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
Dec 12, 2005
It’s the time of year when mailmen collect food for the needy, when firemen ask for toys so every child has a gift, and organizations trying to provide shelter and warm clothing to the homeless ask for our help.
Knowing what it means that a child should go without a single gift, or that the unemployed should be forced out on the streets in sub-zero cold, people respond. In so doing, they show the generosity and feelings of solidarity which exist in the population, especially among people who work for a living.
But this very generosity indicts the government, which supposedly exists to serve the population. The government, which could do what’s needed to guarantee that decent jobs exist, turns its back on those without a job. The government–which ought to do what’s necessary so that everyone has a decent and affordable place to live, enough to eat, and adequate clothing–ignores the problems, when it doesn’t make them worse. Government, which should guarantee that every child be given the means to be fully educated, can’t be bothered.
To be more exact, it’s too busy finding new ways to aid the biggest of the big bourgeoisie–more ways to reduce their taxes, more ways to subsidize corporate profits.
Almost every year, corporate profits hit new records–adding up to more than a trillion dollars this year alone. The corporations then distribute their profits in the form of bigger dividends and stock repurchases to the wealthy class which owns more than 85% of all corporate stock. They pay their executives astronomical bonuses, which no one could have imagined, even ten years ago. They buy up other companies–only to resell them, or to dismantle them for tax advantages. This tiny minority which possesses most of the wealth in this society, gambles it away in financial markets as though they were in a giant casino.
None of this creates more jobs. Nor does it add to the productive capacity of society, or improve the cities we live in–just the opposite. Because this wealth is stolen from the labor of working people, our standard of living continues to decrease; teenagers have little hope of finding a decent job, and older people are being deprived of the very pensions they worked their whole lives for. Schools are warehouses, not temples of learning.
Today, at the end of 2005, this is where we are–mired in a growing catastrophe for the laboring population. Maybe our generosity in responding to appeals to help the homeless overcomes some part of the problem–but only for a few hours, and only for a few of the homeless.
Generosity and charity can’t get rid of homelessness, nor any of the other problems we face. Those problems are the necessary consequences of a system based on the pursuit of profit.
If we want to live in a world where everyone fully benefits from the labor they contribute to society, this whole system must be changed.
Capitalism is worn-out. It was already old and decrepit more than a century ago. It’s long since time for it to be replaced by a society where each of us will benefit, because all of us benefit, a communist society in the true sense of the term.
Dec 12, 2005
The Pentagon announced that it is going ahead with the development of eight new DDX destroyers. Those eight new destroyers will cost 2.5 billion dollars each–a price that, no doubt, will double or triple in the years to come if these Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics contracts go as usual.
Meanwhile the federal government is getting ready to cut 50 billion dollars from programs for the poor and elderly, such as Medicaid, Medicare and food stamps. Just the cost of one of those eight destroyers would pay for a big part of the cuts they proposed.
This country spends more on the military than the rest of the world combined–and companies like Boeing, Northrop and General Dynamics profit mightily from it.
Dec 12, 2005
Rigoberto Alpizar was killed by federal air marshals on December 7, for no other reason than that he was upset and tried to get off a plane.
Federal officials claim that Alpizar yelled about having a bomb, and was reaching into his bag when they shot him.
It’s a story filled with holes.
Alpizar had gone through the usual series of security checks in order to get on the plane. How in the world would he have a bomb? And, why would he get on the plane with a bomb, and then try to get back into the airport in order to detonate it?
The most damning thing, though, is the way FBI agents tried to coerce other passengers into lying.
Passengers reported only seeing someone who was clearly agitated being talked to by his wife, who was trying to calm him.
One fellow passenger, John McAlhaney, who sat several rows in front of Alpizar, said, “I heard him saying to his wife, ‘I’ve got to get off the plane.’ He bumped me, bumped a couple of stewardesses. He just wanted to get off the plane.... I absolutely never heard the word ‘bomb’ at all.”
McAlhaney said that the first time he even heard the word ‘bomb’ was when FBI agents tried to pressure him into saying he’d heard Alpizar say it. Clearly, if the FBI had had witnesses who volunteered that they’d heard it, agents wouldn’t have needed to people to say it!
As Alpizar bolted through the plane, his wife, Ann Buechner, called out frantically that he was mentally ill and hadn’t taken his medication. Other passengers heard her; the air marshals ignored her. They shot him in the back, killing him.
David Stempler, president of the Air Travelers Association, said he believes passengers would find this shooting “more reassuring than disturbing.”
Reassuring? Only if they’re planning on committing suicide!
This has nothing to do with stopping bombings or keeping people safe. Not only was this a show of force, pure and simple, it was an act of terrorism.
Today, air marshals are in every big airport, sporting weapons, demonstrating by their presence that we live under military rule.
It’s a form of terrorism–aimed at showing the power of the State–ready to be used against the population.
Dec 12, 2005
Over the last 15 years, the City of Los Angeles has been modernizing its libraries. Sixteen branches have been renovated and 47 new ones have either been built or are in construction.
The new libraries were designed to be inviting places. For once, officials in charge of the project organized neighborhood meetings to get the residents’ input about sites and designs. And they completed the program under budget, leaving money for five additional libraries that were not planned initially.
In fact, the entire cost of the program, 317 million dollars, is less than 10% of what the U.S. spends for the occupation of Iraq EVERY MONTH!
People have responded. Library usage in L.A. has increased by 70% over the last decade–four times faster than the national rate.
This success of the L.A. libraries may not be an earth-shaking event, but it certainly stands out at a time when local governments are busy cutting such services.
But don’t hold your breath waiting for politicians to spend money on our needs.
The L.A. libraries were built only because L.A. voters decided to tax themselves additionally to finance them–voting through bond measures in 1989 and 1998.
Unfortunately, the population is not given the right to vote down taxes that go to subsidizing big corporations or paying for wars!
Dec 12, 2005
Rosemary Barbour is married to a nephew of the Mississippi governor, Haley Barbour. In the first days after Hurricane Katrina, Governor Barbour publicly praised George Bush to the skies for his fine Katrina relief effort–the effort that FEMA in reality never got off the ground.
It just so happens that Rosemary’s company, Alcatec LLC, has been awarded ten Katrina clean-up contracts totaling 6.4 million dollars. The New York Times reported that the most valuable contracts had no competitive bidding.
Hey, nothing but “family values!”
Dec 12, 2005
Did anyone believe the “USA PATRIOT” Act would be temporary? Congress is about to put that lie to rest. Politicians from the House and Senate reached an agreement that not only extends it, but makes it worse.
The so-called “compromise” bill makes permanent 14 out of 16 provisions set to expire at the end of this year.
The bill extends the government’s ability to demand customer records from libraries and businesses, such as telephone companies and internet providers. The bill pretends to let record-holders challenge the demands in court–but when intelligence agencies say the records are needed for national security reasons or criminal investigations, the courts must approve their demands. And the bill imposes a prison sentence of up to five years for anyone who discloses a request for records “with the intent to obstruct an investigation.” This means a librarian, who might publicly object to turning over patron records, can be imprisoned for five years.
The bill permits intelligence agencies to conduct searches of people’s homes or businesses without informing them for 30 days. In addition, it lets the FBI take an individual’s financial records and internet transactions without even asking court approval.
Of course, courts have never provided much protection to individuals the government wished to harass or persecute. But the government’s refusal even to go through the courts shows its intent to attack anyone opposing its policies.
Nearly 400 communities and seven states have passed resolutions against the infringements on civil liberties in the “PATRIOT” Act. But resolutions alone have never stopped the government from invading people’s lives.
In those periods when social movements responded to such government attacks, their actions imposed limits on the government.
The “PATRIOT” Act can be made a dead letter today when this generation follows in its predecessors’ footsteps.
Dec 12, 2005
In November, students at South Gate High School in a working-class community near Los Angeles organized a sit-in. For two days, as many as 500 students refused to go to class, rallying together on the football field bleachers. The students voiced their anger over the severe shortage of full-time teachers, classroom space, desks and books. And they were angry that courses required for graduation, as well as some after-school activities, are unavailable.
South Gate, which is part of the L.A. Unified School District (LAUSD), got a new, additional high school this year, enrolling 2,000 students. It was supposed to relieve the severe overcrowding at South Gate High. It was also supposed to allow a switch from the year-round schedule, which provided for only 163 school days, to the traditional, 180-day September-June schedule. But when the school year began in September, school officials explained away the overcrowding–pretending that “additional” students who had been in private and parochial schools came back to the public school when it switched to the traditional schedule.
Excuses!
Even if this were true, how is it possible that the two schools are so overcrowded only because a couple hundred more students than expected registered? There wasn’t enough room to begin with.
The conditions that students and teachers face at South Gate are typical throughout the L.A. school district, where classrooms are increasingly starved of money and resources, as budget cuts year after year take hold.
It’s not that there is no money. L.A. voters passed several bond measures over the last decade, and the LAUSD has launched a 15-billion-dollar construction project.
But where has all the money gone if newly built schools are not helping to ease the overcrowding and provide a decent education for all students? One thing is sure: these taxpayer billions are enriching contractors.
The real issue here is that the education of students from working class backgrounds takes a very low priority in a society run on a capitalist basis.
The protests at South Gate High show that there are plenty of students–supported by their parents and teachers–who are unwilling to accept the conditions imposed on them. Their actions can change the situation.
Dec 12, 2005
“The U.S. government does not authorize or condone torture,” claimed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. She is also quoted saying to her audience on her recent trip to Europe, “It is against U.S. law to be involved in torture or conspiracy to commit torture.”
Her words were firm, her tone sincere. But, like so many other “sincere” statements, it was nothing but a blatant lie. But the U.S. media actually reported the story as if there could be any question about whether the U.S. tortures.
What does it mean to chain people up on walls? What does it mean to keep them in the dark or in extreme cold or in extreme heat? What does it mean to beat them to a pulp? What does it mean to hook up wires to their genitals or to nearly drown them? What does it mean to keep people in prison for years without ever charging them, let alone sending them to trial?
In fact, these methods used by the U.S. are the typical methods of torturers throughout the world.
Of course the U.S. uses torture–in great quantities. And their own officials even admit it. Their top lawyer said the U.S. would follow the Geneva Convention or the Convention Against Torture ONLY when it suited U.S. policy.
Whether it is called “rendition” or “enhanced interrogation techniques,” it is torture. Whether it is done in this country or some other one at U.S. behest, it is still torture. And it is an integral part of U.S. policy.
But as disgusting as this part of U.S. policy is, it is only a small portion of a much broader policy of violence, pursued by every U.S. administration, and aimed at controlling the peoples of the world.
Today there are thousands and thousands of Iraqi and Afghani families who have lost their loved ones to U.S. bombs; thousands are maimed, their homes turned into rubble, their chance of employment next to nothing, their country involved in hideous civil war.
Since the end of World War II, the United States has carried out more wars than all other countries put together. And wars are not the only method used by U.S. governments. The U.S. regularly has used covert military actions. For example, the “Al Qaeda terrorists” got started with CIA money used to arm and train them against the Russians in Afghanistan 20 years ago. The U.S. supplied the Contra terrorists who murdered and tortured the people of Nicaragua. The death squads in El Salvador and Guatemala were paid with our tax dollars. What of the bloody dictators propped up by the U.S. government in Indonesia, in the Philippines, in Turkey, throughout Latin America from the Dominican Republic to Chile?
Neither the activities nor the lies of the Bush administration are new. They are all aspects of the long-term policy of U.S. imperialism.
Dec 12, 2005
North Carolina officials executed a man on death row on December 2, followed by another execution, this one in South Carolina, the same day. Maryland executed a man on December 5th. These judicially carried out executions mark more than 1,000 people put to death since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to re-institute the death penalty in 1976.
But all death sentences are not equal, of course. Almost all prisoners facing execution are poor. One third of them are black, reflecting the fact that in this racist society, poverty weighs so much more heavily on the black community. Most prisoners have virtually no education. Most on death row are served by lawyers who are state-appointed.
And where a person is jailed makes a big difference to what sentence is given. Twelve states and the District of Columbia have abolished the death penalty completely. By contrast, 355 of the executions, more than one third, took place in one state: Texas.
Although the majority of people in this country still favor the death penalty, support for this barbaric practice is declining. Some people were convinced by prisoners being taken off death row after new evidence, especially from DNA testing, was received. About one in eight sentences for those on death row have been shown to be in error.
The U.S. is not only one of the most bloodthirsty nations in the world–only China, Iran and Viet Nam show similar numbers of executions. The U.S. also has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, with a million and a half people behind bars.
As of this writing, Stanley “Tookie” Williams awaits execution in California. Only clemency from Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger can stop the execution scheduled for December 13. And Schwarzenegger dragged out his decision in the most demeaning, cynical and inhumane fashion.
The Williams case exposes this so-called justice system for what it is worth.
As a teenager in the 1970s, he helped organize the Crips gang in Los Angeles. He participated in many crimes, including drugs, robbery and murder–although he denied committing the particular murders for which he was sentenced to death in 1979.
During Williams’ many years in jail, he finally got the education he never got in the supposedly “free” society outside. In a country with a free public education for all, Williams and millions of other poor children got nothing, becoming the uneducated youth making up gangs and committing horrible crimes. In prison, he wrote nine children’s books, telling his young readers about his life, warning them against gangs. His transformation helped gain him supporters around the world; in 2000, a member of Switzerland’s parliament nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize.
No one denies Williams’ horrible past. Very few people would argue that prison helps anyone develop a productive life. Yet Williams got in prison what he never got in the outside society: a chance to study, develop ideas and attempt to positively influence younger people.
That fact alone demonstrates to what extent this society is degenerate, unwilling to provide for the needs of its citizens. The leaders of the U.S., not only the former governor of Texas, but politicians of both parties pretend they are doing something about the violence this society engenders. No–everything they do encourages a bleak future among the poor, a future which can only produce more murder and mayhem–not less.
Dec 12, 2005
The following article appeared in the November 25 issue of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), published by the revolutionary group of that name active in France. It discusses the situation in the banlieues, or suburbs–those massive housing projects that lie on the outskirts of France’s big cities–the areas that produced the outbursts of angry youth during November.
Government ministers and the right wing parties continually make immigrant families scapegoats for the explosion in the suburbs. And the politicians daily denounce the immigrants, proposing more measures against them.
Sarkozy (the Minister of the Interior) announced the deportation of non-citizens involved in suburban violence, even if their papers were in order. Bernard Accoyer, the head of the UMP (Union for the Presidential Majority–the right wing party in power), declared: "Integration and assimilation are called into question by a volume of immigration which goes beyond the country’s capacity to absorb it."
In the same vein, politicians declared: "Among the minors involved in crimes, there is an over-representation from polygamous families," a way to say that "these people aren’t like us." Following these declarations, the government announced measures limiting access to family benefits and making it harder to apply for French citizenship when an immigrant is married to a citizen.
By using this language which feeds racist prejudices, the government refuses to face facts. Youth whose parents or grandparents came from other counties may have made up a good portion of those involved in violent acts, but what’s significant is that these families were pushed into ghettoes where the poorest people are concentrated.
This part of the working class has always been stuck in the most peripheral and badly equipped urban areas. In the 1960s, the bosses sent their recruiters seeking unskilled workers into North African or African villages, in order to fill positions on their assembly lines and in the mines. The bosses saw these workers as nothing more than production machines. They didn’t care about their living conditions. They pushed them into single-person housing and then shanty towns. Later, with the arrival of the immigrants’ families, they were packed into those giant buildings constructed on the cheap, whose names are expressed in numbers: the "3000" in Aulnay-sous-Blois, the "4000" in La Courneuve.... These figures express the number of apartments, but have nothing to do with the quality of the place.
A couple of decades later, their children and their grandchildren, who were born in France, still rarely manage to get out of such areas. And these neighborhoods have deteriorated over the years, while mass unemployment added to the problems. The bosses weren’t concerned to teach the immigrant parents of today’s youth to speak, read and write French, and today they aren’t concerned about the conditions in which these youth grow up. On the contrary, the bosses’ organizations have led a fight to reduce the number of government employees, which means fewer teachers in these ghettoes although many more are needed. It means fewer public services of all sorts to aid families who confront tragic situations.
Today, the state doesn’t pay to provide what the suburbs need; instead it gives subsidies to the corporations. In areas where three out of four people are immigrants, with much higher unemployment than elsewhere, the bosses’ attitude remains: "That doesn’t concern us and we"re not going to pay for it."
Today, the government encourages racism by claiming that immigration is the principal reason for "suburban violence." This is a convenient way to make people forget what the government and the bosses caused.
Dec 12, 2005
The U.N. conference on climate change, with 10,000 participants, just ended in Montreal. It was the most important conference on the climate since the Kyoto conference of 1997, which drew up an agreement that theoretically went into effect last February.
For countries agreeing to it, the Kyoto agreement set targets for the reduction or limitation of greenhouse gases. The role of greenhouse gases in climate change is complicated and difficult to measure, but there is no doubt they have an important impact. These targets are supposed to be attained in 2012.
Supposedly, the recent conference was called to examine what had been carried out. But since the United States refuses to accept the Kyoto agreement, and U.S. companies are not forced to restrict their production of these gases, the Kyoto targets obviously cannot be met. After all, the U.S. is the biggest greenhouse gas producer on earth, responsible for a quarter of all pollution.
But other countries that agreed to the Kyoto standards won’t make their goals either. For example, Canada, the host country of the Montreal conference, was supposed to reduce its greenhouse gases by 6%. But, due to the reluctance of its industrial companies, its pollution has actually increased by 24%.
Scientists have issued clear warnings about what global warning means. Right before the Montreal conference opened, Martin Rees, the head of the British National Science Academy, pointed out the extreme consequences of global warming: “Floods, droughts and hurricanes attain levels which justify comparing them to weapons of mass destruction.” And he estimates that, if nothing is done, the U.S. coast on the Gulf of Mexico will become uninhabitable. But, he declared, “Those in charge are worried more about the costs of action rather than the consequences for the planet of doing too little, too late.”
Too little and too late is exactly what the U.S. government had in mind. Nothing is being done.
Just to make its point, the United States caused a flap at the conference: its top negotiator, Harlan Watson, walked out in protest when the conference agreed to discuss future emission standards. Former President Bill Clinton may have shown up to give a speech, undoubtedly to embarrass the Bush administration; but that was just window dressing. Clinton had three years after Kyoto was written to get it passed in the U.S. Senate. He didn’t even try to do it.
Even for the countries that agreed to the Kyoto agreement, the loopholes turn the agreement into a joke. A country or a company that produces less than the full amount of pollution it is allowed can sell the rest of its pollution allowance. The country or company can claim it is meeting the Kyoto limits while giving another company or country the right to create MORE pollution–and get paid for this “pollution credit” at the same time.
Look what a good deal the French company Rhodia worked out for itself. It is selling its “emission credits” to Brazil and South Korea. Rhodia spent 16 million dollars reducing its pollution, but expects to sell its pollution credits for about 300 million dollars! What a profit–but where is the reduction in global pollution?
Under capitalism, all problems–and global warming isn’t a small one–clash with the law of profit. Governments, whether or not they signed the Kyoto agreement, won’t put any real pressure on industrial polluters. And corporations take only those measures they find in their economic interest.
The Montreal conference ended with the U.S. finally agreeing to new talks. But these talks will be “open and non-binding” and “will not open any negotiations leading to new commitments.” It shows we can expect nothing with respect to preserving the planet from those who lead the capitalist world.
Dec 12, 2005
On December 10, Ford and the UAW leadership announced a deal giving Ford health-care concessions similar to those at GM. The UAW’s Ford Council is to vote during the week of December 12. Ford said it wants Ford workers’ votes to be completed before January–that is, workers will be pushed to vote hurriedly, in the midst of their preparations for the holidays.
The following is from a SPARK newsletter given out at Ford’s Rouge Plant and Chrysler’s Warren Truck Assembly Plant shortly after the GM concessions were ratified.
The new GM contract, with health-care cuts and wage give-aways, is on its way to Ford and Chrysler workers. Some UAW leaders will try to sell it, saying we need to follow the pattern. The only pattern worth following is one that protects us. Dump the GM pattern!
The GM deal takes away $1 an hour from raises that were promised for next year. And that affects everything else. When base wages don’t grow, future raises will be calculated on less pay, and raise after raise afterwards will shrink,percentage-wise, from what it should be.
Overtime premium will be less, SUB will be less, profit sharing less. Contributions to a range of benefits will be less.
From now on, workers will also give back two cents from COLA, every three months. Workers will fall still further behind inflation.
The GM plan breaks years of promises by GM to fully cover retirees’ healthcare. Retirees will now have to pay:
" $21 a month insurance premium for family plan, or $10 a month single.
" The first $300 of "included" medical expenses in every calendar year, or $150 a year single.
" Either 10% or 30% of charges beyond the $300, depending on PPO coverage, until the retiree has paid either $500 or $1000 out of pocket in a calendar year, depending on PPO coverage.
Plus retirees must pay for all these extras, which are NOT "included":
" $50 emergency room visit if not admitted
" Office calls
" Mental health & substance abuse treatment
" Dental and vision co-pays
" Medical equipment
" Drug co-pays.
Medical care for retirees will now be funded by a complicated plan that limits how much money GM will put into the plan. The result is that money to cover a major part of retiree medical benefits can run out–as it did at Detroit Diesel and at Caterpillar, where the UAW negotiated similar plans.
Active workers also have to start paying new drug co-pays, from $5 to $18, depending.
There are cutbacks in the GM plan that will hit active workers’ health care but they are not spelled out. PPO plans will be changed. Payments to doctors will be reduced. More workers’ claims will be denied. But the actual details are still held in secret.
All of these take-aways are included under something called "administrative" changes.
"Health care protected. No Cost-Shifting. No Benefit Take-aways." These lies appeared in the contract highlights put out to sell the 2003 contract.
Before the ink was dry, workers and retirees in traditional Blue Cross Blue Shield plans discovered they were no longer in that plan. They had been shipped into a new PPO.
The new plan eliminated more than a thousand doctors. Many workers and their families had to find new doctors.
"Administrative changes’ are used to hide the biggest take-aways.
Ever since 1950, when pensions were brought in across the auto industry, workers’ hourly wages were kept lower. The deal was that the company would put the extra money into pension funds. They even called pensions "deferred wages." Retirees already paid for their pensions and medical care–long ago.
If that money isn’t in the funds now, it means the companies stole it. Time for them to pay up!
The companies claim they have no money for health care. Baloney.
By their own figures, GM sat on 53 billion dollars in cash and securities as of September 30, 2005. Ford on that date had almost 37 billion in cash and securities, five billion more than it had last December. Chrysler took six billion dollars cash into the merger with Mercedes. In the last 24 months DCX made more than six billion more in profits.
These companies had, and have, plenty of money to fund the promised health care for retirees and give active workers their promised raises.
The companies try hard to shift our attention. They complain that they can’t compete with other countries. Another hunk of baloney.
When Delphi filed bankruptcy, Delphi’s lawyers asked the bankruptcy court to give 21.5 million dollars to an "unspecified" number of Delphi executives for their first six months" pay. An analyst found that 21.5 million is more than was paid to Toyota’s top 33 executives, combined, in all of 2004!
Does that sound like a company with a problem with competition? Only to "compete" over who can rip off the most for themselves!
If the auto companies can’t compete as they say, it’s NOT because of workers’ wages. The U.S. auto worker still produces by far the most value per hour. The companies take more value from U.S. auto workers’ labor than in any other country. In this "competition" they are already in the lead!
Moreover, U.S. companies don’t pay the taxes that other industrialized countries charge to support national health care and social safety net systems.
Companies here get more breaks than in any other industrial country. Should we be sucked into their lies and let them have our retirements too?
Retirees, who suffer some of the biggest cuts, have no vote on this set of concessions. But there’s another way retirees can vote–with their feet protesting outside union headquarters, or marching into the convention, with their presence at any union meeting, with their anger at any local official who dares to push this contract. And against those scoundrels, they do have a vote!
Ford and Chrysler workers have a chance to stop this slide to the bottom. But just voting "No" won’t do it. In the first place, who usually counts the votes? The very people pushing this disgusting sell-out. Companies and union bureaucrats need to have their feet held to the fire. Both active and retired workers can do it.
Dec 12, 2005
SEIU organized a nationwide contest on the internet, supposedly to find “the best common-sense ideas” about how to “improve the lives of workers.” SEIU leaders said they wanted suggestions from the people, not experts.
So who did they select as the 23 judges to pick the best ideas?
Mostly corporate executives! Plus a few politicians, journalists and SEIU President Andy Stern himself. They didn’t even bother to put one worker on as window dressing!
It seems SEIU leaders think workers’ ideas are good only if they suit the bosses.
Dec 12, 2005
Billions of dollars
| Ford | GM | Daimler-Chrysler | |
| 1994 | 5.3 | 2.5 | 3.7 |
| 1995 | 4.1 | 6.9 | 2.0 |
| 1996 | 4.5 | 5.0 | 3.5 |
| 1997 | 6.9 | 6.7 | 2.8 |
| 1998 | 6.1 | 3.0 | 5.6 |
| 1999 | 7.2 | 5.9 | 6.2 |
| 2000 | 3.5 | 4.3 | 7.3 |
| 2001 | -5.5 | 0.5 | 0.6 |
| 2002 | -1.0 | 1.7 | 4.4 |
| 2003 | 0.5 | 3.8 | 0.5 |
| 2004 | 3.5 | 2.8 | 3.1 |
| Total | 35.1 | 43.1 | 39.7 |
These companies crying so poor today accumulated–by their own accounts–35, 43, and 40 billion dollars in 11 years. After taxes. And even when the companies show losses, those were usually the result of accounting changes, or "special charges’ and not the result of actual money losses.
Dec 12, 2005
At a November 29 news conference with Donald Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Peter Pace, questions were asked about white phosphorus used in Fallujah, resulting in the death of civilians.
The New York Times has described the effects of white phosphorus on human beings: “It also rains balls of flaming chemicals, which cling to anything they touch and burn until their oxygen supply is cut off. They can burn for hours inside a human body.”
Rumsfeld let Pace deflect the question. And Pace pretended it was little more than a railroad flare: “We use white phosphorus as a marking and screening agent.” When a reporter persisted, saying that Iraqi civilians exposed to this chemical have been killed by it, Pace said only that it is a “proper material for warfare.”
“Proper” or not, the U.S. has long used such materials. During World War II, U.S. and British bombs destroyed the whole city of Dresden using such materials. At least 35,000 and maybe a hundred thousand civilians were killed in the firestorms this bombing let loose. In Viet Nam, whole stretches of populated territory were burnt up by napalm.
The Army even makes a sick joke of it. In an Army publication, the effect of white phosphorus on the Iraqi population is described as “shake and bake.”
U.S. policy makers may talk about “winning the hearts and minds of a population”–but their actions are meant to destroy that population.
Dec 12, 2005
On November 30, in a speech before midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy, President Bush rolled out his “Plan for Victory” in Iraq. He insisted that the new Iraqi government, to be elected on December 14, would take control over Iraq, supported by the U.S.-trained Iraqi military and police force, allowing U.S. troops to begin to withdraw.
Bush proclaimed: “We will continue to shift from providing security and conducting operations against the enemy nationwide to conducting more specialized operations targeted at the most dangerous terrorists. We will increasingly move out of Iraqi cities, reduce the number of bases from which we operate and conduct fewer patrols and convoys.”
Bush repeated the word “victory” 16 times in a heavily scripted political extravaganza that makes a garish Las Vegas musical look modest. The banner behind Bush spelling out “Plan for Victory” recalled his May 2003 proclamation, “Mission Accomplished.”
But no “Mission Accomplished” or “Plan for Victory” banner can cover over the ugly reality of the ongoing U.S. war in Iraq. The U.S. war and occupation has provoked a growing insurgency, with daily attacks against U.S. troops increasing from one month to the next. At the same time, it has provoked a terrible civil war between the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, as well as between different parties and militias inside the ethnic groups, a war of everyone against everyone, as one military expert recently explained to the Wall Street Journal.
The U.S.-trained military and police force is often nothing but an instrument of that civil war. As the December 4 editorial of the Washington Post noted, Iraqi Interior Ministry commando and police units “have been conducting ethnic cleansing,” leaving hundreds of bodies along roadsides and in garbage dumps, some with acid burns or with holes drilled in them, and with many others simply vanishing. “The Baghdad morgue reports that dozens of bodies arrive at the same time on a weekly basis, including scores of corpses with wrists bound by police handcuffs,” wrote the Los Angeles Times.
Of course, the main concern of the Bush administration is neither the civil war nor the terrible toll on the Iraqi population–so long as that war doesn’t threaten U.S. control of Iraqi oil.
Instead, the main problem for Bush is the U.S. population. Every poll indicates that whatever support there was for the war has long ago evaporated. Support is now so low, only the extreme right-wing of the population, those who would support Bush under any circumstance, is still firmly behind it. And even among them, support is eroding.
This change in the population reflects the growing sentiment against the war amongst U.S. troops. With more than 2,100 soldiers dead, and hundreds of thousands more who have been wounded and suffered other terrible traumas, these troops want out of the war and they are leaving the military in droves. Re-enlistments in both the regular army and the National Guard, amongst the professional commissioned and non-commissioned officers and the regular troops, are down sharply. At the same time, the U.S. military is having a harder time finding fresh cannon fodder to pour into Iraq, since the enlistment of new troops is also down. And this has led the military professionals to warn that the worsening war in Iraq is damaging the U.S. military machine.
The growing sentiment against the war obviously has led even many in Bush’s own Republican Party to distance themselves from him. Republicans running for office last November considered Bush so “radioactive,” they didn’t want him anywhere near their campaign. Republicans in Congress have also been pretending to call Bush’s conduct of the war into account, such as the Senate vote of 79-19 calling on Bush to provide quarterly reports on the supposed “transfer of responsibility for Iraq’s security to Iraqis.”
Obviously, the Republicans rushed this resolution through because they did not want to be outdone by Congressman John Murtha, the militaristic hawk with strong ties to the Pentagon, who went public with a call for an “immediate redeployment” of U.S. troops in Iraq.
But they are also responding to the same problem Murtha recognized. Instead of ensuring greater U.S. domination of the region and its resources, the U.S. occupation of Iraq has provoked greater instability, which threatens to spread outside Iraq’s borders. They would like to pull the U.S. troops out of Iraq. Yet, they can’t, without running the risk that this retreat could set in motion the fall of one or more regimes tied to them, starting with the most important, Saudi Arabia. It could destabilize the whole Middle East.
To those who really run the state apparatus, the stakes behind this war are too important to leave in the hands of the Bush administration. One by one, either through indictments and threatened indictments against key Bush advisors, Libby and Rove, or through the removal of several of the architects of the war, starting with Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld’s former deputy, they have besieged the Bush administration in order to try to salvage what they can from the war in Iraq.
Of course, no one should be so naive as to believe that this means an actual change in policy. The U.S. superpower still has its sights set on Iraq, both for its oil riches and its strategic military location in the very heart of the Persian Gulf.
Whatever the change in policy they carry out, it will be with the intent to impose U.S. imperialist domination over the whole region. In one way or another that means more war–which could only further worsen the situation for working people in this country.