in l975 showed that three out of four Americans supported it then. And a recent poll showed an even larger majority–four out of five support women’s right to choose an abortion under most circumstances.
Nonetheless, the attacks on abortion rights began almost immediately after Roe v. Wade and have continued ever since. The Hyde Amendment was passed by a Democratic-controlled Congress and signed by Democratic President Carter in l977. It was probably the worst attack because it prohibited using federal funds in Medicaid programs for abortion–in other words, effectively, it denied poor women the right to choose an abortion.
Other attacks included the requirement that the parents of women under 18 years of age be notified before an abortion can be performed; restrictions on what doctors are allowed to tell patients about abortion and contraception; increased waiting periods between the request and the performance of the abortion; prevention of the use of the morning-after pill, mifepristone, up until l995; and even, in some states, the requirement that a woman go to court to request an abortion.
But the attacks have not only been legal ones. In large parts of the majority of states, there is not a single doctor left performing abortions. This problem is the result of a campaign of terror carried out by so-called pro-lifers who have picketed at centers which perform abortions, attacked verbally those entering the centers, and even called on supporters to "eliminate" doctors who perform abortions. Doctors and other medical staff have been murdered.
It is the reactionary nature of the past time period that allowed all those attacks–legal and extra legal–to continue. As the social movements of the l960s and l970s began to quiet down, a number of politicians encouraged the growth of a Christian fundamentalist movement, using it as a base of political support.
Of course such politicians are not limited to the United States. They are simply the U.S. version of the fundamentalism widespread in other countries; they differ little in attitude from Islamic fundamentalists in the Middle East or from Hindu fundamentalists in India or Jewish fundamentalists in Israel in their attitudes toward women and the right to abortion.
If women are to defend themselves and maintain the right to choose abortion (including for poor women who effectively are denied it today), it will be by the same means women gained this right over three decades ago. The right to legal abortion was not given by the Supreme Court 30 years ago–it was granted because women had demanded and fought for it. The decision was partially a result of the women’s movement, and it was part of the larger demand for more democratic rights which had existed over a 20-year period prior to l973.
The battle to get rid of Jim Crow by the black population, the numerous protests against the war in Viet Nam and the women’s movement all created a climate in which a number of rights were expanded, including the laws for better health care which resulted in Medicare and Medicaid. New laws were passed against discrimination in the work place, in transportation and in housing.
It was in this context that women fought for and won the right to abortion. It is such a situation we have to begin creating again by our struggles.
Mar 17, 2003
On March 12, one innocent man was rescued, at least for now, from the Texas murder machine.
Just 10 minutes from execution, Mr. Delma Banks Jr. was granted a stay of execution by the U.S. Supreme Court. He was to be the 11th person executed by Texas this year, and the 300th execution since Texas reintroduced the death penalty.
In fact, Bank’s case was not unusual. He was a black man who was sentenced by an all-white jury on the strength of testimony by a paid police informant and by a man awaiting an arson trial. The arson case was dropped after Bank’s conviction. Both witnesses have signed statements that they lied in court and why they lied.
Banks’ trial attorney did not visit the crime scene, did not get pre-trial prosecution information, and did not challenge the exclusion of black jurors. He also did not call witnesses who knew that Banks was 180 miles away at the time of murder!
Nevertheless, Banks was convicted, sentenced to death, and spent 22 years in jail while losing appeal after appeal through the Texas court system. The Texas appeals courts are so stacked that even one of the newspapers in the state capital, the Austin American-Statesman, editorialized that the Court of Criminal Appeals is so incompetent that it should be abolished.
Banks’ type of frame-up is a common police procedure. Banks is unusual only because his supporters found a way to involve very high personalities. Signing the brief for Banks’ Supreme Court appeal were not only a former head of the FBI, William Sessions, but also a former Chicago U.S. Attorney and two former Circuit Court of Appeals judges, one of whom was appointed by President Nixon. None of these men can be accused of being bleeding-heart liberals or soft on crime! But the facts were too clear. Banks was denied a fair trial to satisfy Texas justice’s thirst for blood.
Today, led by George and Jeb Bush and their cronies, the framers of public policy are taking us backward in time, to the days of barbarism. Clan vengeance and blood retribution disappeared from civilized societies long ago. Today, not one single civilized industrial society accepts the death penalty, not one–except the U.S. The only nations which do practice capital punishment are out and out dictatorships, military dictatorships–except the U.S.
Delma Banks and his fellow Death Row inmates are also mirrors of government policy towards Afghanistan and Iraq. "We don’t care who we kill, but we are going to kill someone!" That’s the Bush battle cry. And he goes unchecked. All of the supposed "good people" in government have nothing to say about this Administration as it replaces civilization with barbarity, at home and around the world.
Mar 17, 2003
On March 7, Hans Blix, the chief U.N. weapons inspector, and Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, shot down several of the latest assertions by U.S. officials, about Iraq’s supposed "weapons of mass destruction."
According to Blix, contrary to intelligence claims (that is, U.S. intelligence), there was no evidence that Iraq was using trucks to move around production facilities of biological weapons, or mobile weapons production units. Of course, just because these assertions were not true, it hadn’t stopped U.S. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, or President Bush from repeating these assertions over and over again. Blix also said that there was no evidence to support one of Bush’s other favorite lines–that Iraq was building and storing weapons underground, despite extensive investigations.
When it came to the existence of nuclear weapons, ElBaradei countered U.S. and British officials’ claims even more emphatically. In one of these claims both the U.S. and British intelligence services jointly submitted documents they said showed that the government of Niger had concluded an agreement with Iraq to sell it enriched uranium for the manufacture of nuclear weapons.
ElBaradei reported that these documents were forgeries. And–they were not even good forgeries. Neither the letterhead, nor the signatures were real. Of course, what ElBaradei did not say, but what everyone had to conclude, is that both U.S. and British intelligence knew that these were forgeries all along–and almost certainly created the forgeries themselves. At the same time, ElBaradei once again shot down U.S. claims that high strength aluminum tubes that Iraq tried to purchase could be altered to be used to enrich uranium for the building of nuclear weapons.
Concluded ElBaradei, "...we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq."
Obviously, the vast operations of both the U.S. and British intelligence services have never once supplied one shred of credible evidence. On the contrary, some weapons inspectors have told the press (in reports that were not covered by the U.S. news media) that the "secret" intelligence that the U.S. and Great Britain supplied was "garbage" and "shit."
Of course, working people should have no illusions that any U.N. agencies are about to take the side of the oppressed against the big imperialist powers. After being lied to over and over by the U.S. and British governments, both Blix and ElBaradei thanked them for "strengthening" the inspection process by building up their troops and armies around Iraq. As if, these open preparations for an imperialist war that will kill hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq are not the biggest threat by far.
But even the weak and meek protests by U.N. bureaucrats and officials against the U.S. officials’ lies would be potentially devastating–that is, if they were ever really covered by most of the U.S. news media–especially the television and radio, where most people in this country get their news today. Of course, the fact that the U.S. news media ignores most of this, in order to parrot President Bush and the rest of the lying officials in this country , only shows how every major institution in this supposed "free" and "democratic" country is nothing but a mouthpiece for the policy of the rapacious ruling class based in the U.S., which is out to increase its domination of the world.
Mar 17, 2003
When John Engler retired as Michigan governor, he didn’t have to worry about covering the cost of medical care on his state pension.
He just moved next door into a job with EDS–created especially for him. The job is said to pay a quarter of a million dollars a year in salary, with the prospect of another quarter million a year in bonuses.
EDS must have figured that turnabout was fair play. After all, during Engler’s 12 years in office, he increased EDS’s contracts with the state by 1000%.
Most people, when they look for a job, fill out applications or send out resumes. Engler just bought himself a job–with state money, of course!
Mar 17, 2003
Charles Schwab Corporation, a large brokerage firm whose chairman has championed 401(k) retirement plans for years, recently announced that it was no longer going to match its employees’ contributions to their 401(k) plans. Schwab is just the latest of a growing list of companies that have been reducing or totally abandoning their commitment to contribute to 401(k) plans. Goodyear Tire and Rubber, Great Northern Paper, Tech Data, El Paso Corporation, CMS Energy, DaimlerChrysler and Ford Motor Company have all done the same, as have many state and local governments, including the State of Maryland.
Some workers have only 401(k) plans to supplement poverty-level Social Security payments. Other workers have 401(k) plans as supplements to a regular pension. But in every case, these 401(k) plans were trumpeted by company bosses and government officials as a way for workers to build up a significant financial nest egg that would provide them with retirement security.
The collapse of the stock market demonstrated what an illusion that was. And the refusal of big companies to keep their commitment to kick in money shows what a scam it was.
We are going backwards. Workers who have contributed all their lives to the growth of this society are being dumped and told to fend for themselves in their old age. It’s an outrage. Their work produced much more wealth than they ever saw–and it’s sitting in the bank vaults of all those people who have been playing the Wall Street casino. There’s money to be had. The people who worked all their lives need to take it.
Mar 17, 2003
State of Michigan employees recently went to a union meeting about cutbacks where they heard about new Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm’s plan to deeply cut state workers’ pay and benefits.
She wants workers to give up:
an upcoming 3% raise;
a direct pay cut of 2.7%;
ten% more copays on health care;
longevity pay and step increases.
Add it up and Granholm wants every worker to give up $4,100 starting this October. She says the state has a big deficit. If so, it’s because of what the state under previous administrations did with its money.
Former Governor John Engler gave tax breaks, cuts, abatements, outright gifts to big Michigan corporations, to the tune of fifteen billion dollars. This is the claim on the website of his own Michigan Economic Development Corporation. The current budget deficit is 1.7 billion dollars. Granholm may be a Democrat, but she’s being very careful not to call Republican Engler to account for how he spent the state’s money. And she certainly isn’t proposing to go back to the wealthy people and corporations who got the money to get them to cover the deficit. Instead she threatens the workers–if they don’t agree to the concessions, the state will cut thousands of jobs.
At the meeting organized by the state employees’ UAW Local 6000, the local officers said that the UAW international gave them a legal ruling that management cannot unilaterally take away concessions as long as the current contract is in effect–until December 31, 2004. The union said the only legal thing the legislature can do is by a two-thirds vote it can take away a raise of state workers. That’s all they can touch. And furthermore, whatever happens in terms of changes must go to the membership for a vote.
The workers shouldn’t believe such reassurances. The legislature will give Granholm the 2/3 vote. And the workers should remember that when past contract-breaking concessions were brought up for votes, the topmost UAW leadership pressured workers to go along and accept the cuts, under the threat that they would lose their jobs if they didn’t give concessions. But in those cases where workers gave up concessions, they discovered they lost their jobs too.
In front of this new extortion attempt, there’s no need to cave in. Workers can refuse to be intimidated, find the ways to demonstrate their anger. One thing will give Granholm pause: a large, angry, continuing mobilization of workers. That’s what’s needed. Let Granholm find her money elsewhere.
Mar 17, 2003
American Airlines, the biggest airline in the world, is following right behind United Airlines in the dirty game of demanding concessions and threatening bankruptcy to get them. American says it needs 1.8 billion dollars a year in concessions from its unions. Otherwise, it claims it can’t compete with USAir and United, who used bankruptcy to get big concessions from their workers.
American says it needs "labor cost savings" amounting to 620 million dollars a year from the 32,000 Transport Workers Union (TWU) members who are mechanics, baggage handlers and cabin crew. But then it explained it could save 447 million dollars by contracting out massive numbers of jobs.
In other words, American is holding outsourcing as a club over the workers’ heads. With this club in hand, American presented the TWU with a long list of demands. They included massive wage cuts, eliminating differential pay for shift work, getting rid of the cap on part time work, gutting the pension plan, reducing health benefits, eliminating meal allowances for overtime work, etc.
In other words, United says: You can have the blood taken out of your wrist or your throat. But we want four pints of your blood. Make your choice.
This is no choice at all!
Reinforcing its demand for concessions, American has been making public moves toward bankruptcy. It hired Henry Miller of the investment banking company Greenhill & Co. He helped manage bankruptcies at Continental and Braniff airlines.
So far, the three unions at American, the TWU, the flight attendants and the pilots, have agreed to talk over the extent of concessions. They say their members will have the right to ratify any agreement.
Giving up concessions doesn’t save jobs. Nor does it prevent the boss from coming back again asking for more concessions. The examples of United and USAir show just the opposite; when the unions accepted concessions, they encouraged the companies to carry out more layoffs and more demands for further concessions.
This drive for concessions will stop when the workers refuse these demands and back up their refusal with a fight. This is the only thing that billionaire bosses understand.