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
Jul 23, 2007
The U.S. housing crisis is getting worse.
Millions of working people find themselves in homes with monthly notes that have jumped beyond what they can afford. Many have taken out second and even third mortgages on their homes, in order to pay off a credit card debt mushrooming out of control as wages fell. Mortgage companies and banks claimed to have ways to make the payments easier on the pocket book.
Now it turns out that the banks and lenders roped people in with deceptively low starter payments, which, after a couple of years, automatically doubled or tripled.
No wonder mortgage delinquencies are up and spreading to most areas of the country.
The financial pages calmly report that there could be several million foreclosures in the next couple of years–as if it were nothing. But in fact, this means that millions of families risk losing everything, their house and all their hard-earned savings. Many may find themselves on the street, or doubling up, moving in with other families.
And why? Because the biggest financial companies, banks and even big industrial companies, like GM, decided that they could make a killing in the housing market. Mortgage companies bundled the mortgages together and sold them to investors. They did that over and over, making money coming and going. It was easy money. They didn’t even have to do anything or produce anything.
This flood of Wall Street money is what pushed housing prices up. But it was just a matter of time before the bottom would drop out. Now, everything is starting to go in reverse. Houses are not selling. Prices are dropping. Already homebuilders are saying that it is the worst crisis in 16 years.
And investment funds that specialized in these mortgage bonds are starting to go under. Two funds run by Bear Stearns, an investment company, are already said to be bankrupt. As the New York Times reported, “in round figures, their investment losses total 100%.” And no one knows how many pension funds loaded up on these kinds of risky investments that paid high interest rates in order to make up for the lack of funding from government and business.
Given the huge build-up of debt and loans, this crisis could be just starting.
Wall Street and big companies started this whole mess because they found an easy way to make big, big profits. But you better believe that they do not intend to suffer from it. They will try to make working people–whose only desire was to have a decent place to live–pay for it.
As with everything else in this crazy capitalist society spinning out of control, we are being squeezed by the capitalists’ greed for money. It’s long since been time to say “Enough!”
Jul 23, 2007
In Germany, the production and distribution of electricity has been privatized since 1998. Vattenfall, one of the four companies that control this market, has had repeated problems at two of its nuclear plants.
On June 28, the Krümmel power plant was shut down after a fire led to the release of radioactivity. At another plant in Brunsbüttel, it took the corporation several days to acknowledge a serious breakdown.
These incidents occurred at plants built in 1976 and 1980, that were already past their secure life span. Nonetheless, Vattenfall insists on continuing activity at Brunsbüttel until 2011. And it just increased its electric rates. Profit before all else!
Jul 23, 2007
The world’s largest nuclear power plant was forced to shut down because of damage from a powerful earthquake. Japan’s Kashiwazaki power plant, with seven nuclear reactors, is located about 160 miles from Tokyo. Three of its reactors had already been out of service when a powerful earthquake struck on July 16, causing a fire, radioactive leaks, and the shutdown of the rest of the plant.
Officials of the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) at first claimed that there was little damage to the plant. But in the days that followed they were forced to admit that radioactive water had been released into the sea, that containers holding radioactive waste had tipped over and ruptured, and that radioactive material had been vented to the air outside the plant at least twice, one time for nearly three days before it was stopped. Four days after the quake, company officials admitted there were at least 63 places the plant needed repair. How much there is and what the risk is, the Japanese public certainly doesn’t know. But they have every reason to be distrustful.
In 2005, the Tokyo High Court dismissed a suit brought by residents of Kashiwazaki against the construction of yet another reactor at the plant. The judges declared that a survey by a government institute proved that cracks under the plant “did not amount to a fault and could not cause a quake.” The recent quake proved otherwise.
Another nuclear plant near Tokyo is also located near a fault line. Many earthquake experts are now calling for the immediate closure of this plant and a review of the safety of Japan’s 55 nuclear power plants, none of which were built to withstand an earthquake as powerful as the one at Kashiwazaki.
The irresponsibility of Japanese businesses and government officials is similar to what happened during the nuclear “accident” at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in 1979. The moratorium that was placed on the construction of new nuclear power plants in the U.S. following this incident is about to end. The U.S. government is about to issue licences for the construction of several new nuclear plants in this country for the first time since Three Mile Island.
Will these new plants be safer? Hardly!
Along with licenses, the government will also give the companies reduced liability in case of a nuclear “accident.”
Japan or the U.S.–governments are the same, working in the interests of big business.
Jul 23, 2007
On July 21, 2007, the Federal Emergency Management Agency finally admitted that thousands of trailers it had provided to people who lost their homes in Hurricane Katrina were contaminated with formaldehyde. Shortly after people began living in the trailers, they started complaining of difficulties with the air and some respiratory and other ill effects. But for more than a year, FEMA officials refused to handle complaints that had begun flooding in to them in early 2006.
The Environmental Protection Agency considers formaldehyde a cancer-causing agent in humans. An occupational health and safety engineer testified that the exposure found in the trailers was 400 times the normal limit for year-round exposure to formaldehyde as set by the Center for Disease Control. Some 58,000 people are still without homes and living in these trailers, almost two years after their homes were destroyed.
More than a year ago, workers at FEMA began to push for testing the trailers. But a FEMA lawyer replied last June that the agency should not respond. He wrote, “Do not initiate any testing [on formaldehyde] until we give the OK .... Once you get results, should they indicate some problem, the clock is running on our duty to respond to them.”
In other words, FEMA was not searching to protect the people already victimized by Katrina. It wanted only to protect the profits of the companies who built and provided the trailers.
Jul 23, 2007
On July 18, a steam pipe exploded under a crowded street in Manhattan. A massive eruption of steam, water, mud, asbestos and other debris tore through the pavement, killing one person and injuring 41 others.
The loud explosion, the darkening of the sky, the debris and soot falling on the streets made people think New York was encountering another terrorist attack like 9/11. Not to worry, said New York Mayor Michael Bloomerg, rushing to calm people, “There is no reason to believe whatsoever that this is anything other than a failure of our infrastructure.”
For people who live and work above a 105-mile network of steam pipes, aged and neglected, prone to explode any given day, it wasn’t much consolation!
The pipe that burst was installed 83 years ago and clearly hasn’t been repaired for decades. The proof is that it was still wrapped in asbestos. Since a ban in the mid-1970s, asbestos on pipes is replaced every time a pipe or the street over it is repaired.
Many of New York’s steam pipes, which provide both heating and cooling to residential and commercial buildings, are even older than the one that burst. The system is operated by Consolidated Edison (Con Ed), which also provides electricity to New York. After major blackouts in 2003 and 2006, Con Ed was criticized in a Public Service Commission report for not maintaining its power system properly.
The same is certainly true for its steam system. Steam leaks are a daily occurrence in the streets of Manhattan, and explosions are not so rare either. One in 1989 killed three people, and there have been many others since then. If these explosions don’t always make the national news, it’s only because they are so ordinary.
A number of other major U.S. cities, including Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, have similar steam pipe systems. And just as in New York, many parts of these pipe systems are not only past their expected life, but also very poorly maintained. A pipe explosion near the White House in Washington in 2004, for example, badly injured two workers.
What about cities that don’t have steam pipes–are they any safer? Not at all–because the infrastructure is crumbling in every city. What big U.S. city in recent years has not experienced a power failure? And if not that, then it’s pavements collapsing under rain and snow, levies caving in during storms, roads and bridges buckling in the heat ... you name it.
But it’s not heat, rain, snow, storms or earthquakes–these known, predictable natural events–that cause the failure of the infrastructure. It’s the lack of maintenance. Engineers and maintenance workers have certainly been warning of the dangers of such negligence. But in their endless drive to cut costs and maximize profits, companies running the different parts of the infrastructure have constantly ignored these warnings. And government officials at every level have let them get away with it.
Foreign-bred terrorism? No, the biggest danger hanging over our heads is made right here in the U.S., and brought to you by the capitalist system. It’s the ticking time bomb that the aging, neglected U.S. infrastructure has become.
Jul 23, 2007
An education report “Diplomas Count: Ready for What?” just came out, examining how many students are graduating from high school. While based on the 2003-2004 school year, the overall tendency is very much up-to-date. The study looked at the 50 largest school districts in the U.S. and ranked them according to graduation rates–to be precise, how many finished grades nine through twelve in four years.
The Baltimore Sun paper and local TV bragged about the study’s results in three Maryland districts: Baltimore County ranked 4th best with a graduation rate of 81%, Montgomery County came in 6th with an 80% rate, and Anne Arundel County ranked 12th with a 75% rate.
True, these rates are somewhat higher compared to the national average of a 70% graduation rate. But let’s get some realistic perspective. Even in Maryland’s two highest graduation districts, one out of five students do not graduate; and one out of four doesn’t graduate in Anne Arundel County. Is this something to crow about? And there was no mention of Baltimore City, where two out of three students don’t finish high school on time.
Baltimore City has plenty of company among urban districts. In Chicago and Philadelphia, only half graduate on time. In Los Angeles and New York City, somewhat less than half graduate. In Cleveland, two out of three don’t graduate. Detroit has the lowest rate: three out of four young people don’t graduate.
What about the overall national graduation rate of 70%, an appalling rate for the richest country in the world. In the 1990’s there was a steady improvement in graduation rates. But not in these last few years. Since 2002 the rate has remained the same. Things are not getting any better.
Breaking down the rates, there are no big surprises. Poverty and discrimination rear their heads in education, as throughout the society. The lowest graduation rate is among American Indians, with less than half graduating; then come Black, and then Hispanic students, with slightly more than half graduating on time.
What this report shows is not something to clap your hands about. Rather the opposite. A decent, exciting education in well-kept-up buildings, with science, world geography, math, literature, the arts, could and should be available to all young people. Education is one of the most important measures of the well-being of society and its future. The high drop-out rate of the next generation of working-class and even some parts of middle-class youth, tells us all we need to know about the distorted priorities set by the policy makers of this country.
Jul 23, 2007
The UAW International cut a deal with GM aimed at getting rid of layoff protection. Skilled trade workers in Flint and Lansing who have been in the Job Bank because GM closed so many plants there formally were given a choice: take a buy-out, shift to another trade or go on the line in Flint or Lansing if there’s an opening–or move to another plant hundreds of miles away. In reality, their only choice, if they want to keep their job, is to uproot their family and to lose their home. That’s because there are no jobs in Flint and Lansing and the UAW leadership agreed to lift restrictions preventing GM from requiring laid-off workers to take jobs more than driving distance away from their home.
What kind of union leadership gives up a major benefit–without a vote of the workers affected and without a fight?! The same kind that will try to push similar concessions in the 2007 contract.
Jul 23, 2007
On July 20, the United Auto Workers (UAW) leaders officially began this year’s Big Three contract negotiations. The contract deadline is September 14.
But the companies have already been doing their negotiating for a long time. While the workers have been manufacturing millions of vehicles, the bosses have been manufacturing all manner of lies with smoke and mirrors. In executives’ interviews, in the reports of their bankers and stock analysts, in endless drivel from corporate-owned media, the auto companies have waged a long campaign of scare stories, all calculated to convince workers that there is no choice but to give concessions in this contract.
The companies hide their true financial condition and resources in order to pretend that their condition is shaky, bankruptcies are near, and workers must “help out” or else risk losing all their jobs. What lies! There is no real distress in the gold-and-platinum-plated corporate world.
To make matters worse, many of the top UAW officers repeat company stories and give the impression that they, too, believe the workers have little choice but to give concessions. For example, just before the negotiations opened, a UAW vice-president said that Ford might go bankrupt in a few years if something wasn’t done.
The entire show is to convince workers to go along with concessions instead of fighting back.
Workers are being told to look at Delphi. Delphi went “bankrupt,” and workers had to take wage cuts of 50%! So Ford, GM and Chrysler workers will be told to be glad their sacrifices won’t be that big.
Or, workers will be told to look at Dana. Dana went “bankrupt,” and workers had to take a medical-care VEBA that is inadequately funded. So Ford, GM and Chrysler workers will be told to be glad to accept a better-funded VEBA.
But even if the bosses and their partners are trying hard to convince workers to give up some wages and some benefits, there remain many workers who are not at all convinced. The final Delphi contract was rejected by a third of the Delphi workers and by most of those who weren’t temporaries. And earlier, after health-care concessions against Big Three retirees were rejected by 49.9% of Ford workers, the deal was not even brought to a vote at Chrysler.
Workers’ opposition is far under-reported in the corporate media. But it exists, it exists in large numbers, and when these workers begin to express their determination to resist concessions, they can draw behind them others. The large majority have reason to fight. Auto workers have given up far too much already.
Jul 23, 2007
The auto companies say they are “bleeding cash” and are near bankruptcy.
But they’re not going to allow workers a close look at the books! Because books can be made to say anything, as Enron’s thieves proved. For instance:
The companies say they have unfunded pension liabilities. What they don’t say is that this figure includes the multimillion-dollar pensions promised to their executives. The workers’ part of the pension funds is funded and in fact over-funded! It’s the executives’ part that is kept unfunded for tax purposes. They want workers to sacrifice to pay for executives’ pensions!
The companies say they are losing money every quarter. What they don’t say is that more than half those “book” losses are from estimated–not real–costs they pretend they will have in the future, from closing plants and restructuring. What they also don’t say is that by moving their actual profits to other accounts, they can show “book” losses in manufacturing. For example, the profits they make on selling or leasing cars can be shown in the books of Ford Credit or GMAC or Chrysler Financial accounts!
The companies also use their cash to establish mountains of debt from periodically buying and selling other companies. GM will buy Daewoo for a while and then sell it off. Ford will buy Aston Martin and Land Rover for a while and then sell them off. Daimler will buy Chrysler for a while and then try to sell it off. Each step creates many millions of dollars in fees and interest for bankers, executives and lawyers–not to mention stock splits, stock buy-ups and extra dividends for high-roller investors. But the debt drains resources from the core companies, appearing as massive liabilities on the books. The manufacturing companies are used as mere funnels to skim every possible dollar–and then claim poverty, particularly before contract negotiations.
The companies say their health-care obligations for retirees are too high. What they don’t say is that instead of keeping up with the investments needed year by year to keep these insurance funds healthy, the companies deliberately took the money and paid oversize dividends to big stockholders. Between 1994 and 1999, for example, the Big 3 made 92 BILLION DOLLARS in profit. Much of this was then paid out in stock repurchase programs, extra dividends and other means of conveying this money to Wall Street and other investors–instead of using a small part of that money to guarantee their contract with workers and retirees.
The companies say their labor costs are too high. Whatpercentage of a car’s price is labor? Only 8.4% and that includes white collar labor! The companies want us to believe that 91.6% of the rest of the car’s price is completely necessary, completely without waste, completely without room to cut, and completely without any fault on the part of the bosses!
Or consider that profits on a $35,000 vehicle can run between $10,000 and $15,000. That’s over 30% profit right there! The companies could settle for 20% and fully fund the workers’ wages and insurances and still have money left over.
Finally, the UAW itself calculates that the average auto worker is now working so hard that he or she creates $206 of additional value every single hour worked! The companies claim they pay $75 an hour in wages and benefits–and that’s a lie–but even if it were true still it would mean they have $131 an hour left for themselves and wealthy investors.
No, the companies are not poor, neither are workers’ wages and benefits too high. The fact is that the companies want to take still more money from the workers’ labor to hand it over to wealthy executives, bankers and stockholders.
There’s no reason for workers to give them one cent of that money. We work too hard for it, to give it away!
Jul 23, 2007
At a UAW meeting on June 21 in Marion, OH, a GM retiree spoke up to Gettelfinger. The retiree said the UAW should preserve benefits.
Gettelfinger said to him: “Are you familiar with the steel industry? Are you familiar with the airline industry? Will you come back to me if they go bankrupt and you lose your health care and a portion of your pension? Will you come back to me and tell me what a great leader I was?”
What a rewrite of history! In the airline and steel industry, union leaders played it “safe.” Steel and airline unions gave up concessions. Guess what happened? Steel and airline companies honored the workers’ sacrifices by filing for bankruptcy after concessions! The only thing greedy corporations respect is a well organized fight.
Jul 23, 2007
Cerberus bought Chrysler after a bidding war against other investment groups. The same thing happened when Cerberus and others were fighting over Delphi. And other auto supply companies are being fought over by billionaires like Wilbur Ross.
Why is it that all these wealthy vultures are fighting to see who will own auto companies that are supposedly losing money and declaring bankruptcy? Why would smart businessmen be so desperate to own money-losing operations?
The answer is that these auto corporations are not really hurting like we are told. The bidding wars prove that these companies are in a position to be very profitable. All the claims of poverty and bankruptcy are just a scam to fool the workers into surrendering and giving up concessions.
Jul 23, 2007
At Dana Corp., the UAW agreed to so-called union control of all retiree healthcare and all long-term disability. These changes will affect past, present and future retirees. The media say that Dana Corp. is now the example for the whole auto industry.
Dana will contribute only 71% of the liability. That means a 29% cut in money available for retiree healthcare and disability.
What happens to that 29 cents on the dollar? The company keeps it!
It’s a good deal for Dana Corp. but an awful deal for workers.
Jul 23, 2007
The auto companies want workers to agree to a different two-tier pay scale. They want it set up so new hires get a lower pay that will stop at a low level and NEVER CATCH UP.
In 2003, top UAW leaders told Delphi workers that this kind of low two-tier deal would eventually help new workers catch up.
Now we see that was a lie. The new Delphi contract brings the higher paid workers DOWN to the same low level as the new hires.
When the bosses divide us up, into higher and lower pay levels, they have only one reason–to bring EVERYONE to the BOTTOM LEVEL sooner or later.
Don’t let them even try it.
Jul 23, 2007
It is sickening how the newspapers constantly talk about what the companies “need” in the upcoming negotiations. These “liabilities” they say they need to dump are people–people who have worked their whole lives and deserve the pensions and health care they’ve earned with their blood and sweat.
How about what workers need, with the prices of gas and college education and everything else constantly on the rise?
Workers “need” a bigger share of the wealth they create!
Jul 23, 2007
The following two articles were translated from the May 14 issue of Le Pouvoir aux Travailleurs (Workers Power), a publication put out by comrades in the African Union of Internationalist Communist Workers.
The Spanish government offered Senegal 20 gazelles of the Dorcas species to populate a wild animal reserve near the city of Saint Louis, Senegal. A Spanish army plane was specially chartered to transport these animals. This takes place at the same time that Spanish planes regularly shuttle between the Canary Islands and Saint Louis expelling clandestine Senegalese immigrants.
It’s indecent to see gazelles better treated than humans.
The Spanish army and the Senegalese authorities increased joint police controls along the Senegalese coast to prevent immigration of African nationals to Spain’s Canary Islands. A boat ready to transport 140 Africans of different nationalities from the country of Guinea-Bissau was intercepted before it had even gone to sea. The majority were arrested and detained in a military camp. This happened last April 30. But ten days later, a Senegalese newspaper said that 50 Senegalese were still detained in the Guinea-Bissau camp. The Senegalese authorities aren’t in a hurry to get them out. The authorities want to show Spain, and all the European countries affected by immigration, that they can count on Senegal to struggle against this type of immigration and by extending the period in prison, they pretend they can deter others from trying. Of course, they expect a nice cash payment in exchange for their collaboration.
Because it’s become more difficult to leave Senegal or Mauritania, those trying to emigrate take more risks while making a longer crossing. They leave further away to escape the coast guard’s patrols. There are more and more deaths due to makeshift boats sinking, while the planes coming back to the city of Saint Louis transporting those who failed in their attempts are always full.
But no barriers can stop the migration of poor people who are driven to leave by hunger and misery.
Jul 23, 2007
Despite protests by thousands of people, the city council of Waukegan, Illinois, passed a law assigning two local police officers to work with federal authorities on deportation.
Even if two cops means very little, this measure is a threat hanging over the heads of all undocumented workers. And it’s one of many similar measures introduced in cities and states across the country following the failure of federal immigration law in the Congress.
The bills proposed in Congress, supported by the majority of Democrats in alliance with Bush and the Republican leadership, had two aspects, both aimed at keeping immigrants without papers in a subservient position. One was a further crackdown. The other aspect of the proposed laws was the offer of so-called “legal” papers to only a part of the undocumented immigrants, papers so limited that immigrants in fact could have no real legal rights for at least 13 years, if not many more. It also would have driven in a wedge, dividing immigrant workers themselves.
With the failure of this Congressional legislation, the focus of attacks on undocumented immigrants has shifted to the states and local areas. Laws have already been passed in Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma and Rhode Island, among other places.
In Mamaroneck, New York, the city used checkpoints and ticketing to harass day laborers. Similar attacks on day laborers are occurring in many towns. The city of Freehold, NY began fining day laborers seeking work in public.
None of these towns bothered to fine those employers who hire day laborers for less than the minimum wage–or who work them, but then don’t pay! The point of these laws is not to stop such bosses–it’s to harass and scare the workers.
Anti-immigrant laws are an attack on all workers. When workers are fearful that anything they do can lead to deportation, it’s harder for them to stand up for their rights, to fight against low wages and horrible working conditions. And when one part of the working class is kept in this kind of semi-servitude, every part of the working class can more easily be attacked.
Recently, the state of Alabama passed a law aimed at immigrants, requiring people getting Medicaid for their children produce a birth certificate or other proof of citizenship. The effect was to kick vast numbers of poor people off Medicaid–people who often never got a birth certificate, or can’t find it, and can’t afford to get another one, especially if they were born elsewhere. Sixty% of those kicked off were black and 38% white, while only 2% were Latino.
It’s in the interest of all workers to strongly oppose all these attacks on immigrant workers.
Jul 23, 2007
On July 16, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles delayed the execution of Troy Davis for 90 days so he could present evidence in a hearing asking to have his death sentence commuted.
Ever since 1989, when Davis was arrested for killing a Savannah, Georgia police officer, he has maintained his innocence. The police found not one piece of material evidence against him. Seven of the nine prosecution witnesses who implicated Davis in the original trial have since recanted their testimony. Most say the police pressured or threatened them with criminal charges if they didn’t testify against Davis. Nine people now say that one of the two witnesses who has not recanted is actually responsible for the murder.
Nonetheless, the appeals courts have refused to grant Davis a new trial. In 1996, in the name of fighting terrorism, Congress had passed and President Clinton signed legislation limiting when in the appeals process a prisoner can introduce new evidence of his innocence. Effectively Davis was told it didn’t matter if he was innocent, it was too late to bring in new evidence–even if he didn’t know about it at the time of his trial. The law virtually guarantees that many will be executed for crimes they did not commit.
Davis today has support from a wide range of organizations and people running from Amnesty International to people in the community to Congressman John Lewis to William Sessions, former head of the FBI.
But even with all this, it’s not sure Davis won’t be executed. He needs more support from all those unwilling to see such a travesty of “justice.” As do the thousands of other prisoners on death row, who have also been denied the right to present new evidence of their innocence.
Jul 23, 2007
On Monday July 16, ABC News aired parts of a documentary “Inside the Surge” made by British photographer Sean Smith. The whole film had already been shown on British TV. Smith had just spent two weeks with U.S. soldiers in Baghdad.
These infantry soldiers go out for six hours on, six hours off, day after day after day, for 15 months. They see some of their buddies killed every week.
And they go wild. They shoot off huge rounds in Iraqi neighborhoods, not knowing who is their enemy. This brief film footage shows the troops killing a taxi driver who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. They round up all the men in the surrounding houses, sending them off to prison, where they expect to be tortured.
An old lady whose house they storm into cries, “God send us peace in Iraq. Get out of my house. I am paralyzed with fear.” Why would she not be afraid when all the men in her family are in danger and the soldiers end up dragging the dead taxi driver into her yard.
We see small parts of what the U.S. military is wreaking on the Iraqi population: an infant bleeding from a gunshot wound, a youngster covered with shrapnel, a man bleeding and burned.
And we see the horror that U.S. troops are caught in, as they fear death at every corner. An armored car in which six U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter were burned to death was shown in the film. A woman wrote, “I am the mother of the driver of that tank that burned... My son was 19 years old and could see the futility of the invasion and occupation and knew this war will never be won.”
The film and photographs accompanying it have been seen by hundreds of thousands of viewers, using web sites like Youtube.com, where the video can be seen. Viewer responses were also quite pointed. One wife wrote, “It’s about time that the media started to report the struggles our soldiers face over there every day. The mental and physical toll this is taking on our troops and their families cannot be measured.”
One soldier featured in the film bitterly summed up the U.S. war in Iraq: “I challenge anyone in Congress to do my rotation.... I’ll do 15 more months–they don’t even have to give me extra pay–if any politician or the president will come ride with me on my rotation,” every single day.
After more than four years of pretending the U.S. was carrying out an antiseptic and humane war in Iraq, a major U.S. media has finally shown a small slice of the war as it is. And even then, they cut the film.
But burying this war behind the mountains of propaganda put out every day to justify it will not make the war go away–neither for the Iraqis, nor the U.S. troops, nor their families.
Jul 23, 2007
Pakistan’s Supreme Court overturned the suspension of the country’s chief justice by President Pervez Musharraf. This is the latest blow for the dictator, who has experienced several political setbacks lately.
Musharraf’s dismissal of the chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, last spring was an obvious attempt by the dictator to ease his legal maneuvering into another term as president. So, the Supreme Court’s siding with Chaudhry is probably a sign that Musharraf may not get the legislative support he needs to get himself reelected.
In any event, the struggle between Musharraf and Chaudhry proved to be more than a legal battle. Whether Chaudhry intended it or not, by challenging his dismissal he became a symbol for the opposition to Musharraf’s regime. There were large demonstrations in support of Chaudhry, one of which last May led to street clashes, leaving 39 dead. Government repression followed, as opposition politicians were arrested and cable transmissions of some private TV stations were blocked. But that prompted even bigger protests, and the government saw itself forced to rescind the repressive measures–which probably also encouraged the Supreme Court to rule against the dictator.
All this coincided with another campaign by Musharraf that seems to have backfired on him. After a weeks-long siege, Musharraf decided last week to raid a mosque in the capital city of Islamabad, where pro-Taliban militants were holed up. The taking of the mosque resulted in more than 50 deaths, and was followed by retaliatory attacks. A series of bombings aimed at army and police forces in different parts of the country killed more than 100 people. This also meant an end to Musharraf’s efforts to renew a truce with the Taliban, who are based on both sides of the mountainous border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The truce was initially supported by the U.S., but now the Bush administration seems to have already made an about-turn in strategy. A recent U.S. intelligence report called the truce a mistake which has allowed the Taliban and Al Qaeda to gather strength.
Has the U.S. already decided to drop Musharraf because of the continued weakening of the dictator’s control over Pakistan? Possibly, which may mean that Musharraf’s days in power are numbered. But Musharraf’s possible fall from power will not necessarily mean an end to dictatorial regimes in Pakistan. Nor does it seem that things will get better for Pakistani workers and poor.
To the contrary. Last week, White House spokesman Tony Snow said that, now that the truce strategy has failed, U.S. military strikes within Pakistan could not be ruled out. What does that statement sound like, if not a possible spreading of the Afghanistan war, which has been a disaster for Afghan people, to neighboring Pakistan, which is five times more populous than Afghanistan?
Only a year ago Musharraf visited Washington and was praised by Bush for being a staunch ally in the “war on terrorism,” which is nothing but a euphemism for extending U.S. military control over more parts of the world. Musharraf has been doing part of the dirty work for the U.S., by helping the U.S. attack Afghanistan and by trying to keep the lid on the seething popular anger in Pakistan against U.S. imperialism.
So if Musharraf goes, he’ll be just another name in a long list of dictators who have been local henchmen for the U.S., only to be tossed away by their imperialist Big Brother. If he’s lucky, he may escape the fate of another such henchman, Saddam Hussein.