The Spark

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

Issue no. 728 — June 7 - 21, 2004

EDITORIAL
Spending Money to Destroy Another Country, While Letting This Country Go to Rot

Jun 7, 2004

On June 2, the U.S. Senate voted to spend another 25 billion dollars on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan–added to the 154 billion it had already authorized in two previous votes. The vote was 95 to zero.

Not one single Democrat objected! Not one single Republican! Ted Kennedy even dared to say that though he had many questions on the war, he was voting for the money to support the troops.

No, this money is not going to support the troops–it is going to lengthen the war, which is no way to support the troops. It is going into massively destructive weapons that will only be used to slaughter more Iraqi people. And–of course, of course–it is going into an endless stream of profits poured into the pockets of war profiteers ranging from Halliburton to Bechtel to Raytheon.

This money is not coming out of the pockets of those who voted the latest war authorization, nor from the giant corporations that benefit from U.S. wars.

It is coming out of our pockets in the taxes and fees we pay. And it is being stolen from all the services and programs that government should assure.

There is a crisis in education. The schools for workers’ children decay–repairs go undone, class sizes grow too large, programs like art and music shrink and disappear, textbooks grow further out of date, teachers’ jobs are cut back and teachers’ wages stagnate. Good education takes good money. But the U.S. Senate sends money off to war–even while it votes to cut back on funding for education, and on revenue sharing to the cities and states that pay for education.

There is a health care crisis–because this country, in contrast to every other industrialized country, has no state-run health system. The Senate, too busy spending money for war and other things that benefit the capitalist class, has never found the money for medical care–something that people in other countries take as a right.

The conditions that mark our daily lives are in a mess. Going to work on a bus? Good luck finding one to get you there! In some cities mass transit hardly exists; in others it is so patched together it usually breaks down. Going to work by car? Hope you get there without the roads shaking the car apart or the potholes swallowing it!

It’s not only the roads, it’s the whole infrastructure that’s potholed and patched. A mild thunderstorm can now leave hundreds of thousands of households without electricity. Any heavy rain overflows sewage systems and washes raw sewage into public waters and beaches. Antique city water mains break repeatedly. The entire network of basic services that our lives depend on needs rebuilding–it needed rebuilding yesterday! But the Senate sends money down the sinkhole of war.

And, in a country whose corporate executives brag about how many workers they can lay off, there is no safety net to catch us when we fall through the cracks. Workers’ compensation pays fewer of us when we are injured. Unemployment benefits are withheld from most people who lose their job. Public clinics close. Funds for emergency housing dry up. Shelters are overcrowded.

There is no money for what the population needs because the Senate is spending it on–among other useless things–a war to destroy another country.

We should expect nothing else from this Congress made up mostly of wealthy people, who in their entirety vote to support the policies and projects that defend the interests of the ruling class–and not just in this war, but in everything that comes in front of them. Whether the politicians raise the vast range of incidental taxes and fees that we pay so they can cut taxes for the wealthy and the corporations, or whether they gut the social programs so they can award monstrously profitable contracts to monstrously profitable corporations–they show without any doubt whose side they are on.

Working people will not find what we need in the halls of Congress, but in ourselves. Whether it be to oppose this war and bring it to an end, or whether it be to improve our own lives and the future of our children, our best hope lies in the strength and power of our own class.

Pages 2-3

Enron Trial:
Justice for the Rich

Jun 7, 2004

Prosecutors in the first big Enron fraud trial are already backpedaling. Former Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow, the major witness in the case, will not be taking the stand for them after all.

The case involves a scheme where Enron sold financial interests in worthless Nigerian power barges to Merrill Lynch, with the promise to buy them back six months later. That allowed Enron to report 12 million dollars in phony profits, with no risk taken by Merrill Lynch. Six low-level executives are on trial–four from Merrill Lynch, and two from Enron.

Fastow pled guilty of fraud last year, getting a light sentence in exchange for his cooperation in this and other Enron fraud cases.

Prosecutors now say, however, that Fastow worded his statements carefully enough that they leave "reasonable doubt" of intent to defraud. So they can’t use his testimony.

This case was supposed to be the easiest of the Enron prosecutions. If the prosecutors are raising doubts now, what does that mean about their cases against higher executives like Jeffrey Skilling and Richard Causey?

Not to mention Ken Lay, whom they haven’t even bothered to charge.

Enron executives ripped off Enron workers and the public, but they’ll get away free–supposedly because they worded their scheme in just the right way.

If you’re rich enough, the technicalities to get you off are big enough to drive a money truck through!

Enron Thieves Caught Bragging on Tape

Jun 7, 2004

Enron energy traders bragged about "stealing" millions of dollars four years ago by helping create the California energy crisis. And they did it all on tape.

The tapes were made public after a small Seattle-area public utility went to court to get them from the Justice Department. The Justice Department and Enron didn’t want them released.

And no wonder–they prove that Enron traders made secret deals with power producers to shut down plants in order to drive prices up.

One trader brags about "all the money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers in California."

"Yeah, Grandma Millie, man!" says another.

Another trader brags about Ken Lay: "He steals money from California to the tune of about a million." When asked to rephrase, he says, "Ok, he, um, he ‘arbitrages’ the California market to the tune of a million bucks or two a day."

And when a major forest fire shut down a major transmission line into California, providing an excuse to raise prices even further, Enron traders even crowed gleefully about that, singing, "Burn, baby, burn! That’s a beautiful thing."

These slimeballs knew exactly what they were doing, and these tapes prove it.

Somewhere right now, some oil company executives are probably singing and bragging about THEIR latest schemes.

Ronald Reagan:
Acting for the Capitalist Class

Jun 7, 2004

Ronald Regan, president of the United States from 1981 to 1989, died after a long bout with Alzheimer’s disease. The press is calling him the man who imposed curbs on government spending in order to reduce size of the government. In fact, it was Reagan that introduced the biggest government budget deficits seen since World War II–almost literally handing over the government purse to the capitalist class to rob. All subsequent presidents followed in his footsteps.

Having declared war on deficits in his first budget address, Reagan turned around and pushed through "reforms" to the tax code that severely reduced the amount of taxes paid by the corporations and the wealthy. At the same time, he increased multibillion dollar payments to the biggest corporations through the military budget. Taken together, these measures increased the budget deficit enormously. Reagan then used the pretext of this budget deficit to push through the so-called "Balanced-Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act" of 1985. The act supposedly required the federal government to automatically cut all programs a certainpercentage in order to bring the budget in balance by 1990. In fact, the cuts were concentrated in the social programs and public services, even while military expenditures, interest payments to banks and a range of other goodies for the corporations escaped the budgetary ax.

In 1986, pointing to the 736 billion dollar deficit racked up during his first four years in office, Reagan proposed actual cuts in almost every single social program, including Medicaid, Medicare, housing assistance, child nutrition, social services, tuition assistance, etc.

While these cuts are associated with Reagan’s name, we should remember that the Democrats controlled the House of Representatives during those years by very big margins (the smallest was 242 to 190). And neither was Reagan the one who started cutting taxes to the wealthy and to the corporations–that had begun during the presidency of Democrat John Kennedy, and continued under Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter. Democrat Carter also made the first big outright cuts in some of the social programs, cutting out, for example, the 26-week extensions from unemployment benefits and changing the inflation formula that determined the amount of food stamps poor families would receive.

If Reagan took this policy much further than anyone had done before–it was more than anything due to the working class and the black population pulling back from the political scene. The bourgeoisie and its political servants, feeling they had a free rein, overtly began to reverse many of the gains in social programs, public services and education that had been imposed in earlier years by the population when it was mobilized to fight for its own interests.

Reagan had served in the late 1940s and early 1950s as president of the Screen Actors Guild, using that post to help carry out attacks on the communist militants who had built the unions during the 1930s. In the 1980s, he used the power of the federal government and its armed forces to break the strike of the air traffic controllers. When union leaders refused to call other workers out on strike or to mobilize them for actions that really could have tied up business, the strike was defeated, and the die was cast for a whole period.

The fact that every president since Reagan has carried out the same policy shows that it is not just a question of personalities or of party. Clinton, who sat in the White House during an economy that expanded, couldn’t use the pretext of current budget deficits to cut social programs, so he began to preach the necessity of rolling up "surpluses" in order to reduce past deficits. And just like Reagan, he used the power of the presidency to attack workers who dared to strike–the mineworkers, the pilots at American Airlines and the UPS workers.

This long-term policy of stealing from the working class majority to hand wealth over to a small minority of parasites who sit on the top of society will be reversed only through a new widespread mobilization of the working class–like those of earlier years that created the public school system, that forced the establishment of social programs and that made government extend public services such as clean water, sewage, decent roads, public health facilities, and so on.

Children’s Deaths Come from Political Choices

Jun 7, 2004

A 17-year old Baltimore woman and her boyfriend have been charged with killing their month-old twins. The babies and the parents were living in the basement of an abandoned building without electricity or toilets. The young woman herself was a run-away from a foster home. She has been accused of using drugs and neglecting a child she had when she was only 14 years old.

Her story resembles that of dozens of other poor young mothers, often abused or on drugs, who end up neglecting, harming or actually killing babies they were too young to have in the first place. Her life is an exact description of poverty in capitalist society, a society too cheap and heartless to use its resources for the needs of the most vulnerable.

Poor families face enormous problems of where they will live, how they will pay the gas and electric, how they can help their children at school, how to pay for day care or medicines or shoes or diapers. Even those poor families with a working parent cannot make ends meet. From such conditions come run-away teens who try drugs and sex without birth control. From such conditions come new generations of abused children who can hardly make it through the miserable conditions, poor schooling and low-wage jobs, which are all this society offers them.

And the very government agencies supposedly set up to protect children at risk, are given no money with which to do it. In one year, Maryland state workers had 33,000 incidents of child abuse to investigate. A continued hiring freeze has prevented county departments from hiring the child welfare case workers recommended. A national welfare organization says the state has 200 fewer workers than it needs, just for child welfare.

Those dealing with these terrible problems cannot possibly get through the work loaded on them. In one county where child investigation services are doing three times as many cases as is recommended, there is a 25% vacancy rate. In Maryland’s second wealthiest county, there are only three people to handle almost 800 applications for food stamps and medical assistance every single month. Two other counties show staffing down by almost a third over the last three years.

There are too few people to handle too many results of poverty. This government puts the interests of capitalist society, which engenders such poverty, before the interests of children.

Spanish Officials Put the Lie to FBI Case in Madrid Bombing

Jun 7, 2004

On March 11, a bomb exploded on a train near Madrid, Spain, killing 191 people and wounding 2,000 more. On May 6, the FBI arrested Brandon Mayfield, a lawyer from Portland, Oregon and a converted Muslim, holding him for two weeks as a material witness in the Madrid bombing. The FBI claimed it had found his fingerprint on a bag of detonators, similar to those used in the bombing, which was found near the scene.

Spanish officials, however, didn’t corroborate FBI lies. In mid-May, they announced that the fingerprint belonged to an Algerian named Daoud Ouhnane whom they were holding for an expired visa. Spanish authorities in fact had notified the FBI as early as April 13 that their own tests had shown Mayfield’s fingerprint did NOT match the one on the bag of detonators. That was three weeks before the FBI even arrested Mayfield!

In reality, this case was never about anyone’s involvement in a terrorist bombing. The FBI was carrying out a witch-hunt against Mayfield for having defended a member of the "Portland Seven," a group of black Muslims who were railroaded on charges they had supposedly tried to join the Taliban.

This case is part of the U.S. government’s broader attempt to terrorize anyone who stands up against them–and to intimidate lawyers who defend people railroaded for opposing government policies. Mayfield was fortunate that the Spanish government didn’t back up this frame-up. Others–who have been held for months and years–have not been as lucky.

Democratic rights and freedoms–these are the big words mouthed by U.S. officials as they trample all over them.

Pages 4-5

Haiti:
Floods, Poverty and Occupation Troops

Jun 7, 2004

Six days after torrential rains stormed down on Haiti and the Dominican Republic, the U.N. estimated there were at least 2,600 dead or missing in Haiti and another 700 in the Dominican Republic. Entire villages were engulfed by water or carried away by an avalanche of water, mud and rocks. Some 25,000 survivors are trying to keep alive under terrible conditions.

Tropical rains and hurricanes are regular occurrences in the Caribbean, but the weather is not the main reason so many people died in Haiti.

The people where the flooding occurred are peasants living on the sides of bare hills or in the bottom of valleys in river beds. The government has provided them with no gas or electricity, so in order to cook, they chop down trees, leaving the land subject to erosion. Stagnant water has remained in this area ever since 1998, when Hurricane George hit, but they have received no help to drain the area.

Of course the rains caused the flooding, but the terrible poverty in Haiti is the reason for the extent of the suffering.

When the catastrophe hit Haiti, there were 1,500 U.S. troops in the country. They invaded three months ago, when former president Aristide could no longer preserve order, and fighting between armed gangs threatened the safety of U.S. business investments in Haiti, as well as the safety of Haiti’s rich.

The towns hit by the flood became unreachable since the roads were blocked by mud and rocks. At first the U.S. military used its helicopters to deliver some small amounts of food, medicine and supplies–not nearly enough, however–a couple of pounds total per person. And on Sunday, June 1, even these minimal efforts ended.

Guy Gauvreau of the World Food Program said, "We deeply deplore that the multinational force has other priorities ... and that we won’t be able to count on their helicopters any more." Those "other priorities" are the movement of the U.S. troops in Haiti to Iraq!

U.S. businessmen have plundered Haiti for over a century, with numerous armed invasions to back them up. When the U.S. government decided to invade Haiti three months ago, it spared no cost to fly in the well-equipped troops from Camp Lejeune, NC. But today it turns its back on providing aid to desperate people in the flood zone. These are the priorities of U.S. imperialism, which views the people of Haiti only as something to exploit.

June 6, 1944, "They Believed They Were Dying for Democracy and Freedom"

Jun 7, 2004

Leaders of the major imperialist powers went to France to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the U.S. landing in Normandy on June 6, 1944.

This invasion was supposed to mark the "liberation" of France from Nazi barbarism. In fact, June 6, 1944, was first of all a slaughter. Of the 327,000 U.S. and Allied troops that landed in Normandy on D Day and the five days after, 209,000 were either killed or wounded. Further, over 200,000 Germany troops were killed or wounded, as were tens of thousands of French civilians caught in the bombing.

Even today, historians and politicians claim that the U.S. troops thought they were giving their lives for freedom and democracy. In fact they died for other reasons.

The U.S. went into World War II to establish its hegemony all over the world. Not only were German and Japanese imperialism broken by the war; but U.S. imperialism used the war and its aftermath to force England and France to open up their colonies to U.S. investments. In the decades following World War II, the U.S. supplanted British and French domination over hundreds of millions of people, giving free rein to U.S. corporations to exploit the cheap labor in these lands.

The victory of U.S. imperialism didn’t bring "democracy" and "freedom" to the world, but dictatorship and poverty. In Europe itself, the U.S. propped up dictatorships in Spain and Portugal for decades after World War II. In Greece it supported the king in a bloody civil war against the workers and peasants in the 1940s and later supported a military dictatorship in the 1960s and 1970s. In Africa, Asia and Latin America, the U.S. propped up a whole series of dictatorships and absolute monarchs. All this was done to protect the "freedom" of the U.S. corporations to fully exploit the workers of these countries. The fact that the U.S. dominated the world led to the extremely bloody wars in Korea and later in Viet Nam–wars it carried out to stop a growing movement in underdeveloped countries attempting to break free of imperialism’s control.

The current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are simply the latest addition to the numerous wars U.S. imperialism has been fighting for many decades. The social order it imposes isn’t free or democratic.

The U.S. soldiers who died sixty years ago on the beaches of Normandy may have believed they were giving their lives for freedom. The bitter irony is that they died to assure the profits of giant U.S. corporations.

The Chinese Economic Miracle:
Profits of Exploitation

Jun 7, 2004

The AFL-CIO is petitioning the U.S. government to stop trade with China, pretending it is doing this on behalf of workers in China whose rights are brutally suppressed. At the same time, the AFL-CIO petition claims more than 700,000 jobs have been lost in the U.S. thanks to China’s "unfair" labor practices.

It’s true that labor conditions in China are terrible and worsening. Despite its continuing economic growth, despite the expanding private economy, unemployment has increased and misery has worsened in the Chinese countryside where the majority of the population still lives. And in the cities, the amount of inequality grows. According to a 1997 study, about 31% of all wealth was owned by 1.3% of Chinese families; the poorest 44% of families owned only 3% of the wealth. Talking about the average covers the reality of a widening gap between rich and poor, a gap that is very similar to what exists today in the United States.

Shanghai, a city often cited for its economic growth, is headquarters to 56 multinational companies; 91 investment firms have also located there. A huge boom in construction and housing boosts economic statistics. But what has this meant for the majority of the population? Previously, millions of Chinese workers in and around Shanghai lived in what was almost free housing, subsidized by the government. A roof over one’s head was considered a right. Now that the capitalist market has become the driving force, at least 2.5 million in Shanghai alone people have been pushed out of their homes, often by bulldozers plowing through their neighborhoods.

While there has been an increase in work, the conditions on the job are horrendous in both the building industry and other sectors. In the shoe industry, for example, the workweek runs as high as 80 hours, mandatory. The bosses hold on to a part of the wages earned as an added pressure to keep people working. In the toy industry, income is based on piecework. The piece rate is so low that workers are obliged to stay on the job 10, 12 even 16 hours a day, 6 and 7 days a week, to earn enough to live on. To better control their work force, some bosses have now installed dormitories in the factories, with workers sleeping there as they did in the U.S. textile industry more than 100 years ago.

This "economic miracle" in China has also produced high unemployment. Those who used to work for state run industries, along with millions of peasants who can no longer survive in the countryside, make a desperate army of between 80 and 150 million unemployed looking for any jobs available in the cities. They become victims of all kinds of scams and all kinds of official demands for permits: permits to leave where they reside, permits to move into another region, permits for temporary lodging, etc.

So yes, what the AFL-CIO says about brutal conditions is true. But why is the situation of China’s workers worsening? China’s government had in previous times provided most of its population with housing, education, health care and retirement almost for free. Now that the government has decided to invest more and more in the "free" market, guaranteed benefits and lifelong employment are being thrown aside. China is indeed entering the world market, and looks more and more like a larger version of India, with its fabulous royalty and miserable poverty-stricken millions.

But the AFL-CIO implying that millions of U.S. workers’ jobs have been lost to China is just plain false. The AFL-CIO talks as if production is leaving the United States when, in actuality, production in this country has doubled over the last 30 years. In the 1990s alone, the amount of production went up by 40%.

So what is the problem? It’s not a "decline" in production in the U.S. It’s the bosses’ cutting back on jobs. It’s the bosses speeding us up and getting more work out of every single person still working. If the number of manufacturing workers had increased as fast as production did over the last 30 years, there would be about 40 million workers in manufacturing today, instead of the 14.5 who currently are employed in such jobs.

Even if 700,000 jobs had gone to China–as the AFL-CIO claims–they would more than have been made up for by the 25 million manufacturing jobs eaten up by speed-up and other productivity pushes.

But the AFL-CIO and other union leaders don’t talk about this problem because they have led the way in supporting the U.S. bosses’ drive to increase productivity. They have helped the bosses to enforce speed-up on us in the name of staying "competitive." They pass the blame for their own stupid policies onto workers somewhere overseas.

U.S. workers don’t have enemies in China–we have them right here heading our own unions.

An Airport Tragedy in Paris

Jun 7, 2004

The following article was excerpted and translated from an article appearing in Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the newspaper of the French Trotskyist organization. The account of the collapsing airport terminal sounds similar to what we have seen in this country. The push to make profit at the expense of human life goes on everywhere in the capitalist world. On May 23, a new departure terminal structure at the Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle airport near Paris collapsed. A 100-foot long tubular-shaped structure of concrete, glass and steel cracked and fell to the ground. Passengers walk through this area to check-in and pass to their departure gate. Four people were killed and three others seriously injured.

It was only luck that more people weren’t killed or seriously injured. The incident happened early in the morning, before too many passengers were in the area–and a fireman, noticing the structure cracking, decided on the spot to evacuate the area.

The following day, more cracking sounds were heard, leading to the complete closure of this brand-new terminal, the sixth one built at Roissy airport.

The so-called Safety Commission

Once the opening date had been announced, Air France launched a publicity campaign for its new "showpiece" terminal constructed with the latest design techniques. It was to serve for its expanded activity to China and to house KLM, the Dutch airline that Air France has recently purchased. When construction problems arose that could delay this opening, the pressures were immense to go ahead anyway. The first opening date had already been set back after fissures appeared in the support structures of the terminal. There were other problems too, such as violations in public access and fire controls. And, at the time of one inspection, a ceiling light structure even crashed to the ground and the Safety Commission could see a number of water leaks.

Workers protested the poor working conditions and the problems with construction, but their protests were not reported. In the last weeks leading up to the Grand Opening, workers were forced under pressure to work around the clock, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to meet the deadline. As a result of this intense pressure to work faster and faster to complete the project by the given date, a number of serious accidents took place, leaving at least one worker killed when he fell from a ceiling platform and another paralyzed for life.

Air France and the ADP, the airport authority responsible for constructing the new terminal, pressured their contractors and sub-contractors to hire even more temporary workers in order to meet the opening date of June 27, 2003. The opening was held with great fanfare despite all the problems.

Profit pressures, too

It is only after the dramatic collapse of Terminal E that the news media have now made public a report issued by the cost commission for terminal construction at the airport. While this report praised the fact that this latest terminal cost 20% less than the previous terminal, it also in fact acknowledged that the push to save money had led to problems. Upwards of 400 subcontractors were used to lower the costs to the giant construction companies that held the major contracts, with no one really controlling the whole project. The new terminal had eliminated a great deal of material by "simplifying" the design of the earlier terminal it was based on. The original building plans for the terminal were rejected because the companies building it were having difficulties with the modern roof structure–they said it was in danger of falling.

The costs have not ended

The entire new terminal may now have to be torn down and rebuilt from scratch since the basic structure is likely weakened. With its ultra-modern, near pillar-less design, one fault can lead to a chain of others. Air France "magnanimously" announced that it would not lay off any of its employees. But of course, this announcement concerned only full-time permanent employees. There are many temporary hires, contract workers and sub-contract workers at the airport. In fact, this has been the trend over the last number of years. Air France, like other businesses, increases its profits by reducing the pay of those who do the work at the airport–from construction to operations, to cleaning and maintenance through to the operation of the airport stores and restaurants. These thousands of workers’ jobs are now jeopardized, just as were the lives of the people who walked through the dangerous terminal.

Pages 6-7

Chicago:
Concessions Demanded from McCormick Place Workers

Jun 7, 2004

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and Governor Rod Blagojevich are demanding that the workers who set up shows at McCormick Place give concessions. These two Democratic Party politicians say that attendance for shows at McCormick Place is down and Chicago needs to compete against Atlanta, Orlando and Las Vegas to get more shows.

Six years ago, using the same argument, Daley extracted concessions from unionized workers at McCormick Place. Workers gave up some overtime premiums and some jobs. The two big companies that set up exhibits, Freeman and GES, didn’t lower the price they charged the exhibitors. They simply pocketed the increased profits.

The same will hold true this time. Daley and Blagojevich are more than happy to take campaign contributions from numerous unions, claiming to be pro-labor. But their actions show whose side they are on.

Living Wages ... Nowhere in Maryland

Jun 7, 2004

Maryland’s majority-Democratic state legislature passed what was popularly called the Living Wage bill in the session that ended in April. The bill would have raised hourly wages to $10.50 for workers employed by companies with state contracts worth at least $100,000.

On May 25, Robert Ehrlich, the Republican governor of Maryland, vetoed the bill, as the Democrats knew he would.

Despite the fanfare over the bill, the Democrats had no intention of increasing wages. They were simply using the bill as a political ploy, knowing the Republican governor would veto it.

The proof of their real policy is what the Democrats have done–or rather not done–when they really could have passed such a bill. They had years, even decades, in which they controlled both the legislature and the governor’s mansion. In all those years, the Democrats never passed a bill to raise the wages of the lowest paid workers. In fact, they pushed the practice of sub-contracting out state work to businesses that pay exceedingly low wages.

And the Democrats, when they controlled the purse strings, never used that control to bring up the pay of the lowest grade state workers who also make less than $10.50 an hour.

No, all we are seeing is an election year trick which the Democrats hope will convince some voters that they are the party which is the "friend" of labor.

Page 8

Iraq:
The U.S. Appoints a "New" Government as It Increases the Number of Troops

Jun 7, 2004

In early June, U.N. officials announced the formation of a new Iraqi government to replace the Governing Council, as the current government is called, on June 30.

This, according to George Bush, is a step toward a sovereign Iraq. But only those who close their eyes could believe this. The new government, appointed by the U.S. appointed Governing Council, will also be a U.S. puppet. The background of the new prime minister, Iyad Allawi, says it all: he is a former Iraqi exile who has had close ties to the CIA for at least seven years.

This new government, like the old one, has no power–not even on paper. It will not even have any authority over Iraqi security forces, let alone the U.S. occupation forces. It will also have no power to rescind any edicts that had previously been issued by the Coalition Provisional Authority, or CPA, the current occupation authority. And it will have no say over the granting of contracts. As for Iraq’s oil revenues, while officially they will be under the control of the Iraqi government, an "international advisory board," controlled by the U.S., will decide how the revenues can be "used properly."

As for the CPA, while it will officially cease to exist, its officials will simply become officials of the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, from which they will continue to direct affairs.

Most significantly, the U.S. military occupation of Iraq will continue–and grow larger. The U.S. military just announced that it will send a significant number of the troops stationed in South Korea and Germany to Iraq, and it will extend the so-called "stop-loss" program.

According to this latest version of "stop-loss," soldiers in units that are 90 days or less away from being sent to Iraq will not be able to leave the service even if their tour of duty is over. These soldiers can then be deployed in Iraq for at least a year. In other words, the U.S. intends to increase this war.

Why, then, is the Bush administration putting on this show of handing power over to the Iraqis? Neither Bush nor the U.S. ruling class and political establishment want this war to become an issue taken up by the U.S. population. They know too well how, only a generation ago, the popular opposition to the Viet Nam war, in connection with the Black movement and other social movements, seriously curtailed their options.

The U.S. military has recently made truces with both Sunni and Shiite insurgents in Iraq, allowing them to hold onto the territories they control–one in Sunni areas centered around Fallujah, and one in Shiite areas centered around Najaf and the Shiite-dominated Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City. It’s not that the U.S. military was shy of using brute force to crush the militias, as the heavy aerial and ground bombardment of neighborhoods and mass arrests showed. But this would mean for Iraq to continue to occupy the top news, with horrible images of war and casualties on both sides–and that’s what the Bush administration wanted to avoid for now.

But the question is not settled. These insurgencies have proved that the militias enjoy the support of the population, and thus pose a threat to U.S. control of Iraq and its oil. In order to control the oil fields, the U.S. will step up its military involvement in Iraq–even if it does so quietly until the election is over.

In the second year of the occupation, everything indicates that the U.S. is not only staying in Iraq but deepening its involvement, against a hostile population plagued by poverty, unemployment and even a lack of most basic services such as electricity and running water.

The U.S. ruling class wants to continue its control of Iraq, especially the country’s vast oil reserves, at the expense of the populations of both Iraq and the U.S. Like the people of Iraq, working people in this country have every reason to oppose this bloody occupation.

Veterans:
Cannon Fodder Whether They Die or Live

Jun 7, 2004

On Memorial Day, George Bush gushed with sentimental words about American soldiers. "Since the hour this nation was attacked, we have seen the character of the men and women who wear our country’s uniform... In places like Kabul and Kandahar, in Mosul and Baghdad, we have seen their decency and their brave spirit," he said at Arlington Cemetery. He added that veterans "carry with them for all their days the memory of the ones who did not live to be called veterans."

It’s more than Bush and his ilk will do. He is not ready even to provide adequate medical care to soldiers who manage to survive and return home. His budget for 2005 does not provide full funding for all the health care needs that vets are supposedly entitled to. He even proposed 1.2 billion dollars less than what his own appointee, Veterans Administration Secretary Anthony Principi, had requested.

Now an internal White House budget office document has come out that shows Bush plans to cut another 910 million dollars from veterans programs in 2006.

Bush’s actions speak louder than his words. And so do the actions of the Democrats. Bush’s opponent John Kerry may talk about health care as a right for every veteran, but no administration ever extended such health care, including Clinton’s, even when he had a Democratic Congress.

Those who go in the military are given the right to die by this government, but not the right to live a healthy life.

Heroes One Day—Despised the Next

Jun 7, 2004

Thousands of workers who filed workers compensation claims after 9/11 have still not received a single penny. Insurance companies, employers and the New York State Workers’ Compensation Board have challenged the big majority of the claims filed.

The dust cloud that covered lower Manhattan after the collapse of the World Trade Center contained asbestos, lead, mercury and other harmful substances. Anyone who breathed this air in the days, weeks and even months afterwards got these dangerous substances in their lungs and throughout their bodies.

One report says the Trade Center collapse "caused the largest acute environmental disaster that has ever befallen New York City."

Those who worked at Ground Zero soon after the collapse–firefighters, rescue workers and construction workers–received the worst concentrations of fumes. Health officials estimate that 40,000 rescue workers alone breathed this tainted air.

Many of them have come down with respiratory ailments like asthma, and other problems like high blood pressure, heart attacks and chronic fatigue. Most are too sick to work; and their medical bills are piling up.

Even so, insurers and employers are refusing to pay many workers’ medical claims. They tie up sick workers in court for months and months.

They don’t try to deny the poisonous mix that was in the air after 9/11. They just pretend that the workers’ illnesses were not a direct result of that poison–ignoring all the medical evidence.

Officials called all of these workers heroes at the time–but when the workers fell ill because of their heroic efforts, they were thrown aside, without any aid. It’s the kind of cynicism and hypocrisy we’ve come to expect from business and government.

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