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
Jun 21, 2004
Summertime and the living is easy–except when you’re at work. And then it’s as hard as–and as hot as–Hell. Enough to make you start looking forward to your vacation–that is, if you get one. Many of us don’t.
Today, in the 21st century, in the wealthiest country in the world, 21% of us get no vacation at all. For most of the rest of us, it’s not much better. If we work in private industry, we average less than eight vacation days a year, and get just over six paid holidays a year. When we work for a government agency, we get a few more paid days off–but not enough to compare with what happens elsewhere.
People in other countries must think we are barbaric here! Other industrialized countries legally grant vacation time to every worker. Austria, Denmark, Finland, France and Spain actually require bosses to pay for 30 holiday and vacation days a year for every worker–that is, six weeks. In fact, workers in all of these countries average even more paid time off than the legal requirement. Most other industrialized countries require at least four weeks of paid time off a year. Canada is one of the exceptions, with only two weeks paid time off. But only in the U.S. do workers have no right by law to a single paid vacation day, no right to a single paid holiday. We may have a holiday off, but neither the federal government nor any state government requires the bosses to pay us for it.
That’s not to say that things are great in other countries. It’s just that they’re worse here.
We have been letting the bosses take advantage of us. Big time. In fact, they even brag about it. They explain how high the level of worker productivity is in this country–that is, how fast they get each one of us to work, how much labor they squeeze out of each one of us, every hour, every day–and how many extra hours they force us to put in. And they brag about the immense profits pouring out of this increased productivity.
To live in a country where our work produces so much wealth, only to have it stolen from us–it’s an outrage!
If our labor produces more goods and services in the same amount of time, we could be working fewer hours, still getting paid as much as before–if not more. In 2003, those of us who work in factories put out 5.1% more production every hour than we did in 2002. In 2002, our productivity increased by 7.2%; in 2001, by 2.2%; and by 4.7% in 2000. And so on. Add up all thosepercentages, and you can see that in much less than a decade we could have been working ten fewer hours a week, with NO loss in pay. We could be getting more paid vacations days every year, more holidays–more time for ourselves, our families and our friends.
That is, we could have been, if all the benefits of this increased productivity had gone to us, instead of to big corporations, which use the profits they steal from us to buy up other companies, speculate on the stock market, invest in other countries (often pushing this country into wars to protect their investments)–anything and everything that is disastrous for the population, but beneficial for the bank accounts of the wealthy.
Increased productivity can raise our standard of living–quickly and spectacularly. If it takes much less time to build a house, many more houses can be built by the same number of workers, lowering the price, giving many more workers the chance to have a home–IF the benefits of increased productivity went to those who do the work.
Increased productivity has become a scourge–it steals our energy and our time from us. And, yet, it should be the very thing that opens up the door to a better life for all of us–more time for relaxation, more time for doing our business, more time for some culture, some education, some fun. More time to do what we want and become who we want.
Increased productivity can raise our standard of living and our quality of life–but only if we wrest its benefits from the bosses who today are hogging it all for themselves.
Jun 21, 2004
The House and the Senate have both approved lowering the tax on corporate profits from 35% to 32%. The Senate bill passed by a vote of 92 to 5, that is with the full support of both the Democrats and Republicans.
The two bills are somewhat different, and the differences still need to be worked out. But they all agree on the essentials–to cut the corporate income tax.
Both bills continues the long term reduction in the tax on corporate profits. In 1965 taxes on corporate profits provided 24% of all money the government took in. In 2003 taxes on profits provided only 10%. During the same period the personal income tax share of all government money stayed about the same at 41%. The big change was in Social Security taxes, which were 19% of all government money in 1965 and more than doubled to 41% in 2003.
But the Social Security tax is sharply regressive, which means that the rich pay a much smaller portion of their income in the tax than workers do. Executives getting million dollar salaries pay only one half of one% of their income in Social Security taxes, while workers pay the full 6.2%. That’s because only the first $87,000 a year is taxed–if you earn more, you pay no more tax.
This action in the Congress occurred without much publicity, but it means another multi-billion dollar gift to the owners of the corporations that will be paid for by the rest of the population.
Jun 21, 2004
Every phone user in the country pays a fee to the E-rate program. This federal program supposedly pays for computerizing schools and libraries that can’t otherwise afford computers.
It actually pays to line the pockets of contractors. Since 1998, the program has paid out over eight billion dollars through more than 200,000 grants. However, there was next to no auditing, no oversight to ensure the money really went to provide needed computer equipment for the children.
As contractors tumbled to the free money involved, massive fraud followed.
IBM built a 35-million-dollar network for El Paso schools, so complex that it then got another 62-million-dollar contract to build its own brand-new maintenance support center! SBC got eight million, then stockpiled the equipment it sold in its own warehouse.
The frauds are so large–and embarrassing–that a committee of Congress is finally investigating. Forty-two criminal investigations are under way. NEC has already cut a deal, pleading guilty to preying on schools in Michigan, Oklahoma, Arkansas and California. Millions of dollars have been repaid by other companies to avoid prosecution.
Because of the size of the scandal, many sample audits were done in the past year. They showed that roughly one-third of the sampled programs were taking money and not fulfilling their contracts.
One Congressman said, "You couldn’t invent a way to throw money down the drain that would work any better than this."
Well, wasn’t that the intent?
Jun 21, 2004
Ronald Reagan’s funeral, on a Friday, was declared a day on which federal employees could take off, if they desired, to honor the memory of the ex-president.
However, any employee who wanted to take off had to use up one of their own personal holidays to do it!
Ronald Reagan wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
Jun 21, 2004
A nurse at Kaiser Permanente’s South Sacramento Medical Center was diagnosed with TB (tuberculosis) last March.
Known under such names as consumption and the white plague, TB has been a major cause of deadly epidemics throughout history. But with the development of a vaccine about a century ago, TB was not only brought under control, it was all but eradicated in industrialized countries, including the U.S., for several decades.
In the 1970s, however, TB started to make a comeback in the U.S. There were several outbreaks of TB in the 1980s and 1990s in different parts of the country, including New York, Maine, North and South Carolina, Mississippi, Oregon and Washington. California today leads the rest of the continental U.S. not only in the number of TB cases but also in the rate of infection.
Politicians have been quick to say that TB is brought to the U.S. by immigrants. It’s true that TB has made a big comeback in poor countries (where it had never been totally eradicated). And it’s also true that the rate of TB is higher among foreign-born U.S. residents than the rate among native-born. But to blame the rise of TB on immigrants is nothing but an attempt to divert attention from the real issue. And that issue is the steady decline of the public health system in this country and around the world.
While TB is highly contagious, it is also a disease whose prevention and cure are relatively simple–and they have been known for a whole century. Immunization and regular check-ups are enough to prevent TB in individuals. As for people who have TB, the treatment, which basically consists of various antibiotics, must be continued for about six months so that all the TB bacteria in their bodies are eliminated. This is necessary to prevent someone from spreading TB after he or she recovers.
In other words, TB could easily be eliminated, if the population has access to basic health care services–the entire population, that is.
But, over the past three decades, more and more people, both working and retired, have been losing health insurance benefits, while state and local governments have been gradually dismantling the existing public health care system. Just to give an example from California, in 2002, Los Angeles County closed 11 of its 18 health clinics. These clinics are the only places where workers and poor who don’t have insurance can afford to get any kind of health care. The county also cut at least 80,000 annual child immunization visits and at least 38,000 visits for treatment of communicable diseases, including TB.
This is why TB has resurfaced and why it is spreading–larger and larger layers of the population have no real access to basic health care–immigrants and everyone else without insurance.
Jun 21, 2004
On June 17, a crowd of about 700 demonstrated its anger at the proposed Detroit School Board’s elimination of support staff jobs such as janitors, boiler operators, secretaries and bus drivers. Up to 3,200 jobs may be involved.
The proposed cuts follow in the train of many other cutbacks in teaching staff, class size, and school programs. The board says the cuts are necessary to balance the schools’ budget deficit. But the parents, teachers and support workers were there to say that putting children at increased risk is unacceptable.
If the school board represented, as it is supposed to, the interests of the children, it would have joined forces, first with those who are protesting the cuts, and then with as many other school boards as it could reach.
Instead, the school board closed its scheduled meeting rather than hear the protesters’ complaints. It as much as declared that it will make the decisions, and make them behind closed doors.
The parents and workers who protested are right to do it–and to keep on doing it. If it means shutting down the school board, so be it.
Jun 21, 2004
Democrats totally control the Illinois government for the first time since the mid 1970s. When Governor Rod Blagojevich asked the Democratic controlled legislature to eliminate tax loopholes that give corporations some 300 million dollars, Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan blocked the proposal. Did the governor try to mobilize public support to get the Democratic legislature to tax the corporations? No. Instead he proposed to lay off 5,000 state workers and cut programs for children and the elderly. Madigan countered by proposals to cut welfare programs.
When the Democrats were out of office they made many promises about how they would aid workers and poor. Now their only disagreement is over what programs they will cut. The hypocrites continue what the Republicans did for years, and what the Democrats claimed to oppose.
Jun 21, 2004
The State of Maryland took its place in the drive for wider use of capital punishment. After executing no one for six years, the State on June 17 put to death three-time murderer Steven Oken.
Oken had already been given two life sentences, one in Maine and one in Maryland. But Steven Oken made a so-called "poster boy" for those advocating the death penalty–that is, those trying to drag society backward to the days of clan feuds and blood revenge.
The death penalty has always been applied unfairly, the poor dying, the well-off escaping. A black man who kills a white person is 20 times more likely to die than a white man who kills a black person.
When DNA testing began to reveal case after case of those on death row who have been wrongly accused and wrongly convicted, the public disapproval of executions reached even the most insulated of politicians. Governors of Illinois and Maryland, among others, declared moratoriums on legal executions.
The advocates of capital punishment found in Steven Oken a case that seemed to overcome several of the most common objections. Oken, a white man, while using cocaine, illegal prescription drugs and alcohol, sexually assaulted and murdered three women in a particularly brutal way. There was no question of faulty evidence. There was no question of racial prejudice or social injustice. This killer could be put to death in a way calculated to short-circuit any major public reaction. His execution could then serve to open the way, to prepare "public opinion" for future executions.
This calculation was carried out on June l7.
One study after another has shown that capital punishment does nothing to deter crime. And it is clear that, "poster boys" notwithstanding, the criminal justice system is deeply racist, and deeply a matter of social class. But, most to the point: State executions are as barbaric as any other murder–even more so, as the executions are always cold, deliberate, consciously calculated.
Those who want to move society forward will continue to oppose capital punishment.
Jun 21, 2004
With George Bush beaming at his side, Afghan president Hamid Karzai announced in Washington that elections will be held in his country in September. In fact September elections in Afghanistan have more to do with Bush’s November election here than with the situation in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan continues to be a war-torn country. Engaged in this war are 13,000 U.S. soldiers, another 6,000 from other countries, plus thousands of so-called "private contractors," that is, mercenaries. In the mountainous region along the Afghan-Pakistani border, both the U.S. and Pakistan are in the middle of a spring offensive, dubbed "Mountain Storm."
The U.S. military raids and bombs villages, with the pretext that the villagers help and shelter Taliban and al Qaeda fighters. The raids involve random mass arrests of ordinary people in the name of "looking for terrorists"–just like in Iraq. The much-publicized conditions in Iraqi prisons exist in U.S.-run prisons in Afghanistan as well, as reported by the U.N. agency Human Rights Watch.
But the U.S.-led war is not the only war raging in Afghanistan. The country is today controlled by various warlords, and while most of these warlords are in a somewhat loose alliance with the U.S., they often fight each other for more territory. In March, for example, this infighting resulted in the killing of a member of the U.S.-sponsored Afghan government, aviation minister Mirwais Sadeq. Sadeq was the son of Ismail Khan, the warlord who controls the strategic western city of Herat. In retaliation, Khan hung some of his opponents, who were in alliance with the U.S.-backed president Hamid Karzai.
In reality there is no central government in Afghanistan, no one with the ability to organize elections–only the brutal rule of warlords in their various fiefdoms. Karzai is just a powerless figurehead, propped up by the U.S. for public relations purposes. Karzai controls little more than his presidential compound in Kabul; his bodyguards are American "security contractors," that is, mercenaries.
Many of these warlords controlling different parts of Afghanistan are also heroin traffickers. As a result, heroin production in Afghanistan has mushroomed in the past two years. In 2003, opium production soared to 3,600 tons, which represents a twenty-fold increase over 2001 and 75% of the world’s illegal opium. A top U.S. Agriculture Department official estimated this year’s crop at 5,400 tons, which is another 50% increase from last year. So Afghanistan is once again the world’s top producer, a position it held before the Taliban government banned poppy cultivation in the late 1990s.
So the U.S. government, which just months before 9/11 had publicly praised the Taliban for virtually stopping opium cultivation, today allows its allies, the warlords, to resume trafficking. It’s a reward given to the warlords working with the U.S.
No aspect of life has improved for the Afghan population since the U.S. invaded their country. With permanent war and little economic activity to speak of, unemployment and crime are rampant. Ordinary Afghans are being victimized by the widespread robbery, rape and murder carried out by the warlords.
Neither has the situation of women improved, despite the grandiose speeches of Bush and his cronies. Women are still not allowed to work or to go to school; they are still forced to wear the head-to-toe burka in public. Religious fundamentalist warlords, allied with the U.S. and thus in power, attack and burn down schools that teach female students or attack the students themselves. In early May, for example, three eight-year-old girls were poisoned in the province of Khost, as punishment for going to school.
The terrible price of the war in Afghanistan is paid, first and foremost, by the people of that country. But it is also paid by American workers–in the elimination of social programs and public services in this country to free up money to pay for the war, and with the lives of U.S. troops sent to fight in Afghanistan.
Jun 21, 2004
The U.N.‘s International Labor Organization published a report showing that 10 million young children are taken to work as live-in domestic servants, that is, slaves in the homes of the well to do. The report counted two million children working in this modern slavery in South Africa, half a million in Brazil, a quarter of a million in Pakistan and another quarter of a million children enslaved in Haiti (with a population of only seven million).
But this report is hardly the first to be written about the traffic in young children. And there is a much larger traffic in poor children of all ages. These modern slave drivers grab a constant stream of youngsters, getting them to leave the countryside for a life they promise will be better in the cities. Instead, the children end up making Nike tennis shoes in Viet Nam by age 14. The ILO report described a labor agency that was shut down in South Africa this past March after the discovery of 21 young black girls crammed into a garage that had only one mattress for them to sleep on.
But the report of such activity is not new. In 2002, an international organization estimated that 250 million children work in the poor countries. Of these, 179 million children worked at tasks so dangerous–whether in the world’s factories, fields or brothels–that their lives were in danger.
The world organization concluded its recent report: "The task is extremely difficult. Concerning the world of children working, almost everything remains to be done." And of course, such reports need to be made to tell this truth.
But what these international agencies never mention is the cause of child labor: the world capitalist system. This economic organization of the world bleeds the poor countries dry. If the children of the Third World are slaves, if Africans are dying of AIDS and famine, if the gap between the so-called North and South increases, it is thanks to a system of exploitation born three centuries ago in Europe.
That system killed those most vulnerable at an early age from its very beginnings and continues to do so to this day.
Jun 21, 2004
Britain has been one of the few countries to have joined the U.S. in sending combat troops into Iraq, an action that has been roundly opposed in Britain. Here is the translation of a report from Britain appearing in the June 18 paper of the French revolutionary group Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), which examines the impact of the war and other Labor government policies on recent elections in Great Britain.
Everyone in Great Britain expected a spectacular defeat for the Tony Blair government with the June 10 set of four elections: for the European parliament, city governments, and the election of the mayor and Greater London Assembly. And that’s exactly what happened.
. . .
This vote to punish Blair occurred in each of the separate elections of June 10. In the city elections, which concerned about a third of the voters (city officials are elected for four years and only some posts came up this year), it was the first time in the history of the country that a party in power came in third in these elections. The Conservatives obtained 38%, the Liberal Democrats 29% and Labor 26%.
The Labor Party lost 20% of the city councilmen they had, or 476 positions, which have to be added to the 2,800 positions lost since Blair came to power in 1997. What’s more, the Labor Party lost in a number of cities were workers have great weight–in Newcastle, a major shipyard city and Doncaster, a mining and metal working city whose city government has been controlled by the Labor Party since the party was founded in 1905. The dominant position that the Conservative Party won last year, for the first time since the 1950s, due to voters punishing Blair over the war in Iraq, has now been very largely consolidated.
On the other hand, the Labor Party candidate Ken Livingstone was reelected mayor of London. This wasn’t thanks to the Labor Party, but despite it. Livingstone, who had quit the Labor Party four years ago while posing as a champion of the opposition to Blair, ended by recently returning to the lap of the Labor party. But he was reelected with a clearly reducedpercentage. Only his strong opposition to the war in Iraq, if no longer to Blair, saved him from defeat. This was shown by the election of the Greater London Assembly, where the Labor Party received 11% less than Livingstone and was clearly surpassed by the Conservative Party.
The European elections were a still more resounding defeat for the Labor Party. Even if the party came in second, it was with only 22.6% of the vote, the lowest score the Labor Party has ever received in these elections, compared to 26.7% for the Conservatives.
. . .
There were many ways for the electors to vote to the right of Blair [not only for the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, but also for a new formation, the United Kingdom Independence Party, which made an open appeal to the isolationist, anti-foreign and racist prejudices latent in the population.] But workers hardly had a way to use their vote to express their opposition to the servility of the Labor Party government with respect to Capital, in Iraq as in Great Britain. For in these elections there was no current which chose to embody a policy situated clearly to the left of Blair and indicating a perspective of struggle for the workers.
. . .
A big part of the electorate had good reasons for wanting to punish Blair–his lies over Iraq, his carrying out the military occupation, the growing degradation of social benefits (in particular pensions and health care) and of public services.... It remains the case that British workers have many accounts to settle with the Labor Party government and its agents of the City of London [the British Wall Street]. And if they didn’t have the means to show it at the time of these elections, they will perhaps do it tomorrow, by utilizing more appropriate methods, those of the class struggle. In any case, that’s what can be hoped for.
Jun 21, 2004
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) supposedly exists to safeguard workers’ rights.
The current chairman of the NLRB is Robert Battista. How dedicated to workers’ welfare is Mr. Battista?
Well, in the mid-1990s, the Detroit Newspaper Association set out to break the newspaper unions. The Association provoked the unions to strike and then brought in scab labor to put out and distribute the News and Free Press.
Who helped represent the Detroit Newspaper Association during this union-busting campaign?
Why, Mr. Robert Battista, himself!
Jun 21, 2004
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) said it will hear a case against the "card-check" procedure for unionizing a workplace.
The AFL-CIO has raised an alarm–but a strange sort of alarm. Instead of organizing actions to mobilize workers to fight this latest attack, the AFL-CIO says that workers should respond ... by voting for John Kerry for president.
In other words, workers should vote for the Democratic Party candidate and wait for him to defend them. AFL-CIO leaders have been around longer than that. They know full well that no president gave in to workers’ needs–unless workers were already mobilizing to impose what they wanted.
We can see what happens when workers don’t make a fight–and not only by looking at the Bush administration. When Clinton, a Democrat, had a Democratic majority in Congress during his first term, the union leaders themselves complained that Clinton stiffed them, wouldn’t give them his time. He didn’t need to, since the working class was quiet–waiting for Clinton to do something.
Depending on Democrats or Republicans is nothing but a dead end. But apparently, some people prefer a dead end to an open highway.
Jun 21, 2004
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has issued a statement that any politician who supports a woman’s right to an abortion is "cooperating in evil," and threatened to deny Catholic politicians of participation in some church sacraments.
Some bishops have already said they would not give communion to Kerry or to other politicians such as Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm or New Jersey Governor James McGreevey. One bishop declared that anyone who VOTES for a politician who supports abortion rights, gay marriage, euthanasia or stem cell research should not receive communion.
The Conference of Bishops said that they did not want communion to be reduced to a political issue; that they were just upholding their "canonical and pastoral principles."
Not a political issue? Of course it is–and they are the ones trying to use it to ram their backward views down everyone’s throats via politicians they control.
In other words, they want to create a theocracy. They want the Church to dictate laws and policies, just as it did in the Middle Ages.
This kind of decision-making based on religious doctrine can only stand in the way of a truly rational society. Stem cell research, for example, promises to open up a whole series of treatments for all sorts of conditions, from diabetes to lupus, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, to paralysis from various causes. But the Catholic Church and other religious leaders oppose stem cell research because it uses cells that only by falsification can be called a fetus.
The Catholic Church is not alone in this stance. It is joined by a whole range of fundamentalist Protestant groups, which not only share their backward views on abortion, gay marriage or stem cell research, but also seek to force those views on the whole of society.
They are all trying to turn the clock backward 250 years to before the time when the "rationalists" who argued for a secular society helped lead bourgeois revolutions in France and in the United States–then struggled to make sure the society they helped establish would be free from religious control.
Jun 21, 2004
Ray Charles, one of the most influential artists in the history of American music, has died.
Blinded by an unknown disease at age 7, Charles studied music at a school for the deaf and blind. From an early age, he learned to play many styles of music including classical, jazz, gospel, and blues, soaking up whatever he could from boogie-woogie piano players, blues musicians and the Baptist church.
He helped to invent soul music, turning gospel music into more secular songs, recording huge hits like "What’d I Say," "Hit the Road Jack," and "Unchain My Heart."
In a society deeply divided by racism, including in the music industry, Ray Charles fought against the divisions. In 1962, he recorded an album of country songs, "Modern Sounds In Country Music," including another of his hits, "I Can’t Stop Loving You." He made his own unique version of "Georgia On My Mind."
Near the end of his life, Charles finally began to receive some of the recognition that he was due. There had been times when the music industry had pushed him aside, having made what money they could off of him.
Since his death, the media have used his memory to drum up patriotism. They have played up his performance of "America the Beautiful," without mentioning that when he first sang it during the Vietnam War, he used it to protest that war.
They also conveniently leave out Charles’ participation in the civil rights movement, performing at rallies and contributing money. Charles spoke out when a music promoter demanded that he play to a segregated audience with the white people downstairs and the black people upstairs. Charles told the promoter he didn’t mind the segregation, so long as black people were downstairs, closer to him!
The media also neglect to mention that Charles participated in a 1963 concert to integrate entertainment in Birmingham, Alabama. Bull Connor and the other bosses of the city organized a media blackout and refused the participants food and lodging, but the concert went on. When they left, the entertainers faced bomb threats against their airplanes.
Ray Charles will be sorely missed. He left his mark on many who came after him. He should be remembered not only for his music–which touched so many people–but for what he really stood for.
Jun 21, 2004
The U.S. occupation of Iraq is continuing to spin more and more out of control. In the first half of June, the U.S. government reported 12 car bombings. June 14 was a particularly horrific day. There was one suicide bombing in Baghdad in the middle of morning rush hour aimed at a convoy of foreign contractors. Five foreign "security guards" and eight Iraqis were killed. An hour later in another part of Baghdad, a suicide bomber drove between two police vehicles and detonated a bomb that killed three cops. In the city of Mosul in the north of the country, four Iraqi civil defense soldiers were killed after their car hit a roadside bomb.
There have also been sniper attacks and attacks by rocket propelled grenades. Targeted have been all those who represent the occupation, first of all U.S. soldiers, mercenaries and contractors. Several government and military officials of the U.S. appointed Iraqi government have been assassinated. In just one day, senior officials from the education ministry and the foreign affairs ministry were killed. Also, police stations, recruitment and training centers for the Iraqi police and military forces that the U.S. is trying to put together are coming under attack. Finally, the insurgents have been targeting key parts of the Iraqi infrastructure, most especially oil pipelines. On June 15, oil pipelines near the Persian Gulf were bombed, forcing the shutdown of Iraq’s main export terminal for up to 10 days.
Yet, even though ordinary Iraqis are also victims of these attacks, news reports agree that most Iraqis still blame the U.S. first. After the June 14 car bombing in Baghdad, for example, that took the lives of eight ordinary Iraqis along with the five foreign mercenaries, a crowd of young men flooded into the streets and hurled bricks at a squad of U.S. soldiers, while onlookers screamed for the U.S. to go home.
This is hardly a surprise. In the U.S. war last year, the U.S. military bombed the cities and killed thousands, and that followed the ten years of U.S. bombing and strangling the economy through a deadly economic blockade that resulted in the deaths of over a million people. Reporters say that many people tell them they see the U.S. occupation of Iraq as an effort by the U.S. oil companies to steal Iraq’s oil and turn the country into a kind of semi-colony of the U.S., a center for U.S. power in the Middle East.
It is this anger and resentment that feeds an insurgency that gives every sign of continuing to grow. And many high U.S. military officials have not been afraid to go on record as saying that this is exactly the kind of nightmare they had warned the Bush administration about, that they are stuck in a quagmire with no way out. If U.S. forces stay,they will only be bled and weakened without any chance of winning, while distracting U.S. forces from propping up U.S. sponsored dictators in other parts of the world. But, if they leave, this sign of weakness could weaken U.S.- sponsored dictatorships throughout the Middle East. It could also very well weaken the U.S. client state of Israel in its half century long war against the Palestinians.
Of course, the Bush administration is publicly pretending that there is nothing wrong, that everything is going according to plan. According to the Bush administration, the U.S. military is turning more and more "peacekeeping" duties over to the Iraqi police and military forces it is now setting up. And, most importantly, the Bush administration is going through with the much ballyhooed June 30 handover of power, at which time the U.S. occupation of Iraq is officially scheduled to end. To give these claims more credibility, the Bush administration has already won the approval from what is supposed to be "the international community" for this supposed handover, that is, the U.N. Security Council–and by a unanimous vote.
Of course, this vote represents nothing but a business deal in which the U.S. finally granted a few construction and oil contracts to French, German and Russian companies.
What will really change on June 30? Instead of the U.S. occupation being run by the old "Coalition Provisional Authority," it will be run by the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. Replacing Paul Bremer, the official U.S. pro-consul who headed the CPA, will be John Negroponte, the new U.S. ambassador to Iraq. Negroponte’s main qualifications for the job as the new U.S. hatchet man in Iraq were earned two decades ago, in the 1980s, at the height of the U.S. wars against insurgencies in Central America. At that time, Negroponte served as the U.S. ambassador to Honduras. He was one of the Reagan administration’s top officials coordinating and running the U.S.-sponsored Contra war against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, a war that cost the lives of tens of thousands of people.
The new Iraqi government to which the U.S. government will hand power is headed by Prime Minister, Iyad Alawi. Alawi has had a long career working with the CIA, during which time he helped carry out several terrorist bombings inside Iraq that took the lives of countless Iraqis.
Despite all this talk about the handover of authority, the U.S. is not withdrawing any forces from Iraq. If anything, the announced plans to cut U.S. forces from Germany and South Korea is aimed at making more armed forces available for Iraq. Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to send in more private "security contractors," that is, mercenaries. Today the mercenaries form the biggest armed force in Iraq except for the U.S. military.
No, all that will happen in this supposed handover is that one puppet government will replace the other. The main power will remain the U.S.
And the war will continue at an ever greater cost to the people of Iraq ... as well as the working class in this country, which is paying the growing cost ... with lives and money.
Jun 21, 2004
World military spending reached 956 billion dollars last year, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, of which almost half (47%) is done by the U.S.
That means the United States is spending about one and a quarter BILLION per DAY on military expenses–450 billion dollars in 2003. Other wealthy countries don’t even come close in their military spending–Britain’s share, for example, was 48 billion last year. The U.S. is also the largest seller of weaponry, exporting almost half the world’s supply last year.
It’s not an accident that the U.S. has the worst medical care system of any industrialized country. Not that there aren’t good doctors and hospitals–they’re just not available. Money is spent elsewhere.
A new study by Families USA showed that during 2002 and 2003 there were 82 million Americans under the age of 65 who had no health insurance. Most of these uninsured people had no coverage for more than nine months. Black people, Hispanic people and those younger than 25 lacked coverage more often than others. The state with the worst rate of people lacking health coverage was Texas, with 43% of those under 65 lacking coverage. In eight other states–including California, more than one out of every three people under 65 lacked health insurance.
This country’s military spending kills quickly, especially overseas, while health spending kills slowly right here at home.