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
Sep 14, 2009
This summer, President Obama said almost nothing as the Republicans attacked health care reform with their claims that it will take away “freedom” and “choice.”
We have no “choice” right now!
Many of us can’t “choose” to have medical care because the insurance companies won’t accept us, because we have a pre-existing condition. We can’t “choose” to have medical care because the insurance and drug costs are so outrageous. We can’t “choose” to continue medical care because the bosses cut it out, or throw us out of work. When we have insurance, we have to go to the doctors or the hospitals that the company decides on, and can only have procedures that the company okays.
That’s no choice. That’s medicine organized by the big monopolies for the purpose of making a profit. Whatever medical care we get is purely incidental.
So, what did Obama say about health care reform in his big speech last week? He made a big show of pretending to fight against the Republicans who had been gaining on him in the polls. He even called some of their propaganda “lies.”
But at the same time, Obama embraced some of the Republican’s most horrendous and reactionary proposals, especially the vicious attacks against undocumented immigrants and against abortion rights for poorer women who can’t afford an abortion on their own. Obama, just like the Republicans, attacked those who are often the most vulnerable. He too tried to divide working people against each other, while diverting people’s anger away from the big business interests responsible for our intolerable situation.
Of course, the Democrats’ and Republicans’ fight is just a political side show. Behind the scenes both parties are taking care of business–for big business. Obama made this clear in his speech, when he defended the very same health care monopolies responsible for all the horrors he mentioned. He even said that he wanted to “keep what’s worth keeping” of the medical care system. What’s he talking about?
Reforming health care means starting from scratch–getting rid of the profit system, organizing health care according to the needs of the population and according to what medical science has discovered, particularly for the best kinds of treatments. That would save money–and extend medical coverage to everyone. The proof is that all those countries that have a government-run system pay less money per capita, have better overall results in health, and have better and faster access for everyone. Only the very wealthy, who already have everything they need, would not benefit from such a system.
But this “reform” merely keeps the wealth for the wealthy. Big insurance companies, drug companies and hospital associations are behind this reform. A day after Obama’s speech, Karen M. Ignagni, the chief executive of America’s Health Insurance Plans, the insurance industry trade group, said it best: “The industry has been the leader in creating the proposals everyone is about to endorse.”
The politicians want to force tens of millions of people to buy health insurance, or else face a government fine. That’s a bonanza for big business.
Health care coverage was extended only once in this country’s history. In 1965, the massive mobilization of black people forced the government to extend health care, Medicare and Medicaid, to the elderly and poor. To get real health care reform today, working people will have to mobilize once again.
Sep 14, 2009
Five years after a man was executed by the state of Texas, a special investigation by the state found there was mishandling of forensic evidence. The investigation concluded there was no scientific basis for finding Cameron Todd Willingham guilty of arson. In 1991, this false evidence had been used to convict him of setting fire to his home in Corsicana, Texas, killing his three children.
Unfortunately for Willingham, the exoneration comes too late.
The night of the fire, Willingham had tried to rescue his children. He was driven back by smoke and flames so fierce that his hair caught on fire. When he saw flames leaping out of the windows of his children’s room, he tried so hard to get back in the burning house that police had to restrain and handcuff him.
Neighbors described Willingham that night as hysterical, screaming, “My babies are burning up.” But state prosecutors produced eyewitnesses at trial to falsely testify Willingham had behaved “oddly” and did not make an effort to save his kids. They also brought forth testimony from a jailhouse snitch, Johnny Webb, a long-term drug abuser who later admitted being doped up.
Only weeks before Willingham’s execution, renowned scientist and arson investigator Gerald Hurst had reviewed the evidence. Hurst began refuting every indication of arson. But the courts ignored Hurst’s warnings and proceeded with Willingham’s execution anyway.
This is a simple case of cold-blooded murder by the police, prosecutors and the courts. What better argument can there be for abolishing the death penalty?
Sep 14, 2009
Big insurance companies such as State Farm, Farmers, Hartford, as well as a number of smaller companies, have requested that the California Insurance Commissioner approve new premium increases.
The state had already allowed increases of 4 to 7% in the last year. So what’s the excuse of the insurance companies this time?
The California wildfires, of course! Never mind that the number of houses destroyed by the fires–a few hundred, or even if it’s a few thousand–is still less than one% in a state with 15 million homes!
At the same time, these insurance companies have been reducing coverage. So, as a consumer advocate put it, “People are going to be paying more for less.”
It sounds like these companies have used the fires as an excuse to increase their premiums and profits.
Sep 14, 2009
Wendell Potter used to be head of corporate communications at healthcare industry giants, first Humana and then Cigna. He admits that he was part of the scare stories designed to prevent any change in U.S. health care: “Over the years, I helped craft this message and deliver it.”
But in 2007 Mr. Potter said his conscience made him quit his job and begin to testify about the health care industry’s practices.
In recent interviews on radio and television, Potter said health insurance companies follow three major strategies: (1) to deny requests for any procedure that are expensive; (2) to cancel policies for the insured when someone finally needs care for an expensive disease; (3) to raise premiums sky-high on small businesses when one of their employees gets sick, which are then passed onto the workforce through higher co-pays and premiums.
And these methods were expected of their employees and not just at the companies where Potter worked. Potter cites the example of a Blue Cross employee, who earned a perfect performance evaluation for finding a legal way to drop thousands of policyholders. Their care would have cost ten million dollars.
On his blog, Potter admitted that he participated in “deceitful and dishonest PR campaigns that worked so well, hundreds of thousands of our citizens have died, and millions of others have lost their homes and been forced into bankruptcy, so that a very few corporate executives and their Wall Street masters could become obscenely rich.”
In other words, corporate boards–staffed by health insurance executives–are the real “death panels” that already exist.
Sep 14, 2009
Constellation Energy, parent company of BGE, needs to dispose of thousands of tons of coal ash residue from its power plants every year. Current plans to dump some of the coal ash at Hawkins Point, south of Baltimore, are raising protests from nearby residents.
Coal ash, which comes from coal-burning power plants, is filled with such toxic metals as arsenic, mercury, cadmium and beryllium. It is even somewhat radioactive. The danger is that these toxins can pollute the water table and air. Last December thousands of tons of coal ash escaped a dump in Tennessee. Some one billion gallons of sludge covered the nearby area, some going into three nearby rivers, some overrunning a few houses.
It’s not surprising that neighbors don’t want coal ash dumped near them. But they shouldn’t expect the government or the EPA to help them out. The EPA has not issued a ruling about the dangers of coal ash. In NINE years, it has made no decision, announced no regulations on this waste product from power plants.
Sep 14, 2009
Two out of three low wage workers in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York were cheated out of some wages, according to a new study by researchers from UCLA and City University of New York. After surveying more than 4,000 workers in low wage jobs such as manufacturing, retail and child care, they reported that low wage workers lost an average of $51 in wages in the previous week. And these were workers who only earned $339 a week to begin with.
Employers used a variety of tricks to steal their employees’ wages. For example, more than 90% of these workers did not file for workers’ comp when they were injured on the job and lost some pay because of company pressure. One out of every seven workers had worked “off the clock,” that is, the employers had forced these workers to give free labor during the past week. And three quarters of these workers had done overtime in the previous week without being paid any overtime premium.
Almost half of those workers who dared to file a report or lodge a formal complaint, either with their boss or the government, suffered retaliation, such as being fired.
The only surprise in all this is that officials from the U.S. Department of Labor dare to act shocked and surprised at this report.
Sep 14, 2009
It’s been a year since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the major Wall Street investment bank, triggered a panic that threatened the utter ruin of the financial system and the economy as a whole. Only the supposedly “heroic” intervention by the U.S. government, which handed trillions of dollars to big banks, insurance companies, auto companies, etc. was able to stop this collapse.
Or did it?
There are all kinds of signs that the government injection of trillions of dollars only encouraged more speculation and more bubbles.
Over the last few months, the stock market has leaped up by more than 50%. The price of oil went up by more than 70%, and gold is now trading at a near record level of $1,000 an ounce. Banks are now financing new waves of mergers as companies buy and sell one another, a little like in the old days before the collapse. Speculative investments with exotic names like Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs), that were blamed for spreading the last crash, are being created and traded on a massive scale once again.
Underlying this increasing speculation is a growing bubble of debt. Over the past three months, the leading stock brokers increased by 75% the amount of money they’ve loaned to stock speculators. Speculators are increasing their profits and their risks.
Some economists, like Simon Johnson, the former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, are warning that if this continues, an even more dangerous crash is inevitable. He and other economists are calling urgently for the government to step in with new regulations to stop the bubble.
But the role of government is to serve as a tool for the capitalists, each of whom is competing to increase their own profits. Even if the government could step in, which is doubtful, any intervention to stop the growth of the speculative bubble could trigger a new crash. The government cannot address the causes of the crisis; it can only offset the losses of the capitalists so that profiteering can resume. The problem is, given the record size and scope of the government bailout over the last couple of years, any new bailout could very well bankrupt the U.S. government. It could usher in a bigger and more grave crisis.
Sep 14, 2009
The media tells us the economy is starting to recover. Certainly for the capitalists, there is a recovery–profits are up by 20% over the last six months.
The capitalists have done it partly by forcing fewer workers to do more work. They have raised productivity by 6.6% compared to a year ago.
This kind of huge jump in productivity–especially during a recession, when productivity usually drops–could only be carried out through big attacks against the working class. Output per hour worked is forced up, even while jobs are eliminated.
These attacks have fed the growing joblessness. Another 216,000 jobs were cut in August. There are now nearly 30 million people whom the government classifies as unemployed or underemployed.
When commentators call this a “jobless recovery,” what they mean is a recovery in corporate profits–paid for by speed-up, loss of jobs, and lower pay and benefits.
Sep 14, 2009
Starting September 1, the politicians in Illinois raised the tax on candy and soda to 6¼%. They had the nerve to claim this will cut down on obesity!
But many workers and poor people can’t even find healthy foods like fresh vegetables and fruit in their neighborhood stores. And, when available, those foods are frequently very expensive.
This new “obesity tax” is nothing but a way to take even more money from working and poor people, to fatten banks, big corporations and real estate developers with even more tax breaks and subsidies!
Sep 14, 2009
The number of homeless students has been surging. With increasing unemployment and house foreclosures, there were more than one million homeless school children in the U.S. last spring. This is twice the number from two years before. There will surely be many more this school year, with the big increase in unemployment, evictions and foreclosures.
Educating such children is difficult or impossible. These children face the hardships of no place to live, and sometimes not enough to eat.
Federal law requires school districts to keep track of homeless students and provide them with any needed special transportation to school. However, the federal government does not provide money for such services. So school districts must use local and state money to pay for the special transportation and meals, taking the money from other educational needs.
Those responsible for homelessness should pay to educate the children they are harming. Let the big bankers, Wall Street speculators, real estate wheeler-dealers and corporations pay!
Sep 14, 2009
The following is taken from a presentation at a Spark public meeting held in Detroit on September 13:
This past week, as the school year began, the schools in Detroit were full of chaos. Many students, parents AND teachers had no idea where they were supposed to go–what school they were assigned to–on Day One, let alone how they were going to get there.
This chaos was the work of Robert Bobb, the “emergency financial manager” appointed by Michigan Governor Granholm to head the Detroit Public Schools.
Early this summer, Bobb closed 29 schools, sending those students to 36 other schools. In addition, he completely reorganized or “reconstituted” thirty-five more schools in the district. Principals were removed and replaced, and 1000 teachers were made to reapply for their jobs. They would either stay in their old school or be held in limbo waiting for another assignment. (This was a consequence of Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” program, which has been continued under Barack Obama under a new name, “Race to the Top.”) All that happens with this, of course, is a great big merry-go-round: some teachers stay in their reconstituted schools, and others move to reconstituted schools. Nothing changes except the chaos level.
All in all, two-thirds of the district’s 84,000 students were affected by these moves.
Then, in August, Bobb came out with his demands to the teachers for their next contract. These included attacks on teachers’ wages, including a 10% across the board wage cut and no step increases for the duration of the contract, and a demand that the contract last 5 years.
In addition, there are all sorts of proposals that mean a real attack on students’ education, such as:
Elimination of the sick bank cash-out and longevity bonus for teachers. Teachers often keep accumulating their sick bank days from year to year because they don’t have anything that covers them for a serious problem that might keep them out for a long time. Very often, long-term teachers reach retirement with a big bank of accumulated days. Right now, they can cash those days out when they retire and get paid for them.
Bobb wants to cut that cash-out–which will mean that experienced teachers approaching retirement will TAKE all those days, disappearing from the classroom a semester or a year early. Those classes will be left with a series of substitutes instead of any real teacher during that time.
In addition, Bobb proposes a series of technical changes that mean teachers could effectively be left with no prep time during the school day. This means teachers will come to class unprepared, unless they’re just going through the motions from what they’ve done in previous years. Again, students are the ones who suffer, in either case.
And the REAL kicker–technical changes that effectively put NO limit on class size. If that were to pass, there would effectively be NO limit to classroom size: 40, 50, 100. And it could mean further teacher layoffs.
After several large demonstrations of teachers, parents, students and other supporters, Bobb agreed to extend the contract 60 days, until October 31. He did not want to risk a strike until after the school year started.
Bobb’s cuts, and his further cut proposals, can ONLY result in worse conditions in the schools and worse results for the students. And it can only encourage an even greater exodus into neighboring school districts and into charter schools.
Charter schools are privately run, but they get their money from the public school system; in other words, they drain it from the public schools. BUT they don’t have to meet any of the standards that the public schools do, including standards on class size, or even the size of the classroom. They aren’t held to the same test standards by “No Child Left Behind.” They don’t have to hire qualified teachers; they can hire young people right out of school, with or without their teaching certificates, and pay these teachers much less for many more hours of work (often 7:00 AM -5:00 PM, every school day.) And they usually spend much less money on their students, so that much more of it goes into the pockets of those running the schools. Sometimes these are for-profit outfits openly running the schools to MAKE money; sometimes they are people who have a religious agenda and use the money they skim to create a whole network of charter schools pushing that agenda.
We always see a couple examples of a charter school here or there where the students do very well. These are schools that get loads of money pumped into them so that they can SERVE as the examples. They might get all the press, and give the impression that charter schools are doing great things. But they are not representative of the vast majority of charter schools. Several Department of Education studies have shown that charter schools produce WORSE results than comparable neighborhood schools. Of course, these studies get much less publicity.
Robert Bobb has openly declared his support of charter schools, and he seems to be doing what he can to transform the DPS into a district of charter schools. He already paid 20 million dollars to several charter school companies to “consult” in running 17 schools. This includes Edison Learning, Inc., which was paid to run the schools in the city of Inkster, a Detroit suburb, for five years. Edison left them no better than they were at the beginning–but drained them of a lot of money. And Edison was given twenty Philadelphia schools, only to have those schools perform worse than before Edison took over!
Students suffer when private companies are allowed to make a profit from public funds–instead of seeing that money go directly to their education. And they suffer as well when schools are closed or completely reorganized, throwing chaos into their educational lives, or when classes are so stuffed that teachers can’t possibly give individual attention and instruction.
The ONLY thing that makes sense to save DPS–and ALL poorer and working class schools–is to provide them much more money and resources. ALL schools should get the same money that the wealthiest districts get. But they don’t; not even close.
Proposal A, passed in Michigan in 1994, lowered property taxes across the state and raised the state sales tax. It was a way to let corporations and wealthy individuals off the hook, since they could then pay much lower taxes on expensive properties; and it put a much bigger share of tax payments on the working class, since working people pay a much higherpercentage of their income in sales tax than wealthy people do.
In order to get people to go along with this, the state said that it would equalize school funding across the state. Before that, each individual district was funded mostly through local property taxes. This meant that richer areas, with more valuable properties, always had more money for their schools than poorer ones–even when districts like Detroit regularly tax themselves at a much higher rate to pay for their schools than rich districts do.
Now workers are paying a much higherpercentage of their incomes to this fund through sales taxes. But they’re getting a lot less out of it. Per-pupil spending is set by law at different amounts for different school districts. Districts like Detroit, Inkster, River Rouge and other working-class districts are paid just over $7,000 per pupil. The districts in the wealthy suburbs of Birmingham and Bloomfield are paid over $12,000 BY THE STATE for each pupil!
So, in effect, a parent in Detroit is paying more to educate the children in wealthy Birmingham than they do to educate their OWN children!
And on top of it, districts are still free to tax themselves further if they want to–and if they can. So rather than equalizing school funding, Proposal A has added one unequal funding on top of another unequal funding–and made this inequality official policy.
We’ve always heard, “You can’t just throw money at the problem,” and that’s true–you can’t JUST do that. But it’s a good place to start! The wealthier districts know this–it’s why they’ve refused to redistribute the funding or cut their own funding, even using OUR money to pay for THEIR kids’ education! If they don’t think money helps, let THEM educate their kids on $7,000 per pupil per year, and we’ll ‘make do’ with $12,000!
If all these schools are to be improved, it takes MORE money poured into them, not less! State-wide and nationwide, money should be POURED into the poorer districts, to pay for all the improvements that are needed–even if it means taking money from the richer districts. Equalize the results, through unequal funding in the OTHER direction, for a change.
Imagine what that could mean for our society, and for the world, if EVERY child could have the benefit of a top-notch education: small class size, for individual attention. State-of-the-art buildings, including fully-outfitted science labs and computer labs, theater, pools, not to mention bathrooms that WORK and ceilings that don’t leak! Full sets of RECENT textbooks for all students, not to mention all sorts of supplementary materials. If EVERY child were given the opportunity to truly engage their natural curiosity and thirst for knowledge and understanding, if every child were given a truly thorough scientific understanding of the world, if every child were allowed the chance to engage their creativity–think of how fast society would progress: all the things we could do, all the advances we could see!
That will take a huge fight, because it means the complete reorganization of the resources of this society. The current rulers of this society are perfectly content with the way things are now. Despite what we always hear, they have no use for a well-educated population. They only need a small handful to direct THEIR system; the proof is all those coming out of the universities and taking jobs at places like McDonald’s. And they still need LOTS of workers who won’t make much money at all. A fully well-educated population would be a waste, as far as they’re concerned.
In fact, they seem to be deciding that ANY spending on the education of workers’ children is too much. They’d rather gut the school systems, suck funds for profit, and leave workers’ kids to rot. After all, with the high rate of unemployment, they’ve just accepted that a largepercentage of working-class kids will have no jobs and no futures at all.
If working-class kids are to have any future, the working class will have to impose it on the ruling class through major fights.
Sep 14, 2009
Colin Harrison has written a fascinating detective novel that shows something about the very different layers of today’s society. At the bottom are two Mexican women, here in the U.S. illegally, who have the job of collecting papers from offices for shredding. The head of the shredding company is a very different type of immigrant, a wealthy business woman from China. She uses the shredding company to steal certain documents from big corporations and send them over to her brother in Shanghai, China. He and his friends are wealthy speculators. They use the stolen information to manipulate the stock price of a U.S. pharmaceutical company.
The head of the pharmaceutical company discovers that its secrets have been stolen and uses the Italian mafia in New York to deliver a lesson to the shredding company, leading to the deaths of the two Mexican women. But when the pharmacy company’s stock drops, a billionaire investor, who suffered a hundred million dollar loss, moves into action. He carries out a massive stock manipulation of his own to drive the stock price back up.
Anyone with a 401(k) plan that has tanked while bankers get ever richer will find this novel an eye-opener into the world of speculation and fraud and well-protected crime at the top.
This novel will hold your attention with some very believable characters who reveal the hidden parts of today’s society.
Sep 14, 2009
In the seven months he’s been in office, Barack Obama has continued and intensified the crackdown on immigrants begun by Bush.
Instead of raids on the work place, the Obama administration issued 652 “Notices of Inspection” nationwide, getting employers to fire those with questionable Social Security numbers, and saving the employers the aggravation of a raid. The government has stepped up getting employers to use E-Verify, a database of Social Security numbers. But the error rate is so high, the government itself admits that this year 19,000 people with perfectly good papers were denied employment.
The Obama administration has turned to local governments to help it crack down on immigrants. The number of people arrested and deported so far this year is double the number deported by Bush two years ago.
The effect of these actions has been to harass and intimidate a part of the working class already forced to work for low pay, under terrible conditions.
There is every reason for immigrants to protest these attacks, just as they did three years ago. Then, there were massive demonstrations, which brought hundreds of thousands of people out into the streets of cities like Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, D.C.
But the organizations that led these demonstrations behind the call for immigration “reform” are quiet today.
No surprise. Look who the major players were. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU), tied to the Democratic Party, provided the controlling apparatus in major cities. Local and national immigrant rights organizations, often supported by business-funded foundations or tied to the Democratic Party, provided many of the organizers.
Business and the Democratic Party–as well as Bush–were the real controlling forces behind the push for immigration “reform.” And they were aiming for an immigration “reform” that provided employers with a more efficient way to regulate and control immigrant labor. When business saw the massive response of immigrant workers to the call for demonstrations, both Democrats and Bush pulled back, fearful of encouraging a mobilization they couldn’t control.
The demonstrations three years ago showed the readiness of massive numbers of immigrants to come out for their rights.
But they also showed that if immigrant workers are to defend themselves they will not only have to mobilize again–but also to rely on themselves. If they do, in the current situation of widespread attacks, they might well find a response from other workers who have learned some sad lessons from the last three years.
Sep 14, 2009
On September 7 in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, Lubna Ahmed al-Hussein was condemned to pay a $200 fine or spend a month in prison for wearing “indecent clothes.” What indecent clothes? Trousers!
In fact, this courageous woman could have received a sentence of forty lashes from the whip. But her case became infamous thanks to her contacts in the international media. So she was spared that horror of Sharia law, although dozens of other Sudanese women arrested with her were not.
Lubna Hussein, who is fighting for the repeal of this reactionary law enacted by the military and religious dictatorship in power since 1991, has refused to pay the fine and so went to prison. She wants to make her trial and imprisonment a symbol of the 43,000 women arrested for “indecent dress” in the Khartoum region since the law went into effect.
Dozens of women demonstrators accompanied Hussein when she went to court; the police arrested 43 of them. She got out of prison after one day because the journalist union paid her fine, although she had not requested it. Lubna said upon leaving the prison, “I’m not happy because there are more than 700 women still in prison, and there is no one who is paying their fines.”
In her fight, Hussein is supported by all those who support the rights of women. The U.S. government, however, had nothing to say about this case.
That’s no surprise! The U.S. government keeps quiet about the lack of rights of women living under numerous fundamentalist regimes, including Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan.
Sep 14, 2009
For all practical purposes, there has been no draw-down of U.S. troops in Iraq. 135,000 troops still occupy the country and U.S. troop strength is actually being increased, when the number of “private contractors” is included. The Army reported a 19% increase in private security guards hired by the Defense Department in the second quarter of this year.
Violence is increasing throughout the country, and it is Iraqi civilians who pay the biggest price. The official death toll, which is always understated, is 4,111 Iraqi civilians killed so far this year.
The U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq continues to bear its poisonous fruit. U.S. troops out now!
Sep 14, 2009
On September 8, four U.S. soldiers were killed in Iraq, the most killed in a single day in the last two months. The Associated Press reported that one of the soldiers was killed on patrol in Baghdad and three were killed on patrol in the northern province of Kirkuk.
So what were U.S. troops doing on patrol when the U.S. supposedly pulled all of its troops from Iraqi cities and population centers, turning the patrols over to the Iraqi military and police?
In reality, only the name has been changed. U.S. troops, now said to be "advisers’ to the Iraqi military, are just like the earlier generation of U.S. troops called "advisers’ in Viet Nam.
Sep 14, 2009
General Stanley McChrystal, the military commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, is asking that thousands more U.S. troops be sent to that country on top of the 68,000 who will be there at the end of the year. There are also about 35,000 troops from other NATO countries.
And that is not all. There were more than 68,000 contractors working for the Pentagon back in March and the number has been going up, according to the Congressional Research Service. There are also private contractors working for the U.S. State Department and for other NATO countries.
These contractors do many kinds of non-combat duties, like construction, maintenance, cleaning and food services, to free up a largerpercentage of the U.S. soldiers for combat.
There are also a growing number of contractors who are mercenaries, directly engaged in military security duties, intelligence work and combat.
The military may soon take private contracting even further. It is considering increasing the number of U.S. combat troops in Afghanistan by 14,000 by swapping out military clerical workers and other office staff in the country for so-called “trigger pullers”–combat troops. Thousands of additional private contractors would be hired to do the clerical work.
Of course, by increasing the number of contractors and mercenaries, the U.S. government partially hides the real extent of the build-up. And it also funnels even more money and profits to its buddies in the private sector.
Sep 14, 2009
The violence in Afghanistan is getting worse.
On September 4, between 70 and 100 Afghans were killed and more than a hundred injured in a single U.S. attack. Taliban fighters had highjacked two oil tanker trucks. When one of the hijacked tankers got stuck, people arrived with containers to drain out the fuel. At that point, a NATO commander called in a strike by U.S. aircraft that killed those nearby, most of them civilians.
Last month, 47 U.S. soldiers lost their lives, the deadliest month in the Afghan war so far. By the beginning of September, about 175 U.S. and 125 allied soldiers had been killed in Afghanistan during 2009... and the year is still far from over.
The war in Afghanistan is now eight years old. It was started under the Bush administration and continues now under Obama’s administration. Neither Democrats nor Republicans will end this war. So it is up to the soldiers and people in this country to do it.