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
Mar 23, 2009
Top officials in the Obama administration, leaders of Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike–all these people said they were shocked that AIG had paid 165 million dollars in bonuses to some of its top executives.
Liars!
Last November, AIG got the okay for the bonuses from Timothy Geithner, who was then the head of the New York Federal Reserve and is now Obama’s Treasury Secretary. AIG also got approval from Bush’s Treasury Department, from people on Obama’s economic transition team and from Andrew Cuomo, the New York State Attorney General.
Every single one of them signed off on the bonuses back in November.
When the Obama administration took over from Bush, it moved to protect those bonuses. In February, it ordered Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd not to insert legislation restricting bonuses at companies getting bailout money. So Dodd backed loopholes allowing the bonuses, not just at AIG but at every other company that had gotten U.S. bailout money.
When the AIG bonuses were made public, it triggered enormous public outrage.
What could the Obama administration do? It did what politicians always do, it lied over and over again, pretending it didn’t know, or pretending it couldn’t do anything to stop the bonuses.
Public outrage grew. Obama took to the podium, while the Democrats in the House of Representatives demanded that the AIG executives give back 90% of the money in taxes.
This may have been a cynical maneuver by politicians to save their own political skins. But they were also trying to divert public attention from a much bigger scandal than the bonuses.
Much of the 200 billion dollars in bailout money that AIG got from the government had already gone straight to the biggest banks in the world: Goldman Sachs got 13 billion dollars, Merrill Lynch got seven billion dollars, Bank of America got five billion dollars and Citigroup got 2.3 billion dollars.
This came out too. Government officials pretended they were just trying to repay these banks for losses claimed on highly risky mortgage-backed securities and other exotic financial instruments that AIG had insured.
There was only one problem. No one knows how big the losses are or how much of the securities are still good or bad. But the government paid 100% of the face value for every one of these securities–something that no banker in his right mind would ever do with the banks’ own money.
The government was using AIG to launder the money that it showered on the banks.
It was all done in secret, behind closed doors–just like the rest of the bailout, of which AIG is only a small part. Using every excuse and avenue–the Federal Reserve, the FDIC, the U.S. Treasury, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac–the government is handing trillions of dollars over to banks, insurance companies, auto companies, auto suppliers–and through them, to the richest people in the world.
Now these same people pretend to be shocked? Scandalized? No, they’re only surprised because for once they got caught.
At AIG, a little light was shone on these operations. It showed the politicians–Obama-Bush, Geithner-Paulson, Cuomo, Democrats-Republicans–for what they are: the servants of capitalism working together to make sure that the richest people in the world get even richer.
Don’t let them dare expect working people to pay for it!
Mar 23, 2009
The executives of Constellation, parent company of Baltimore Gas and Electric, were expecting enormous pay-out packages after the deal with EDF (the French nuclear utility) goes through. They were supposed to get a combined 32 million dollars.
But the announcement in the local paper brought an uproar–mostly from BGE’s 1.2 million customers who get more rate increases and worse service!
The Constellation execs had already raised rates for both electricity and natural gas. They recently cut 800 people, not counting all the others laid off in the last ten years.
Faced with public outrage, the clever corporate types announced the 32 million dollars was no longer guaranteed–although the execs could still receive compensation bonuses of unknown size.
So they will still get their huge payouts, just more quietly. There’s more than one way to skin a cat or BGE customers!
Mar 23, 2009
“I call on states to reform their charter rules and lift caps on the number of allowable charter schools, wherever such caps are in place.” That was Obama’s key proposal, issued on March 10, for “reforming” education.
Charter schools operate on money taken away from public school funds, to teach some public school students–usually students the charter company picks. Privately run charter schools, aiming at a profit, cut costs, including less pay for teachers and other staff.
Not only haven’t charter schools scored better than public schools on standardized tests; when comparable students are measured, charter schools fare worse.
More than anything else, charter schools have been just another way to channel taxpayer money to private interests. Nonetheless, Obama wants not only to continue but to expand this practice–expand it a lot, in fact. To emphasize this aim, he gave his cabinet post for education to a man with a known track record: Arne Duncan, who closed dozens of public schools and handed them over to charter schools during his eight years as the head of the Chicago Public Schools, at the expense of Chicago’s children.
Education will not improve under this regime–but capitalist profits will.
Mar 23, 2009
The government claims that its bailout program for banks, the TARP program, will help the banks re-start the economy and save it.
That’s baloney. The TARP program helps the rich provide for the rich, at our expense.
Prime examples are Merck Pharmaceutical’s new merger with Schering-Plough, and Pfizer’s takeover of Wyeth.
These Big Pharma mergers are being financed with TARP money–taxpayer money given to banks like JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, which then loan it to deal-makers.
TARP is providing a reported 31 billion dollars to the drug companies–to do what? To fund the mergers by which the drug monopolies take on enormous new debt burdens. This will mean a hike in drug prices and a big impulse to stock market speculation. It also means an estimated 35,000 layoffs as companies consolidate their operations.
Layoffs, price hikes, and stock market speculation. That’s going to save the economy? That’s what sunk it in the first place!
Mar 23, 2009
A Detroit court released previously secret text messages related to ex-mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s perjury conviction. One in particular gives an unusually clear glimpse behind the screen of politics. This refers to a prior investigation of the Mayor in 2003.
From the mayor’s lawyer to Kilpatrick: “Mike ... asked who we would rather be cleared by him or Duggan.”
This means: Republican Mike Cox, attorney general of the state of Michigan, is asking Democratic mayor Kwame Kilpatrick whether Kilpatrick prefers to have Republican Cox or Democratic county prosecutor Mike Duggan announce that the mayor is cleared of the charges. Cox is asking this, before the investigation has even started!
It’s all about scratching each other’s back in private, and scamming the public in public.
Mar 23, 2009
With thousands of people being laid off, losing health insurance from their employers and forced to buy individual insurance on the open market, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan is increasing deductibles and cutting benefits for all new customers buying individual health insurance.
This is nothing but Blue Cross taking advantage of an opportunity to jack up its profits.
It’s through methods like these that Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan has managed to increase the money in its reserves by nearly 130% in six years–from 1.3 billion dollars in 2001 to nearly 3 billion dollars in 2007. Blue Cross tries to pretend it has less in its reserves today, but who would believe any claim made by a company that schemes to squeeze blood out of the unemployed?
Mar 23, 2009
For nearly two decades Bernard Madoff ran a fraudulent “Ponzi scheme,” stealing at least 65 billion dollars. Taking money in, he regularly sent investors a report on their fabulous “earnings.” If someone wanted to take back money, he used part of the new money coming in to reimburse them. The rest he squirreled away for himself.
How did he get away with it? Simple.
He depended on the very same laws and regulations that allowed the big Wall Street banks and “hedge funds” to defraud the whole country. He depended on the same willingness of government to overlook financial fraud–letting Wall Street push speculative frauds such as “securitized mortgage” bonds and “counterparty derivatives.”
There are only two differences between Madoff and all the other Wall Street crooks: 1) he stole much less; 2) government didn’t bail him out.
Mar 23, 2009
The top 25 Chrysler executives pledged not to accept any “new” bonuses. But their pledge does not apply to bonuses that were contracted in 2007! Chrysler intends to pay out those bonuses in August 2009 as scheduled.
Chrysler workers also accepted a contract in 2007–and they sure didn’t get much! But everyone says that the workers’ contract must be broken and even more concessions given.
No! Let the bloodsucking executives take concessions, and let the productive workers get the bonuses!
Mar 23, 2009
The following is a translation of a section from the December 2008 Circle Leon Trotsky, a public meeting organized by Lutte Ouvrière [Workers’ Struggle] in France.
Since the industrial revolution, the whole history of capitalism has been punctuated by crises, followed by longer or shorter recessions, after which recovery begins slowly and turns into an economic boom, followed by another crisis. These economic cycles "play the same role in the life of capitalism that the cycle of the circulation of blood play in the life of an organism," as Leon Trotsky had observed.
Crises are not anomalies or sicknesses of the capitalist economy. They are in fact the only time when capitalism regulates all the imbalances created by its system of production.
The means of production and the distribution of wealth are controlled by private owners–this is what characterizes capitalism. The capitalists are not motivated by a desire to furnish all the goods necessary for the daily life of several billion human beings. They don’t produce food, medicine or automobiles to satisfy human needs, but only because they expect to earn profits from this production.
All the riches of society, including profit, are created in the workshops of production. Human labor is the only force capable of creating value by transforming, for example, steel, plastic and electric wires into cars. Labor power has this extraordinary ability to create more value than it costs to maintain. If the wages that a capitalist pays his workers more or less allow them to pay their bills, these wages are still much less than the wealth the workers create by their work. The part of the wealth created by the workers beyond what they are paid by the capitalists is what Marx called surplus value. It is the source of capitalist profit.
Ultimately, all of capitalist society is organized in order to divide up surplus value. Surplus value sweated from the workers on the automobile assembly lines will be divided among the stock holders, the dealers, the bankers, the insurance companies and other intermediaries.
But if the cars sit in the parking lots of the factory or in the dealer showrooms, the surplus value is unrealized; it is only potential. In order to obtain their profits, the capitalists must sell the cars. It’s a really important phase. For every car, every plasma screen TV, every consumer good on the market, the capitalists must find a consumer with enough purchasing power to buy it. There must be money enough in the market.
But that market is limited. Households all over the world constitute the potential buyers of consumer goods. There is first of all the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie, who consume a lot, and not just private jets or yachts. But much more numerous are the ordinary layers of the population, whose limited purchasing power allows them just to buy life’s necessities even during periods of economic prosperity when the purchasing power of the working class is growing.
Supply, on the other hand, depends on the capacity of production. This grows with scientific inventions and technical innovations. But supply is not the result of a conscious decision taking into account which needs production will satisfy and how to meet them. It results from the decisions of a multitude of individual capitalists, all competing with one another.
These capitalists are engaged in a fierce war. In the automobile industry there are a dozen big companies. If world demand is estimated at about 70 million new vehicles per year, each company wants a bigger part of the market. Each one builds factories to produce more cars than it can ultimately sell. This competition leads to swollen capacity of production, which at some point will surpass demand. This is overproduction.
Inexorably, some companies wind up with too much productive capacity or with inventory they cannot sell. To reestablish equilibrium, the losers brutally reduce production. Some lay off part or all of their workforce, canceling contracts with their suppliers. Others go out of business.
Crisis is the only means of liquidating the built up inventory, of balancing supply, which is too big, with demand, which is limited. The adjustment is made after the fact, suddenly.
Building a car requires materials and parts, like steel, other metals, electric wires, plastic produced from petroleum, tires, and a multitude of different parts, on top of the machine tools, assembly lines and electricity to run them.
Every crisis, every slowdown in automobile production or in other consumer goods industries spreads into those industries that sell them producer goods. Thus ArcelorMittal announced it would close half of its blast furnaces in Europe because of the crises in construction and automobiles. It took the opportunity to eliminate thousands of jobs.
As in every other sector, competition rages between steel or chemical companies to sell the most possible steel or plastic to the consumer goods industries. Competition also rages between various industries, between the producers of metals or steel, and all their customers who build automobiles or housing. Each wants to grab the biggest share of the profits.
This competition is always a source of instability and crisis.
But the imbalance is even greater when investments are great–for example, to build a blast furnace or a chemical plant. It takes a long time to start producing and even longer to pay off their investments.
The French steelmakers after World War II, for instance, delayed their investments in blast furnaces capable of making steel plates for the auto industry or household appliances as long as possible. When they were finally built during the 1960s with massive aid from the state, their new mills at Fos and at Dunkerque were hardly operational before the demand for steel dropped, forcing the permanent closure of numerous blast furnaces. This was one cause of the steel crisis of the 1970s and 1980s that led to tens of thousands of layoffs. It also led to the French state swooping in to help Wendel and Schneider by nationalizing their obsolete and surplus factories.
Crises thus allow equilibrium to be reestablished among the different branches of industry; between the two fundamental sectors of the economy–the industries that produce consumer goods and those that produce machines, raw materials and all the other means of production.
Through crises, the capitalist economy eliminates businesses–because there are too many for the size of the market.
In a rationally organized economy, it would be necessary to regularly adjust the collective work–according to the work time needed to produce whatever products. It is a constant of human economy: as technology and the means of production improve our collective ability to produce wealth, the labor time needed to produce food, clothing, computers and cars tends to decrease.
But in a capitalist economy, this periodic adjustment is made by brutally destroying those businesses where the labor time and cost of production are above average.
Crises also allow the capitalist economy to reestablish the average rate of profit. Each capitalist always produces more goods in order to increase his share of the profits. If a new machine or new process allows him to produce twice as quickly, twice as cheaply, he will invest in this machine. It will allow him to increase his share of the market and eliminate part of his competition.
But what is good for one individual capitalist is not good for the capitalist class as a whole.
Sooner or later his competition will also invest in this machine, or in an even better one. At the end of the day, there will be too much capital invested in these machines. Because human labor, not machines, produces profit, this endless increase of capital leads to a regular decrease in the rate of profit for the capitalist economy as a whole.
Each capitalist tries to resist this decrease by increasing the exploitation of his workers in all sorts of ways: lengthening the work day, speed-up, cutting wages or eliminating workers. But exploitation ends up running up against human limits and so the rate of profit declines.
By eliminating the least profitable businesses and closing the least productive workplaces, crises destroy capital. This destruction of capital restores the rate of profit in the capitalist economy as a whole.
For the weakest capitalists, crises mean destruction. For the others, crises provide the opportunity to buy up the competition at a low price. The biggest capitalists get a little bit bigger. During each crisis, capital becomes more concentrated.
Crises are the absolutely indispensable moment when the capitalist economy can purge itself of all the imbalances it engendered during the stages of production and distribution of goods.
For the workers, each crisis means a catastrophe of massive layoffs and unemployment, of impoverishment for an additional part of the laboring population. It is harmful for society as a whole as well, since it means the destruction and waste of useful goods that a whole portion of humanity cruelly lacks.
But for the capitalist economy, these are only incidental expenses!
The current crisis illustrates the immense burden finance imposes on the capitalist economy. But, contrary to appearances, finance is not only a parasitical growth. It is also the blood that irrigates the capitalist market. The capitalist economy cannot function without the banks.
First, the banks allow production to continue by giving cash advances, which companies permanently need. This applies to small suppliers or parts makers who often have to wait three months or more to get paid for their orders but who have to pay their bills immediately. But it also applies to the big companies. If General Motors had to wait until it had sold its cars to buy raw materials, pay its electricity bills or its workers’ wages, production would be constantly interrupted.
A sudden halt in loans following a loss of confidence in the banking system or a large increase in the rate of interest causes the failure of thousands of businesses, because it deprives them of the credit they depend on. Even a giant auto company like General Motors, whose sales have collapsed in recent months, burns through its reserves to pay the daily expenses of its factories because it cannot borrow from banks or financial markets except at exorbitant rates.
The banks also play a role when the capitalists decide to reinvest their profits. The investment to build a new factory requires a large amount of capital. The capitalists place the money they make from their sales in the banks, so the money will grow. The banks concentrate masses of capital and pool it to put it at the disposal of whichever capitalist needs it at that moment. The banks allow capitalists to invest in anticipation of future profits.
What banks are doing is then no longer simple commercial credit, short-term loans to make business function, but rather long-term loans for investment.
All through the development of capitalism, banks concentrated small and scattered bits of capital coming from small businesses and landlords to put that capital at the disposal of industry. Increasingly decentralized bank branches, savings banks, concentrated the savings of the population, and even of a fraction of workers’ salaries, in their bank accounts. The banks transformed these tiny and unusable sums into capital put at the disposal of the big capitalists who, in crisis after crisis, took control of the bigger sectors of production.
Obviously, the banks don’t play this role as intermediaries just to please the capitalists. They charge interest on every loan they make. Through this interest they take their share of the surplus value created by the workers–and they"re not satisfied with the smallest share.
Over time the banks did not remain modest intermediaries. Situated in the heart of business at the level of the purse, they took control and invested only in what was most profitable.
Parallel with the banks, the capitalists can also raise capital through the stock markets. They created, very early in their history, corporations with many stock holders. Every share represents one fraction of the total capital of a company. The stockholders don’t receive fixed interest like the banks, they receive a dividend instead. These dividends, which vary from year to year, represent one part of the annual profits of the corporation.
Businesses can also raise capital by issuing bonds in the financial markets. These bonds guarantee their owners a fixed annual interest but no right over how the company is run.
The generalized rights of the public, stock-held companies, made it possible to separate the life of the companies from the capital which enables them to function. It especially accelerates the concentration of capital by putting thousands of small shareholders under the control of the big investors, without giving the small shareholders any say in the running of the company. This has facilitated the growth of monopolies and cartels in major sectors of the economy.
Finally, for a long time now the division between the industrialists and the bankers has disappeared. There are not good industrial entrepreneurs on one side and bad bankers on the other. The directors of the big banks sit on the boards of the big industrial companies and vice versa.
The most important U.S. banker, J. P. Morgan, who had more gold in 1900 than the U.S. Treasury, controlled half the rail network of the United States and then bought the biggest steel company in the country.
The weight of financiers in industry and the concentration of capital increases regularly during each crisis.
With the concentration of capital, the extension of capitalism to every country, to every economic sector, then the development of credit and later the direct intervention of the national states in the economy, the crises of one industry are transformed into general and deeper crises as soon as they break out. But, whether in one industry or throughout the economy, crises always happen at more or less regular intervals.
In 1921, Trotsky noted "that during the periods of the rapid development of capitalism, crises are short and have a superficial character .... During the period of decline, crises last for a long time and recoveries are temporary, superficial and based on speculation."
Mar 23, 2009
Ten Ford bargaining units voted NO! against the new concessions. Forty-one% of the overall membership voted NO.
Sometimes we hear people say there is nothing you can do about a problem.
But there were many Ford workers who didn’t believe that. Despite the media saying they had no other choice; despite all the politicians demanding that auto workers give up their standard of living; despite the International Union sending people into the plants every day pushing a YES vote; despite all the scare tactics and pressure–there were Ford workers who worked hard for a NO vote–and they almost beat it.
Workers often just wish to come to work, do their jobs, get paid, go home and take care of their families. But companies like Ford, GM and Chrysler are not going to leave us alone. They are going to be coming back for more concessions, again and again, until workers stop them.
Other workers can build on what Ford workers did. The wages and benefits workers have were not just given. Someone did something–someone fought in the past to get them. And workers will have to fight today to keep them.
Mar 23, 2009
The following lines, commenting on the struggles to come, came from an editorial written by the comrades of Combat Ouvrier.
We, the workers, have obviously not won all that we demanded during the general strike. But in areas that concern work, daily life, wages, and the prices of goods, we have forced the bosses and the government to step back.
While we await the study of prices to establish a local minimum wage that corresponds to the cost of living in the West Indies, the general strike extracted an increase of 200 euros per month ($250 U.S.) for everyone–paid in part by the bosses and in part by the state and the local governments.
Sure, this increase is valid for only three years. That is to say, we must be able at that time to impose its continuation. But between now and the end of three years, many things could happen, here and around the world, above all on the level of the economy. Between now and then, we will certainly have to fight again over wages and prices, and for jobs. Because, with the economic crisis worsening day by day, the bosses and the government are totally determined to force the cost of this crisis onto the workers.
The principal gain from the events that just took place in the West Indies is the form of the struggle itself, the form of the general strike. We gained the experience of a general strike! We rediscovered the strength and power of such a movement–rediscovered that, from the moment the workers engage together in struggle, they pull behind them massively the other layers of the population.
We have been able to realize also that such a movement bringing together all the working and poor people can force the state and the bosses to pull back. To have lived and understood that is a real gain for the future. Because, inevitably, we will have to fight again.
This movement of February 5 must remain a real gain for everyone, a springboard on which we must now rely for the struggles to come. We must not only conserve and reproduce all the positive effects of this strike, but also criticize ourselves, to see where we were weak, what errors or inadequacies there were, in order to correct them for the next struggles. A general strike of this magnitude, resting upon such a popular movement, brings to light many aspects that we must develop further in the future and correct in order to do it better.
Remain ready to mobilize whenever necessary!
Keep alive our spirit of struggle!
It won’t be long before we will need it again!
Mar 23, 2009
Elie Domota, the spokesman of the struggle in Guadeloupe, made a comment toward the end of the general strike in Guadeloupe with respect to the békés, the very rich descendants of the former slaveowners who dominate the island’s economy: "Either they"ll apply the agreement or they"ll leave Guadeloupe ... We are very firm on that question. We won’t let a group of békés reestablish slavery." All the reactionary circles, colonialists, bosses and békés and the rightwing press in the French West Indies and in France raised a hue and cry. The prosecutor in Point-B-Pitre, the biggest city in Guadeloupe, began to threaten a legal attack on Domota.
The LKP and the population reacted to support the spokesman of the LKP (the Collective Against Profiteering which led the long general strike.) First of all, at a press conference the 48 representatives of the LKP member organizations repeated word for word Domota’s statement. A petition circulated in the West Indies with Domota’s statement, and it’s already been signed by thousands of people. Workers are circulating it on the job and getting signatures.
Further, hundreds of lawyers in the West Indies, in France and in other countries let the LKP know that they were ready to come to defend Domota and all those who might be threatened.
After a few days, hundreds of graffiti supporting Domota appeared on the walls of Guadeloupe.
The embarrassed prosecutor of Pointe-à-Pitre responded with some barely understandable comments that he wasn’t aiming at the words themselves, but was inquiring into the true intentions hidden behind Elie Domota’s words!!!???
In brief, the legal system and all those who intervened, believing they could stir up public opinion over the supposed racism of Domota and the LKP, have had to pay for it. All their efforts wound up increasing the popularity of Domota and the LKP. Just walk in the streets, you see it. Everywhere, popular support is more obvious.
Mar 23, 2009
In Guadeloupe, alongside strikes to get the Bino agreement signed by the bosses, negotiations continue between the LKP and the bosses for a general lowering of prices.
The big retail bosses are resisting lowering the prices of staples. But there is real pressure from the population, and in each negotiating session large groups of people come to support the negotiators.
Other negotiations are taking place between the LKP and the GMA (Great West Indian Millers), the business that has a monopoly over the import and sale of flour. There are negotiations for a 15% to 20% reduction in the price of flour. Then, after negotiations with the bakers, undoubtedly it will be possible to lower the price of bread.
Soon there will be negotiations with telephone and Internet providers to get lower fees, rates and subscriptions. Internet rates are much higher than in France. France Télécom and Orange enjoy a monopoly and really extort subscribers.
The population remains very attentive to the question of prices. The number of participants at meetings giving updates in front of the Mutualité building is high–between 1,000 and 1,500 people took part in the last meeting. Monitoring committees to watch prices are being set up.
Some days ago, a bus passenger protested against the cost and didn’t go along. He did it in such a way that all the bus passengers got off in protest.
Despite the negotiations, it will really be the mobilization of the population that can get significant price decreases in the island.
Mar 23, 2009
Barack Obama and his military advisors announced they are discussing expanding the war into Pakistan, not only Pakistan’s tribal areas but also into the city of Quetta in the province of Baluchistan. The U.S. claims Taliban insurgents have fled Afghanistan to Quetta. The military is discussing not only using drones to conduct missile strikes there, but also sending CIA and Special Operations forces into the region. In other words, the U.S. war on Afghanistan and Pakistan is going into overdrive.
The U.S. military has also been using engineering units to build up permanent bases in the areas of Afghanistan nearest to Pakistan. The Air Force is also preparing to build numerous additional airfields to support the deployment of thousands more troops to the region.
These announcements amount to the Obama administration softening us up for the beginning of Chapter 2 of the war, with the perspective that the war will go on and on. The expansion of the war can only increase the suffering of the region’s population, which has already suffered tremendously. The war has already pushed Afghanistan down to become the poorest country in Southern Asia. Twenty million of Afghanistan’s 26 million inhabitants live under the internationally recognized poverty line, according to U.N. agencies. Expanding the war will also bring more suffering to U.S. soldiers and their families, not to mention the draining of hundreds of billions of dollars more to pay for it.
It’s a war brought to us by a president who dared in the election to portray himself as "anti-war." In reality, even when Obama voiced opposition to the war in Iraq, he did so tepidly. At an anti-war rally in Chicago in 2002 before the Iraq war started, Obama insisted that he is not against all wars or even most wars.
In truth, Obama is in favor of all wars the bourgeoisie wants to carry out. And, despite his words, his every action demonstrates it. He voted for money for the war in Iraq every time until he was in his election campaign. He is sticking to Bush’s timetable for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. He is engaging in a vast expansion of a new war in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Mar 23, 2009
The president said, “As this transition in our mission takes place, our troops will focus on a more limited set of tasks, including counter-terrorism operations, and training, equipping and supporting Iraqi forces.”
That was George W. Bush on September 13, 2007.
But as we know, Barack Obama, promising big changes in Iraq policies, was elected.
Here’s what Barrack Obama had to say on February 27, 2009: “Our mission will change from combat to supporting the Iraqi government and its security forces, training, equipping and advising Iraqi security forces, conducting counter-terrorism missions.”
Just what kind of change is this? Sounds like... none at all.
Mar 23, 2009
According to a recent study by the Washington, D.C. health department, an epidemic of HIV/AIDS has been hitting the population of the nation’s capital at a rate higher than in West African countries where HIV/AIDS has long been considered the worst in the world.
Why this epidemic of HIV/AIDS in the nation’s capital? High levels of poverty–which breeds drug use–lack of medical care and restrictions Congress placed on preventive measures.
It’s a clear snapshot of American capitalism–a deadly preventable epidemic raging alongside shining marble government buildings.