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 19, 2004
President Bush has systematically avoided news conferences. But last week was different. The U.S. war in Iraq was spinning out of control. So Bush was shoved onto the stage of a press conference to answer a few questions.
Over the last few weeks, the Bush administration had been going through the charade of preparing to bring a "sovereign"government to Iraq by June 30. This hand-picked government would then "invite" the U.S. military to remain. Of course, this will mean continuing the U.S. occupation–just under another name.
To smooth the way for this fake handover, the U.S. military has been trying to decimate any resistance and terrorize the Iraqi population. A couple of weeks ago, the U.S. military launched a full-scale attack on Falluja, complete with F-16s and Apache helicopters firing into the densely packed city. At the same time, the U.S. military went after people in some of the poorest parts of Baghdad and other cities in the south of the country.
These stepped-up U.S. military operations provoked a huge insurrection in most cities throughout central and southern Iraq. It also united various parts of the population against the U.S. occupation, including the Sunnis and Shiites.
When the U.S. military launched counter-attacks, the insurrectionists just melted back into the population–which only shows that the insurrectionists are not just a tiny minority, as Bush says, but people who are part and parcel of the Iraqi population.
In the face of this, Bush dared say that even though these weeks have been "difficult," it is worth it. He dared say the U.S. is bringing "freedom," "democracy" and "security" to Iraq.
As if you can bring freedom to Iraq by murdering tens of thousands of Iraqis and destroying much of their country.
No, the U.S. government’s very deep interest in Iraq is not "freedom" and "democracy." It is a war for the control over Iraq’s oil. It is a war to further U.S. military and economic control of the Middle East. It is, first of all, a war against the Iraqi people.
But the war in Iraq is also a war against us. And the numbers prove it. The first two weeks of April were the bloodiest weeks since the start of the war. And U.S. casualties were the highest.
From the start, Bush has lied to justify this war: the weapons of mass destruction, the terrorists, the costs of the war, declaring major military operations complete, and now–the final insult–that it is a war for freedom.
Bush has had plenty of company in telling all these lies, starting with the Democrats. Today, Kerry and Kennedy may criticize Bush, pretending that he misled them into supporting the war. As if they didn’t know what was so obvious to the millions of people all over the world, who took to the streets to demonstrate against the war. But they all make it crystal clear, they intend for the war to go on, no matter who wins in November.
None of these politicians will stop this war because the U.S. ruling class really intends on keeping control of Iraq and its oil. It will end only when the people in this country decide to end it. The Viet Nam War was not ended by the politicians, but by the social movements in this country, starting with the movements against the war by the soldiers themselves.
Everyone knows that the U.S. soldiers don’t want to be in Iraq. They hate the war. Support them, by fighting to bring everyone back immediately.
Apr 19, 2004
Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm has found yet another way to cut the state’s budget deficit. Her latest proposal is to tax the heirs of elderly people who receive Medicaid to pay for nursing home care.
In fact, Granholm is simply implementing a federal law passed in 1993 under President Bill Clinton that allows the states to take back some of the costs of nursing home care from recipients’ heirs after they die. Michigan is one of two states–along with Georgia–which had yet to do so.
This is nothing but a mean-spirited attack on working people. It’s an inheritance tax directly aimed at working families.
Who are the elderly who receive Medicaid assistance to pay for nursing home care? People who have exhausted all of their savings. In other words, poor and working people. Wealthy people don’t qualify for Medicaid, because patients have to "spend down" their assets to about $2,000 to do so. Moreover, they use medical facilities that are much better than the ones Medicaid pays for.
Legally, people who enter nursing homes are allowed to hold onto a home and a car and still receive Medicaid. Before 1993, they could leave a little something to their family members after they died. The 1993 law allows the states to tax this inheritance, including life insurance benefits, and the sale price on the home to cover the costs of nursing home care.
This comes at the same time that the politicians are repealing inheritance taxes to benefit the wealthy. The federal inheritance tax was fully repealed through the year 2010 as part of Bush’s 2001 tax cuts. The politicians are still trying to get this repeal extended beyond 2010 as well as to repeal state inheritance taxes.
The Republicans like to refer to the inheritance tax as a "death tax." Taxing heirs of nursing home care recipients is truly a death tax. With the costs of nursing home care not controlled in any manner, in most cases it is a one hundred% tax, and for something that society should pay for–the care of its sickest elderly people who are unable to care for themselves.
Apr 19, 2004
Gasoline prices in the whole country are at unprecedented highs–on April 12 the average pump price for self-serve gasoline was $1.79 per gallon, a new record. In California, at $2.16 on the same day, the prices were higher than anywhere else–as they have been for the past eight weeks.
Oil companies say it’s because there is a shortage in the gasoline supply. When supply is short, prices rise. But why is there a shortage? The companies name their usual list of culprits–"high OPEC prices" (that is, the Arabs!) and "tight environmental standards" lead the list.
Of course, the oil companies are not eager to discuss the real reason for the supply shortage. In fact, they have caused it themselves, deliberately, so that the prices–and their profits–go through the roof!
In California, five companies produce 90% of the state’s special CARB gasoline. In the past two decades, these companies have been closing down refineries–despite the continual increase in the population and the demand for gasoline. In 1983, there were 37 refineries producing CARB fuel; today there are only 13.
This strategy has been working for the oil companies, which are running record profits–Wall Street calls the situation in California "refinery heaven." And it’s been working so well, the bosses want to do more of it: Shell Oil has announced that, on September 30, it will shut down its Bakersfield refinery for good!
Shell gave some lame excuses for the closure–the refinery losing money, nearby oil fields running out of reserves. But consumer groups had no difficulty exposing these as blatant lies. According to Shell’s own documents, the Bakersfield refinery had the highest profit margins among Shell’s eight U.S. refineries last year. And state officials have confirmed that the oil fields in question still hold at least 20 years’ worth of crude oil.
The oil companies are doing exactly what the electricity companies did in 2000 and 2001 when they shut down power plants, causing the electricity prices to skyrocket in California.
Once again, the bosses are trying to shake us down for the last penny in our pockets, by manipulating the supply of a vital necessity.
That’s capitalism at work!
Apr 19, 2004
Just ten days before the April 15 tax deadline, the General Accounting Office of the Congress released a study detailing taxes corporations avoid. Almost two-thirds of companies paid no taxes between 1996 and 2000, years during which their profits were increasing. Colgate-Palmolive, for example, paid no taxes, with 1.6 billion dollars in profits from 1996 to 2000; Microsoft, with a profit of 12.3 billion dollars in 1999, paid no taxes. The official tax on corporate profits was almost 40%, but the vast majority of the big corporations paid less than 5% of their profits in taxes in those years. This is less than every worker pays in federal taxes, as we know too well.
Today John Kerry says he wants to change the law to prohibit the use of tax havens, but in turn he proposes to lower the overall tax rate on corporate profits. This would continue still more to lower the share that taxes on profits make up of all U.S. tax revenues. Corporate taxes were 23% of the taxes in the mid 1960s and down to only 7% in 2002.
While taxes fall on profits, the politicians find new ways to get money out of us. There are all kinds of new excise taxes and fees. Anyone who has a cell phone, an automobile or a home can testify to this. While the majority of corporations making profits pay nothing, we are being overwhelmed with taxes and fees to not only make up the difference, but also to hand over more money to them in the form of subsidies.
This is truly government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich.
Apr 19, 2004
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently ruled that Creekstone Farms, a meatpacking company in Kansas, could NOT test all its cows for mad cow disease.
Creekstone slaughters prime Black Angus cows mostly less than 30 months old, young ones that are least likely to be infected with mad cow disease, according to the USDA. Nevertheless, the company wants to test all its cows, because it has lost its business exporting beef to Japan since the government there requires testing of all cows from countries where mad cow disease has been detected.
All the big meat packing companies that slaughter cows for ordinary customers in this country set up a howl when it heard what Creekstone wanted to do. The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association President said, "If testing is allowed at Creekstone and other companies, we think it would become the international standard, and the domestic standard, too."
And that obviously is something none of the big companies want to have happen–they might turn up proof that mad cow has infected their herds!
Better to infect the population than to cut into profit–and the USDA agreed!
Apr 19, 2004
Maryland’s Republican governor is bragging that no taxes were raised in the legislative session just ended. No taxes? What a lie–they just raised a bunch of fees, which are nothing but the most regressive form of taxes. The first one affecting most adults is a 50% increase in car registration fees, now costing $128 for two years, instead of $81. And every homeowner in the state will pay $30 extra per year toward the sewage running into the Chesapeake Bay, even though homeowners are not the primary reason for the pollution.
At the same time, the counties and cities in Maryland are also raising various fees. For example, Baltimore’s mayor is adding yet another increase to the water bills everyone pays. Over an eight year period, water and sewer fees in Baltimore will DOUBLE.
What has the city been doing with the water and sewer fees it collected for the last 50 years? Why wasn’t the maintenance taken care of so that raw sewage would not be spilling into the water system? Baltimore’s mayors–all Democrats–had other uses for the fees we paid. For example, they all gave tax breaks and subsidies to their real estate developer friends to build big projects down at the Inner Harbor.
The Democratic mayor wants to blame the Republican governor, saying "I believe that if the Republicans could tax the poor on the air they breathe, they would do that too...."
Republicans or Democrats–the only people the politicians don’t make pay more are the very ones who have the money–their buddies, the wealthy.
Apr 19, 2004
Senator John Kerry was speaking at the exclusive "21 Club" in Manhattan. Only those attended who could afford the $25,000-per-plate fund-raiser. To these very wealthy members of his own class, candidate Kerry said, "I am not a redistribution Democrat.... Fear not."
In the face of enormous social inequality of wealth that desperately needs some redistribution into the hands of workers and the poor who lack jobs, medical care and a social safety net, John Kerry tells the excessively wealthy: "Fear not."
Or, to working people: Expect not.
Apr 19, 2004
The Congress has just passed legislation to let corporations reduce their pension contributions by 80 billion dollars over the next two years. This bill was supported by both Democrats and Republicans, who voted for it overwhelmingly. Ted Kennedy joined with Republican Judd Gregg of New Hampshire to steer it through to passage. Both claimed that this is "the ultimate jobs bill," saying without it, companies would have to put money into their pensions instead of into job creation. In fact this money is not going into job creation, but only into more profits–which undoubtedly pleases Wall Street.
It’s not surprising that companies would like to get out of paying into their pension funds. But what’s shocking is that union officials supported this same bill. The United Auto Workers supported the law, as did the Machinists Union, the Transport Workers Union, and the Airline Pilots and the Association of Flight Attendants.
What is needed is a requirement that companies fully fund their pension plans and be prohibited from terminating them.
Instead the pensions of 35 million workers have been weakened–just so big companies will have 80 billion dollars more to show in their profit margins. This law puts further in jeopardy the health insurance of retirees, which 459,000 have already lost. It is simply a robbery at the expense of retirees and workers who are looking forward to retiring, carried out by the Republicans and Democrats working hand in hand.
Apr 19, 2004
When President Bush formally endorsed Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s new plan for the Palestinian Occupied Territories, he called it "historic" and "courageous." It was supposed to be a step toward peace, as though the Israeli government was magnanimously making certain concessions to the Palestinians, withdrawing from the Gaza Strip and dismantling some Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
In fact, this "step toward peace" is nothing but an outright land grab by the Israeli government. It intends to begin formally incorporating big parts of the Occupied Territories, starting with East Jerusalem, which had been Palestinian, and six big settlement blocs in the West Bank. And, this land grab won’t stop there. Just as it has done since its establishment in the late 1940s, Israel will no doubt try to take over more and more of the Palestinian Territories.
In the news conference, Bush justified his support for Sharon’s plan by saying that he was only taking into account the changing "realities on the ground" such as "existing major Israeli population centers."
But what Bush and Sharon did not bother to mention was that in one stroke, the Sharon government had torn up all its agreements and promises to one day return the Occupied Territories to the control of a Palestinian government. Moreover, the Sharon government did it unilaterally, backed up by brute force–a clear message to the peoples of the rest of the Middle East that the Israeli government intended to do what it wanted–and to hell with everyone else.
The Israeli assassination of Dr. Abdel Aziz Rantisi, the head of Hamas, a few days afterwards, underlined this. It was one more way for the Israeli government to say that it was ready to murder and kill as many Palestinians as it wanted in order to impose its complete and utter domination. And Bush had to be in on the decision for Israel to go ahead with the assassination, even as he cynically praised Sharon for "courageously" working for peace.
Of course, this has been nothing but a continuation of the entire history of Israel’s existence, which has been based on violently pushing the Palestinians off their land and out of their homes, often condemning them to live in squalor, misery and malnutrition, making them foreigners in their own land. The Israeli government has maintained this oppression through imprisonment, torture and murder.
The Israeli plan to pull out their settlements from the 16-mile long Gaza Strip was hardly a surprise. The Israeli settlements in Gaza had never worked. Only a small handful of settlers lived there, even though the Israeli government had taken over almost half of Gaza for these settlements and offered the settlers extremely generous subsidies and aid. Not even the most fanatic, religious fundamentalist Israelis wanted to live in settlements literally surrounded by millions of densely packed, angry and seething Palestinians, who had been forced to live in some of the most miserable slums in the world.
Under Sharon’s plan, the Israeli military occupation of the Palestinian population in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank will continue. Israeli troops will remain stationed in bases inside Gaza, as well as around its borders. At the same time, Israeli troops will keep the Palestinians in the West Bank cooped up in a series of ever smaller and more disjointed cantons or ghettoes, with the Palestinians hemmed in by the heavily fortified so-called "security fence" that the Israeli government is building.
Bush’s announcement that he had decided to support Sharon’s plan was merely a formality. The Israeli government would never have been able to carry out its occupation and war against the Palestinians without massive U.S. support, both financial and military, throughout this time period. The Israeli military, the settlements in the occupied territories, the massive government subsidies to attract the settlers–much of the bill was paid for by the U.S.
The U.S. pays–through the teeth–because Israel serves as U.S. imperialism’s most important, powerful and loyal guard dog in the Middle East. And, obviously, with the U.S. bogged down in its own worsening war and occupation in Iraq, Bush is looking for ways to reinforce Sharon, his loyal ally, in his own war.
In fact, the Sharon plan is a sure prescription for further wars and violence, and a growing divide of blood and hatred between the peoples of the region, just like the U.S. war in Iraq. Sharon and Bush are partners in turning the whole Middle East into a bloody field of never-ending carnage.
Apr 19, 2004
Every year, fifteen million people die from drinking polluted water, the vast majority children under 12 years. In fact, this is the chief cause of infant mortality in the world. According to the World Health Organization, more than a billion and a half people in the world lack access to clean water. And another three billion people lack sewage systems and water treatment facilities. In some parts of Asia and Africa, hundreds of millions of people risk cholera and typhus thanks to dirty water.
In the rich countries of the world there is enough water for use in food, agriculture and industry. On average, people in the United States use 20 times as much water as what is available to people in Africa. And it is not just a question of geography. Israelis and Palestinians live next to one another, but Israelis average four times as much water consumption as do Palestinians.
Yes, politics plays its part in the use of water. Instead of the world’s resources being used and extended to provide safe drinking water for everyone, water is becoming another commodity sold only to those who can pay. For those who cannot afford to pay–there is thirst and deaths by disease.
Apr 19, 2004
Last July, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a man some call the chief architect of the U.S. war on Iraq, declared, "There’s an enormous eagerness among Iraqis to help us." Talking about the new "volunteer" Iraqi army, Wolfowitz said, "Seven thousand people [were] signing up in just the first 24 hours."
Nine months later, with an estimated 200,000 Iraqis organized by the U.S. into various armed forces, the first test came. Units were ordered into Fallujah and other cities to put down the insurrections that had suddenly flared up.
Many refused.
A senior U.S. Army officer admitted that overall perhaps 20 to 25% of the Iraqi army, civil defense police and other security forces had quit, changed sides, or otherwise failed to perform their duties during the rebellions in Fallujah and other Iraqi cities. In fact, the number was obviously higher. Ahmed Chalabi, a favorite of the Pentagon, now on the Bush-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, called it, "...the collapse of the indigenous Iraqi security structures put in place by the Coalition Provisional Authority . . . Half of the army mutinied... elements of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, which is designed to be a national paramilitary force, also mutinied and may be implicated in the murder and mutilation of the four Americans which touched off the siege of Fallujah."
What’s next? General John Abizaid, the top U.S. military commander over the Middle East, says the U.S. wants to bring back former middle and high level Iraqi military officials, that is, the very people who headed the repressive regime that kept Saddam Hussein in power. Hundreds of the butchers are to be appointed in coming weeks
Not a surprise. These are the very people the U.S. depended on to keep the Iraqi people under control during the years Saddam Hussein was supported by the U.S.
The U.S. has now come full circle, reinstalling the repressive parts of the old Saddam Hussein regime back in office, resting them on the graves of the tens of thousands of people killed by the U.S. war on Iraq during this last year.
Apr 19, 2004
On March 31, the U.S. news media widely broadcast gruesome images of four charred bodies being mutilated in Fallujah. The media reported that the bodies belonged to American "civilians." But for the most part, the reports obscured what these four individuals had been doing in Iraq.
In fact they were mercenaries.
According to news reports, there are an estimated 18,000 non-Iraqi "private security workers," that is, mercenaries, in Iraq. They are employed by at least two dozen companies calling themselves "security" or "risk management" firms, mostly based in the U.S. and Britain.
These companies pay the mercenaries they hire up to 1,000 dollars a day, and they charge their clients up to 2,000 dollars a day for each hired gun. If the Bush administration uses so many of these mercenaries instead of enlisted troops, it’s obviously not to save money.
Rather, the use of mercenaries lets the U.S. hide a lot of what is going on in Iraq. Mercenaries don’t appear in the official figures when they are killed. The four who were killed in Fallujah most probably would not even have been mentioned by the media if it weren’t for the way their bodies were treated. According to the Los Angeles Times, at least 50 mercenaries have been killed so far in the Iraq war. According to the British press, 80 mercenaries were killed just in the beginning of April.
If this figure is hidden from sight, so also is the work the mercenaries carry out. It’s true that some of these mercenaries are visible. Blackwater USA, the company that the four killed in Fallujah worked for, for example, happens to supply bodyguards for Paul Bremer, the top U.S. administrator in Iraq. But the mercenaries carry out all kinds of other tasks, including covert "special operations" hidden from view.
In fact, these mercenaries are almost exclusively former Navy SEALs, Green Berets, Marines, CIA agents and British Special Air Services members–that is, soldiers or agents trained for, and involved in, such special operations.
Blackwater USA, which was founded in the mid-1990s by former Navy SEALs, makes no secret of the "expertise" of its operatives in special operations–to the contrary, it advertises it (the very word "blackwater" refers to covert operations undertaken at night by elite divers). According to the Chilean magazine Que Pasa, for example, Blackwater recently recruited, trained and sent to Iraq 122 former members of the Chilean military, who were involved in torture and other repressive practices during the military dictatorship that ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990. Similar revelations have come from South Africa, where former cops and soldiers implicated in human rights abuses during the apartheid era have apparently been recruited to work as mercenaries in Iraq.
The mercenaries have "expertise" in repression against a civilian population–this is exactly why they are being paid the big bucks.
How many mercenaries are involved in the ongoing house-to-house searches in Fallujah and other Iraqi cities? What kind of atrocities against the population are they committing? And how many of them are themselves getting killed in the process?
We don’t know, because news reports, which tell us very little about the activities of the regular troops, tell us even less–usually nothing–about the activities of the mercenaries. But we have a good idea–given that what they did aroused a vicious hatred in the people of Fallujah.
In any case, it’s obvious the Bush administration is using these costly mercenaries in its dirty war against the people of Iraq as a way to escape some of the scrutiny of public opinion here at home. But, as during the Viet Nam war three decades ago, the immunity from accountability that Bush hopes to maintain may not last very long–especially as the cost of this war keeps soaring, in terms of both money and human lives.
Apr 19, 2004
On March 31, four mercenaries from the U.S. were killed in the Iraqi city of Fallujah and their burned bodies hung from a bridge. Since that time, the U.S. military has used the killings as an excuse to launch a massive attack against the city. It’s obviously a pretext since Marines and mercenaries had already been deployed to Fallujah before the incident. The week before they had invaded homes, shot rockets into buildings from helicopter gunships, and killed 18 Iraqis. It’s undoubtedly the reason the mercenaries were killed.
This latest campaign is an attempt to "pacify" Fallujah’s population of 200,000. Fallujah has been one of several centers of resistance for a year now. U.S. soldiers had killed at least 15 civilians in a demonstration there in April of last year. And there have been attacks on the population ever since.
The U.S. hopes to squash any resistance in Fallujah and other cities before the June 30 deadline for the handing over of power in Iraq–which everyone knows will simply be a symbolic play for George W. Bush’s re-election. The U.S. has deployed 2,500 Marines to Fallujah. In addition to troops, the U.S. has used tanks, attack helicopters, bombers and gunships against the city.
It is estimated that over 600 people have been killed in Fallujah in two weeks of fighting, with more than 1200 wounded. More than half of those killed have been women and children, or in other words, civilians. An Iraqi doctor said, "The Americans claim that all the wounded are fighters and will not let us take them away. Families cannot escape because of their snipers." These attacks will be remembered in the annals of military history alongside the massacre at My Lai in Vietnam and other atrocities.
What the U.S. is doing is terrorism aimed at civilians, in this sense no different than the terrorism of 9/11. But there is one very big difference–the U.S. is using the full power of its military apparatus to carry it out.
The population of Fallujah has not simply rolled over in the face of this attack, it has resisted. There have been several dozen American soldiers killed in the fighting. The uprising in Fallujah has also started to be echoed in other cities. And the plight of the people of Fallujah, a Sunni Muslim stronghold, has even created an uneasy alliance with Shiite Muslims from other cities, which have sent food, medicine, arms and even soldiers to assist them.
Apr 19, 2004
The first week in March, at a joint UAW-DaimlerChrysler conference, UAW Vice-President Nate Gooden laid it on the line for the assembled local union leaders: "Every soul in this room has to buckle up and buckle down." But he wasn’t talking about organizing, and he wasn’t talking about fighting to beat back attacks by DCX (DaimlerChrysler). He was talking about buckling down to help DCX do what it wants–squeeze more work out of fewer workers.
Gooden’s speech defended cuts by DCX. He told the conference that Letter 124 must be promoted by union leaders or else they will never get a local union agreement, that is, his office will not approve an agreement outside of Letter 124. And what is Letter 124?
Letter 124, in the 2003 UAW-DCX contract, is a promise by the UAW to enforce on its members a "team concept" method of reorganizing and intensifying work. It would take to a new level the current speed-up, job elimination, and shrinking rights on the job. In this contract, the top UAW leadership now agrees to use a full-court press to force local units into such teams.
Under Letter 124, workers would lose the right to hold a job by seniority. Workers instead will have to rotate through all the jobs in their "team." Classifications will no longer be honored. In addition to assembling parts, each team must do the janitorial work in its area, the inspection work in its area, normal machine maintenance and repair in its area, and material handling in its area. Even more than today, gone will be inspection jobs, janitor jobs, material jobs and skilled jobs.
For skilled trades, instead of separate crews like pipefitter crew and an electrician crew, tradesmen will be expected to be jacks of all trades. The net results expected: fewer and fewer workers employed, with no loss of production.
Letter 124 is no change in general direction. The UAW has been helpful to DCX in chipping away workers’ wages, benefits and working conditions for years. Even this year, they didn’t wait for Letter 124 to install a much worse attendance program. The less freedom that workers have to be absent, the fewer replacements DCX needs to employ. When Gooden says, "We shouldn’t have to do anything to get people to come to work–that’s one of your obligations when you get hired," he’s warning workers not to expect much help from the UAW if they are disciplined or discharged for absences.
Nor is it new when Gooden argues that workers have no choice but to go along with these changes "or else we (DCX) won’t survive." Since Chrysler’s alleged brush with bankruptcy in l980, UAW leaders have justified every company attack by saying the sacrifices were necessary to save jobs. The fact that UAW membership has done nothing but fall, and fall rapidly, since l980, seems not to have impacted their thinking!
In fact the concessions made by the union continue to resemble nothing so much as throwing blood in front of sharks. Auto industry analysts expect DCX to use its 2003-2007 UAW contract to eliminate one in every five current jobs.
Most local units have not yet ratified local agreements, seven months after the national agreement was made. Workers at two locals, Warren (Michigan) Truck and Toledo (Ohio) Jeep, resisted give-away contracts until the UAW leaders scheduled votes just before Christmas–and told the workers they either had to vote for some concessions, or the UAW would put them out on strike for the Christmas holidays. The Warren Truck workers had previously voted 90% "No" on their contract. Also, workers at Warren (Michigan) Stamping have twice voted "no" on their local contract. And these contracts, though including some concessions, were far from the huge changes mandated by Letter 124.
It’s in response to local resistance that the national UAW leadership announced it will take decisions over the heads of the local units.
At the conference, Gooden told management to step aside and "Let the UAW be first, we know what it takes to turn this corporation around." That is, let the UAW take the lead in setting up increased exploitation and hardships for UAW members–those who don’t lose their jobs.
The UAW’s first organizers had a different concept. They did not say that workers should save their jobs by sinking to the lowest condition. The best organizers said workers needed to band together and fight to wipe such poor conditions off the face of the earth. It’s that exact choice which is placed anew in front of the workers of today–and not only at DaimlerChrysler.
Apr 19, 2004
Mel Gibson’s "The Passion of the Christ" was released last month to great fanfare in the media and Christian churches. A lot of attention was given to the idea that in this movie, Gibson presents the details of the torture and death of Jesus in a way that is historically accurate, true to the facts of history.
In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Historical inaccuracies exist in this movie on all levels.
In order to be "authentic," Gibson has the entire movie spoken in Aramaic, a native language in Palestine of that era, and Latin, the language of Rome. The only problem is–Latin was not spoken in the eastern half of the Roman Empire, where Palestine was situated; Greek was. So, even on this very basic level, Gibson gets it wrong.
Gibson repeats what many Hollywood films have done: his image of Jesus seems taken from Medieval paintings, in his European features and even his blue eyes (although in this movie it’s difficult to tell since they’re usually swollen shut or covered with blood)–rather than the Semitic features that a historical Jesus would have had.
Like the Gospels, the film portrays Pontius Pilate, Roman governor of that sector of the Empire, as a bureaucrat who tried to be fair, but was pushed to crucify Jesus by the scheming Pharisees. In fact, Pilate was known for his brutality. The way he ruled that area was so brutal, in fact, that he was removed from that position before a rebellion would break out.
In order to maintain its rule over the widespread corners of its empire, Rome regularly made alliances with the leading religious figures in these areas, like the Pharisees in Judea. It would have been in both their interests to get rid of anyone who might rouse people and disrupt their rule. But in fact, Pilate and the Romans executed a lot of would-be trouble-makers at that time, and certainly did not need to be pushed to do so by the Pharisees.
But in much bigger ways, the film ignores the real history of the time period, and the real conditions in that corner of the Roman Empire. It was these conditions that gave rise to Christianity, and not the personal characteristics of any one preacher of the day.
In fact, conditions were much worse than the movie portrays. Palestine was one of the poorest corners of the Roman Empire, with a few increasingly rich, allied with Rome, separated from a very many desperately poor, who were constantly in danger of being enslaved by Roman forces and sent away to be worked to death. Torture, imprisonment and execution were regularly used by the Roman empire to keep order.
The Jesus cult that became early Christianity was a social and religious movement among these poorest and most destitute people in Palestine. Because of this, they emphasized a communal lifestyle, an opposition to Roman occupation AND the rich, and a desperate hope that a force would come to deliver them from their conditions. And they believed they would be delivered within a few years.
Most of the Gospels were not written until a couple centuries later, though–a time when Christianity was much more accepted by the wealthy, and on its way to becoming the state religion of Rome. It’s an irony of history that a religion born out of a social movement of the poor, against the authority of the Roman Empire, was transformed into an arm of that Empire–and a means of imposing slavery, that is, keeping the poor in their place.
It’s a role it has played ever since.
At the same time, the salvation these desperate people sought was pushed back out of this world, to be expected after their deaths.
The official view of Jesus himself changed over the centuries, from a very human preacher who became a martyr on his death, to a resurrected representative of God, to a mystical part of a Trinitarian God himself.
"The Passion of Christ" and its religious view can only serve to confuse and cloud a truly accurate view of history.
Apr 19, 2004
On Sunday, April 25, six pro-choice organizations have organized a "March for Women’s Lives, a demonstration for abortion rights in Washington D.C. We all have every reason to participate, since it is exactly such activities that helped win women the right to choose 31 years ago.
Once again, the reactionaries are drawing a bead on women’s access to abortion.
No one should pretend that abortion is a choice without bitter consequences. But in the current situation women face, it is a choice that must be available.
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 in 1976 by a Congress that had almost a two-thirds Democratic majority in both houses. It was probably the worst attack because it prohibited using federal funds in Medicaid programs for abortion–in other words, effectively, it denied poor working women, as well as women on welfare, 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 been not only 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. George W. Bush has specialized in this.
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 fight for more democratic rights that had dominated political life in this country for more than two decades.
The battle to get rid of Jim Crow by the black population, the numerous protests against the war in Viet Nam, along with 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 workplace, 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.
Apr 19, 2004
After signing a bill in early April called the "Unborn Victims of Violence Act," the president said "... we reaffirm that the United States of America is building a culture of life." The bill creates a new federal offense when the fetus of a pregnant woman is harmed during the commission of certain crimes against women.
Is this administration the champion of "life" for the unborn fetus? Of course not.
If it were true, what would we see? U.S. maternal health care would take a leap forward, with funding to provide good nutrition and medical check-ups for every pregnant woman in the country. The reality is that the administration has opposed any kind of national health care. It proposes cut backs in the federal WIC program, which provides nutrition supplements to more than seven million pregnant women, infants and children. When handing out tax breaks for the rich, Bush and company opposed any tax deductions for low income families who must pay thousands of dollars for their health insurance or for the care of elderly family members.
If it were true that this administration intends to "help" the unborn, then what else would be happening? Serious environmental issues would be sorted out with technology already available–to protect the especially vulnerable fetus from such poisons as mercury, pesticides and lead. Babies born with such exposure are likely to have health problems for their entire lives.
Under the current administration we see the opposite. Instead of making power plant operators cut back by 90% on the poisonous mercury they currently spew forth, the administration is delaying the cutbacks of mercury emissions for the next 15 years. And even then the reduction would be only a third of what is already possible. Instead of implementing world standards on Persistent Organic Pollutants, like dioxins, the current administration makes it difficult to regulate or eliminate these pollutants widely used in chemicals for household products. Instead of reducing the use of lead, the administration wants lead industry representatives to regulate their own industry. Lead is particularly dangerous to unborn children, affecting the development of the brain.
The Bush administration–the great defenders of the unborn, as they claim–are more blatant in their hypocrisy than most politicians. They are the ones who ought to be called the "baby killers."