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
Aug 3, 2009
President Obama, Fed Reserve Chairman Bernanke, and Treasury Secretary Geithner have been pumping “good news” into the media–and the media repeat the view that the economic crisis is nearly over.
False! The people spouting this feel-good message are the very same people who didn’t foresee the financial collapse yesterday before it happened. So why should we believe them today, when our future is at stake?
Not only is the current catastrophe still developing, in certain ways, it is getting worse.
One of the causes of the present crisis was the massive amount of bad debt on the banks’ balance sheets.
Most of that debt is still there. But, by a change in government accounting rules, the banks were allowed to hide their bad debts.
That sleight of hand allowed the banks to pretend to be profitable, awarding even bigger bonuses to executives than before.
The banks didn’t make money–they got money from the government’s purse.
That monstrous government bailout of the banks, amounting to more than three trillion dollars already, with many more trillions promised, did not act as a spark to start up the economy’s engine again. The banks did not use it to fund new production or construction. They used it to speculate. We are already seeing the results of that speculation–in the gyrating oil prices, among other things.
And that means sooner or later another bank will be caught out short and will go bankrupt, setting in train more failures. What will happen then? Who will bail the banks out next time?
Today no government in the world, not even the U.S. government, has the same room for maneuver as it had last fall.
The U.S. Treasury may decide to run the printing presses flat out, churning out bundles of paper to cover its deficits–it already is. But those paper dollars just accumulate around the world, pushing down the dollar’s value to others.
The whole world’s economy is at the mercy of unscrupulous wheeler-dealers, whose actions are in keeping with the morality of capitalism: always make more profit, by whatever means!
Their actions have already created a disaster for the world’s people.
Markets are shrinking, production is being cut back, massive numbers continue to be laid off. Unemployment is increasing in a spectacular way in all the big capitalist countries: the U.S., Britain, France, Spain.
And every layoff only weighs further on the economy, producing still more layoffs. Without a job, who can buy anything?
To make matters far worse, governments around the world are restricting public expenditures–in order to direct all that money to the banks and capitalist businesses.
The Obama administration may pretend that it is putting money into public services–the fact that every state in the country has a serious budget crisis shows what a joke that is. The federal government has cut back seriously on the money sent to states and cities, further aggravating their budget problems–which they themselves cause by giving tax breaks to business. Public services are reduced, jobs are cut–adding further to the downturn.
The crisis has NOT ended. In the months to come its effects will only be worse, extensively damaging the standard of living of workers around the entire world, sowing misery and despair everywhere!
Workers have only one way to get out of this disastrous trap: Mobilize, constitute themselves as a force capable of opposing the program of the capitalists and their governments, imposing their own solutions to the crisis.
Aug 3, 2009
A Los Angeles City Council committee is offering the CIM Group a 30-million dollar loan. CIM says it needs the money to retrofit one of its theaters, for Cirque de Soleil’s acrobatic circus show.
Officials say CIM pledges to create 868 jobs. Why 868? Because that way, it comes to one job per $35,000 loaned–a requirement of the federal fund from which the money comes. And about "creating" these jobs, all CIM had to say was that the show would bring business to the retailers in the mall and its vicinity!
The city had already poured 127 million dollars into the construction of CIM’s Hollywood & Highland mall where the theater is located. And CIM is not the only company to get big sums of money. Far from it!
So it’s a big lie when L.A. politicians say that the city has no money and demand more concessions from city workers.
Aug 3, 2009
Los Angeles politicians have launched a big assault on workers’ wages and benefits.
Claiming that the city has a 360-million-dollar budget deficit, they are threatening layoffs–unless city workers agree to concessions.
Big concessions, in fact. Mandatory furlough days every other Friday for a whole year–a 10% pay cut. A 2-to-7% increase in the workers’ pension contributions–another pay cut. A two-year wage freeze–a third pay cut, considering inflation. The city is also trying to push some workers out on early retirement, some of them without even a cash “buyout” payment!
These are the same old, much-used tricks from the bosses’ sleeves. But city workers can have a trick or two up their sleeves as well, giving these scoundrels the only answer workers, and their families, can afford: A big NO!
Aug 3, 2009
On July 20, the U.S. government commemorated the 40th anniversary of the first steps of men on the moon. The technical accomplishment, like the courage and skill of the three astronauts who dared to make the trip, fully merits the celebration. For this voyage wasn’t only the symbol of what science could best produce, it was also a hint of what humanity will be capable of when it succeeds in getting rid of the restraints of capitalism.
It was a spectacular success–especially for the methods which the U.S. government had to employ to surpass the Soviet Union in the space race. The U.S., despite its economic superiority, had in fact been surpassed by the USSR with its Sputniks. To make up for lost ground, the U.S. had to follow its rival’s example, employing the greater efficiency in centralization and planning.
Forget about free enterprise, individualism, competition and the law of the market. The government created a special administration, NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration), and gave it all the means it needed. All research centers that had anything to do with space, whether they were under the control of the army, the air force, the navy or the Departments of Commerce and the Interior, were grouped under the authority of NASA. It gave research projects to universities, but NASA ensured they were performed to the highest standards. The same method was used with manufacturers to whom NASA gave certain work to perform. All of it, that is, the work of several hundred thousand people over a ten-year period, was coordinated and planned in order to set foot on the moon by 1970.
Nothing was left to chance, which was essential for an undertaking of this type, and nothing was left to the “invisible hand of the market.” Obviously, that didn’t prevent corporations from getting their profits along the way. But that’s another story.
Aug 3, 2009
–Unemployment rate 7.3%, up from 4% one year ago.
–Not since 1983 has the rate been so high.
–In June, 88,000 more Marylanders were out of work and actively looking for a job than a year ago.
–Most of the economy is affected: construction, transportation, utilities, manufacturing, finance, and state, county and city governments.
When politicians and the news media talk about the beginning of an economic recovery, they sure aren’t talking about our economic recovery!
Aug 3, 2009
Nearly ten million Americans are now collecting unemployment benefits.
Collecting, that is, if eligible. States must verify eligibility before issuing checks.
More than 4.6 million workers have had their checks delayed more than three weeks–some as long as six months, or more–because the states have neither manpower nor computer power to deal with the load.
And why not? Because the systems were starved for money in order to lower the taxes required of employers! In the last ten years, for example, California’s employer tax rate went down 40%–and 165 billion needed dollars were kept out of the state insurance fund.
Delays in payments mean that families go hungry, sick, bankrupt, homeless. Ah, but what does that matter, as long as corporate taxes stay low!
The states’ priorities are revealed.
Aug 3, 2009
Robert Bobb, the “emergency financial manager” for the Detroit Public Schools, has committed to hire four separate private “consultants” to redesign seventeen of the district’s schools.
Bobb, claiming the district is 259 million dollars in debt, has already closed dozens of schools and laid off 2,500 employees. But now he’s spending 20 million dollars of federal stimulus money–to hire these private firms.
These four companies are for-profit charter school management firms. All four have track records that are mediocre at best. The most notorious of the four is EdisonLearning, Inc., which took more than 20 schools in the Philadelphia School District, only to see performance DROP since 2002.
Because there was a big protest against turning more schools into charter schools, these companies won’t run the Detroit schools outright–they’ll only “assist” the staff in redesigning the schools, recreating the curriculum, and providing training. So, they’ll be given 20 million dollars but will have no accountability!
Bobb has also declared that 41 of the district’s schools will be “reconstituted”: the principals there were replaced, and all 2,600 of the teachers who work at those schools had to reapply for their jobs or be moved elsewhere. This will do nothing but throw those schools into utter turmoil. It can only hurt student performance there, and drive even more students into charter schools and neighboring school districts.
Robert Bobb’s program is only more of the same rotten policies that have been going on in the Detroit Public Schools for years: gutting the schools, handing millions of dollars to private contractors, and handing the schools themselves over to private charter firms. It’s a local reflection of what’s been happening nationally–first under Bush with “No Child Left Behind,” and now under Obama and his renamed “Race to the Top” program.
From the beginning, it’s all been a plan to open up a trillion-dollar “industry” to private corporations. The excuse has always been that this competition for profits would increase quality, but that’s always been a lie. Corporate control of schools can only cause the quality of education for the poor to drop straight into the toilet as money is drained out of the schools, many of which are severely underfunded.
Aug 3, 2009
“Home prices rise,” “Economy recovering,” “Growth in GDP,” the media trumpeted at the end of July. They pushed the idea that the recession was easing.
The bosses’ recession may have ended, but unemployment, foreclosures and houses for sale remain at the highest levels since the great depression of the 1930s.
When we check the fine print, it turns out that housing sales are still falling, just not as fast as they did in the previous three months.
Here is how Dean Baker, an economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, put it: “There are enormous inventories of unsold housing.... High unemployment and underwater mortgages will keep foreclosures at close to an annual rate of two million.... There is no sector of the economy that will provide any substantial boost to the economy.”
The bosses’ recovery is no recovery for the vast majority.
Aug 3, 2009
The Attorney General of New York State released an astonishing account of bank executive bonuses. At least 4,793 Wall Street bankers and traders were paid bonuses of ONE MILLION DOLLARS OR MORE last year. This, while the banks involved were failing, going broke–and then taking more than 200 billion dollars in taxpayer bailouts!
Among the biggest:
Citigroup received a 45-billion-dollar bailout, and then gave million-dollar bonuses to 738 employees.
Bank of America and Merrill Lynch received bailouts totaling 45 billion dollars, and paid million-dollar bonuses to 868 employees.
Goldman Sachs got 10 billion bucks in direct bailout and many, many more billions in indirect bailouts through AIG. Goldman paid million-dollar bonuses to 953 people.
Morgan Stanley got 10 billion dollars in bailouts, and paid million-dollar bonuses to 428 people.
JPMorgan Chase got 25 billion dollars in bailouts, and paid million-dollar bonuses to 1,626 people.
Nothing is too good for the bankers, when the taxpayers are paying!
Aug 3, 2009
U.S. troops continue to patrol the Iraqi city of Mosul, according to a BBC news video from July 26.
But didn’t the Obama administration announce a month ago that the U.S. had pulled its troops out of Iraqi cities? Weren’t Iraqi police and army supposed to maintain order in their own cities?
Not in Mosul, apparently. And for a good reason. Right now, armies of the regional Kurdish leaders and the Shiite-led central government regularly fight in and around this large city in Iraq’s northern oil region.
And such rivalries between separate armed groups certainly exist in other parts of Iraq. No wonder the U.S. has kept 130,000 troops in Iraq, despite grandiose declarations about a “pullout”!
Thanks to the divisions sown by the U.S. occupation, no end is in sight to the bloody civil war in Iraq. Nor is an end in sight to casualties of war, both Iraqi and American.
Aug 3, 2009
The U.S. government announced an agreement with the government of Kyrgyzstan to keep a U.S. base open in that country, which is just north of Afghanistan.
While obtaining a new lease for the base–for 60 million dollars a year, almost four times the old price–the Obama administration also got Russia’s consent to let U.S. military planes fly over Russia on their way to Afghanistan.
Thus, the U.S. has secured a transit route for flying troops and supplies into Afghanistan from the north. In the meantime, to the south of Afghanistan, the U.S. has secured the participation of the Pakistani military in this war, under the pretense of fighting “Pakistani Taliban.”
This puts Afghanistan under siege from the north and south. And within Afghanistan itself, the U.S. and its main ally, Britain, have escalated military operations. The U.S. is in the process of doubling the number of its troops in Afghanistan, from 30,000 to 60,000.
So there is only more suffering and destruction in store for the people of Afghanistan–one of the poorest countries in the world, already ravaged by three decades of war. As for U.S. troops, 40 of them were killed in Afghanistan in July, making it by far the deadliest month for U.S. troops in the eight-year-old war. This is reality: a rapidly expanding war even if the news media don’t cover much.
Aug 3, 2009
Several Israeli soldiers testified about the violence of the Israeli army’s invasion into the Gaza Strip last December and January. This military offensive, which was supposed to end Hamas’ shooting rockets into Israel, resulted in 1,400 dead and 5,000 wounded Palestinians, with six Israeli soldiers and three civilians killed.
Several human rights organizations have already accused the Israeli army of deliberately killing civilians during the offensive in Gaza. These accusations are based on testimony taken from Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip.
But this time, additional accusations came from the testimony of Israeli soldiers who fought on the ground. The reservist organization Shrovim Shtika (Break the Silence) published the testimony of Israeli soldiers denouncing “the accepted practices” of the Israeli army.
“We had the order to shoot first and think later,” a soldier recounts. Another depicts the orders received from his superior: “Not a hair of my soldiers should fall and I don’t want one of my soldiers to take risks by hesitating. If you aren’t sure, shoot!” The disastrous military operation in Lebanon in 2006, to inflict a defeat on Hezbollah, had proved a bloody failure. It resulted, for the first time in a long time, in a number of Israeli dead and wounded. Since then, the priority of the Israeli Army has been to minimize its losses, and thereby ensure it has the support of the Israeli population.
The violent methods used during the war against Gaza from last December 27 to January 18, cynically baptized “Operation Cast Lead,” meant effectively there was no combat. The men of Hamas hid or fled, leaving the civilian population caught in the trap, with nowhere to go. “The general impression was that we were here to kill and that bothered no one,” relates another soldier. Entire neighborhoods were dynamited, farming areas completely ravaged. Entire streets in Gaza were demolished to reduce the risk of explosive traps and shooters lying in wait. “There remained nothing standing in our zone. It was like the films of World War I where nothing remained,” affirmed a soldier.
The soldiers also denounced the use of white phosphorus in the streets of Gaza. White phosphorus sticks to human skin while burning its victims. In addition, Israeli soldiers forced Palestinian civilians to act as human shields to penetrate into buildings–with a gun at their backs–to see if they were booby trapped. These same methods were widely used in operation “Defensive Shield” against the West Bank in 2002, which led to the massacres in the refugee camps of Jenin.
Under the pretext of ending Hamas rocket attacks, the Israeli army knowingly and deliberately massacred the Palestinian population of Gaza, hoping to crush any impulse to revolt. It seems the Israelis succeeded in this goal for the moment. But the conditions of life, already very difficult before the war offensive, have become so atrocious that the population, pushed to the wall, will have no choice but to rise up again, to try to get out of the stranglehold oppressing it, especially under the harsh blockade that Israel continues to impose on the Gaza Strip.
This testimony by soldiers about what their army has done, although given anonymously, may open the eyes of the Israeli population, which is also held prisoner by the warmongering arguments of its government.
Aug 3, 2009
On July 28, the collapse of one of the tunnels dug under the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt caused the death of one Palestinian, while five others went missing. Ten days before, seven other people were buried alive in another tunnel collapse.
Since the beginning of 2007, 150 Palestinians have died in these tunnels. The tunnels are several hundred yards long, 50 to 60 feet deep, and are scattered along nine miles of the border.
These tunnels are almost the only way to get a job in a territory where official unemployment last April was 44%, and almost the only means of supplying necessities to the 1.5 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip. The Israeli military regularly bombs the tunnels. They are also closely monitored by Egyptian soldiers, who sometimes flood them with gasoline or stuff the tunnels with explosives.
The six check points into Gaza, which are regularly closed by the Israeli authorities or are opened only a very short time, have transformed Gaza into a vast open-air prison. Six months after the end of the most recent war, the blockade of materials prevents the reconstruction of the 6,300 homes that were either destroyed or severely damaged. The importation of goods into Gaza is severely restricted. The Israeli siege forces the inhabitants into material and moral misery. The average income per household has fallen to 280 dollars a month; even the attendance of children at primary school has fallen.
The blockade imposed by the Israeli government is leading to an unbearable situation for the Palestinian population. The Western powers are totally complicit in this scandalous situation.
Aug 3, 2009
On the West Bank, near Nablus, Jewish settlers carried out a raid on olive groves belonging to Palestinians, destroying several hundred trees. This was to take revenge on the destruction ... by the Israeli army of homes situated in so-called “illegal” settlements. Soon the Israeli government is supposed to destroy 23 settlement outposts. Soon, that is, according to a promise Israel made to the Bush administration ... five years ago ... to destroy these outposts.
Apparently, the Israeli administration makes haste slowly. U.S. pressure counts for something in this delayed reaction. Not that the declarations of Obama on the Israeli settlement policy are sufficient to impress the Netanyahu administration. But perhaps the Israeli government might worry about the threat of an eventual reduction in U.S. financial aid. Perhaps the U.S. will reduce the bank guarantees it makes, so that it becomes more difficult for Israel to borrow on the financial markets. That might count in a crisis, but it’s nothing new, since the Bush administration did the same thing in 2003 and 2007. And it didn’t change the essential thing: U.S. military aid of 2.7 billion dollars, which allows the Israeli government to buy arms, from the U.S. and elsewhere, to equip an army always on a war footing.
It’s doubtful that the Israeli army and the police will display any zeal in dismantling the outposts. And even if they close them, it will change nothing in the policy of systematic expulsion and the theft of Palestinian land.
Officially, Israel stopped constructing new settlements in 1996. In reality, the settlement construction never ceased. In 1993, at the time of the Oslo Accords, there were 120,000 Jewish settlers in the occupied territories. Today there are more than 300,000 in the West Bank and 187,000 in East Jerusalem. As the Israeli paper Haaretz revealed from an official document censored for “reasons of national security,” more than 75% of the settlements are irregular. There are both private parties and groups that establish themselves on land owned by Palestinians, and even build infrastructure, roads, schools, synagogues and police stations.
The establishment of settlements is a weapon of the Israeli government. As the Israeli anti-settlement movement points out in one of its denunciations, these settlements are set up “to prevent the construction of a Palestinian state by making impossible any territorial continuity.” The objective is to drive out as many Palestinians as possible, to make life impossible for those who find themselves imprisoned in the ghetto-enclaves, and who will have to flee a land that is theirs.
Aug 3, 2009
On July 24, workers shut down a large, state-run steel mill in Tonghua, Northern China, to protest the privatization of the plant and looming mass layoffs.
When riot police were sent, the workers fought back with bricks. Reportedly, about 100 people were injured. The workers ended the shutdown after 11 hours, only when the government announced that the privatization was suspended indefinitely.
Tonghua workers had every reason to fight back. In the 1990s alone, state-run enterprises in China laid off about 50 million workers. Since then, mass layoffs in China have continued. These layoffs often come with the privatization of state-run enterprises–in many cases an outright handout of huge industrial plants to private interests.
Hundreds of millions of Chinese workers and their families have thus been thrown in the street, while those who still have jobs mostly toil for meager wages. At the same time, a handful of Chinese “entrepreneurs” have been getting obscenely rich. For example, the owner of Jianlong, the company that was supposed to take over the Tonghua mill, was the tenth richest man in China in 2008, with a fortune of 2.9 billion dollars.
Jianlong had gotten out of a deal to buy Tonghua last year, when the plant showed a loss. When Tonghua was profitable again this summer, Jianlong came back to buy a majority share in the plant, with money from the Chinese version of a government “stimulus” program.
Jianlong then announced that the company would lay off 25,000, or five out of six workers, at Tonghua. That’s when workers took matters into their hands, and stopped the take-over, and layoffs–at least for now.
Unlike other workers’ actions like this, which are quite wide-spread in China, the Tonghua events made the news all over the world–but mainly because the plant’s general manager, Chen Guojun, was killed during the shutdown.
According to news reports, Chen had personally made the announcement about the layoffs, and angered the workers further with his arrogant attitude. About 1,000 workers apparently attacked Chen in his office and beat him to death. If it weren’t for this death, the international news media would have ignored the workers’ mobilization. To the capitalist media, the death of one boss is more important than the death, and suffering, of hundreds of millions of workers and their families.
This manager got caught in the middle of a big social dispute–a dispute between a handful of big capitalists on the one side, and millions of workers and their families on the other. In this dispute, not only in China but the whole world, the big bosses are fighting for the privilege of increasing their personal wealth beyond any limit. It’s workers who produce all that wealth, but for some workers–actually hundreds of millions in China–the fight is not only about a dignified life, but survival.
Aug 3, 2009
The government’s Commodity Futures Trading Commission will release a report completely changing its stand from last year. Yes, they admit, oil speculators were the real reason that gas hit $4.00 a gallon.
Any fool could have understood that! But this same CFTC played dumber than a fool, when they told us last year that speculators were not responsible. It was only “supply and demand,” they told us then.
This is how government agencies work. First they lie to cover the corporations’ butts. Then later they come back with some lame excuse and try to cover their own!
Aug 3, 2009
President Obama said in his July 22 speech on health care that “the biggest driving force behind our federal deficit is the skyrocketing cost of Medicare and Medicaid.”
Apparently the president doesn’t read his own budget, which shows that military spending is a higherpercentage of the government’s spending than Medicare and Medicaid. Of course, some of it is hidden.
The totals given for so-called defense and for veterans affairs don’t include numerous military contracts hidden in other parts of the budget, such as energy. Not to mention billions in interest on loans for past wars and the expense of the current wars.
Lying may come naturally to White House occupants. But this lie has a point: to prepare us for yet more cuts in Medicare and Medicaid.
Aug 3, 2009
There are eight or nine bills supposedly aimed at improving medical care in this country winding their way through Congress, all behind closed doors.
There is no doubt the health care system is in need of an overhaul. The United States spends almost twice as much money per capita as most other industrialized countries. Canada, for example, spent $3,895 per person in 2007, compared to $7,290 for the U.S. Health care consumes a larger part of the economy in the U.S. than other countries as well; 16% of GDP compared to 9% for Norway and Sweden.
Yet we get much less coverage than every other industrial country. Today, nearly one child in nine and one adult in five under 65 goes without medical insurance.
Those who do have insurance pay out much more each year to see a doctor and for hospital care, prescriptions, and tests than do people in other countries. Total out-of-pocket expenses for people who have insurance through their employers rose more than 115% between 2000 and 2008.
The United States, the wealthiest country in the world, ranks far behind other countries in measures of health like life expectancy and infant mortality. It’s a complete disgrace. Life expectancy in the U.S. increased by 8.2 years between 1960 and 2006, compared to 15 years in Japan and 9.4 years in Canada. In the U.S., around seven infants died in their first year out of every 1,000 live births in 2006, compared with around two or three in northern Europe and Japan.
Other countries provide better medical care for much less money because there is more control over profit in their centralized, state-run systems. In the U.S., the pharmaceutical and medical supply industries are regularly among the most profitable in the country. They ranked number three and four in the Fortune 500 rankings in 2008. The insurance industry was not far behind. Moreover, every part of the U.S. system has its own administrative bureaucracy–layers and layers of bureaucrats–a big waste.
So why didn’t Congress or the Obama administration look at other countries when crafting their plans for changing the health care system? Because the insurance industry owns Washington. USA Today found that 20 large insurance and drug companies spent 35 million dollars on lobbying in the first quarter of 2009, an increase of 41% compared to the same period the year before. They are working to guarantee they wring more profit out of medical care.
Whatever comes out of this "reform," we can be sure of four things:
" We will be mandated to have medical coverage.
" Employers will not be mandated to provide health insurance.
" Subsidies will not nearly cover the cost of premiums.
" And we will pay for the medical industry to make even greater profits.
Aug 3, 2009
With the economic crisis, private health insurance companies are losing business. Workers lose their jobs and their insurance. People who buy their own insurance face pay cuts and have to drop their policies.
But the government is coming to the rescue–of the insurance companies! No matter which health “reform” plan is finally adopted, the insurance companies stand to get more business and profits. All the plans being considered require everyone to have an insurance policy–without finding a way for the government or companies to pay for it.
The coming “reform” won’t improve most people’s health care and will impoverish many of us. But it clearly will improve the profits of the health insurance companies.
Aug 3, 2009
Drug companies are among the most profitable in the U.S. In 2008, they had 17% profit rate compared to 8% for all manufacturing companies. And 2008 was not an exceptional year.
These super-profits, and huge drug company expenditures for advertising, are the main reasons we pay so much for drugs, not research as they claim–the government pays for most of that.
The drug companies made a big deal recently promising they would try to reduce the rate of increase in what we spend on drugs. Notice they said nothing about reducing their profits!