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
Apr 14, 2008
On Friday, April 11, the stock market dropped 256 points, after General Electric announced its profits were “lower than expectations.”
GE did make money, however–an enormous amount: over four billion dollars profit in just three months. But it wasn’t enough. GE wanted more.
But since GE, this behemoth with tentacles throughout the economy, made only 4.3 billion, instead of 4.5 billion, Wall Street panicked. Not enough profit, not enough profit–you could practically hear them moaning all the way out to L.A.
Corporations have been rolling up record profits year after year, decade after decade, building up enormous wealth, rewarding executives with tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses every single year, buying up other companies, enriching their already very rich stockholders.
Where did they get all of it, those vast sums of money? GE, itself, is a trust, a company that owns other companies that produce a vast range of products and services–light bulbs and lighting equipment, refrigerators, stoves, jet engines, nuclear reactors, medical equipment, silicone and plastics, not to mention the entertainment and news that Universal Studios and NBC churn out. It’s all that, plus an investment bank, GE Capital, which isn’t doing so well these days because, like all the other big financial interests on Wall Street, it got stung in the mortgage swindle they were all running.
Every other big company has been running the same scam. The auto companies, which have been telling workers for years they were making no money, made enough out of production to hand over hundreds of billions to GMAC and Ford Motor Credit. And those big financial giants had enough to join the mortgage speculation game.
They all did it–and they all got caught in their own scam. Today, they are coming back to bail themselves out by starting an enormous offensive against the working class, pushing to cut jobs, cut wages, telling us they have no choice, since they aren’t doing well.
When monster companies say they’re not doing so well, watch out! They’re scheming, trying to extort still more wealth from the workers who produce all their products. They want a double shot of cash to clear their heads and straighten out the financial mess they made for themselves.
Sure, they’re going to tell us they need our help to save the company–or even the country. Don’t believe it. They want to steal from us to save their own big financial holdings.
The big financial operators made the mess. Let them pay for it. Let them lose some profit. Let them lose their shirts. But don’t let them come back, trying to push fewer workers into putting out more production. Don’t let them think we will give up our wages so they can have still more profit.
We’re not at the end of the mess these swindlers created. We’re barely only at the beginning. If we don’t want to get dragged down into their hell, don’t give in to their blackmail.
Apr 14, 2008
On March 31, four people were killed in broad daylight in two shootings within a mile from each other in East Los Angeles. Two car salesmen, 50 and 62 year-old grandfathers, were shot execution style by gunmen who escaped in two stolen cars. About 20 minutes later, two 22-year-old men were shot to death in the street about ten blocks away.
Residents of this old, relatively stable working-class neighborhood were certainly shocked by the brutality of the killings, but not surprised it had happened. Only two weeks before, on March 16, a 52-year-old factory worker burned to death after being set on fire in the street–possibly because of the money he owed to loan sharks. Residents agreed that the gruesome nature of the crime was intended to terrorize people.
Gang violence against the population is an everyday affair in L.A.’s working-class neighborhoods. On April 2, for example, two people were shot in the South Robertson area, only two days after an anti-gang rally in the neighborhood.
Unable to defend their claims about violent crime declining any longer, L.A. city and police officials now call for even more cops and neighborhood sweeps. Of course, it makes the situation worse, when part of the young are turning on people like themselves, people they have gone to school with, people who are their neighbors, or even family members.
What we face in our neighborhoods is a deep-seated social problem. Jobs disappear–especially those jobs that pay a wage someone can live on–and youth end up in gangs. But this grinding up of working class communities is one more consequence of the economic crisis today. In other words, residents come under attack–by street gangs as well as the armed gangs in blue.
And the social dissolution that has led to these gangs will be overcome only when workers fight for the right for a job for everyone–a decent paying job.
Apr 14, 2008
American Airlines pulled over 300 planes out of service for inspections last week, cancelling over 3,200 fights between Tuesday and Saturday.
The 300 airplanes are MD-80s, some of the oldest planes still flying. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it found wiring problems that could lead to fraying and fires in the right rear wheel wells. All these planes were pulled to check and fix that one problem.
The American Airlines cancellations last week were supposed to show that the FAA was cracking down on safety problems. But what it really highlighted was how much the FAA has let the airlines get away with. The only reason these planes were inspected and the problems checked was that a few FAA inspectors kicked up a fuss.
After two inspectors found that Southwest Airlines planes with cracks in their fuselages were being allowed to fly by the FAA, the inspectors went public. Eventually, the FAA fined Southwest and ordered inspections of all its aircraft. Forty-six Southwest planes were temporarily grounded for inspections. United and Delta were also forced to ground planes for inspections and maintenance.
There is plenty of reason to be worried. The average age of the airline fleet is older and older, and the companies don’t spend money to buy new ones. And the older the airlines’ fleet becomes, the more maintenance the planes need on a regular basis.
Yet the FAA has been cutting back on its inspections. More maintenance work has been contracted out by the airlines. In 2006, over two-thirds of it was outsourced to other companies. That outsourced work is NOT inspected by the FAA.
Not only that, but the FAA is now talking about moving even further toward having airlines regulate themselves!
As one of those FAA whistle-blowers said, this shows “how much in bed the FAA really is with the carriers.”
As a result, there is a smaller and smaller margin of safety for the planes. In other words, the decaying condition of the airplanes is no different than what is happening to the rest of country’s aging infrastructure–a problem that was highlighted by the collapse of a bridge in Minnesota last year and the failure of the levees in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.
Apr 14, 2008
Citigroup has lost billions of dollars in the subprime mortgage mess. But its executives made sure they were well rewarded anyway.
Although the former chief exec resigned in November as all the bad news came out, he didn’t leave empty-handed. One newspaper reported that Charles Prince had made 110 million dollars in the three years he headed the company. His exit package was worth 30 million dollars in stock, with a pension each year of 1.7 million, and he got an office, an assistant and a car and driver.
The new chief executive, Vikram Pandit, will do nicely as well. He is supposed to get 216 million dollars for last year and this year.
Although Citigroup’s stock price plunged in half, the company still gave out very nice year-end bonuses: a three million-dollar bonus to the finance chief; two million dollars to the chairman and 14 million for the chief financial officer.
With all the bad news, did these execs give back their bonuses after the poor results rolled in? Ha! Ha!
No, in January, Citigroup announced up to 24,000 layoffs–and raised interest rates on consumer loans!
Workers and consumers are paying for this executive greed.
Apr 14, 2008
In March, Washington D.C.’s mayor and police chief jointly announced a program called “Safe Homes.” They tried to push it as an answer to the horrible crime problems in three of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, and specifically as a way to get guns out of the hands of young people.
They said police would go door-to-door carrying out searches of people’s homes for guns and drugs. Of course, the police tried to sweeten the move, by saying they would first ask residents’ permission. And they claimed that if they found any drugs or guns, they wouldn’t prosecute anyone–unless the gun was found to have been used in the commission of a crime.
Needless to say, their proposal was met with suspicion, skepticism and especially outrage.
For who would trust the police, let them into their house and allow them to do whatever they want? Who knows what they would do? Or who they might shoot? And who knows what the police mean when they say they will ask permission? What will they do if they don’t get permission? Will they find an excuse in order to come back and make an example of that family?
No, the “Safe Homes” program is little more than a thinly disguised version of what the U.S. military is doing in Iraq–carrying out door-to-door searches in order to terrorize the population. And the police and city officials are trying to use the fear some people have of poor young people–even their own children–as a way to get people to go along with this terror
And the federal government is no exception. They are apparently pushing “Safe Homes” programs all over the country. One is supposed to be in the works for Philadelphia. And police and local authorities in Boston recently tried to introduce one–so far with the same reactions.
People don’t want it. And for good reason.
Apr 14, 2008
Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, Schools Superintendent Arne Duncan and other elected officials spoke at a rally April 1st before hundreds of students in downtown Chicago. They denounced the growing gun violence and crime, especially by young people, highlighted by the 23 public school students killed at or near schools. As usual, the politicians then called for stricter gun control laws and more police.
These politicians are shameless. They cut spending on schools, health care, mass transit, after-school programs, gyms, parks, summer job programs. They worked ceaselessly to drain the working class and poor communities of resources and money, in order to hand it over to big business in the form of ever more tax breaks and subsidies.
They have the nerve to act shocked that increased despair and demoralization among young people has led to more violent crime. No, getting more cops or more gun laws will not reduce crime. But it will beef up the biggest violent gang in the city–the gang that wears a uniform.
Yes, we need rallies and protests, but our own and not ones led by these political clowns.
Apr 14, 2008
Legislative leaders worked with Governor O’Malley during the final days of the session that ended on April 7 to confiscate half of 400 million dollars in seed money set aside to finance retiree health benefits in the future. These top state officials claim they needed this money to balance the state budget for the coming year.
Of course, state officials had plenty of money for other things. For example, they decided not to tax computer services, used primarily by businesses. State officials had already projected that this tax would bring in 200 million dollars in the coming year. They raided the retirees’ health care fund for the same amount of money.
It couldn’t be clearer. The next step will be for Maryland’s top politicians and state officials to claim the state doesn’t have money to pay for the health care benefits of both active and retired state workers.
State workers better watch out. These top politicians–all of whom are Democrats–may claim to be the workers’ friends. But they’ll use every trick in the book to take every penny they can from the workers and hand it over to big business.
Apr 14, 2008
Property owners and their developers in Washington D.C. have emptied more than 200 apartment buildings of thousands of tenants over the last four years. They have made millions of dollars doing it.
According to the Washington Post, landlords engaged in a range of dirty tricks to get rid of tenants. Tenants often had to put up with multiple violations–like a lack of heat or water or electricity. When threats or lies or eviction notices didn’t get them out, some property companies accused tenants–falsely–of not paying rent and took them to court. Of course, tenants in these rent-controlled apartments tended to be low-wage working people lacking money to hire a lawyer to defend themselves in court.
In at least two of the cases discussed in the newspaper, arson destroyed an apartment building just as the landlord was trying to evict the last few tenants. So far, no one was prosecuted for these crimes.
In the 1980s, the Washington D.C. City Council passed rent control laws that they claimed would protect tenants. Of course, enforcement of building codes remained lax, to say the least. And the city council gave landlords a special exemption: if a building was already empty, then the landlords would pay no fees to convert from apartments to condos.
So the faster a property deteriorated, the larger the rats, the quicker that tenants took payments the landlords offered them to get out. One property manager was paid a fee for every apartment he emptied. In six months, he earned $75,000 by “clearing” 30 apartments.
Washington D.C. landlords have gained at least 300 million dollars by emptying apartments with lower rents and turning them into condos. They have sold some condos for a million dollars apiece.
On March 12, fire destroyed an apartment building in an area becoming more upscale. It was the largest D.C. residential fire in over 30 years. Fortunately, no one was killed.
It was hardly a coincidence that tenants in this building had been fighting the owner for years over lack of heat or electricity or workable plumbing.
Arson, threats, cutting off services–they’re all just another method of doing business–and very profitable at that.
Apr 14, 2008
In Western countries, the increase in prices over the last several months has reduced the living standards of the working class. But in the world’s poorer countries, food price increases have become a horrible social catastrophe.
Between 2006 and 2007, the price of basic foods increased by 27%. Recently, food prices have gone up even faster and higher. The price of wheat has increased more than 120%. Prices for rice, soybeans and corn have not stopped climbing.
There are more than 70 million people starving to death around the globe. The United Nations world food program has asked for another 500 million dollars to provide them some food aid. Since June of 2007, the foods purchased by this organization have increased 55%. Food prices have already risen another 20% since the UN made its request for more aid.
What causes these price increases that throw millions of people living in poor neighborhoods out into the street? Some journalists have the nerve to say that the poor eat too much! They demand too much food, which pushes up the prices, say those who blame the poor. It’s simple! If the poor would just keep starving to death, there would be no problem.
So readers may shake their heads thinking they are reading wrong, when the editors of Le Monde write, "In only a few years, hundreds of millions of people who previously survived on almost nothing have now become big consumers"! Another journalist wrote that in China “people have developed an appetite for meat.” By this logic, the Chinese ate less meat during the previous decades because they lacked an “appetite”!
But the disgusting journalists who blame the poor for the increase in food prices are largely silent about the role played by food speculators. There is already a lot of speculation on agricultural commodities in ordinary times. But during a financial crisis a lot of big capitalists are searching for deals on which they can make profits. Once the price of food commodities began to rise, a lot more capitalists jumped in. For example, in London, from January to February, the number of deals involving basic food items jumped by at least 65% compared to the same period in 2007.
Just as the speculators once bet on rising prices for houses or start-up Internet companies, they now focus more and more on food products. More precisely, they are betting on the pieces of paper, on the “commodity options” that they buy and then resell, forcing a rise in prices. Financial journals have articles about what a remarkable opportunity rice and all basic grains are for investors.
So the speculators have pushed up the price of rice from $420 a ton to $570 over the last six months on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and from $330 to $470 a ton on the Bangkok exchange. On one single day in March, the price of rice rose 31%!
This dizzy increase in food prices is a catastrophe with two faces: an abhorrent enrichment for some, and a hideous famine for millions of others.
Apr 14, 2008
In this past week, protests over high food prices and low wages continued in Ghasl al-Mahalla, a northern industrial city, leaving two people dead after clashes with police. In Mahalla, home to the Middle East’s largest textile factory, there have been a series of strikes over the last year.
This article is about Egypt–but it could be about Haiti, India, Ivory Coast, Mozambique... it could be about dozens and dozens of countries–for in the last several weeks, there have been fights around the world, protesting the astronomical increases in food and energy costs.
Since the beginning of 2008, the prices of basic foods have increased enormously in Egypt. A large part of the population has been forced to reduce their consumption, and have had to rely more heavily on bread as their only food.
And even the price of bread has exploded, due to the increased price of flour. Millions of Egyptians with low incomes have to wait in long lines in front of the bakeries that still sell bread at state subsidized prices.
So at 6:00 a.m., mothers, children, and workers wait in long lines just to obtain this bread. And often there isn’t enough bread, resulting in shoving and conflicts in the lines. An estimated 15 people have been killed in different regions of the country during fights that have broken out over bread.
When there is no subsidy, the bread is sold at 10 to 12 times the state-subsidized price. U.N. observers state the average price of food has doubled in the last three months. The wages of millions of Egyptians equal about $36 a month. That won’t cover the cost of a family’s housing, transportation and food. Much of the population struggles just to survive.
Demonstrations are more and more frequent. In February, thousands of textile workers gathered in Ghasl al-Mahalla, north of Cairo, to protest the increase in basic food prices and to demand that the minimum wage go up to $216 a month. Even the official union federation tied to the government has demanded an increase in the minimum wage, to $150 a month.
In December, workers in tax offices held a sit-in to demand that their wages be increased to $216. And doctors, whose base salary is just $20 a month, demanded a new minimum of $100.
The only response from Prime Minister Nazif was to declare that strikes were illegal in Egypt. President Mubarak called on the army to guard the distribution of bread.
The rich parasites surrounding the Mubarak family, holding government positions or heading up companies, need to be reminded of the hunger riots that broke out in 1977. Then President Anwar el-Sadat, under pressure from the International Monetary Fund, announced an end to state-subsidized food prices. Rioters rapidly forced him to change his decision.
Apr 14, 2008
Worldwide protests against Chinese repression in Tibet have encompassed the Olympic Games. Starting in Athens, then moving to Rome, Paris, London and San Francisco, protesters interrupted the carrying of the Olympic torch through crowds in those cities.
These protests grew out of earlier demonstrations in Tibet on March 13. Thousands of Tibetans were commemorating the date on which the Dalai Lama, leader of Tibetan Buddhists, was forced into exile by the Chinese government 49 years earlier, in 1959. The police force, dominated by the Chinese in Tibet, fired into the crowd, killing dozens. Many more were wounded and arrested.
Then as now, the Dalai Lama claims to be the political and religious leader of Tibet, which is officially a province of the People’s Republic of China. In 1949 when Mao Zedong came to power, China emerged from decades of chaos, civil and foreign wars. The rival great powers had cut China up into fiefdoms, which encouraged separation. Thus Tibet, attached for centuries to China’s Middle Kingdom, had gained a kind of “independence.”
Tibet remained stuck in profound backwardness, which was even worse than in the rest of China. The lamas, Buddhist monks, lived as parasites off the peasantry. At the summit of this medieval society the Dalai Lama was enthroned as the temporal and spiritual leader. By the time the Maoist regime came to power in 1949, less than 5% of all landowners had forced half the population into serfdom.
In 1951, after the Chinese Army of “national liberation” penetrated into Lhasa, a “17 point agreement on the peaceful liberation of Tibet” was signed with the Dalai Lama. In exchange for recognizing the Beijing regime, the social system represented by the Dalai Lama was allowed to continue in Tibet by agreement with Beijing.
Anti-Chinese riots broke out there in 1956, and again in 1957 and 1958. So Beijing chose to end its agreement with the Dalai Lama. To escape prison, he fled in March 1959. After his departure, serfdom and slavery were officially abolished. Beijing decided to “collectivize” the land in 1961 in a measure aimed at the feudal landlords and Tibetan monks, whom the Chinese authorities viewed as disloyal.
Meanwhile, at the height of the Cold War, the U.S. and its allies tried to weaken the Maoist regime by stirring up Tibetan separatism. Tibetan guerrillas even went to a CIA training camp in Colorado–although, it seems, without much result.
The majority of Western leaders ignored the Dalai Lama’s past as the head of a feudal theocracy practicing torture, serfdom and even slavery. Instead they discovered his “spiritual example,” granting him, among other things, the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989.
In order to reinforce its hold over Tibet, the Beijing regime imprisoned oppositionists and settled numerous people of Chinese descent in Tibet. The Beijing government persecuted Buddhist monks. During the supposed Cultural Revolution, a number of them were defrocked by force, and some were executed. The regime tried to economically and politically unify China. It also attempted to push Tibet out of the Middle Ages, often with positive consequences. Living conditions of the population improved: average life expectancy rose from 36 years in 1950 to more than 61 in 1990. Infant mortality fell and the population more than doubled in size. Public education, carried out in Tibetan and Chinese languages, spread in place of religious education.
Nonetheless, the regime, which was undemocratic for the entire Chinese population, was even more oppressive in Tibet. The relative economic and cultural progress also made the oppression much more intolerable.
In other Chinese regions, explosions of anger by the population occur frequently, sparked by corruption, exploitation and theft by the authorities and the Chinese bosses. But in Tibet, all social and political protest also takes on the form of a national protest, if only because the language and ethnic origin of those who have the guns aren’t the same as the protesters’. And the awful policies and methods of the Chinese regime also tend to make the Tibetan working classes forget what separates their interests from those of their old masters. The Chinese regime has pushed them back into the clerical-feudal camp of the Dalai Lama and his supporters.
A number of newspapers and official governments of the great powers managed a few verbal protests against repression in Tibet. Commentators in various places again mentioned a boycott of the Olympic Games in Beijing, although even the Dalai Lama came out against a boycott. Washington called on Beijing to show “more restraint.” In diplomatic language, everyone knows what that means: carry on as usual!
Apr 14, 2008
In response to widespread protests against rising food prices in Haiti, the government was forced to give up a small concession by announcing it would cut the cost of rice by more than 15%.
This announcement was made only after at least four people were killed and several dozen wounded by bullets in the course of violent demonstrations against crushing poverty and skyrocketing prices of basic necessities. These demonstrations shook Cayes, GonaVves and the capital, Port-au-Prince.
In Cayes, 30,000 people took to the streets and the demonstrations turned into a riot. Shops were burnt and despite shots by the soldiers, a warehouse run by the United Nations mission in Haiti was stormed.
This country, situated a short distance from the United States, is one of the poorest in the world and the majority of the population suffers from hunger. As a demonstrator cried out, “We can’t stand this hunger. The government must act now, or we’ll burn and destroy everything.”
There have been hunger riots and demonstrations in many other countries from one end of the planet to the other. Almost a day doesn’t go by without the press reporting a new country affected by this wave of anger provoked by soaring prices.
After Mexico a year ago, Africa, Asia and Haiti have been swept by violent riots, which are often brutally attacked by the police. This week four people were killed in Haiti, several hundred wounded in Egypt, two killed in Ivory Coast and, according to the African press, forty killed in Cameroon. This is not counting hundreds of people arrested and imprisoned in many countries for the sole crime of demanding the right to be able to eat.
Senegal, Burkina-Faso, Mauritania, and Morocco also had violent explosions, as did Uzbekistan and several countries in Southeast Asia. In Thailand, the government put armed soldiers around the rice fields to prevent the famished from directly trying to seize them. Everywhere people are protesting for the same reason: the dizzying increase in the price of basic necessities–bread, rice, milk, oil and meat. According to the U.N., the average price of a meal in the poor countries has increased by 40% in a year. This is only an average, which hides still crazier increases.
In fact, there are hundreds of millions of people who are directly threatened by famine: all those who in the cold statistics of international organizations are classified as “less than $1.50 a day” and who spend more than 80% of their income on food.
Apr 14, 2008
Last week, when the UAW and American Axle went back to the bargaining table, the newspapers reported that the company was “disappointed” in an offer from the UAW. American Axle characterized the union’s proposal as “a slight improvement from the UAW’s previous bargaining positions” but said the union was not offering up enough concessions!
What is going on?
American Axle brags that it is so profitable it paid its CEO more than 257 million dollars in the last 10 years!
This same company says it wants massive concessions–to cut the workers’ wages in half and eliminate health care and defined pensions for future retirees! Basically, American Axle aims to get three people for the price of one!
Of course, the reason why they think they can get away with this is because of the huge number of concessions that other auto companies have been able to impose over the last years.
No wonder that 3,600 American Axle workers at 5 plants in Michigan and New York have been manning the picket lines for over seven weeks.
The fact that the union leaders can be talking about any cuts at all should be a warning to the American Axle workers. They are trying to sell a rotten settlement that they will claim is slightly less bad than the original company demands. This is the same trick these union leaders pulled when they imposed the huge concession contracts at the other auto companies last fall.
The workers haven’t been on strike all these weeks to have the knife stuck in 4 inches, only to be pulled out 1 inch.
And their determined fight can block this latest attack by showing other workers what they can do, and thereby begin to forge a unity among workers that is so desperately needed.
Strikes can be catching.
Apr 14, 2008
The unemployment rate for vets returning from Iraq and Afghanistan is twice that of the general population of the same age. In 2005, one out of every four vets was unemployed. And of those employed, one quarter made less than $22,000 per year, or under $11 per hour.
The information came from a VA study that has not yet been made public. Even a vet working for the Veterans of Foreign War criticizes the way the military handles its young recruits: “I don’t put it past our military to spin stories that soldiers will get the best training, and when they get out, they’ll have the world at their feet. It’s a false promise.”
The Wall Street Journal reports that the study admits there’s an employment problem for vets, going on to suggest, “Perhaps it would be helpful to promote jobs ... that match their military skills....”
In other words, push them to sign up with a military contractor, who will send them back to Iraq and Afghanistan!
Apr 14, 2008
International aid to Afghanistan has been more talk than action. Of 25 billion dollars pledged since 2002, only 15 billion may have reached Afghanistan. For the United States, only half the ten billion dollars pledged has arrived. The World Bank has only sent half of what it promised. Germany has sent only two dollars out of every three it pledged.
According to a recent report by an official of Oxfam, a British charity, only seven million a day is spent on what they call rebuilding the country–from all the destruction caused by the U.S. war. Of course, a lot of the money earmarked for reconstruction is simply pocketed by corrupt Afghan officials.
This same report found a much bigger part is pocketed as huge profits and consultants’ fees and goes back to the companies of the countries pledging the aid.
These foreign contractors make the Afghan officials look like amateurs. The worst example in the report was the U.S. Agency for International Development, which spent money to build a road from the capital Kabul’s airport to the center of the city. This road cost three million dollars per mile, that is, FOUR times what roadbuilding usually costs in Afghanistan. Guess the U.S. contractors made a bundle on that road.
In other words, international aid is aid to international contractors.
Apr 14, 2008
Stop-Loss, directed by Kimberly Peirce (director of the Oscar winning movie Boys Don’t Cry), is about soldiers in the Iraq war coming home on leave. Two of them, an army staff sergeant Brandon King, and his buddy Steve, are getting out of the Army ... or are they?
Brandon gets stop-lossed. Stop-loss is a process whereby soldiers who have completed their tour of duty are reenlisted against their will. There is a clause in the soldiers’ contract with the Army which allows the President to essentially not allow soldiers to leave the Army when their time is up.
Brandon is furious. He did his time. He was almost killed. He saw his buddies get killed–friends under his command. He does not want to go back to Iraq.
Brandon goes to his commanding officer to find out what is going on–this has to be a mistake. NO. After his CO explains this is no mistake, it is in the contract and “the Army needs you” kind of crap, Brandon replies: “F_ _ _ Bush!” (At which point several movie viewers applauded.) Brandon goes on to say that the contract states specifically that this can only be done in times of war and Bush declared the war over. Brandon’s CO deems him a flight risk and sends him to the stockade. On the way Brandon escapes and goes AWOL.
Soldiers are finding all kinds of ways to get out of the army. The official number of deserters has reached nearly 10,000 (undoubtedly many of these are the guys who have been stop-lossed). In addition, soldiers are getting expelled for drug-use and drinking–which is wide-spread.
To stop this hemorrhage of troops, the army is using stop-loss. It is referred to in the movie as a back door draft. The military has also vastly increased the amounts given out in re-enlistment bonuses and has lowered educational requirements to the point where in 2007, only 70% of inductees had a high-school diploma. The movie says 650,000 men and women have served in Afghanistan and Iraq and 81,000 of them have been stop-lossed.
The movie also shows the serious psychological effects of the war on all the men, especially Tommy, who drinks and ends up shooting himself. Suicide is the fate of more soldiers than were killed in action in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
When interviewed about directing the movie, Kimberly Peirce said that she did not want to criticize the mission. “Stop-Loss is a movie about guys (like her younger brother) who signed up after 9/11 for patriotic reasons. She interviewed many soldiers and many of them told her: “They‘re putting us in impossible circumstances.”
It seems you cannot write a “pro-soldier” movie that does not criticize “the mission.” Like the movie Home of the Brave, about the lives of wounded Iraq war veterans, by taking the side of the soldiers you end up coming out against the war.
Apr 14, 2008
It’s tax time again, the time of year we’re reminded how much of our money went to Uncle Sam.
It wouldn’t be so bad if we were getting anything in return. Instead we see social programs, schools and services being cut while our money is spent for war and to pay for the misdeeds of corrupt officials.
What did they once say about taxation without representation? We’re not the ones deciding to spend our tax dollars like this.