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
Apr 14, 2003
Michigan’s new governor has put the following choice to every state worker: give back $4100 a year in wage and benefit concessions or face the possibility that thousands more jobs will be cut.
In other words–your money or your life.
Other states across the country are doing exactly the same thing, although they are often less open about their demands. They announce cutbacks in funding for education, for social programs and for public services–which can only mean severe job cuts or cuts in wages and benefits or both. The state of Maryland announced that scheduled wage increases were eliminated–for the third year in a row. In the real world, this is a wage cut–since frozen wages don’t buy what they did three years ago. The state of Maryland also has imposed a hiring "freeze" in most offices–meaning that jobs are being cut, since people retire, quit, get sick, etc.
All the states tell us we must accept fewer public services, less aid through social services, enormous cuts in public schools that are already dilapidated and overcrowded.
The politicians heading the states say they have no choice. They tell us that state law forbids them from running up a deficit. They have no choice–or so they say–but to reduce spending on the programs that serve us and on their workforce in order to cover large budget "shortfalls."
No choice? Of course, they have a choice. They could stop handing out large tax breaks to every corporation around. The state of Michigan itself brags that it is currently giving out 15 billion dollars in tax breaks to corporations–while its projected budget deficit is around only two billion. Obviously, the politicians heading the state of Michigan have a choice. So do those who sit at the head of every other state and city. They could force the big corporations to pay taxes they avoid. The state leaders could stop awarding enormously bloated contracts to corporations that use them to skim off billions of dollars in unseen profits. They could stop using their state or city treasury as a trough at which wealthy pigs line up to gorge themselves.
It’s not just government which plays this "no choice"game. Airlines tell us they must have enormous wage and benefit concessions from their workforce–otherwise they will go bankrupt. They have no choice–or so they say–because of September 11 and now the war on Iraq. Steel companies say that foreign competition left them no choice but to declare bankruptcy–and dump their pension plans.
Nonsense! Of course they all have a choice. They are simply using bankruptcy to take back wages and benefits we once had so they can go on doing what they have been doing all along–buying and selling other companies, setting up profit-making subsidiaries, handing out multimillion dollar bonuses and salaries to executives, shifting money over to their bankers, who are among the biggest moneyed interests in the country.
All this talk about "choice" is just a smokescreen to cover up what the capitalists and their government are really doing: declaring a war on us here at home.
It may not be fought with guns, but it’s a deadly war. Nonetheless, it’s linked to the war that Bush chose to carry out against the people of Iraq. Both wars–the one against Iraq and the one here at home–are part and parcel of the policy U.S. capitalism is carrying out today–to make workers here and people in the whole world pay to puff up the profits of U.S. corporations.
No choice, they want to tell us? A system that gives us no choice is a system that deserves to be tossed aside–along with its wars and the sacrifices it demands.
No choice, they want to tell us? Maybe not for them, who set up profit as their only rule and guide. But we do have choices. Working people can decide to oppose their wars against other people. Workers can decide to defend their standard of living. The working class can choose to fight for a society worth living in.
Apr 14, 2003
In the massive assault on Iraq, the U.S. military has been widely using ammunition made of depleted uranium (DU). One of the densest substances known, DU is used for its ability to penetrate any armor.
But DU is also radioactive. It’s called "depleted" only because it is no longer useful as fuel in nuclear reactors. It still continues to release harmful radiation–and will for hundreds of centuries. When DU munitions explode, they turn into a fine dust which causes severe metal poisoning if inhaled and contaminates the soil and ground water.
The first U.S.-led attack on Iraq in 1991 was the first military campaign in history in which DU was used on a wide scale. Soldiers returning from that war soon exhibited a wide range of ailments, known as the Gulf War syndrome: respiratory and kidney problems; rashes; bone cancer; damaged reproductive and nervous systems; birth defects in their offspring, to name a few. Then came the "Balkan syndrome," a similar array of health problems observed among troops who were stationed in the former Yugoslavia after the NATO airstrikes used DU there in 1995.
Today, the Department of Veterans Affairs has classified nearly one out of three of the 504,000 eligible veterans of the 1991 Persian Gulf War as disabled. That’s the highest rate of disability for any modern war. Most scientists agree today that these veterans’ symptoms resemble health problems caused by heavy metal poisoning and exposure to low levels of radiation.
Not surprisingly, similar health problems have afflicted Iraqi people, and more severely. In Basra, in Southern Iraq, where much of the fighting and bombing in 1991 took place, the rate of cancer has increased more than ten-fold, from 11 per 100,000 people in 1988 to 116 per 100,000 in 2001. Birth defects have also skyrocketed.
The Pentagon has cynically dismissed the evidence of what happened to Iraqis as "Saddam’s propaganda," while government "experts" suggest that the veterans’ ailments may be "psychological" in origin–that is, in their heads!
American soldiers share with Iraqi people the gruesome consequences of these barbaric wars, in most cases for the rest of their lives. And they have much more in common with the Iraqi people than they have with the warmongers–the politicians, generals and bosses–who start these wars.
Apr 14, 2003
The American and British forces may not have used bacteriological or chemical weapons so far (although the uranium-tipped missiles used are in fact chemical weapons if the long term effects are considered). They have nonetheless used a large quantity of other weapons no less deadly: namely, fragmentation bombs of all sorts.
The fragmentation bombs are designed to spread out a multitude of smaller and smaller explosions across a very wide surface. They obviously are not designed to destroy heavy armament or buildings, but rather to kill and wound as large a number of individuals as possible.
Not only are these weapons designed to achieve the maximum number of human victims, but after their primary explosion, they leave anti-personnel mines which can then be set off at random by the smallest shock–that is, by anyone passing nearby.
No one should believe that these are bombs used only on military targets–if for no other reason than the lack of reliability of these weapons. Foreign journalists stationed in Baghdad reported seeing parts of unexploded fragmentation bombs remaining from one of these guided missiles in Douri, a residential suburb of the capital on April 3. The original explosion had already killed 14 civilians and wounded 66 others.
While the American and British forces claimed that they were in pursuit of Saddam Hussein’s supposed "weapons of mass destruction," they were busy using such weapons against the Iraqi population.
Apr 14, 2003
When California Governor Gray Davis announced deep cuts in the state’s education budget, many school districts announced that they would cut classes, sometimes even entire programs, and lay off teachers and other workers.
Parents in some well-to-do districts immediately reacted, starting fund-raising drives to "save our schools," raising in some cases as much as one million dollars within a few weeks.
Working class districts may have seen fund-raising drives also–but there’s one big difference: working class parents don’t have millionaire and billionaire friends, nor do they have direct access to the offices of big corporate CEOs.
Forcing the schools to raise their own money can only widen the already existing gap between well-to-do and working-class school districts. And it continues down the road staked out by "vouchers" and "charter schools," aiming to move the country’s public school system towards privatization–in effect, if not in name.
Apr 14, 2003
Jessica Lynch is the 20-year-old private who was rescued by Special Operations troops.
When Lynch’s story hit the news, her family reported that she had joined the army because she couldn’t find a job. Like so many in her high school, job prospects were poor. The unemployment rate in the area was 15%. Lynch went into the army hoping to get veteran benefits so she could go to college, perhaps to become an elementary school teacher. In fact, now Lynch may be able to go to college, but not on veterans’ benefits. The governor of West Virginia offered her a full scholarship to any state college in West Virginia, once she became a hero.
But what of other vets? Bush’s current two-trillion-dollar budget includes significant cuts in programs for veterans, including college benefits. Other vets won’t find money for college. They will return home to a bad economy, with fewer and fewer decent paying jobs. And if those other vets need special medical care, they will find that VA hospitals have cut back on doctors and services, with more vets denied care–and on top of that the current budget is cutting still more money from veterans’ medical benefits.
After every war, vets had a higher rate of unemployment–because no employer wanted to take on the extra expense associated with all their service-related ailments.
After the Viet Nam war, many vets came back, without prospects and with bad memories of that war carried out against the Vietnamese people. The number of vets who committed suicide continued to mount–to the point that more vets died from suicide than the number of soldiers who died in the war.
After the first Gulf War, a number of vets had diseases which couldn’t be put in any category and for which their doctors found no remedy and which the government even denied for years. The years since the war have been spent battling to get needed medical attention.
Now a new generation of young men and women will sooner or later come back from this war. They will discover the same thing other vets discovered before them. The government, which used them as cannon fodder, will toss them aside, along with the yellow ribbons. Some will discover as too many others did before them–that the one place this society readily leaves open to them is skid row.
Apr 14, 2003
On April 8, two cameramen were killed and three others wounded when a U.S. tank fired several rounds into the Palestinian hotel in Baghdad. The U.S. tank commander said his unit had been fired on. Journalists at the hotel insisted the shots didn’t come from the hotel. In any case, people died.
That is the reality of war, and of this war especially–civilians die. Even the U.S. general in charge of public relations said it, although he tried to pretend that the only civilians who died are those who "put themselves in harm’s way."
In this case, the ones who "put themselves in harm’s way" were journalists with instant electronic access to radios, television and newspapers around the world. So it was hard for the U.S. military to pretend it didn’t happen. But what about Iraqi civilians–put in harm’s way by the U.S. decision to rain down tons of bombs every day on their cities?
In modern war, it’s not just a question of soldiers defending themselves when they believe they are under attack. For many decades wars have meant bombs raining down death from the sky on civilians until the army gives up. In any combat zone, thousands of non-combatants–men, women, children–die or are severely wounded. No matter how "precise" the military claims their bombing, women and children die–so many that the military came up with a description to avoid the ugly reality: these deaths are called "collateral damage."
In this war, the dead are Iraqi civilians with no journalists or cameramen in the U.S. speaking for them. Even when journalists from other countries do so, people in the U.S. don’t see the photos or easily find stories about them.
The purpose of war is to kill enough people to subdue the enemy.
In the case of this war, the enemy of the U.S. leaders was and is the whole Iraqi people.
Apr 14, 2003
When Saddam Hussein’s statue was pulled down in Baghdad, there was a small celebration on the streets of Dearborn, Michigan. Dearborn and the greater Detroit area is the center of the largest Arabic community in the U.S., including exiles from Iraq.
The celebration was featured in news headlines and front-page pictures throughout the U.S., even internationally. It seemed as though this whole community supported the U.S. war on Iraq. Nothing could be further from the truth. Even though the people in the streets were obviously happy about the fact that Saddam Hussein fell, this does not mean that everyone agreed with the way the U.S. was conducting this war.
But the media doesn’t seem much concerned about the truth. Previous demonstrations–larger ones, in fact–in this same community went largely unreported, or if reported, minimized. But, then, those demonstrations opposed the U.S. government’s war on the people of Iraq. Others protested the racial profiling, surveillance and illegal detention of hundreds of ordinary Arabic people in the U.S.
Those demonstrations may have gone unreported. But not unnoticed! Some who dared attend the demonstrations received FBI phone calls, summoning them for questioning.
The media has been talking a lot about freedom and democracy lately–by which they apparently mean freedom to think as the government thinks and democracy as long as no one opposes the government.
Apr 14, 2003
For 12 years, the U.S. governments under Bush I, Clinton and then Bush II, warned that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, that is, chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. This is how they justified the suffocating economic embargo that lasted 12 years and cost the lives of one-and-a-half million Iraqis. The present Bush administration used it as the pretext for attacking, invading and now beginning to occupy the country.
Throughout the war, the U.S. government continued this charade. It issued endless warnings that Saddam Hussein was about to use chemical or biological weapons, that he had drawn a red line around Baghdad, etc. At the same time, the U.S. officials issued report after report of U.S. troops uncovering the possible makings of Iraqi chemical or biological weapons. They supposedly found them hidden in chemical factories, farms, in the honey comb of underground tunnels under Baghdad. U.S. troops even claimed to have found enriched uranium for the makings of nuclear bombs.
The U.S. news media dutifully reported these stories, taking them at face value, giving them great prominence, and then magnified the effect with their endless on-air speculation by their parade of supposed "experts," retired generals, colonels, majors, Bush administration officials, etc. Of course, the fact that all this turned out to be false alarms was always crowded out by supposed new sightings of "weapons of mass destruction." This left the impression for many people in this country, at least, that the U.S. had either proven that these weapons existed, or that it was on the trail of finding the proof.
In fact, they have not found anything.
Sure, we can well expect that the Bush administration and U.S. military will eventually come up with some "startling proof" to salvage the situation. After all, they are the ones with the guns. They are the ones in a position to bribe or torture a few Iraqi officials into a false confession or to suddenly "find" some of these weapons way out in the desert. We can well expect that they will do what cops do all over the world, including in this country: extract false confessions, plant false evidence, frame-up people.
But when they present this little bit of proof, we need to remember what they said before when they charged that Saddam was threatening the entire world because he had massive amounts of weapons of mass destruction. These included 500 tons (or over a million pounds) of agents to make nerve and mustard gas, as well as 30,000 missiles or bombs to deliver them. He was also supposed to have massive amounts of materials to produce biological weapons: 25,000 liters of anthrax and 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin. Besides that, they said he had mobile and underground laboratories making these germ and chemical weapons.
According to Colin Powell in his February 5 presentation at the U.N. Security Council, the U.S. had the proof of this. He said they had satellite photos, telephone conversations between Iraqi officials, and top-secret reports from important informants with impeccable credentials. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle and all the other important officials assured the public over and over again that they had top secret evidence that proved this. This was confirmed by the Democrats in Congress who lined up to support the war.
Of course, if this were true, then the U.S. military would not be looking for a few miserable tins of chemicals secretly buried under a chicken coop on a farm. It would not be looking for a needle in a hay stack. They would be looking for massive amounts of weapons, materials and factories.
The Bush administration will ignore what it said before, but it will continue to do what it has done from Day One: Feed the public a daily diet of lies and deceit to justify a completely barbaric policy, one based on the murder of millions and the destruction of entire countries.
The main threat against the peoples of the world does not come from ruthless dictators like Saddam Hussein, but from the likes of George Bush and the big powers and corporations that he serves.
Apr 14, 2003
The Pentagon’s recently-awarded non-competitive contract for putting out oil-well fires in Iraq was a real sweet deal for Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of the Halliburton Company. With as much as 7 billion dollars over the next two years, with unlimited renewals possible, it put Halliburton at the top of the list for winning even more valuable contracts for the "reconstruction" of Iraq.
Halliburton’s chief executive from 1995 to 2000 was none other than Vice-President Dick Cheney, a major promoter of the current war on Iraq. And Cheney is still on Halliburton’s payroll. Formally, Cheney quit Halliburton in 2000. But when he did, Halliburton gave him an $800,000 bonus to be paid in installments for the next five years. Last year, Halliburton paid $162,000. And it’s all perfectly legal.
If you want a government contract, nothing beats having the vice-president on your payroll.
Apr 14, 2003
In a clear parallel to the Viet Nam era, New York City union leaders called a "Support our troops" rally at the World Trade Center site on April 10.
During the Viet Nam war, much was made of the so-called "hard hats" who were used by the media to make it appear as if ordinary workers were in favor of that war. In fact, the earliest and most sustained opposition was among the working class, as polls and local referendums consistently showed. But when needed, trade unions dominated by gangsters could make sure that newspapers had pictures to show of flag-carrying "hard hats" berating–or even attacking–antiwar protesters.
This time around, the unions involved are trying to be somewhat more cautious. On the surface, "Support the troops" says nothing directly about supporting the war. However, since nothing was said about supporting the troops by immediately removing them from the impossible position in which they have been placed, it was a rally that could only make the Bush administration smile.
Official AFL-CIO policy is always carefully crafted to sound noble while bowing down to power. An example is its statement of March 20, that "Now that a decision has been made, we are unequivocal in our support of our country and America’s men and women on the front lines as well as their families here at home. We also urge the president as commander in chief to redouble the administration’s commitment to bolstering our security against terrorist attacks here at home." In other words, AFL-CIO leaders gave Bush everything he wanted–while piously wringing their hands.
The union movement in the United States today is branded by this nearly universal attitude among its top leaders: show some opposition in words but go along "now that the decision has been made." Now that the decision has been made by the bankruptcy court, how many union leaders say it is necessary to give up 2.1 billion dollars in concessions to United Airlines. Now that the decision has been made, accept the closings of plants and the layoffs of hundreds of thousands of workers. Now that the decision has been made, accept the cutoffs of Bethlehem Steel workers’ pensions.
This is not simply a series of poor decisions. The union leaderships are bound by a common belief. They believe that the bosses and the working class have shared interests, and the bosses must not be pressed too far. They have carried out this general policy in the working class for decades now. The disastrous results are all too clear on every overloaded job and in every unemployment line, and on the front lines of every war where young working class men and women face the horrible choice: kill or be killed.
The way the unions give in to the U.S. government "once the decision has been made," is the same way they give in against bosses who claim that companies can’t survive without constantly cutting jobs, wages and benefits. And both of these policies do nothing for the working class but dig it into a deeper hole.
Apr 14, 2003
Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root, already finishing government contracts for 2000-2002 worth 624 million dollars, is expected to gain multi-billion-dollar contracts in post-war Iraq reconstruction.
This is nothing new. Kellogg Brown & Root’s long history with politicians at the top began during the Roosevelt administration. An up-and-coming Texas politician named Lyndon Johnson helped Herman and George Brown make their first million on a federally contracted dam they built near Austin, Texas. Johnson got a nice handshake from the Browns, or as he told an interviewer later, "In those days, it was cash."
Brown & Root went on to build warships for the navy during World War II, even though George Brown was reported to have said, "We didn’t know the stern from the aft–I mean the bow–of the boat." In 1965 Brown & Root constructed an air base in Viet Nam. During the Balkans war, they provided logistics for the U.S. troops there.
Kellogg Brown & Root, like all government contractors get "cost-plus" contracts. We can see exactly what that means when we notice that Brown & Root listed $85.98 as the cost for every sheet of plywood it supplied in Bosnia and Kosovo–the same plywood that costs $14.06 at Home Depot.
These lucrative government contracts, guaranteeing profits on top of such "costs," have lasted for 60 years, under every administration, Democratic or Republican. Cheney is simply the most recent politician to front for them.
Apr 14, 2003
The U.S. government has widely reprinted what Colin Powell said on January 21 about Iraqi oil, "It will be held for and used for the people of Iraq. It will not be exploited for the United States’ own purpose." In other words, Iraqi oil should be used to build houses that were destroyed, open schools, establish hospitals, set up markets, purify the water. And Bush often refers to such things. But, as they say, actions speak louder than words. And all the actions so far show that the U.S. has one aim and only one aim for Iraqi oil–to exploit it for the benefit of U.S. corporations.
Vice President Dick Cheney–less concerned with mouthing propaganda–was more to the point than Powell. He bluntly declared that the costs of this war must be paid for by Iraq, that is, by the proceeds of its oil. To that end, Cheney’s company has been given the right to move into Iraqi oil fields, using the profits they made there in order to refurbish oil wells and fix up the infrastructure to remove oil from the country, rebuilding the port of Umm Qasr. Still more proceeds from Iraqi oil sales are slated to finance the modernization of the wells, the digging of new wells and new exploration for oil. All this to enable the same U.S. oil companies to take out still more oil–and make still more profit. The Iraqi people will have more empty holes in the ground and their pressing social needs will go unmet.
Apr 14, 2003
On April 9, eleven civilians were killed "accidentally" by U.S. military forces in Afghanistan. When an Afghan militia checkpoint near the border with Pakistan was attacked, U.S. Marine Corps planes were called in. Noticing two small groups of people, they attacked with cannon fire and a 1,000 pound laser-guided bomb. All eleven people killed were civilians, including seven women.
The press, following after the Bush administration, may have forgotten this war–just as Bush will soon try to bury the war in Iraq on the back pages of the newspapers. But it continues, as deadly as ever. There are more U.S. and other foreign troops still operating in Afghanistan today than there were during the high point of the "official war" before the U.S. declared "victory" in this war.
And despite last year’s claims that the war in Afghanistan was a war to end terror, liberate Afghanis from oppression and establish a society of freedom and equality for all the people of the country, just the opposite has taken place.
Most of the people of Afghanistan are back under the control of fundamentalist warlords, who torture and kill anyone who challenges their power. They are at least as oppressive of women as the Taliban rulers they have replaced. In fact, many of them worked with the Taliban when they were in power. Even the brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai recently told the Associated Press, "What was promised to Afghans with the collapse of the Taliban was a new life of hope and change. But what was delivered? Nothing. Everyone is back in business."
A perfect preview of the future the Bush administration has in store for Iraq.
Apr 14, 2003
The latest corporate tax filings show that corporations are moving to guarantee pensions–for their executives!
Delta Airlines, for example, set up a special retirement trust fund for 33 of its top executives last year. A similar deal was arranged for executives at the former Philip Morris company, at the parent company of United Airlines, at profitable Abbott Laboratories and at the now twice-bankrupt LTV Steel.
At LTV, the company shed all obligations to pay pensions to its thousands of employees, who have now seen their pensions cut by the PBGC (the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, funded by our tax dollars). Yet LTV had the money with which to set up a special trust for a top executive, guaranteeing him a pension no matter what condition the company was in.
Conseco, also in the bankruptcy courts, guaranteed a million and a half dollars per year to its chairman as a pension. How was this possible when the company is "bankrupt"? The corporation used a subsidiary to which it shifted the money, a subsidiary which is not in bankruptcy.
Don’t tell us there’s no money–it’s just hidden. And the bosses know where it is!
Apr 14, 2003
One baby in eight in the U.S. arrives early, a rate twice as high as in most European countries. And the rate among black mothers is twice as high as among white mothers. Although far more premature babies are surviving than ever before, prematurity remains a significant cause of death in the first month of life (more than 100 deaths per 100,000 births in 2000.)
So why are there more and more premature babies? The medical establishment talks about the rising age for first pregnancies. But it is both women over 35 and women under 17 who are more likely to have premature babies.
But these factors would be much less significant if good medical care for pregnant mothers were available, including treatment of certain kinds of infections, to lower the rate of premature births.
But like everything else, medical care reflects the class nature of this society: those with money get more of it and of a higher quality.
Women who lack good medical care often lack the resources to get off their feet during a difficult pregnancy. How can they pay to be off work for several months? And what about limits on who gets Medicaid and what it can be used for? The quality of Medicaid assistance is often low for those who do qualify–which is not the working poor.
This country, which has billions to bomb other countries, can’t find the money to assure the lives of all its babies.
Apr 14, 2003
Kmart Corporation is in the bankruptcy courts. At least 600 stores are being closed and tens of thousands of workers’ jobs have been cut.
But what does bankruptcy mean for the top executives and for 7800 store managers, regional managers and pharmacy managers? Bonuses!
Yes, the bankruptcy courts allow the president and the chief restructuring officer to receive a million each as a bonus for the last year of work. And the chief of all the executives, chairman Jim Adamson, comes away with a 3.6 million dollar bonus for the year.
Bankruptcy is clearly the way to go–when you are a boss.
Apr 14, 2003
SPARK received a letter from a prisoner at the Ionia Correction Facility talking about conditions for prisoners there. In part, the inmate described sometimes brutal and racist treatment.
He told the story of a prisoner from another country, who tried to tell the prison officials in broken English that he was in considerable pain. When he got no treatment, no relief from his pain, he began a hunger strike. It took prison authorities 57 days before they took him to a hospital in Jackson, Michigan–where he died.
Another prisoner, kept in maximum segregation for over 14 years, no matter what conduct he displayed, was allowed only two phone calls to his family during that entire time.
We hear a lot from Bush about the inhumanity of Saddam Hussein’s prisons.
Take a look at some prisons here–Saddam’s jailers would feel right at home!
Apr 14, 2003
In 2002, more people were in prison in the United States than ever before–2, 019, 234. It is hardly surprising, given the state of the economy with layoffs and rising unemployment rates. Some of those who cannot find legal work are willing to try illegal work.
Rates vary according to what state has jurisdiction over the crime committed and the extent to which those states use jail sentences. California’s jail population actually went down last year, as non-violent drug offenders were given treatment, as opposed to jail time.
And rates of incarceration, like rates for unemployment, vary by race: in the category of men aged 20 to 34, black males were seven and a half times more likely to be incarcerated when compared to white males of the same age.
While the national unemployment rate has risen to 5.8%, the average for metropolitan areas, where the majority of the population lives and works, is at 6.5%. And in many cities, the rate is higher than that. Flint, Michigan, which has seen heavy layoffs in auto, has an unemployment rate of 9.8%.
In fact, these figures grossly understate the problem. What about the two million adults in prison–they are part of the unemployed–as are the big bulk of the soldiers who entered the armed forces because they couldn’t find a job.
Apr 14, 2003
According to Bush, the goal of the Iraq war was to destroy the weapons of mass destruction that the country possesses. After three weeks of war, the leaders of the intervention haven’t been able to show proof of such weapons. But there has been massive destruction coming from U.S. and British missiles, tanks and cluster bombs.
The results of this destruction are everywhere: gutted civilian buildings; bare hospitals packed with wounded or mutilated women, children and old people; morgues filled with the bodies of civilians. Look at the number of victims among the U.S. and British troops fallen to "friendly fire."
According to Bush, this was also going to bring liberty and democracy to the Iraqi people. But instead of democracy, Bush has just put one of his generals in charge of administering Iraq for the coming months. "Democracy" for Bush is government of the people ... by U.S. generals.
U.S. and British soldiers who fall in this conflict–for they are also dying–don’t die for their country or for "liberty." They die to permit the large corporations which dominate the world to make more profits. The war had hardly begun when Bush began to give out contracts for the "reconstruction of Iraq," and its oil–giving preference to his friends and to U.S. corporations, leaving only crumbs to his British ally.
Behind Bush’s speeches about the "defense of liberty" there was only the thirst for oil.
The war that U.S. and British leaders have carved out in Iraq is a war of thieves. It’s not the first time that the big western powers have thrown themselves into similar acts of robbery. In a century and a half, the world has known hundreds of expeditions for colonial conquest and almost as many wars by which the great powers endeavored to maintain control over people who aspire to their independence.
For the giant corporations and their representatives, war is only another means of carrying out business.
Apr 14, 2003
The U.S. war against Iraq, with its massive bombing and shelling, has not only meant untold casualties among the Iraqi population. For the survivors, conditions of life have been made impossible. These people went into the war already ravaged by 23 years of war and a suffocating economic embargo with much of the economic infrastructure destroyed and millions killed. Now countless more have had their neighborhoods and homes destroyed. And everyone is trying to survive on nothing: no food and water, no electricity, no medical help–and such terrible unsanitary conditions that there are already reports of outbreaks of cholera in some cities.
So, it was hardly a surprise that once the regime of Saddam Hussein collapsed, massive looting broke out in big and small cities throughout Iraq. In effect, the lid blew off a giant pressure cooker, with different layers of the population going into the streets for all different kinds of reasons.
Certainly, organized gangs and thugs took advantage of the situation and plundered what they could, even using semi-tractor trailers to cart away their booty from office buildings, luxury hotels, and even hospitals. For them, everything has been fair game, including the desperately needed medical equipment, supplies, and medicine for all the Iraqi victims of the U.S. invasion and war. One must assume that it was the elements of the old state and police apparatus of Saddam Hussein that had the resources to pull off many of these operations.
But also a large number ordinary people were driven into the street. People desperate for food and water had no choice but to try to grab whatever little they could get their hands on just to be able to stay alive. They also invaded and sacked government and ruling Baath party buildings and offices, expressing their deep anger and resentment against a regime which had ruled through severe and brutal repression, with its much-hated secret police, summary executions, torture chambers, etc.
Their resentment went beyond the government. In Baghdad, poor people invaded the richer neighborhoods, sacking the homes of the wealthy, that is, those who had profited from their misery over all these years. The wealthy, in turn, responded by hiring their own private guards and mercenaries to guard their homes and patrol their neighborhoods.
When asked about the looting at one of his daily press conferences, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld replied blandly that this is what happened during a "transition period" between the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and a "liberated Iraq." He went on to say that this "transition" would not be "tidy."
Of course, Rumsfeld did not admit what was so obvious: that the U.S. government, which was in such a hurry to get rid of Saddam Hussein, was not in any hurry to even begin to relieve the worst abject misery of the Iraqi people in the areas where they had begun to take control. Sure, in the first hours of the war, Bush made promises that aid would begin to flow within "36 hours." They my have even taken a few pictures of a couple truckloads of food being "distributed."But the total amount of aid they have pledged–even if it were all actually delivered–is only a drop in the bucket compared to the huge amount of food, water and electricity they have destroyed.
While U.S. and British officials denounce the Saddam Hussein regime, they have begun to try to reconstitute large elements of it to bring supposed "law and order" over the population. In Basra, for example, the British appointed Sheikh Tameeni, a former brigadier general in Saddam Hussein’s army, to head the new city council. Under him, new heads of the police, traffic police and civil defense department were named–who also come out of the old Baath Party. And these departments will be filled, also, by the same cops and officials as before.
British officials justified these choices by saying, "You are not going to find anyone in the country who is relatively senior who had not got some sort of linkage with the regime in some sort of way."
Of course, when the Iraqis heard about this Baath Party official’s appointments, there was a near riot in the city. A Washington Post reporter saw people trying to attack Sheik Tameeni’s home.
Said a doctor who watched the protest, "We are seeing the future of Iraq right here, and it is not good."
In fact, for the people of Iraq, switching from Hussein to a puppet regime more to the liking of the U.S. won’t be an improvement, not to speak of a liberation, as promised over and over again. Hussein’s regime, like all the other horrible dictatorships in the Middle East and all over the world, is only an appendage of the major imperialist powers, especially of the U.S.
Behind Hussein’s great crimes that the U.S. officials and news media denounce can be found the hand of the U.S. It was the U.S. that encouraged Hussein’s war against Iran. It was the U.S. that supplied him with all the fixings to fabricate and drop poison gas on the Kurds. Iraqi political prisoners spoke of how the instruments of torture, even the handcuffs, all were "made in the USA" or "made in Great Britain." When the U.S. broke with Saddam Hussein in the wake of his invasion of Kuwait, it still gave him back his army and helicopters to put down the revolts in the north and south of the country. Even during the last 12 years of suffocating economic embargo that the U.S. imposed on Iraq and that led to such suffering of the Iraqi people, Saddam Hussein’s hold on power was only solidified.
The new regime that the U.S. is beginning to install will only do what the old one did–ensure the continued enrichment of the big oil companies, banks, construction companies and military contractors at the expense of the mass of Iraqi workers and poor–with this difference–more of the profits will now flow directly to U.S. corporations.
This is the outcome for which this filthy war has been fought–and will continue to be fought. For it’s not nearly over.