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
Nov 22, 2004
As the Iraqi city of Falluja lay in ruins, a U.S. marine told a U.S. reporter that the western part of the city was a "weapons free zone." He went on to explain, "... the marines can shoot whatever they see–it’s all considered hostile."
According to U.S. authorities, their targets were just terrorists, mainly foreign terrorists. Everyone else was supposed to be gone from Falluja.
In fact, as many as 100,000 or more ordinary people were trapped in the city, according to the figures of the International Red Cross. These included some women and children, and many old men. Some were not willing to leave their homes. Others were caught inside. Still others had already succumbed to months of intensive bombing that preceded the U.S. assault.
It was on their city, their apartments and homes and streets, that the U.S. dropped a deadly arsenal: the 2000 and 500 pound bombs, the 155 mm howitzer shells. U.S. forces fired shells filled with white phosphorous, which creates a screen of fire that cannot be extinguished with water and that melts the skin. And they also used cluster bombs with shrapnel that shreds flesh and breaks bones.
Some Fallujans tried to escape the attacks. But when they did, they became targets of tanks and fighting vehicles, which shot at anything that moved, or U.S. helicopter gunships, which hovered overhead waiting for targets. People who tried to swim or paddle to safety across the very wide Euphrates River were machine gunned and blown up.
Everything that was done added to the high death toll.
There was no medical help for those who were wounded or sick–the U.S. had either destroyed hospitals and clinics in the first days of fighting or took them over–locking up the doctors and staff.
There was no humanitarian aid either. The U.S. prevented a convoy of the Red Crescent (the Red Cross for that part of the world) from bringing in medical supplies, food and water.
At the end of the battle, wrote one New York Times reporter, "Driving down Highway 10, the main street running east to west through the heart of Falluja, is like entering a film that is set sometime on the other side of Armageddon." Dogs and cats and rats were feeding on piles of dead bodies; hardened marines gagged on the stench of death that was everywhere.
Falluja was a "weapons free zone," which meant that the U.S. military killed wantonly, terrorizing everyone in its path. Just like in Viet Nam, when the U.S. declared villages were in a "free fire zone," destroying the villages "in order to save them."
The U.S. attack on Falluja is the most extreme use of violence against a civilian population. It is terrorism, state terrorism carried out by the mightiest superpower in the world, the United States.
The vicious destruction of Falluja is a warning aimed at the whole Iraqi population–accept U.S. domination of their country or the U.S. will wipe out everyone: men, women, children and the very old.
In front of the whole world, the U.S. carries out terrorism–in our name, the name of everyone in this country.
We have every reason to oppose this war carried out by the U.S. government in our name–to stop the slaughter in Iraq, to bring U.S. troops themselves out of danger, to show that the face presented by the U.S. government is not our face.
Nov 22, 2004
The army has ordered over four thousand former soldiers in the Individual Ready Reserve to return to active duty in Iraq or Afghanistan. In one way or another, over two thirds of them have not complied.
The Individual Ready Reserve is made up of soldiers who left active duty before their contract–at least eight years, in some cases much more–was up. In exchange, they are eligible to be recalled to active duty during the time that they would still have been active.
Of the 4,166 who have been recalled to active duty, over 1,800 have requested exemptions or delays. Some others have argued that their recall was made wrongly. And over 843 have simply not shown up. They’re now considered Absent Without Leave–even if the government is doing what it can to downplay this latter group.
Because it happens so infrequently, former soldiers in the Ready Reserve expect never to be called back to active duty. In the past, when they were, it was to fulfill a very specialized task for a narrow amount of time.
Now, with the regular military AND the reserves already strained in two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the military is resorting to what some call a "backdoor draft" to fill holes in their forces. As a result, Ready Reserve troops are being prepared to go into the midst of combat; and they can expect to be there for over a year at a time.
These soldiers are not, for the most part, protesting the war itself; they simply don’t want to be the ones to fight it.
Still, this could be a signal of a wider trouble the military may soon have–or even already be having–with its soldiers.
History has shown what can happen when such situations grow. The U.S. began backing out of Viet Nam at the point when it could depend less and less on its soldiers to blindly follow orders there.
The less the U.S. military machine can count on its troops, the more it is constrained in carrying out these vicious wars.
Nov 22, 2004
Last week, six young white men in Maryland were charged in the death of Jamahl Jones, a black youth who died this past July. Jones was only 17 years old at the time of his death.
Jones was beaten to death at a party in Pasadena, a predominantly white town in Anne Arundel County, the suburb just south of Baltimore.
A friend of Jamahl’s, who was also beaten, said they had come to the party in response to a phone call from a black friend at the party who asked them to help him get away from the party. He and other witnesses said many of the white party-goers were drunk and angry and attacked the three young black men.
A white youth at the party claimed the whites were fighting to defend themselves against the three black men because one had a gun. And sure enough, a gun was produced from a neighbor’s lawn. But even the police were not buying that story.
Although the police proposed murder charges in July against four young white men at the party, the Anne Arundel County prosecutors dropped the charges in August. They said the autopsy showed Jamahl could have died of a fall and that the autopsy was "inconsistent" with the police findings that a murder had been committed.
A fall? Is that how Jamahl ended up dead of a skull fracture, with his face bloody and his back bruised?
After the murderers were let off, Jamahl’s mother, Robin Jones, and her two sisters insisted that the case be re-opened, getting support from black organizations. Finally in November, charges against the four were brought again. Two other white men at the party were charged as well. But this time the charges are not murder but manslaughter, assault and reckless endangerment.
People in this suburb continue to dispute whether race was involved in Jamahl’s death. Wasn’t it just a case of young men being rowdy and drunken, as some people in the area put it? But if that is so, so what? The question is why weren’t they charged? How could drunken thugs be responsible for a death and not be sitting in jail on murder charges?
Said Mrs. Jones, "Had that been a white boy lying on the ground that my son and his friends had beat up and killed, you can bet your left eye my son would still be in jail today and he would probably never, ever be getting out."
As if to illustrate what Mrs. Jones said, an Anne Arundel County judge only two days after the second set of charges were brought lowered the bail so four of the six men could easily get out of jail.
The whole handling of the case by the Anne Arundel County legal system–from the autopsy, to the evidence, to the bail–shows that race is involved in every aspect of the so-called justice system.
Nov 22, 2004
A Michigan teenage couple from a rural area north of Detroit decided to terminate the girl’s unwanted pregnancy. Apparently blocked from finding another way, they agreed that the young man should beat his pregnant girlfriend in the belly with a baseball bat. After attempting this several times over a number of days, the 16-year old woman finally miscarried.
How desperate was this young woman that she decided to have someone beat her with a baseball bat. And how much damage did she do to herself–having done this, she apparently got no medical attention afterwards.
We might as well be living in the dark ages, when women swallowed poisonous concoctions and poked themselves with long handled iron hooks to produce a spontaneous abortion. If anyone doubts that we are still there, all they had to do was listen to the moralistic denunciations of this young couple, coming from people who advised other teenagers to avoid such a horrible dilemma by "just saying no."
What crap. The fact is, teenagers are sexually active–sixty% of Michigan’s high school seniors admit to having had sex, most of them somewhat regularly. There is nothing unusual in this–it’s the result of our biology. And, in fact, teenagers in this country engage in sex at about the same frequency as teenagers in Europe.
But there is one important difference between teenagers here and those in Europe. Here they get pregnant much more frequently–about 40% of all American women get pregnant while they are still in their teens. This is by far the highest teenage birth rate in the developed world. It is accounted for by the fact that most teenagers in this country have no access to either birth control nor to medical abortion.
Abortion itself is a horrible choice–the mark that we live in a barbaric society, which offers no good choices to women who, for whatever reason, should not or do not want to be pregnant. But when even that choice is effectively denied any woman, then the options left are even more horrible.
This young couple has paid a terrible price because of it.
Nov 22, 2004
A week after the U.S. began its massive assault on Falluja, it declared victory. And in the following days, military spokesmen crowed about killing 1,200 insurgents and capturing their headquarters, safe houses and storehouses of weapons and explosives. U.S. military commanders called them "treasure troves."
Yet, despite the announcements, there was no indication that the resistance inside Falluja itself had been broken. Guerrillas still roamed the streets, setting up ambushes of U.S. troops and convoys. And Iraqi snipers continued to harass U.S. patrols and positions. U.S. jets and gun ships were trying to blast at what they guessed were Iraqi positions.
A top secret report by U.S. Marines intelligence in Iraq leaked to the press admitted the fleeting nature of the U.S. victory in Falluja. It warned that if U.S. troop levels in the Falluja area were reduced, as had been planned, the insurgents would rebound from their defeat. And it predicted that despite taking heavy casualties, the insurgents would continue to grow in number.
Neither did the U.S. assault on Falluja appear to "break the back" or even weaken Iraqi resistance elsewhere, as U.S. authorities had promised. Just the opposite, battles escalated in cities throughout central and northern Iraq.
In Baghdad, the capital and largest city, U.S. troops, with some Iraqi soldiers, stormed a prominent mosque in which the imam had reportedly called for the defeat of the U.S. After word got out, throngs of outraged Iraqis converged on the mosque to confront the U.S. troops. But the U.S. troops had already been pulled out. The next day, insurgents stormed a police station in the same neighborhood. In Ramadi, the insurgency was so strong, it controlled most of the city. The U.S. troops were only able to maintain a symbolic presence at the government center and a few outposts downtown.
In the northern city of Mosul, with a population close to two million people, guerrillas opened up a second front against U.S. forces. On November 11, in a series of coordinated attacks, groups of guerrillas seized five bridges that cross the Tigris River. Other groups of guerrillas stormed a half-dozen police stations and made off with weapons and uniforms after setting fire to buildings and squad cars. Five days later, a U.S.-led operation, involving up to 2,500 U.S. troops, swept through western part of Mosul in an effort to try to retake their police stations.
The question is, retake it for who? The guerrilla attacks on the police stations led to the disintegration of the city’s 4,000 member police force, with most Iraqi police either fleeing or joining the resistance. The U.S. may claim that it is building up an Iraqi army and police force. But this Iraqi force has consistently failed at the first signs of trouble. Even the most reliable Iraqi force that the U.S. took to battle with it into Falluja was racked by the desertion of at least 400 troops when the battle first began.
The battle of Falluja shows that while the U.S. may be able to win any direct military battle due to its overwhelming force and destructiveness, it can fail to "break the back" of the Iraqi insurgency. The enormous human toll of this latest U.S. "victory" simply sows more and more anger and hatred among the Iraqis against the U.S. occupation. It actually strengthens the Iraqi resolve to drive the U.S. occupiers out of their country.
The U.S. should get out now!
Nov 22, 2004
Porter Goss, Bush’s recent appointee to head the CIA, has been busy getting rid of people. At least half a dozen senior CIA career officers have been forced out, a purge that goes beyond the political appointees at the top of the spy agency.
Goss issued a memo to the agency’s staff that made his objective clear. He said their job is to "support the administration and its policies." He cautioned them not to "identify with, support, or champion opposition to the administration."
In other words, the next time Bush lies about weapons of mass destruction, he doesn’t want anyone leaking information to the press.
Nov 22, 2004
Today, there is a minority of the population in this country which stridently opposes the right to abortion. Every poll continues to show that over two-thirds of the population think that woman should have access to abortion if they choose it. And yet, this small, but very vocal and well-funded moralizing minority would impose their own reactionary ideas about abortion, birth control and other aspects of a woman’s sexual life on the whole population.
Like reactionaries everywhere, they think that their god has given them a right to dictate to the rest of the population.
Well, they are responsible for tragedies like the one just lived through by these two teens, just as they are responsible for the deaths of many women.
Nov 22, 2004
European Union spokespersons were happy to announce on November 15 that they had a deal with Iran. Iran would halt programs to enrich uranium up to weapons grade. In exchange, European Union countries (and others, like Japan) would sponsor Iran for World Trade Organization membership, and establish normal trade relations.
Of course Europe and Japan are happy. Iran is OPEC’s second biggest oil producer. "Normal trade relations" in this case is diplomatic code for oil contracts.
The U.S. government’s reaction came a few days later, when Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters he had seen intelligence that Iran was working on a missile to deliver weapons of mass destruction.
Since this claim was precisely the same "intelligence" that Powell and others made to justify the invasion of Iraq–and precisely as much a lie–his statement was also a kind of code. Iraq in 2002 had signed some oil exploration and delivery contracts with British, French, German and Russian companies. Shortly afterward, the U.S. claimed to have this special "intelligence" about Saddam’s secret missile program, and weapons of mass destruction.
The only weapons involved are oil contracts that target U.S. oil company profits!
Nov 22, 2004
At the beginning of October a victorious strike rolled through the huge modern "Special Economic Zone" of Shenzhen, on the southern coast of China. The 3,000 workers of Computime, an electronic components company, were able to force the company to agree to a 170% wage increase.
The workers’ anger was focused on their very low wages–53 yuan a week or $6.39, in a country where the minimum wage is 141 yuan a week or $17. The company takes rent out of this low pay for a bed in the company dormitory and meals in the company’s dining hall. The strike also revealed the revolting working conditions the workers suffer under: an 11 hour shift with no days off and fines for every imaginable infraction–for example, staying more than five minutes in the toilet.
Many Computime workers said they suffered injuries from their long working hours at the factory, but had to continue working without proper treatment as the company refused to pay medical insurance for them. "My leg was broken during an industrial accident, but I had to carry on with my work or otherwise I would lose my job," said one worker, showing her injuries.
At the beginning of October the workers organized the strike. They put up notices and handed out leaflets. They demonstrated and blocked one of the biggest streets of the city, causing a gigantic bottleneck. After a day and a half on strike, the workers won their increase, bringing their wage up to 143 yuan a week, slightly higher than the legal minimum. To give an idea what this wage means: a Coke costs five yuan and a pizza at one of the international chains operating in China costs 62 yuan.
In these industrial zones which employ many thousands of migrant workers fleeing the misery of the countryside, young workers seem to have become conscious of the force they represent, especially in the big workplaces. Despite exhaustion and repression by the owners and local authorities, despite the fact that unions independent of the state are prohibited, there are more and more reports of strike movements and demonstrations.
Nov 22, 2004
On November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. In less than a year, Germany was united. East Germany, formerly under the control of the USSR, was joined to West Germany. The fall of the Stalinist dictatorship in East Germany, which had "walled in" its people, physically cutting them off from the population of the west, was accompanied by scenes of jubilation. And Chancellor Kohl, at the head of West Germany, promised the East Germans a "flourishing" economy in a reunified Germany.
In fact it’s been "flourishing"–but only for the German bourgeoisie. Almost all the state enterprises in the old East Germany were digested by big West German companies. Factories were carved up, with only the profitable sectors conserved and sold cheaply, sometimes for a symbolic German mark. All the rest were closed, throwing hundreds of thousands of workers out of work.
Today almost one in five East German workers is unemployed, twice the rate as in the rest of the country. The old East Germany had 9.8 million workers in 1989; by 2000, there were only 5.9 million. In the region of Leipzig, one of the biggest cities in the country, there were 500,000 industrial employees in 1989. There are no more than 12,000 today. More than a million inhabitants have left the east, where wages are legally lower than in the west while prices are just as high.
There are twice as many women as men among the unemployed. Women have been especially affected by measures like the closing of nurseries and child care centers. In the former East Germany, the factories often maintained child care centers and other social and cultural services. Child care centers, which were almost free in East Germany, now charge a lot and take in only half as many children. Women in the east are also affected by restrictions on the right to abortion, which was accessible and free in the east, while in the united Germany it remains illegal, although it usually isn’t prosecuted.
While the population of East Germany pays a high price for unification, the bill is also high for the West Germans, who have paid over one and a half trillion dollars over fifteen years in a so-called "solidarity tax." West German workers can see where this tax has gone: not into the pockets of the workers of the east who are unemployed or underpaid, but into those of the bosses, in subsidies for the creation of non-existent jobs, but also into facilities such as expressways, telephone networks, etc. As an East German put it, "Though Germany is a rich country, they find billions to build government buildings in Berlin (which has become an immense work site to the great profit of the concrete kings), they tell us there is no money for the children, for our future."
In a poll published in September 2004, 24% of Germans wanted to return to the situation before the fall of the Wall. This is the balance sheet of a reunification carried out by private enterprise.
Nov 22, 2004
A gigantic crowd met Yasser Arafat’s coffin in Ramallah on November 12, where his body was brought back to be buried. Television throughout the world broadcast pictures of this crowd, alive with emotion. They turned Arafat’s funeral into an enormous demonstration, showing that the Palestinian people are still alive, despite the decades-long attempt by Israeli leaders to pretend that they didn’t exist as a people.
In the West Bank and Gaza, the Palestinian people are cut from each other by barriers and settlements, subject to harassing controls and non-stop repression. But they are still alive and proclaimed this to the world.
Yasser Arafat will go down in history as the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) who became the president of the Palestinian Authority. He was the symbol of the struggle of his people for the nation they were denied. During the last years of his life, the Israeli leaders forced him to stay in the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. Attacking it, even with tanks, they undoubtedly reinforced his image among the Palestinian people.
Israeli and U.S. leaders declared that the death of Arafat may have opened the door to peace between Israel and the Palestinians. This just perpetuates the lie that they have told over the years, claiming that it was only Arafat’s stubbornness that blocked peace. As if the Palestinian territory hadn’t been occupied since 1967, colonized by Israel which moved in hundreds of thousands of settlers displacing the Palestinians and attacked them with its army! As if Arafat hadn’t accepted almost all the concessions that the Israeli and Western leaders tried to impose on him! No! It was Sharon and his predecessors who, after signing the Oslo accords in 1993 in order to stop the first Intifada or Palestinian rebellion, did everything to violate what was agreed to at Oslo!
The Israeli leaders aren’t afraid of Arafat, living or dead. It is the Palestinian people and the people of the neighboring countries that they fear. And it’s not just the Israeli leaders who are afraid. We saw it just before Arafat was buried, when his body was brought to Egypt for a ceremony attended by heads of state from throughout the world. This took place at a military club in a Cairo suburb, near the airport on the edge of the desert, far away from the Egyptian masses. The Egyptian leaders, the leaders of the other Arab states and of the great powers obviously feared that if Arafat’s body were displayed in downtown Cairo, the popular outpouring paying homage to him would become a gigantic demonstration they couldn’t control. This happened when the body of Egyptian nationalist leader Gamal Nasser was displayed in Cairo in 1970.
Nevertheless, Arafat didn’t truly represent the interests of the poor Palestinian masses, any more than Nasser represented the interests of the poor Egyptian masses. Nasser represented the Egyptian bourgeoisie which sought to lessen the pressure it suffered from imperialism. Arafat, who himself came from the Palestinian bourgeoisie, wanted to obtain for his class a place in the sun and above all a state of its own. That meant government posts for people like him, rather than the real freedom and satisfaction of the essential demands of his people. In order to get a Palestinian state, he counted more on support by the leaders of the Arab states and the great powers than on the struggle of his people.
The leaders of the great powers understood this and so did the Israeli leaders. The official recognition of the PLO and the homage rendered to its leader afterward, for example, by the Nobel Peace Prize, were a means to assert their control over a man capable of reining in the Palestinian movement. He proved he would serve them, especially when the struggle of the Palestinians in Jordan and Lebanon threatened to engage the masses of these countries, destabilizing their regimes. Arafat worked actively to stop this development. When the leaders of the great powers recognized Arafat and the PLO, they were doing it to control a turbulent movement through him. It didn’t mean truly recognizing the Palestinian people.
Despite everything, the Palestinian question is still alive and explosive. The people of the entire region continue to see the Palestinians and their struggle as a symbol of their own situation. The provocative attitude of the Israeli leaders in the occupied territories, just like that of the U.S. in Iraq, only increases the likelihood of an explosion in the entire Middle East. The burial of Arafat does not mean the burial of the Palestinian people. The Palestinians remain unconquered and are very much alive.
Whoever finally replaces Arafat, sooner or later the Palestinians must win recognition of their rights. This is not only in the interests of the Palestinians, but also of the Israelis, whose leaders today offer them nothing but endless war. Israelis, despite their leaders, must find the way to fraternal coexistence with the neighboring people, without walls of separation, without armed control points, without racism and apartheid.
Nov 22, 2004
Since the U.S. invaded and occupied Iraq, acute malnutrition among Iraqi children under the age of five has skyrocketed to record levels. This is what a new study conducted by Iraq’s Health Ministry in cooperation with Norway’s Institute for Applied International Studies and the U.N. Development Program found.
According to the study, about eight% of all Iraqi young children now suffer from "wasting," a condition characterized by chronic diarrhea and dangerous deficiencies of protein. This is double the level under the regime of Saddam Hussein in its last years, despite the devastating 10-year economic embargo. It is also worse than malnutrition in some of the poorest countries in the world, including Haiti and Uganda. In fact, it is at the same level of the poorest African countries that had been torn by civil war for decades.
Obviously, the abject poverty in Iraq is worsening due to the lack of work and income so that families cannot even afford the most elementary necessities. At the same time, the water supplies remain extremely filthy and the unreliable supplies of electricity, especially in the poorest neighborhoods, lead to the most unsanitary conditions that breed disease and misery.
No, the U.S. is not "rebuilding" and "reconstructing" Iraq, as it so cynically claims and the U.S. news media so slavishly repeats. It is only wreaking ever greater destruction, whose toll is first of all borne by the most vulnerable: the country’s impoverished young children.
Nov 22, 2004
The Teamsters’ Central States pension plan is in trouble. In recent years, it lost money in the stock market. Earlier this year, the fund reduced retiree benefits for the first time in its 49-year history.
How did this happen?
In 1982, the U.S. government "rooted out corruption" from the pension fund. Saying they wanted to stop gangsters from skimming money from the fund, the government took control of it from organized crime and handed it over to new gangsters to manage: a string of different Wall Street brokerage firms.
These firms invested the fund heavily in the stock market, in areas that might produce high returns, but which were risky. These included lots of technology stocks that became worthless when that stock market tanked; and 77 million dollars in a Russian bank that disappeared.
Why would Wall Street firms invest pension money in such risky places, when so many retirees depend on the fund? They SAY it’s because the returns could be very high. And, of course, the more they lost, the more risk they had to take to try to regain it.
But what they DON’T say is that they get lots of money in "research" fees when they put the money in stocks. The riskier the investment is, the more they made sure to get their fees ahead of time. And they get more fees each time they move the money from one set of stocks to another.
The pension fund was managed by four different Wall Street firms. Each time, the new managers had to make sure to get their cut in fees–by shifting the fund to a whole new set of stocks.
The government pretends to be monitoring the fund to stop any self-dealing by gangsters. But let the self-dealing be done by Wall Street gangsters, it gets a government stamp of approval!
Nov 22, 2004
Last week, Kmart announced that it would buy Sears and merge the two operations. Only two and a half years ago, Kmart had to file for bankruptcy, claiming it had no money. New executives closed 600 stores and laid off 57,000 people.
Suddenly Kmart had enough money to swing an eleven billion dollar deal. That money came from all those jobs lost, stores closed, neighborhoods left without places to shop. Now business commentators are already predicting more stores will be closed and more workers laid off as the two corporations merge.
Edward Lampert, Kmart’s "turn-around" specialist, is no retailer. He got his billions through financial dealings, not by selling the sheets or tools or clothing we all need.
The Kmart-Sears merger is another example of how capitalism works. Its only purpose is making profits for big investors, like financier Lampert and his buddies.
Nov 22, 2004
Last week, California Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi approved a merger between two of the country’s largest health insurers. Anthem will buy WellPoint, which owns Blue Cross of California, the state’s largest insurer. The 18-billion-dollar deal will create the country’s largest health insurance company.
For more than a year, Garamendi denounced the merger and "the outrageous and extraordinary greed of executives." He estimated that this merger would cost consumers four billion dollars because the companies would increase rates and reduce services to cover the cost of the merger.
After all these bold (and, in fact, truthful) words, however, Garamendi reversed himself, saying Anthem promised not to increase premiums.
A promise! Exactly like Anthem made in 2001 before buying Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Maine–where it is now raising premiums 15%!
Anthem and WellPoint are prime examples of the merger frenzy that has plagued the health-care industry. They have been buying other companies across the country, especially non-profits like Blue Cross, and turning them into for-profit companies. As the health care industry has become more and more concentrated, insurance premiums have skyrocketed, along with the companies’ profits and the outrageous salaries of top executives.
And Garamendi is a prime example of state officials who pretend to regulate an industry while giving it a green light to rape the population!
Nov 22, 2004
On November 15, over 1000 people rallied in Los Angeles to protest the planned closure of the King/Drew trauma center near Watts. The protest reflected people’s outrage at the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, who were holding a public hearing that day, supposedly to hear the community’s viewpoint about the closure.
In fact, the supervisors have already started closing the King/Drew trauma center. Since October 16, the center has been closed to ambulances 81% of the time, causing critically injured patients to be sent to other hospitals. County officials say this is due to a severe nurse shortage at King/Drew. But this argument is far from convincing. In the 21 months before October, the center had diverted ambulance patients only four% of the time, and those diversions were mostly because the trauma bays were full–not because of any nurse shortage.
At the same time, the county supervisors have agreed with a private hospital, California Hospital Medical Center, to open a trauma center. The supervisors say that this new center will help make up for the lost trauma care capacity at King/Drew.
This is a shallow argument, to say the least. California Hospital is 10 miles away from King/Drew. Since trauma centers treat victims of accidents and violence for whom every minute can literally decide life or death, these additional miles mean that more people will die. Moreover, supervisors admit that California Hospital can absorb only about 1,200 of the 2,100 severely injured patients that King/Drew was treating every year.
Why the closure then? The problem is certainly not a lack of money. For example, the supervisors have guaranteed California Hospital 2.9 million dollars through June, just to cover the costs of treating uninsured patients. And they have awarded a private company, Navigant Consulting, 13.2 million dollars for "restructuring" King/Drew–which is a euphemism for cutting jobs.
The aim of this closure is to turn even more of the public medical system over to private enterprise, which will use it not to improve the population’s health but big corporations’ profits.
Nov 22, 2004
A new report was issued on a pre-school program in the Ypsilanti Michigan public schools. The program, started in 1962, gave early education to three and four-year old children from poor neighborhoods. Researchers have been following what has happened to the first class of these pre-schoolers ever since.
Some highlights of their latest report: participants in this pre-school program were much more likely to graduate from high school than other students who did not participate in the program; today, the program participants are more likely to have jobs; they have significantly higher incomes. They are significantly less likely to have a history of drug-related crime.
What explains this? Children in the program were similar in every way to the other children–except for being in the program.
But the pre-school program participants benefitted from early education that was adequately funded. The program included at least 2½ hours of classes, Monday through Friday, with one teacher for every eight students. The teachers, who received normal public-school teacher salaries, had full teaching credentials. There were supplies and books for every child.
Was this program very expensive?
Compare the costs. An average of $15,166 was spent to finance each child’s two-year participation in the program. But the researchers estimate that, so far, the economic return from higher tax revenues, lower need for welfare support and less criminal activity has averaged $258,888 per child. This is a return of about $17 for every one dollar invested!
Studies of similar programs have shown the same thing. And yet, politicians who could save public funds by investing in early education turn a blind eye to such studies.
Apparently the wealthy bourgeoisie who own this society and control the two parties want to keep it rigidly divided into classes–one with a decent education and one with a lousy education.
Nov 22, 2004
On November 2, Detroit voters rejected a ballot proposal that would have left the Detroit public schools in the same hands that have run them for the last several years. Only days later, the current head of the Detroit Public Schools, Kenneth Burnley, announced plans to close another 40 schools and cut another 4,000 jobs, blaming it on a budget deficit, including a newly discovered carryover deficit from last year–one they forgot to mention before the vote.
In a real sleight of hand, Burnley blamed the budget "crisis" on the district’s declining enrollment. And the media explained it’s the result of Detroit’s declining population.
It’s true the Detroit population has declined somewhat–in great measure because some black families are trying to go to the suburbs with better schools, just as white families did at an earlier time.
But the number of Detroit students has dropped more than three times as much in the same time period. So something else explains the enrollment drop–and that something has been the opening of charter schools. The number of Detroit students in charter schools increased by over 14,000 since the 1998-99 school year.
Kids are usually taken out of the public schools and put into charter schools in the hope they will do better. The bitter irony is that all the studies so far have shown that overall they do worse than the kids left behind in the schools they came from.
This is no surprise. Charter schools are taking public school money and usually putting it into the hands of people whose main goal is not the education of children. The money has often gone to friends of politicians, to religious groups masquerading as a school or to businessmen out to make a buck. Many of them have simply opened charter schools in the old school buildings the school district was forced to shut down. Their teachers, who are paid less than public school teachers, are usually less qualified.
This drive to establish charter schools can end up demolishing the whole public school system, which is based on neighborhood schools.
That’s what is happening in the Detroit school district. Of the 6,100 jobs cut, many are jobs that will henceforth be done by private contractors who will pay lower wages, making off with the rest in profit. In other words, the politicians and the school officials are both privatizing the public schools!
Public schools are the best hope for giving children an education–but to do so they need the money currently being put into private hands.