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
Jan 23, 2012
Politicians and other professional liars drown us in numbers, trying to convince us that the economy is getting better.
They say it’s recovering, because housing sales are up. Yes, but why are the selling prices going down? Because banks are dumping their toxic mortgages as fast as they can. The dumping is lowering prices, undercutting still more those homeowners trying to sell their homes. Going deeper underwater is not a recovery!
They say it’s recovering, because the unemployment rate is getting better. But why is the number getting better? Because the workers who long ago exhausted their benefits are now dropping off the charts. So many are discouraged that they don’t look for work every month. The government doesn’t count these workers–sweeps them aside like they aren’t there anymore.
In the two months before Christmas, only 300,000 more people found work–temporary work for the holiday season. But what about the 24 million workers who need work NOW? At that rate, it would take more than 13 years to employ 24 million–even if Christmas came every two months!
The politicians tell us to elect them either because they are businessmen, or, because they will give tax breaks to help businessmen, whom they call “job creators.” Only in the mouths of liars hired to sell the idea that down is up and up is down! Businessmen as a group have laid off 6.3 million workers since the beginning of 2008. Job eliminators!
But maybe the “job creators” simply lost too much money and couldn’t pay workers to keep working? Just the opposite! While laying off millions of workers, the corporations, banks and investment funds were stockpiling billions in cash. Too much cash to count.
Today the “private equity” investment funds as a group have over half a trillion dollars in unspent cash hoards. And corporate giants as a group hold more than two trillion more dollars, stashed away unspent. The banks as a group have many trillions more, gifted to them by the government bailouts. The capitalists call this “dry powder”–money laying in storage.
In storage, when 24 million workers need work! In storage, when society’s basic infrastructure–housing, schools, utilities, roads–is falling to pieces.
The capitalists say it’s their money. But, no. Money represents a social product. It can be a social tool. Value is created by the daily work of millions, using machinery and materials worked up by earlier millions. Money represents accumulated social value.
Society needs that money, now. It must be put to work–regardless of the claims of a few greedy hoarders.
Those many trillions of dollars could provide jobs for everyone who wants to work. If the demand for goods isn’t enough at first to employ everyone for a full 40 hours, then the work can be shared out, while everyone gets a full check to live on. The bosses have jammed three people’s jobs into one, already. Every job can be slowed down, made safer, unwound back to three jobs.
Those several trillions of “dry powder” could be taken and used by society to provide a decent improved standard of living. Houses could be well fixed up, medical care could be well provided, students could be well educated, public services could be well restored. Needed work of all sorts could be done and done well–if those hoarded trillions were put to intelligent use, invested in real work.
The resources exist. The housing that is now vacant, the office buildings now standing empty “for lease,” the factories now chained shut, the equipment and tooling now idle–and yes, the money now hoarded up. Everything is right here at hand, all that society needs to hum and come to life again, and promote the general welfare.
The workers who have produced society’s store of “dry powder” have a right to reclaim it, and put it to work, doing the work that needs doing.
Jan 23, 2012
Newt Gingrich has attacked Mitt Romney for when he was head of Bain Capital. That company bought up many companies, laying off many thousands of workers, making Romney very rich. Newt asked, “Is capitalism really about the ability of a handful of rich people to manipulate the lives of thousands of other people and walk off with the money?” Yes it is, Newt, and when you support it, that’s what you get.
Jan 23, 2012
When Mitt Romney said that he pays 15% of his income in taxes–about half the rate at which wage earners are taxed–his rivals in the presidential race attacked him.
Romney’s “defense”? That’s how “investment income” is taxed. It’s true–in the past two decades, the White House and Congress, under both Republican and Democratic control, worked together to pass one tax cut after another on “capital gains.”
The accurate name for that type of income is unearned income. While workers face higher and higher taxes on the money they earn from their work, those who make money on money–that is, the rich–pay less and less tax. According to the Congressional Research Service, after-tax income, adjusted for inflation, rose by about 75% for the top 1% from 1996 to 2006, while it dropped by about 5% for the bottom 20%. And the top 0.1% doubled their income.
Yes, Romney, who uses his money to get even richer, needs to be put on the hot seat. But how about the rest of his class–the big industrialists, bankers and “private equity” speculators?
Jan 23, 2012
Answering a question about his taxes, Mitt Romney said: “... Then, I get speakers fees from time to time, but not very much.”
How much is “not very much”? More than $374,000 from February 2010 to February 2011!
For that amount, many of us have to do real work for 10 years, clocking in and out every single day.
Jan 23, 2012
Rick Santorum, a Republican candidate for president, has sounded the alarm about Muslim fundamentalists trying to push the acceptance of Sharia law in the United States. How horrible it would be to be governed by reactionary religious ideas!
Sure would be–and our biggest risk comes from religious fanatics (or cynical politicians) like Santorum. He would like the United States to be governed by Biblical, Old Testament law.
What?! He thinks there’s a difference?
Would he like to enforce Biblical prohibitions against abortion and homosexuality? Undoubtedly–that’s part of his right-wing platform. How about contraception, adultery, or children talking back to their parents? All are forbidden in the Old Testament–and all are punishable by death!
How is Santorum’s Christian backwardness any different from the Taliban’s Muslim backwardness? Religious reaction is religious reaction–no matter which religion it is.
Jan 23, 2012
Michigan’s Governor Snyder just signed “unemployment reform” legislation that cuts the time length for unemployment benefits and also makes it harder to get and keep benefits.
Michigan’s real unemployment rate in the 2011 fiscal year was at 19.2%–when you include all those without jobs who are left out of the official statistics–discouraged and part-time workers.
This new law will drive down wages by pressuring workers to accept a lower-paying job when their unemployment insurance is cut.
“Reform”–it’s another word for giving more money to business!
Jan 23, 2012
Four homeless men living on the streets of Orange County, California were murdered between December 20 and January 13. The murders seem to be the acts of a serial killer, and a particularly violent one–each victim was stabbed at least 40 times. The police arrested 23-year-old Itzcoatl “Izzy” Ocampo, whom bystanders chased down after the fourth murder.
People who know Ocampo painted a picture of him that’s anything but that of a gruesome murderer. In fact, he was known to be compassionate and generous to the poor and homeless.
Ocampo himself comes from a family that has lived with the reality of unemployment and homelessness. His father lost his job as a warehouse manager in 2005, and has not found steady employment since then.
Ocampo is an Iraq war veteran. In 2006, the year after his father lost his job, the younger Ocampo joined the Marines. A friend who had basic training with Ocampo said he was “really motivated” and “gung- ho” then.
Ocampo acted very differently when he came back in 2010 after two years of deployment in Iraq. A roommate said he would wake up screaming twice a week. His brother said he would look for bombs in the closets and bathrooms at home. He had trembling hands and hallucinations. His behavior got worse when a Marine friend was killed in Afghanistan.
Upon his return from Iraq, Ocampo also found his father living under a bridge. And he himself met the scourge of unemployment. His brother said Ocampo was always applying for jobs, including at Wal-Mart and other stores, but they would never call him back.
Whatever led him to become a ruthless murderer, if he is the one who killed these men–one thing is for certain: Izzy Ocampo is a victim of the Iraq war and unemployment.
And the four homeless men who were killed are victims of a war as well–for there are two different kinds of wars going on. One is waged by the U.S. military, invading other countries–spreading misery in those countries. The other is waged by U.S. companies, laying off workers–spreading misery and homelessness in this country.
Both wars are waged on behalf of the rich, to make them richer. Ruined lives are the price–and workers pay it.
Jan 23, 2012
The shipwreck of the cruise ship Costa Concordia off the isle of Giglio in the Mediterranean led to at least eleven deaths, 21 missing and several dozen wounded, out of the 3,200 passengers and thousand crew members.
The shipping company, Carnival Corp., of which Costa is an affiliate, hurried to throw the entire blame on the Concordia’s captain. It does seem he steered the ship onto the reefs and then was incapable of pulling it off. And he abandoned the ship before all the passengers and crew were safe.
But what the shipwreck really shows is the risk of bringing together thousands people, among whom were very few professional sailors, in what more resembled a floating casino than a ship on the high seas.
In fact, several hours were needed to evacuate everyone. Yet the weather was good and the ship ran aground very close to an inhabited, well-lit coast from which aid came. However, even if the lifeboats had all been operational, the crew had no way to rapidly evacuate thousands of panicked and inexperienced people in an unknown and dangerous environment. What would have happened in the case of fire or storm in the middle of the ocean? What would have happened if the Concordia had sunk instead of running aground?
In order to cut the cost per passenger, cruise lines buy larger ships, needing larger crews, to provide swimming pools, casinos, supermarkets, gyms, ballrooms, even floating gardens and an elevated train on the ship. In this way, shipowners create floating cities. In order to go so close to the coasts that tourists can touch the rocks or to maneuver between two supertankers, cruise ships draw the least possible water, making them extremely unstable in the case of strong winds. There have been several incidents in the English Channel and the Caribbean with cruise ships floundering.
Despite this, the shipowners build ever bigger ships. The next generation will carry 8,000 people aboard. The same logic of profitability prevails in the entire shipping industry. So ships with 13,000 containers stacked in eight layers above the deck go through the English Channel every day, almost blindly. They are way too heavy to be towed to rescue in case of accident. But who cares? They are already building even bigger ships.
This race for size is a race for profit. Carnival had almost two billion dollars in profit last year–12% of its income. Let the ships sail on!
Jan 23, 2012
The federal government gives a big tax credit for the installation of home solar panels–30% of the cost can be deducted from taxes. What a good thing–cheaper electricity without pollution!
Not quite! The cost of putting solar panels on a home is $90,000. Only the well-off can afford it. This is where banks step in. They offer to put on the panels for free, then charge the homeowner for electricity. But the banks get all the tax credits.
And then run off! They sell the installed panels to investors, just like they did subprime mortgages and student loans. Rates go up and the consumer gets stuck with the electricity bills. All in the name of “green energy.”
Jan 23, 2012
More than a thousand people demonstrated near Governor Snyder’s Ann Arbor house on Martin Luther King Day. The protest was mainly against the Emergency Financial Manager law, which allows the governor to appoint a dictator who can tear up union contracts, cut wages, eliminate benefits, close public schools, hand them over to private for-profit companies, etc., etc., etc.
Unfortunately, people couldn’t get close to his house–he lives in a private, gated community. Fortunately, the crowd was loud enough to be heard well beyond those locked gates.
Jan 23, 2012
Seventy-five years ago, on December 26, 1936, the Flint sit-down strike began. It was the longest, and most extensive, of the sit-down strikes then sweeping the industrial heartland of the United States. Flint was the turning point of the social movement of the 1930s, the workers’ self-defense against the bosses’ Great Depression.
After the stock market crash of 1929, the following years saw enormous cuts in production, employment and workers’ income.
The bosses drove down the average weekly pay in auto from $33 a week to $20. In addition, there was speed-up, a vicious drive for increased productivity. In the face of a disastrous depression, the big capitalists were determined to preserve their profits.
Three years after the stock market crash, the working class began to gather its forces. There were almost 1700 strikes nationwide in 1933, most of them in the second half of the year; that was almost three times the number of strikes seen in all of 1932, and the biggest number since 1921.
Despite defeats, the strike movement increased: in 1934, there were almost 1900 strikes nationwide; in 1935, more than 2000; and in 1936, more than 2200. If nothing else, the workers had come to understand that a fight was not only necessary, but possible.
Communist or socialist militants were at the head of most of the important strikes of this period, including the three most significant mass strikes in 1934. In the Toledo Auto-Lite strike, they were militants of A.J. Muste’s American Workers’ Party; in the San Francisco longshore and general strikes, they were Communist Party militants; and, in the resounding victory of the Minneapolis Teamsters strikes, they were militants of the Communist League, the Trotskyist forerunner of the Socialist Workers Party.
At that crucial time, the working class found in its own ranks such militants, people determined to see the working class organize itself, to mobilize all its possible forces. Usually only a handful of such militants were present, sometimes only one in a factory. But in many cases, they were the necessary difference.
Probably the most important victory which prepared the road to Flint came in Akron, where the workers sat down inside their factories.
The first quick sit-down victory in January of 1936 led to a 6-week-long shutdown which forced Goodyear to recognize the union. The next months saw the workers enforce their demands with a rapid-fire series of sit-downs, mostly spontaneous. There were more than 180 recorded in a 10-month period in Akron’s tire plants. Firestone and U.S. Rubber fell in line behind Goodyear.
Of course the plant occupations were illegal, and were attacked by the capitalists with every means at their command. But workers everywhere saw something more important: those workers were winning.
The sit-down wave quickly spread from Akron to Detroit. In the months of November and December alone, Midland Steel, Gordon Baking, Alcoa Aluminum, National Automotive Fibers, Bohn Aluminum, and Kelsey Hayes were all occupied.
In June 1936, Wyndham Mortimer, a vice president of the newly formed UAW-CIO, and a militant of the Communist Party, came to Flint to initiate an organizing campaign. Mortimer had been active for years in plants in Cleveland; he had led job actions and strikes forcing the White Motor Company to accept the union.
The first courageous workers to sign up with Mortimer campaigned secretly. Risking discharge if discovered, they pasted union stickers to car bodies rolling down the line. Everywhere the workers discussed among themselves what was happening, as the speed-up and the arbitrary firing continued.
Small spontaneous job actions began. In one week, at Fisher Body #1, there were seven brief work stoppages against speed-up and firing of workers. GM no longer appeared all-powerful.
Workers began to pour into the union office to sign up. Soon, the workers felt strong enough to organize a public meeting at the union hall, where Mortimer spoke. It was filled to overflowing. Membership grew from 150 in October, to 1500 in November, and to 4500 in December.
For the first time, union members wore their union buttons openly in the plants, and GM didn’t dare fire them.
The national leaders of the UAW planned for a decisive strike after the first of the year. But workers’ action pulled things ahead. Workers in the Chevrolet plant in Cleveland sat down on December 26, when GM management postponed a grievance discussion. The aggrieved workers sat down in their department; other departments followed. The whole plant was quickly occupied.
When the news spread to Flint, the unionists decided that they couldn’t wait any longer. Several of the key plants at Flint were occupied almost immediately.
The strike spread to the rest of GM outside of Flint. Atlanta and Kansas City had already been on strike for over a month. On the 31st of December, Guide Lamp in Anderson, Indiana and Fisher Body and Chevrolet plants in Norwood, Ohio were occupied. On the 4th of January, Toledo Chevrolet joined the movement; on the 5th, Detroit Ternstedt and Janesville Fisher Body and Chevrolet; on the 8th, Detroit Cadillac; finally, on the 12th, Detroit Fleetwood and St. Louis. At this point, GM was forced to close most of its remaining plants.
Flint was the center of GM’s empire. The longest sit-down, 44 days, and the toughest fights were engaged there. But the strike extended throughout GM’s empire. If the Flint workers carried the most important part of the fight, still, they did not fight alone.
Everything required to make that 44-day occupation possible depended on the workers’ own organization. Workers built up barricades, organized patrols inside the plants, secured the entrances, and sometimes mobilized to battle cops. The most famous fight, known as the Battle of Bulls Run, occurred early in the strike. On the 7th of January, the cops attacked with tear gas and guns to drive the strikers out. The strikers responded by throwing the tear gas grenades back to the cops, by soaking the cops to the skin with icy water from the plant’s fire protection hoses, and by pelting them with two-pound door handles “just right for throwing” and other heavier metal parts.
Before it was over, there would be a number of skirmishes, each time provoked by the police or National Guard either directly attacking, or trying to force the workers out by cutting off heat, electricity, or food. Each time, the workers used both their control of the plant, as well as their supporters outside, to defend their positions. When the heat or electricity was cut off, the workers threatened to set bonfires. That was enough to have GM turn the power back on. When the food supplies were interrupted, the strikers who remained outside dealt with the National Guard, either diverting them so food could be brought in or persuading them to let the food go through.
Several times it was the working class women of Flint, organized in the Emergency Brigade, who stood up to the cops or National Guard, shaming them and making it more difficult for them to attack the workers inside the plant.
The Flint strike gained national importance, watched by workers all over the country. And many of those workers watching Flint began to sit down in their own factories. Others came to Flint to make sure the Flint workers did not have to face the power of the state apparatus alone. On the days when the threat was the most serious, between fifteen and twenty thousand workers from all over a three-state area were massed outside the two plants which the National Guard stood ready to invade. The battle at Flint belonged to the whole working class, and the workers knew it.
Inside the occupied plants, the necessities of daily life had to be organized. Meals were prepared for strikers both inside and outside the plants. The factories were cleaned up, living areas were constructed, safety was monitored, bedding was found, problems were solved.
Penned up in the factory, the workers discovered among themselves the basis of a rich social life. Many of their memoirs speak fondly of the singing, the discussions, the debates, the plays, the games of chess or checkers or cards, the caricatures drawn by someone who never before realized his ability. They also speak fondly of the work they each were responsible for, work which was carried out collectively and coordinated by the strike committees inside the plants.
The union headquarters became the center for the strikers outside, for the families, for other workers who came to help. They too enjoyed the collective way their lives were lived during that period.
Those who remained outside carried the responsibility, among other things, for spreading the news about the strike, through distributing the strike newspaper, and also through door-to-door discussions in the working class neighborhoods, recruiting for the union.
The decisions about organizing the strike were taken on the spot, by the workers involved. They had daily meetings, both inside the plants, and in the union headquarters near the plants. Later on, it was this fact that the workers had taken up habits of deciding things for themselves, and then acting upon them right away, which caused so many problems for the company when the strike was over. The workers who came through 44 days of self-organization were not ready to let the company make arbitrary decisions, nor order them around.
And neither were they ready to wait a long time for their grievances and complaints to be settled by someone else. In the four months after the strike was settled, there were, according to GM’s own figures, 170 quickie sit-downs, organized by the workers on the spot in order to get immediate satisfaction of their demands. The sit-down had given them a sense of their own strength, and confidence in their own ability to handle their problems.
The ground-breaking victory at Flint demonstrated something that, ordinarily, American workers have not perceived; that is, the workers at Flint were part of a class, a large class with immense power when it acts together. When the workers finally left the Flint plants after 44 days, their power had forced GM to recognize a union that GM had sworn never to recognize. Almost the whole working class of Flint celebrated, alongside all those workers from throughout the Middle West who had made the Flint sit-down their own.
Within 20 days of the original settlement at the 17 affected GM plants, 18 more GM plants were occupied. Nationwide, beyond the auto industry, there were more than 700 major sit-downs by the end of 1937. In February and March in Detroit alone, 100 factories, stores and offices were occupied by sit-downers for some period of time. Even salesclerks at the Detroit Woolworth lunch counter sat down! Chrysler plants were occupied for 17 days.
Nothing was handed to the workers. As late as 1941, it was necessary for auto workers to shut down the massive Ford Rouge plant in order to crack Henry Ford’s resolve never to allow a union on his property.
The workers of 1937 had come to view themselves, at least for a while, as part of one single class, with one set of interests, with one fight to make. Their consciousness of that fact was the essential key that secured the victory at Flint in February of 1937, and secured the victories in the massive wave of sit-downs and union organizing that would follow.
Today, the bosses are rolling back every advance won since 1937. They are succeeding because such class consciousness in the working class is but a dim memory. But as the capitalists use today’s economic crisis to press harder and harder on workers, it means that workers somewhere, sometime, will feel no choice but to fight in the old ways. Through their fighting experiences they will regain the necessary consciousness to turn the bosses’ plans upside down, once again.
But this time, it is necessary not only to upend the bosses’ plans, but the bosses themselves. The power the workers have when mobilized like this gives them the means not only to take over a big company, but to take over society and run it in the interests of the population.
Jan 23, 2012
Capitalism in the 21st century has been ruthless to steelworkers. Bethlehem Steel, which decades ago employed 25,000 workers at its Sparrows Point plant near Baltimore, was down to 4000 workers in 2001, when it declared bankruptcy. The company drastically reduced pensions and eliminated health benefits for retirees.
International Steel became the new owner in 2003, reducing the workforce to 2,530. Mittal took it over in 2005. The Russian company Severstal took it over in 2008. Then came a 7-month shutdown in 2010, with 2500 workers unemployed.
RG Steel took it over March 2011, reducing the workforce to 2200. December 23, two days before Christmas, RG bosses proclaimed financial difficulties and announced an immediate shutdown of major parts of the plant, laying off 750 workers. Will these layoffs be permanent or temporary? No one knows.
But this is what we do know: the decline in the steel industry is a sign of capitalism in crisis and decay. What an irony to decimate an industry that could produce steel and steel products for improving aged infrastructure and provide thousands of useful jobs.
It makes a mockery of Maryland officials who brag that our state’s unemployment rate is improving and things are looking up.
Jan 23, 2012
Legendary vocalist Etta James died January 20 of leukemia at age 73.
James was a tremendously versatile singer, gracefully mastering musical styles ranging from rhythm and blues, jazz, rock ’n’ roll, blues, and gospel. She could sing romantic jazz-influenced ballads like Sunday Kind of Love, Stormy Weather Keeps Rainin’ All the Time, and her signature tune, At Last. She soulfully rocked on songs like Tell Mama, Something’s Got a Hold on Me, Seven Day Fool, Tough Mary and her remake of Ray Charles’ What’d I Say. And she put her own stamp on blues classics like I Just Want to Make Love to You and her own I’d Rather Go Blind.
James’ career stretched from the mid-1950s to the early years of the new millennium. She was a major influence on many artists who came after her like Janis Joplin, Diana Ross, and the Rolling Stones and more recent artists like Amy Winehouse and Adele.
Though Etta James received some acclaim near the end of her life, like so many other black artists of her time the enormous impact she made on popular music remains shamefully unrecognized.
Jan 23, 2012
Top officials of Santa Ana, California extorted a new contract from city employees in December. Under the new contract, the employees’ contribution toward their pensions was increased from 8% to 13% of their wages. Employees have to take 17 additional furlough days–meaning almost one and a half days a month–a big wage cut. Previously, they were taking one furlough day per month. The combined giveback amounts to a 15% pay cut.
City officials said they had no other choice. The city has a budget deficit of 30 million dollars, and it was left with only $300,000 in reserves. The city manager Paul Walters said that the city “faced shrinking tax revenues and state raids on its budget over the last four years.”
Budget deficit? The workers didn’t cause it. Officials like Walters did.
Santa Ana has set up so-called “enterprise zones,” which cover more than half the city. The businesses located in these areas are allowed to reduce their taxes by $37,440 a year per employee, which is more than what almost all these businesses pay to their workers. There are also sales or use tax credits for equipment. All these tax credits reduce the City of Santa Ana’s income. That’s why there are “shrinking tax revenues.”
If there is a budget deficit, get the money back from the business owners who benefitted from it! Stop trying to cut workers’ wages to make business more profitable–and their owners richer!
Jan 23, 2012
The U.S. has now thrown its weight against Iran, threatening to strangle its economy through new trade and financial sanctions.
The Obama administration says it is trying to stop the Iranian government from producing nuclear weapons–a variation of the same deceitful weapons-of-mass-destruction argument that U.S. officials used against Iraq.
The Iranian government denies the charges that the U.S. levels against it. Iran says it is trying to develop nuclear technology to produce electricity, so it doesn’t completely depend on oil for all of its energy. And it points to the fact that the Iranian government started this program back in the early 1970s, with the help of the U.S.!
But even if the Iranian government were secretly producing nuclear weapons, who could blame it? Almost all the big powers that denounce Iran for trying to produce nuclear weapons have their own nuclear weapons arsenals. And the U.S. is the worst. Not only has it actually dropped nuclear bombs on people, the U.S. also has enough weapons to destroy the world population many times. Moreover, several of Iran’s neighbors, including Israel, Pakistan and India, also have nuclear weapons, with the U.S. government’s blessings!
Yes, Iran is a repressive dictatorship, and a fundamentalist religious state. But this cannot be a problem for the U.S. Most of its closest allies in the Persian Gulf, such as Saudi Arabia, are just as bad or worse. No, the problem for the U.S. is that the Iranian government is rival to the U.S.’s main client states in the region, Israel and Saudi Arabia. To maintain and consolidate its own hold over the Persian Gulf’s oil, the U.S. has targeted Iran. Hands off Iran!
Jan 23, 2012
The U.S. has a long history of attacks on Iran. In 1953, the American CIA overthrew an elected Iranian government simply because the big international oil companies objected to that government taking away some of their control over the country’s vast oil resources. The U.S. government helped impose the dictatorship of the Shah over the country.
In 1979, after 26 years of violent repression, the Iranian population overthrew the Shah. The U.S. government didn’t attack Iran directly. Instead, it encouraged Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, to go to war against Iran. That war lasted eight years and resulted in one million deaths. Toward the end of the war, Hussein used poison gas against Iranian troops and Iranian Kurdish towns, with U.S. financial aid and the help of U.S. military intelligence. In the U.N. Security Council, the U.S. government blocked even the most timid recognition of the use of these weapons of mass destruction by Iraq against Iran and the Kurds on March 21, 1986.
Since then, the U.S. has continued to attack Iran, not just through economic sanctions, but terrorist attacks of all sorts inside the country. One of the latest took place on January 12 in broad daylight in Tehran. Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a 32-year-old scientist and university professor, was blown up after two assailants on a motorcycle put a magnetic bomb under his car. He was the fifth scientist in Iran over the last two years to be assassinated either by the U.S. or Israeli secret services.
This ongoing war by the U.S. sows more death and destruction, makes the entire region more unstable, creates the possibility of even worse wars–all for the greater good of Big Oil.
Jan 23, 2012
Measles, which was virtually eradicated in Europe, has come back in force: the number of cases tabulated by doctors in France has continually increased, from 604 in 2008 to 14,000 in 2011.
It isn’t a minor disease, far from it. In France, one person out of five with measles has to be hospitalized, and elderly and frail people sometimes die of it. The disease is very contagious. The virus can be spread through direct contact through sneezes or the coughs of infected people, including by drops suspended in the air, where it remains active for thirty minutes. It can contaminate an entire class, a movie theater or a sporting event.
Fortunately, measles vaccination is very effective: in Africa, big vaccination campaigns succeeded in cutting mortality by 90% from 2000 to 2007. In France, the epidemic is most widespread in areas where the rate of vaccination is the lowest.
Some trends or groups oppose vaccination for religious reasons, and others under the pretext that it’s necessary to develop natural defenses without recourse to vaccines. These ideas are dangerous. In most European countries infected people can rapidly be hospitalized and taken care of, but this isn’t the case in the rest of the world. Among populations strongly affected by malnutrition, up to 10% of measles cases are fatal and the complications from the disease can lead to blindness or severe diseases like encephalitis. For people infected with HIV, the consequences are still worse.
The World Health Organization says, “In countries where measles has mostly been eliminated, imported cases remain an important source of infection.” Genetic studies of the virus show that the virus that began in France wound up in Germany, Denmark, Russia and Romania. Virus of Swiss origin is found in the shanty towns of Latin America. And measles returns to Africa today, in part due to the virus imported from Europe.
This shows the global importance of vaccination, and the completely individualistic irresponsibility of those in the rich countries who would risk the lives of people around the world.